O come, O come, and honor Christ the Lord. He is rarely neglected, even a hundred thousand million colors. Now I can see and hear it, Good morning. Good morning. I want to speak this morning about one of the major Bodhisattva figures in our tradition, So this Zen practice we do and this Zazen meditation we've just done is part of the tradition of Bodhisattvas in Mahayana Buddhism, Greater Vehicle Buddhism.

[01:20]

Bodhisattvas are enlightening beings dedicated to universal liberation. So this practice is Based on the awareness and realization that we are deeply interconnected, that we are practicing together with all beings, that this is not just about reaching some personal awakening, that that's really not impossible because we are so deeply connected. So the various bodhisattva figures, and there are many, actually many, many different bodhisattvas in the Mahayana sutras or scriptures, but I talked in my Faces of Compassion book about seven major bodhisattvas in East Asia. I talked last week about Manjushri, the bodhisattva of insight or wisdom who sits in the center of our meditation hall, as in most meditation halls in Zen tradition, who represents insight, insight into emptiness, the wisdom of oneness or ultimate truth.

[02:36]

But there are a whole array of other major bodhisattva figures who represent the expression of that in the phenomenal world. So we emphasize in our practice not just the awareness that we start to realize in our sitting, and maybe what brings you to sitting, of this possibility of wholeness that Manjushri represents, but also then how do we express that in our activity, in our life activity, in the world? And there are various different modes or approaches or strategies to this practice. So these different Bodhisattva figures, we can see them as, and traditionally in Asia, they are objects of veneration. They're on the altars and so forth. And they represent energies in the world that we can call on for support.

[03:37]

But they also are aspects of our own practice. So each of these different Bodhisattva figures speak to different ones of us at different times and represent different aspects of our own bodhisattva energies or aspects of bodhisattva potential that we might aspire to. They serve as archetypes of the range of bodhisattva practices and the precepts and how we can put this awareness that we settle into and that emerges on our cushions into our life in the world. They each represent aspects of meditation as well. The one I want to talk about today is named in Sanskrit Samantabhadra, universal virtue or worthiness, in Chinese pushan or in Japanese fugen, and is not so familiar, not so spoken about in

[04:46]

American Buddhism or Zen yet. And actually, we don't have an image of him in our temple yet. Maybe that'll happen. Maybe somebody will donate a Samantabhadra to us. But Samantabhadra is very important. One of the reasons for looking at these different figures is they also provide a way of looking at the array of all the different Buddhist teachings. So this was part of how Chinese Buddhism developed, trying to process and understand all the different Indian Buddhist teachings when Buddhism came from India to China. And different Chinese Buddhist schools develop these systems of looking at the different schools and sutras. And they usually put their own favorite sutra kind of at the top in some hierarchical way. But we can look at the different bodhisattvas. It's just different strategies, different approaches to bodhisattva practice and aspects of our own bodhisattva practice.

[05:48]

aspects of what emerges in our own practice over time as we do this practice of just sitting and being present and upright and paying attention to what it is to be present and on our Kushner chair and pay attention to what's going on apart from our stories about ourself and the world. So Samantabhadra is a very interesting figure. So Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, often rides a lion. And as you can see at the figure on our altar right in front of Shakyamuni Buddha, Manjushri rides a lion, sometimes carries a sword to cut through delusion and represents that kind of cutting through aspect of meditation. Samantabhadra sometimes is paired with Manjushri and he rides an elephant. a very different kind of figure.

[06:51]

So Manjushri represents wisdoms, insight into what's important right now, this immediacy of insight. Samantabhadra and the elephant represent knowledge and studying how things work and using that to benefit all beings. And also this kind of deliberate, slow, steady pace of an elephant. So I think of Sumantabhadra as kind of the visionary, devotional, and even activist Bodhisattva. So I'm going to talk about that a little bit. But first I'll talk about the schools and sutras he represents, or is most prominent in. And these various sutras and schools, there's a lot of overlap between them and there's a lot of overlap in terms of these bodhisattvas.

[07:53]

Samantabhadra is prominent in the Lotus Sutra, for example, but the sutra that is where he's featured most prominently, and other bodhisattvas are in that too, is called the Flower Ornament Sutra. Huayen in Chinese or Avatamsaka in Sanskrit, and it's a very lofty, visionary depiction of the activities of bodhisattvas, a very psychedelic text. and it's kind of wild and flowery. It just happens to have a copy of it here. This is Thomas Cleary's translation, and you can see it's heavy. But it's actually very light. There's all this flowery imagery. So I actually recommend reading it. I'm just gonna open it up in random and read a paragraph.

[08:55]

This is from a chapter called Detachment from the World. Great enlightening beings have ten kinds of hands, hands of deep faith, wholeheartedly accepting and ultimately taking up the teaching of Buddhas, hands of giving, satisfying all those who seek according to their desires, hands of initiating greetings, extending their right palms to welcome and lead, hands of honoring Buddhas, tirelessly gathering blessings and virtues, hands of learning and skillfulness, cutting off the doubts of all sentient beings, hands of fostering transcendence of the triple world, extending them to sentient beings and extricating them from the mire of craving, hands of settlement on the other shore, saving drowning sentient beings from the four torrents, hands of generosity with right teaching, revealing all sublime principles, hands and skillful use of philosophies, quelling diseases of body and mind with the medicine of knowledge and wisdom, hands always holding jewels of knowledge, unfolding the light of truth to obliterate the darkness of afflictions.

[10:01]

These are the ten. Based on these, enlightened beings can acquire the supreme hands of Buddhas, covering all worlds in the ten directions." The next paragraph talks about great enlightened beings having ten kinds of guts. and then 10 kinds of internal organs, and so forth. Anyway, this Thomas Cleary's translation is over 1,600 pages, and it's, so one can easily get lost in it, but just reading aloud bits of it. Thank you. It's, again, very visionary and lofty, But it's inspiring in its own way. This 1600-page text translation is said to be just a small reader's digest version of the actual text, which is what Shakyamuni supposedly realized when he was first enlightened.

[11:08]

And it was so far out that of course nobody at the time could understand what he was talking about. So then he decided to teach more prosaically and he taught the Four Noble Truths and taught about impermanence and kind of basic teachings. Okay, so from this very, and Samantabhadra is amongst many, there are pages full of names of bodhisattvas, but Samantabhadra is the one who's most prominently featured. And from this text, the Chinese Huayen school develops, which has a very different kind of, kind of way of talking and talks about the, the dynamics between the ultimate universal truth and particular phenomenal reality. And this is kind of the basis of the Soto Zen teachings. And so it's very important in our school and in Zen.

[12:12]

But also, it features, amongst other things, a whole range of particular visions of particular samadhis that are related to Samantabhadras. So, samadhi is a word for concentrations, particular meditations. So, these meditative visions are visions of interconnectedness. So this is... You know, all of these different teachings, all of these different bodhisattvas developed over many centuries from just the meditation of people sitting around a room like this. all of these different bodhisattva figures have developed in the same way and have taken different forms a little bit in different cultures. One of the most famous of these samadhi visions from the sutra is called Indra's Net. So some of you may have heard of that.

[13:15]

Has anybody not heard of Indra's Net? Somebody? Anybody? So you've all heard of it? But who has not heard of it? Oh good, okay, so I can tell you. So Indra's net is one way of talking about reality, which is that the whole of the phenomenal universe is this vast network. So Indra was the creator deity in Indian cosmology, kind of minor figure in Buddhism. But still, this whole universe is this network, and at each place where the meshes of the net meets, there's a jewel. And each jewel reflects the light that's reflected in the jewels around it. So it's not just three-dimensional, I don't know. String theory says there's 11 dimensions.

[14:17]

Anyway, it's a multi-dimensional network, and each jewel reflects the light in the jewels around it, and each of those jewels reflects the light in the jewels around them, and so forth forever. So each particular place in the mesh reflects the light of the whole universe. So it's this holographic, image of reality. And so these visions, these Samadhi visions related to Samantabhadra are like this. They are images of, or visions, meditative visions of deep interconnectedness. So some of the other ones, There are many of them in this huge sutra, but these are ways of talking about the reality that is Samantabhadra's reality, and that is the way the world really is, according to this vision of

[15:24]

reality. And the main Buddha in this text is not Shakyamuni Buddha actually, the historical Buddha from our period who lived roughly in the 400s BC in our way of reckoning things in what's now northeastern India, but is the Dharmakaya Buddha, which is the Buddha whose body is the whole universe, who is everywhere. So there are many, many, many Buddhas and many, many Bodhisattvas in this in this Mahayana, this Bodhisattva way of seeing things, which then comes out completely. This is the background of this practice we're doing. So there are many of these different visions. Here it is. Just for example, there's the Lion Emergence Samadhi, which reveals to the assembled bodhisattvas the vast array of Buddhas, lands, enlightening beings, and powers of samadhis and manifestations of teachings from the past, from the present, and from the future that all exist within the oceans of Buddha lands that are on a single tip of hair, hair tip, and on every hair tip.

[16:53]

So there's Buddhas and Bodhisattvas everywhere. And this is just this mind boggling kind of way of seeing reality. I mean, you couldn't, I mean, George Lucas or Steven Spielberg or somebody like that couldn't possibly even depict this. But this is the way that reality and the nature of Buddhas in the world is shown in this text. Not just in every hair tip, but in every atom. there are buddhas and buddha fields. So it's this very wild vision of how reality works and how buddhas work. So there are many of these visions. Another one is called the samadhi or concentration called the inherent body of the illuminator of thusness, which is described as being in all buddhas or all awakened ones and containing all the worlds in the universe, and producing all the other concentration states, and containing the teachings and operations of all Buddhas and the knowledge of all Bodhisattvas, and developing wonderful awakening virtues and vows.

[18:07]

And it says that at the time that Samantabhadra enters this Samadhi or awareness, he sees vast numbers of Buddhas in all the worlds in all directions, And also, he sees Buddhas within every atom in all of those worlds. And in front of each one of those Buddhas sit other Samantabhadra Bodhisattvas, who immediately also enter into this awareness, into this meditative state called the inherent body of the illuminator of sushmas. And the Buddhas in all these different realms thereupon praise each Samantabhadra Bodhisattva for their great enlightening abilities, fostered by the power of the Cosmic Absolute, Dronacharya Buddha, then the Buddhas bestow upon every single Samantabhadra omniscient knowledge of all the different worlds and their workings and their appropriate enlightenment teachings. And once this has happened, in each of the many worlds, and in all of the atoms in each of these worlds, all of the Buddhas reach out with their right hands and pat each of the Samantabhadras in all the realms on the head.

[19:15]

So anyway, this is what happens in this particular meditation vision. So, you know, that's totally mind-boggling. How does that even, you know, what does that even mean? So this is kind of the realm of Samantabhadra, these amazing visions of deep interconnectedness. So what's the point of, you know, of this. Well, these are all ways of talking about interconnectedness. So we were talking this spring about the sutra writing by The 13th century Japanese Soto founder Dogen, who is the founder of our tradition, who transcribed this Mountains and Water Sutra or Landscape Spirit Sutra, who talks about mountains walking and the way in which our world is alive. And this way of seeing this deep interconnectedness of Buddhism, Bodhisattvas everywhere,

[20:23]

So this Samantabhadra sense of things is a way of seeing our environment and environment, deep ecology and deep environmental interconnectedness. This is an aspect of the vision that is part of the background of our practice of Zazen. So this isn't necessarily something that each or any of us witnessed as we were sitting here this morning, but it's kind of in the background. This sense of this deep connectedness to all beings. And part of how Samantabhadra works is that he has knowledge of this and knowledge of how particular things work and how to support and benefit each of these things. So there's this kind of aesthetic sense, this kind of

[21:27]

a vision of the beauty of the world and its interconnectedness that's part of this Bodhisattva's approach to practice through this sense of deep interconnectedness of everything. And then part of his practice is informed by a kind of devotion. Towards the end of the Flower in the Sutra, there are some versions of it, Samantabhadra makes ten vows. So at the end of this, we always, at the end of our events, do four bodhisattva vows. Beings are numberless. We vow to free them. Delusions are inexhaustible. We vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. We vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. We vow to realize it. So those are inconceivable vows. They're vast, and they're the context also of our practice, including the particulars of our limited practice to try and bring

[22:32]

a kind of awareness of caring and kindness and insight into our everyday life. Samantabhadra has ten vows. So there are various different versions of vows that some of these Bodhisattvas have. And his vows are interesting and indicate a kind of devotional kind of feeling, kind of dedication. So his ten offers to venerate Buddhas, and also to praise Buddhas, and to make offerings to Buddhas, and then to confess his own past misdeeds, to acknowledge karma. So even Samantabhadra has human karma, has human, you know, has made mistakes. is a being who lives in the world and has to acknowledge past misdeeds and errors and mistakes.

[23:41]

The next one is to rejoice in the happiness of others. And, you know, on some level that seems just natural that, oh, you know, people are to feel good when people around us have good things happen to them and are happy, and to share happiness. When we see somebody smiling or something good happening to someone, we might feel good. But then sometimes it's possible, as human beings, to feel like, oh, how come that person is so happy? I wish I was happy. We feel that way sometimes. We can feel that way. So Samantabhadra actually vows to enjoy the happiness of others, in spite of what's happening to himself, maybe, or herself. Then another vows, or requesting Buddhists to teach, to actually ask for the teaching. So students have to ask for teaching, to ask what they need to learn. Requesting Buddhas not to enter nirvana.

[24:42]

So fully enlightened Buddhas can just check out any time. They can just go. They see that with all the problems in the world, on some level, it's all just... Karma revolving, and they can just let go. But Samantabhadra vows to request Buddhas not to do that, not to enter Nirvana. Samantabhadra vows to study the Dharma in order to teach it. And we know that Dharma gates are boundless, so everything can be an opportunity to study reality, to learn, to study the teachings. So Samantabhadra vows to study the teaching of awakening, to share it with others. So, you know, that's kind of what we're doing here. And then, maybe the most important, Samantabhadra vows to benefit all beings. So this is one of our main precepts. And this is, you know, this is also difficult in some ways.

[25:45]

It's not about Of course, when we vow to benefit all beings, that includes ourselves. But it's not just about benefiting ourselves or our family or the people we like. How do we also include the people we have a hard time with? How do we benefit all beings? Not just the Palestinians or the Israelis. The world is full of people who are trying to benefit one side or the other. And it gets kind of difficult that way. But Samantabhadra vows to benefit all beings. And then the tenth one is to transfer one's merit to others. So this is sort of controversial in Zen, but it's also very important in our practice and it's basic to Bodhisattva practice. So this word merit, when Bodhidharma, who's on our altar, came to China, he was asked by the king of the kingdom he went to how much merit the king had gained from building lots of monasteries and ordaining lots of monks and having arranged translations of lots of texts.

[26:58]

Because a lot of the sutras talk about all the merit you gain from doing these good things. And Bodhidharma said, no merit. And so on some level, it's all empty. We're all just here. But on the other side, we can think of it as merit, like, oh, I'm getting something out of this. If I sit long enough, then something wonderful will happen. But on the other hand, it's just true that through practice, through our effort, through our caring, through helping others, through helping all beings, through helping ourselves, there's a positive energy that is created. So every month we do some kind of sitting, half-day sitting or all-day sitting or several-day sitting, and people who do that, at the end of the day, there's this energy, and sometimes it's kind of stiff.

[28:00]

It's some pain involved maybe, but you know, you can, or just from sitting for the morning, you can feel there's some energy. So that energy is kind of, this is what that merit is talking about. The energy of practice. We may feel good about that. It may energize us. I don't know. When you leave here, many of you, most of you, a couple of people are here for the first time, but most of you have been here before. When you leave, do you feel some energy, some positive energy? Well, since you've come back, I assume that a lot of the time you do. So what do you do with that energy? I think that's what this is about. Bodhisattvas, not just someone to budget, want to transfer, want to dedicate that energy. So at the end of our, whenever we do a service on Monday night or when we do longer sittings, we dedicate the merit, we transfer that to all beings and to specific beings.

[29:07]

Sometimes we have a well-being list of people who need extra energy. So this is part of Bodhisattva practice. We try to share the positive energy of our practice with others. So all of this, there's this vision of deep interconnectedness, of the vastness of that. There's this sense of dedication to awakening and acting to help foster that. And then part of how I see this, so for all these bodhisattvas, in the book I present modern culture figures as exemplars, and that's just kind of My own kind of playing with it, it's not that those people are exactly bodhisattvas, or maybe they are, but part of how this works in the tradition in Asia is, bodhisattvas aren't fancy celebrities, they're just ordinary people who are being helpful in the world.

[30:14]

like us. But also we can see these different approaches to practice through particular culture figures. So I think of Sumantha Bajor sitting on the elephant trying to benefit beings in terms of kind of visionary activists, people like Dr. King or like Gandhi or Cesar Chavez or many, many people like that who you know, see some problem in the world and take on responding to systemic suffering being caused. So there are many beings, many people like that. Also people who try and express this deep interconnectedness and this sense of the luminosity of the world in various ways. I'm particularly fond of Van Gogh and his painting and the way that the brushwork itself of his landscape sparkles when I think of him. Or I think one of the best examples is Rachel Carson. Do you all know who Rachel Carson was?

[31:16]

Some of you don't. How many people don't know who Rachel Carson was? She was kind of the mother of modern environmentalism. She was a marine biologist and she wrote a book called The Sea Around Us and talked about the beauty of the oceans as a system, as a biosystem. But then also she saw how the oceans were being destroyed. This is back in the 50s and early 60s. by DDT and she started talking about that and that started environmentalism and now we see even more with the acidification from carbon dioxide and with the overfishing of the oceans, how the oceans are being really even more destroyed now. But she started responding to that and was vilified by the chemical companies for it. So she saw the beauty of the interconnectedness of the systems of the ocean, but also the need to protect them. So that's part of my sense of Samantabhadra, to see the beauty of the world and how it's interconnected.

[32:25]

but also that we have some responsibility, or Samantha Bajor takes on some responsibility to act to protect that. So I'll just close with a plug for, in this age of climate damage, some of us went to talk this week at DePaul by a climate scientist from the University of Chicago. Climate damage is here and it's going to be very bad, but it's not, you know, we're not at the point where it's fatal or, you know, there's nothing to be done. There's still, it still can be, there will be climate damage. There is obviously things that are happening, but it can be, it's still within the power of people, all of us, to make it a little less bad. to make the effects a little less distressing as possible.

[33:30]

And so I'll just mention that September 21st, the United Nations has called all the leaders of the world to come together to talk about this, since most of the countries of the world aren't doing much or aren't doing enough about it. And at the same time, Environmental groups are organizing a large gathering. So I'd encourage anyone who can. We're having a special event here that weekend. So I'm not going to be able to go myself. But September 21, which is, I think, a Saturday, there's going to be a large gathering in New York City. So anyone who can go. I think Sierra Club is organizing buses. Anyway, you can go to 350.org and check that out. So that's a kind of Samantha Badger kind of activity. but there are many aspects. Each of these figures, these Bodhisattva figures, represents many aspects of Bodhisattva activity in the world and also Bodhisattva aspects of meditation. So to see how we're interconnected, to see responses to that reality, to dedicate that kind of devotional sense of dedicating

[34:38]

practice to awakening of all beings. This is one aspect, one approach, one strategy of bodhisattva practice, and there are others. So I talked about Manjushri last Sunday. I'll talk about Kanon, the bodhisattva of compassion, in a few weeks. But I'll stop now and ask if anyone has any comments or questions or responses, please feel free. because you were talking about the interconnectedness and the happiness. Sometimes when I'm feeling down, I notice that to live more in the moment, like if you're helping somebody else, like if you see a stray cat or a stray dog and you try to help the animal, it makes you happier by helping somebody else or helping or donating your time to the Salvation Army.

[35:40]

I mean, you could feel down or depressed, but if you're just living more in the moment by helping another person, it's kind of ironic because you're feeling happier yourself by helping someone else. Ernest Thomas Seaton, he's the father of animal conservation, and you were talking about Carson. I don't know, I never heard of Carson before because I'm more, you know, I dedicate more of my time towards the animal conservation, and so, you know, if you're helping animals and you have, you know, these causes, you know, it's going to make you know, yourself feel happy or awesome. Yes, yes, good. Thank you. Yes, that's exactly the Bodhisattva idea, is that we are connected and when we help others, we're helping ourselves too. So this is really the idea for all the Bodhisattvas. And I think the way you were talking about it feels a little more like Kanon, who I'm going to talk about in a few weeks. But yeah, the Ernest Thompson Seaton is very much Samantabhadra idea.

[36:43]

So, yeah, that's good. And I know there's others here who work with animals. So, yeah, there are various ways to see our connection and to act on that and to help. And that does help ourselves to be connected and help others. So other comments? Yes. I'm just wondering, is, so this is Michael Andres-Fugan. Yes. Is that one of the figures that are outside Temple gates, or am I wrong about that? You mean the guardians? No. Oh, okay. Some gates have Manjushri and Manjushri and Shudra. There's wrathful figures usually. Yeah, that's why I was wondering if he had that quality. No, it's not one of the wrathful figures. The guardians of the gates. So all these different figures represent aspects of Bodhisattva practice and aspects of our own practice.

[37:45]

And you might relate more to some than others. But yeah, these are qualities of our practice. Yes, Nicholas. I love the idea of holographic universe, which you mentioned with the jewels. like really paying attention is kind of the doorway to this timelessness and this interconnectedness that you're talking about? Yes. So could you say more about that? Yeah, so, you know, these visions that are in this very psychedelic huge sutra, you know, may seem like kind of wild and far out and cosmic and stuff, but

[38:53]

On some level, it's just paying attention to what's right in front of us, as you say, this ordinary world. I meant to mention Suzuki Roshi saying, the world is its own magic. When we're just sitting and facing the wall and facing ourselves, we can feel this quality of something beyond our usual idea about how things work. So part of, you know, Dogen talks about this all the time, that our usual human perceptions are limited, our usual human intellectual capacities are limited. It's not that that's bad, it's just that it's limited. And to understand that, to see that there are other possibilities, opens us up to a wider sense of things. And so yeah, to pay attention on all kinds of levels is our practice. So the meditation we do here, it's not like edge of the seat.

[39:56]

I don't come around with a stick and hit people if they close their eyes or move their leg position a little bit. It's kind of gentle practice. If you need to change your leg position, that's okay. Do it quietly. But always pay attention. What's going on? If you're feeling sleepy, pay attention to that. If your mind is chattering away, pay attention to that. What's going on? The practice, as you said, is to pay attention. And when we do that, we see that many things are possible. Other comments or responses? Let me. Can you speak again, say a little bit of connection between a couple of different things you were saying. One was, sort of earlier on, I feel like you were talking about the elephant and the aspect of this archetype that has to do with learning, I think, or knowledge.

[41:06]

And then there was sort of the activism, sort of doing the world peace. And also the visions. Yeah, so each of these, you know, these are archetypal Bodhisattva figures and they're complicated in terms of how different aspects fit together. So it's hard to present it all very thoroughly in one talk. Yeah, the aspect of knowledge. So the elephant represents, you know, kind of this deliberate slow pace, but also elephants are known for memory. They represent as an image knowledge. So, knowing how things work, so, you know, in contrast to Manjushri who just speaks the truth, this kind of immediate insight and speaks truth to power, or to Kanon who, a little bit like what Carol was saying, just responds to the suffering of people or beings in front of her.

[42:15]

Sumantha Bajra sees how things are connected, studies how they work, understands and knows how systems work, and then responds to protect, to take care of things by working in a kind of deliberate fashion. So to think about, you know, Gandhi figuring out how to do the salt march, or Dr. King working on long-term projects of, including civil disobedience, but, you know, and, various marches or, you know, the way that kind of deliberate program of trying to respond to, you know, who knows how we're going to take care of gun violence in Chicago, for example. Nobody's figured that out yet, but to understand the dynamics of poverty, of gangs, of guns being so readily available,

[43:19]

you know, it's going to take that kind of knowledge and a kind of long-term program. And there are various people who are working on thinking about this. This is the kind of energy that would be needed to do that. And it's not going to happen, like, immediately. It's going to happen through really knowing all the different aspects that are involved, you know, and the effects of unjust incarceration. There's so many aspects and so many factors. So to understand some system that has all these terrible effects and to look at where to work with it in a programmatic way. So it's that kind of response. It was making me think about Nelson Mandela and how early in his work he was much more and, you know, everything sort of slowed down because he had to, because he was in jail.

[44:23]

But he was reading and thinking and deepening, in the way you're saying, of sort of looking at the whole complexity of the whole situation and that his work sort of bore through over decades of careful study. Yes, Mandela is definitely a very good example of Samantabhadra kind of activity or response, yeah. So it's complicated. There's also this aesthetic quality. It's how to do it in this way that sees the beauty in this. So that's part of the two. You know, I think I mentioned Edison in this, you know, illumination is important in Samantabhadra. So, you know, all of the ways it took, all of the many experiments it took to systematically go through all of the different elements, different substances that it would take to actually

[45:29]

find how to produce a light bulb, you know, and then how to mass produce that. That kind of dedication and systematic thinking through things, that's part of this kind of energy. But this is just one example, but it's an example of kind of a bodhisattva kind of caring about benefiting beings in this way. It's one approach to bodhisattva activity. You can see it on smaller scales, too. But people I know in this room who work in thinking it through long-term programs of how to take care of people in various realms. So any other comments or responses or questions about bodhisattvas? Yes, Nicholas. don't take our mythology too seriously.

[46:34]

Speak of archetypes that we can locate those archetypes in current reality. Yeah. I think for us to make this wonderful practice and teaching tradition real for us in our modern 21st century American context, we have to be creative about how to apply this. tradition to our world and our situation and all of the problems that we have. Part of it is that, you know, it's very easy, I wanted to say this in response to what you were saying, Carol, that it's very easy to feel overwhelmed by all the problems and injustices and difficulties and sufferings of the world. You know, if you look around, it's very easy to feel like there's nothing to be done, it's hopeless, and that's just not None of us individually or even together have to fix everything.

[47:35]

It's not going to happen that way. But each one of us taking on one problem, one instance, one cow responding to a missing animal. or an animal that's lost. Each one of us responding to some difficulty, and many people doing that all over the world, that's how this works. So it's not like you have to fix or solve the whole thing. Each of us taking on some response, that's what Samantabhadra is about. So on that note, I'll finish.

[48:19]

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