on this piece of paper that says the standard presentation of the path of the bodhisattva to Buddhahood. It says that three things in the path of the bodhisattva our compassion, the bodhicitta, which is the aspiration to become completely and unsurpassably and authentically awakened for the welfare of all beings. or compassion, and then this wish or this vow.

[01:07]

And then the third point is realization or comprehension of the truth, of the deepest truths. And that comprehension of the deepest truth entails wisdom. In this class we have not spent much time on the first point of developing compassion. that could easily be a class unto itself, of course, just working on developing compassion.

[02:12]

And the full range of this compassion is to finally come to a place where you feel you would like all beings to be happy and you would like all beings to be free of suffering. Wanting all beings to be happy is what we call maitri or metta. It's love. And wanting all beings to be free of suffering is compassion or karuna. Wanting everybody to be happy and everybody to be free of suffering and and wanting to work for that, wanting to devote your life to that. And training yourself at that and meditating on that until you get to a place where you actually not only want that for everybody, and not only are you willing to work for that for everybody, but you actually yourself

[03:38]

find everybody to be very, very dear to you. Like as dear as your most precious child or grandchild. Now wanting Everybody to be happy and wanting everybody to be free of suffering is really good. But if they're not really dear to you, you might want to work on that from some distance. Like get somebody else to help them out. But certain kinds of helping them you might not want to get involved with. Because they're not really, really dear to you. So it's good to want that, even if they aren't dear to you, but to really, really get into the details of the work of helping all these people be happy and free, it's good if you really feel they're dear to you.

[04:55]

And so that takes quite a bit of an effort to meditate on compassion to the point where you actually start to really, really find everybody really, really dear. So I have a grandson now, and he's really, really dear to me. And for me, it's lots of fun because I never liked a boy so much. When I was a boy, I had some boyfriends but I didn't find them as dear as I find this little boy. I did not understand. I used to think, boy, women are really amazing how much they can like men. But maybe they kind of get into it on boys, little ones.

[06:00]

I didn't know little boys could be so sweet. I knew little girls could be sweet, even before I was a father of a little girl. But I didn't realize how sweet little boys can be. It's really an eye-opener. I mean, they can be really very, very delightful. That's the way he is. He's very delightful. And so I use him as an opportunity to be devoted to him, and I use him as an opportunity to show my daughter that I'm devoted to her. So my devotion to him is another way for me to show her how much I care for her, which I like to do. Because it's true, I do. But also, I work at not getting attached to him. He doesn't need me to be attached to him, actually. he does need me to delight in him though and find him dear i think he does need me to be willing to give my life for him but he doesn't need me to be attached to him as far as i can tell when he appears in my life and i'm delighted and then he goes away and i let him go that's fine with him he doesn't want me to like hold on to him when he wants to leave

[07:25]

When he wants to see me, he wants to see me. When he doesn't want to see me, he doesn't want to see me. And that's the way he wants it. And that's the way I want it, too. I want to be like that. I want to, like, not attach to him. And I also want to learn to find everybody as delightful as I find him. That's a meditation practice I would hope to continue to work on. And I hope to continue to find him as dear as he changes. into perhaps not being quite so sweet, which I'm familiar with. Anyway, working on that is developing the first point of this path. But even if you find all beings to be dear, you still might not make this, I shouldn't make this, but this thing might not arise in you to think, well, everybody's dear to me. That's really great now. I feel that's wonderful. I suffer a lot because of that, because their pain really gets to me.

[08:33]

But anyway, I've gotten to that point, but I haven't yet got this thing about this wish to be a Buddha. hasn't arisen but sometimes it arises and it arises basically spontaneously but spontaneously doesn't mean there aren't conditions for it it just means you don't make it happen nobody else makes it happen it's like you enter into communion with your buddha nature or with buddha and this arises and I didn't, when you signed up for this class, there was not a questionnaire or, you know, there wasn't a questionnaire, right? Like, do you want to be a Buddha? If you want to be in this class, we'd like to know, do you want to be a Buddha? Because this is a class about the three wisdoms of the Buddha path.

[09:37]

So if you don't want to be Buddha, maybe you might not want to take the class, because that's what it's about, sort of. Or you might want to check it out, what's this business about being a Buddha? Anyway, at some point there is the intention to become a Buddha for the welfare of the world, not to become a Buddha just for yourself, but actually to become a Buddha for others first, because that's what Buddha's about. And then there's vows that are made in conjunction with this wish. So there's a wish or a yearning for Buddhahood, but then there's also like a vow to realize it. It's not exactly like I'm going to realize it, but I vow to realize it. I want to realize it. And at Zen Center we chant four vows, although there's many more than four. There's lots of ways to express, to vow to become a Buddha, but we have just four of them.

[10:46]

We call them the four universal vows. And the first one is, sentient beings are numberless. I vow to save them. And on that first kind of amazing statement that we make, implication there which is not raised but I raise it for this class I vow to save them means I vow to become very wise because in order to save them you have to bring them or teach them the medicine which saves them you have to know the kind of medicine that cures their suffering you have to have wisdom which understands among other things that the people all the beings that you want to save are not other than you you need that kind of wisdom if you don't understand that there aren't any beings out there except from you you won't be able to save them you can help them in many ways but you can't actually save them unless you have that kind of wisdom so following to say beings mean is this is that first vow implies that you you're vowing to be wise

[12:03]

to realize a non-dual wisdom, to become free of the ignorance which sees other beings as separate from you and existing out there on their own. And the second vow we say is afflictions, we say desires, but literally it's afflictions are inexhaustible, I vow to end them or literally I vow to cut them. And that implies practicing all kinds of virtues including especially samadhi. Samadhi clears away afflictions temporarily in lieu of realizing wisdom which permanently ends them. So samadhi and wisdom are also implied in the second vow. The third vow is which Zen Center is not usually amplified on too much.

[13:06]

We say Dharma, it says Dharma doors. In Chinese it says Dharma doors or Dharma gates are boundless. And the translation we say now is I vow to enter them. I vow to enter all these Dharma gates or gates of truth or gates of teaching. So Dharma can mean truth. Dharma can mean phenomenon. Dharma can also mean teaching. So one way to understand that vow is that the doors to the truth are boundless. I vow to enter them. It literally says I vow to understand them or I vow to awaken to them or master them. So there's many ways to enter truth is one way to understand that. I think that's a correct understanding. There's boundless opportunities to enter the truth. But another way to understand the word gate or dharma gate or teaching gate is that those gates are schools.

[14:12]

The word in Chinese, they use the word gate for gate, but they also use it for a school or a philosophical position. So that's another way to understand what the Bodhisattva is vowing to do. Not only all the different opportunities for entering the truth, but also you're going to actually learn all the different disciplines, doctrines, philosophical, psychological, scientific, you're going to learn them all. And I mention that not to scare you away from Buddhahood, but just to help you understand, you know, what you're in for. And see if you can like still want to be a Buddha when you find out how much work it is. That you're going to learn all the Buddhist teachings, all the different versions of the Buddhist teachings. And you're going to learn all the non-Buddhist teachings, too. All of them. And you're not going to complain about it and say, that's too many teachings.

[15:16]

You're going to want to learn everything that could possibly be of any assistance to anybody. And the last point is the Buddha way, the way also means enlightenment, Buddha way or Buddha's enlightenment is unsurpassable. I vow to become it or attain it. And this is partly a, I'm mentioning this particularly the third vow because A lot of Zen students don't quite get that. They think that they're not going to be scholars, they think. But to be a Buddha, you have to be a scholar. Not necessarily the kind of scholars you may be familiar with, like they have at Berkeley.

[16:24]

Not necessarily like those. You don't have to drink a lot of coffee, necessarily. or have a laptop. You don't have to have a laptop, but you need to learn how to use laptops. You need to learn how to invent laptops. But this is a, you know, this takes time, this bodhisattva path. And there's no hurry because you're enjoying it so much. Bodhisattva Vowing to save people means vowing to learn how to teach people. And learning how to teach people means learning how to teach people in a way that works for them. So you have to learn all kinds of stuff, all kinds of disciplines. And then all these different disciplines that you learn, you go through these three levels of learning, these three wisdoms.

[17:25]

First you study it and listen to it and read about it and discuss it with the teacher until you understand it as well as you can by the word. Then you move into the next phase where you critically analyze it in various ways and understand more deeply. And this process of learning and study and critical analysis and examination of the teachings and of the truths of the teachings, the teachings of the truth, and all the kinds of teachings, this kind of work, learning how to use your mind to study things and develop wisdom about things, involves, you know, using your intellect. It means using discursive thought. And I've taught here in many places that Zen meditation is, in a lot of ways what Zen meditation is, is giving up discursive thought.

[18:37]

So I just said you need to develop, you need to use discursive thought in order to develop understanding of these teachings, in order to understand, develop wisdom about these truths, in order to learn how to see these truths. You have to use your discursive thought, you have to use your intellect. So how do you put these two together? Well, they get put together in the third level of wisdom. In the third level of wisdom, you let go of discursive thought. When you let go of discursive thought, you enter into common abiding. Entering into common abiding, you start to realize samadhi. you start to realize the one-pointedness of thought. Then, once that samadhi is realized, then, once you're calm, then, once your mind basically stops, then you turn and you look back at the truths that you've understood.

[19:45]

then you observe the understanding which you've achieved in the previous two levels of wisdom. But now this wisdom is conjoined, it's happening in samadhi. So you actually develop a direct perception of the truth with no intermediary thinking or labeling. and that brings the full realization of whatever truth we're talking about. And then also the bodhisattva vow, it says, I'm going to learn all the truths in all the schools of truth. A lot of truths I'm going to study. I'm going to study them, first learn about them, memorize them, discuss them. Then I'm going to critically analyze them. Then I'm going to bring them into my samadhi practice. And samadhi practice concentration practice, which we talked about last fall, right?

[20:50]

Among other times. Samadhi practice. Also, you get instructions on samadhi practice. And when you first get instructions on samadhi practice, you learn about them, you read about them, you discuss them with the teacher. Then you criticize them and you analyze them. Then you... I mentioned that last week, right? Then you... understand them well enough to start practicing the samadhi practices and then when you actually successfully practicing them in this case you become them in this case so you can be practicing giving up discursive thought while you're developing wisdom just like we talked about last week while you're practicing all these compassion promoting practices like giving precepts, patience, diligence, and samadhi. While you're practicing samadhi, while you're practicing concentration, while you're developing one-pointedness of calm, one-pointedness of thought, while you're working on that, you're simultaneously developing wisdom, which helps you understand all these other practices.

[22:04]

And those practices help you be already good at samadhi, so you can then bring the wisdom which you're developing together with the samadhi. So last fall I passed out this diagram. How many people have this diagram? So most of you do, actually, it looks like. So most people repeated the... We're here last fall, aren't we? So some people don't have it, so you can pick it up later, but basically what this diagram is, it's a diagram of different meanings of samadhi or different kinds of samadhi. And... So the center circle... He is what? People who used to be in a class. What's the center circle? What's Samadhi number one in the center?

[23:09]

And what's that? One point in his mind. It's one point in his mind? Uh-huh. . Yeah. It's the fact that all minds All states of mind have this quality of being one-pointed. In other words, right now, all your minds are one-pointed with what they're knowing. If you're aware of feeling your hand on your face, then your awareness of the hand on your face and the hand and the face are one point. You're listening to my voice, the knowing my voice, and the voice that's known and the knowing of it are one point. And that's characterized all your states of mind. And that is mental one-pointedness.

[24:15]

So all states of mind have samadhi. By the way, all states of mind also have wisdom. Wisdom is usually called, however, instead of being called prajna, which we often use, the word is often used for wisdom in Buddhism, prajna. In the teaching of the psychological nature of the mind, we say it has this concentrated quality and it also has intelligence, mati, But that intelligence, as you train in wisdom, the intelligence turns into deeper and deeper wisdom, or, you know, then we call it prajna. But we already have wisdom. We already have the capacity of discernment in our mind. And we already have mental unpointedness. But both can be developed.

[25:20]

So the second circle is... The second circle is called jhana, and the nature of jhana is also samadhi. But the second circle is that you become absorbed or immersed in the samadhi nature of your mind. So many people, everybody's got samadhi all the time, but most people don't feel it. Most people do not feel calm and one-pointed, even though they are. And by giving up discursive thought, by giving up grasping and seeking anything in your mind, you start to settle into the deeper and deeper appreciation that your mind is one-pointed with what it knows. and you become calmer, more stable. Your body becomes buoyant and relaxed and flexible and awake and clear and joyful.

[26:29]

You're in samadhi now. You're not behind the plow. And in that samadhi, in samadhi then, And of course they can get higher and higher or deeper and deeper samadhis, but basically once you're quite well into samadhi, the afflictions due to ignorance are at bay. They're subdued in samadhi. they're not part but the roots of the affliction the roots for reawakening the afflictions have not been removed because there's still in most cases some ignorance some misunderstanding of the nature of self is still there it hasn't been rooted out but you're calm now and at ease and resting well in the one-pointedness of thought there's some wisdom there too that's developing right along with that

[27:34]

You had wisdom all along, but it's growing now in this nice culture of samadhi. The third circle is a circle where the wisdom which understands the selflessness of a person has been realized. So in the third circle you start training in wisdom. Of course, you could be training in wisdom even before you attain the second circle. Just like now, maybe some of you haven't attained the second kind of samadhi, but you have the first kind of samadhi, all of us have that, and you're training in wisdom already. As you enter into the second kind of samadhi, when you're doing the samadhi practice to develop and deepen the sense of samadhi, at that time, it's hard to simultaneously develop wisdom because in order to develop wisdom, you have to use discursive thought at the beginning. to hear the truths. For example, the truth that I just mentioned or implied is that persons have a certain kind of self but not another kind of self.

[28:47]

And the kind of self that persons have is that persons are selfless. They don't have... And selfless have different meanings. One of the meanings is they lack a permanent self. Another meaning is they lack a independent self. Another meaning is they lack an inherently existing self. And these are different understandings of the selflessness of the person, of what the selflessness of the person means. But anyway, in order to hear the teaching about selflessness of your personhood, what kind of selflessness of personhood you really have, you have to use your intellect, your discursive thought. And using your intellect and discursive thought, you're training in wisdom. But you can't do that at the beginning while you're simultaneously giving up discursive thought in order to calm down. So in that sense the practices are separate. At the beginning you're spending some time giving up discursive thought and developing calm, and other time in class and in discussions developing your wisdom

[29:55]

understanding the buddhist teachings about many things most importantly the buddhist teaching of selflessness but then but then after you develop the samadhi and you also develop the wisdom then you bring the wisdom into the samadhi and then you fully realize the teaching which you've been studying, which you've been discerning, which you've been analyzing. And in the third circle you attain the liberation that we call the liberation of the individual, liberation from the world, from samsara, from suffering. And in the fourth circle you attain deeper and deeper understandings of selflessness until you understand the selflessness the way the Buddha does. And so if you don't have this chart, the circle chart, you can pick that up after class, too.

[31:01]

Now, I don't know if this is a good idea, but I'm ready to do something else unless you want to ask questions. but don't feel like you're frustrating me. If you ask questions, I'm happy to... Yes? I'm starting to feel really anxious. Starting to feel... Yes? On one hand, I feel really encouraged, and on the other hand, I feel discouraged. I'm around people like at Green Gulch who are devoted to this practice and practicing this way. I feel very encouraged. But when I'm out in the world, I start to feel discouraged, like it's too lofty, it's too much, and then I start to feel like a failure because I can't, like, what I'd like to be is ideal. And, like, how can I ever develop calm in the midst of this chaos? And so... I don't know where to go with that. Well, you don't know where to go, but I guess the question is, do you want to go?

[32:07]

Where do you want to go? Now, you have this piece of cloth hanging on your torso, which is kind of like you received when you took refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Okay? When you're out in the world and you're feeling discouraged and you don't know where to go, you might think, well, I could go to a bar. I could go swimming. Or I could go to drink while I'm in the pool, even. Or I could go to, for example, the Dharma. See what the Dharma has to say for somebody who's feeling discouraged. And so... let's just say you were like walking around town, you know, and you're starting to feel discouraged. So then you think, well, should I take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha now in response to this discouragement?

[33:09]

And if you're not sure if you're going to take refuge, then I think you kind of like think about whether you're going to take refuge. And so you can continue to feel discouraged and think, well, where should I go? Where should I go? You can try various things, but anyway... The going to or going back to the Dharma is sitting there waiting for you. And the Dharma does have something to say to people who are feeling discouraged. So these practices, these skill and means practices, these compassion practices, they're compassion practices in the sense that they're ways to take care of yourself when you're discouraged. and they're also skill and means that they're ways of attracting people to the very practice that you're doing for your discouragement because if you're discouraged and you have a practice that you do when you're discouraged and it helps you then if other people see that they say well maybe I'll try that too or if you meet people that are discouraged you say well when I'm discouraged when I'm worried and I can't sleep I count my blessings instead of sheep or you know whatever you know

[34:17]

So like right now we have all these horrors all around us, right? We're inundated with images of horror and terror up close and far away, but certainly far away we're hearing about all this. So how can we not get discouraged? And then I start to think, well, does it help anybody for me to get discouraged on top of all the other problems we've got? On top of all this horror, is it going to help the horror for me to, like, collapse here? Well, if so, I should collapse. That's going to be helpful. I'll offer myself to this person who's kind of like, to this person who's discouraged. I'll just collapse here, and then they can come and help me, and they'll feel better. They'll get distracted from their discouragement because they're just going to get busy and happy to help me. And I'm going to tell them, boy, you're really helpful.

[35:20]

They're going to start feeling appreciated and so on. Basically, when you're feeling discouraged, one of the main practices to go back to is the practice of diligence. Diligence is a Buddhist practice, not just a Buddhist practice, but it's one of the practices of developing compassion. And then there's teachings about how to develop, how to deal with discouragement and doubt. Now, if you're meditating... you're in a meditation situation, like if you're in a retreat and you're meditating, you may run into trouble there too. But then there's teachings, there's Dharma teachings for what to do about the things that are distracting you from your meditation. And one of the things that can distract you is discouragement, but lots of other things can distract you too, and there's teachings for those. But just plain old discouragement, you start thinking now in certain ways that you start to think now, okay, I'm discouraged, but

[36:22]

What is my aspiration? What do I want to do? How do I want to be? Now, if you want to be discouraged, well then, if you're discouraged, you don't have much to be discouraged about because you have success. Right? But if you want to be something other than discouraged, then you think of that. Well, what else would there be other than be discouraged? Encouraged? Discouraged-encouraged? Right? So encouraged means, I guess you got courage coming in. Right? You're encouraged. So how do you develop courage? Well, one of the ways you develop courage again is, what is it that I wanted to do again? What was it? When you hear that teaching of check to see what it was you wanted to do, you're taking refuge in Dharma because you remember the Dharma teaching, the teaching of the Buddha, which says when you're down, then one of the first things to do is try to remember what's your aspiration.

[37:27]

Aspiration means what do you want to breathe life into in this life? What do you want to give your life to? What is it that you want to give your life to? Again, what was it? I'm too discouraged to remember. Okay, okay. Okay, fine. Now, then a little while later, where do you want to go now? Well, I want to go back to Dharma. Okay, let's go back to Dharma. Now, what does Dharma say? Actually, that question again. What's your aspiration? Well, okay, I'll tell you. My aspiration is, for one thing, is to become encouraged. Encouraged for what? Encouraged to do the practice. Okay, that's your aspiration. Could be something. Say, my aspiration is to be a great bodhisattva and to be encouraged and full of courage to attract people to practice. What's the next point? Next point is to think about how good it would be if you got encouraged.

[38:30]

Think how good it would be to do something good. To think how good it would be to get so encouraged that you encourage other people to be encouraged and to encourage others. You think about it and think about it until you start to actually feel very, very happy about getting encouraged. about working on what you'd like to work on, you start to think that would really be good. And you start, even before you start doing it, you're starting to feel like you'd love to do it. Because diligence, you know, at the root of the word diligence has to do something like with doing what you love. It has this, I think, a connotation now for some people of like working hard. nose to the grindstone or something. Does it have some of that quality for you? But the root of the word is having to do with doing something you love, something you adore. So, anyway, you start into, like, think that practice X or practice X, Y, and Z, that these practices are really... It would be wonderful if anybody did them, and in particular, I would love to do them.

[39:39]

Okay? And then another thing you do is you... you then start to like apply yourself to whatever the practice is that you feel so good about but you do it carefully because you just worked yourself into a little bit of a froth so you come in kind of steady so you don't get you know start too fast or too intensely but try to like do it in a steady way and the last the last thing that helps the discouragement is what's called rest Bodhisattvas work hard to learn all this stuff, to learn all these practices, to help all these beings to become a Buddha. They work hard. But it's not hard for them to work hard if they're doing the right thing. But they do also, part of what they do is they rest. Rest is part of being diligent. And they rest in two ways, basically. They rest when they've done enough of something that they've been doing.

[40:41]

They don't overwork at what they're already doing. They stop at a certain point and rest when it's time to stop. Or they don't keep doing a practice that's too easy for them, that they just keep doing because it's so easy and they're just in the habit. They stop that. They take a rest from it. But they also stop practices that are too hard. And practices that are just right, they just do until it's time to stop. So another part of being enthusiastic is to know when to rest. And after you rest, you rest enthusiastically because you realize that rest is part of enthusiasm. Rest is part of diligence. You don't rest with a sense of, I shouldn't be resting. You rest with a kind of heroic pride that you're a good rester. Like, boy, that was a good nap there. I'm learning how to nap. Or you take a break. I totally relaxed and gave that practice up for a while. Now I want to do it again. So that's an example of where you go when you're discouraged.

[41:46]

And there's laziness or lack of diligence which is due to like what is called inertia. Like if you're not moving, you don't want to move. Or if you are moving, you don't want to stop. Right? That's a kind of lack of diligence. When you're diligent, you shouldn't be acting out of inertia. You should be doing it because you love to do it. And then each moment you're doing rather than you're just rolling along by inertia or you don't want to do anything because you happen to be at rest and you don't want to move. That's one kind of laziness. Another kind of laziness is, of course, laziness or lack of diligence where you're doing something you don't really want to do, something you don't really think is good and it doesn't really make you happy to think about doing it. In other words, you're being unskillful. You're doing something that isn't happy. So part of diligence is to think how good it is to be skillful, how good it is to be diligent, how good it is to do the right thing. It's really great to do something good. It is.

[42:47]

Think about that. It's not so good to do things that aren't good. So part of non-diligence is doing things unskillfully and lazily. And then the third point is that the non-diligence is due to discouragement. or, you know, thinking, I can't do this. It's okay to say, I can't do this. But to say I can't do this as an insult or like putting yourself down, that we don't like to do that. We do not enjoy that. We don't love that. It's unhappy to be telling yourself you can't do something and be down on yourself for it. So if you hear about all the things that a bodhisattva does and you think, I can't do that, There's a way to think about that, like, well, I can't do that. That's all. You know, it's not a problem. I would like to learn how, and I intend to learn how, but I can't do it yet. And it would be great to learn how.

[43:51]

Yeah, I would love to learn how. And if anybody else can do this, it would be great, too. And I actually see some people who can, and I think that's wonderful. I can't do it yet. But that's not a disparagement to myself. And I'm not discouraged that I can't do it. I'm actually going to turn now back to the practice of getting encouraged to learn how to do the things that I haven't learned yet. To be enthusiastic about learning all these concentration practices, all these giving practices, all these precept practices, all these diligence practices, all these patience practices, and all these wisdom practices. So practicing those virtues together with wisdom means that they're going at the same time. You're developing wisdom and patience at the same time. Patience and wisdom are very similar. You're developing diligence and wisdom right along. You have to have diligence to do the wisdom and you have to have the wisdom in order to do the diligence properly. But there's a slight conflict that I just mentioned between developing samadhi sometimes has to be done sort of like, you know, alternatively with developing wisdom because

[44:59]

developing wisdom means to some extent. Wisdom is what understands the whole program, for example, of the practice. Wisdom is what learns the whole program and has a sense of where we're going. And to learn that and understand it and then criticize it and all that, analyze it and go deep with it, that takes using your mind in a way that doesn't go with developing calm at the beginning. Later, someday I'll talk to you about how later the insight work actually deepens the calm. Calm certainly develops the insight. That may be clear to you, how being clear and relaxed and awake and buoyant, that would help you be able to see clearly. But the analysis at a certain point will calm you more. But anyway, the question is where to go. It's up to you. You can choose. Dharma, and listen and listen and develop the first kind of wisdom.

[46:02]

And then hear the teachings about how to develop the second and third kind of wisdom. And hear the teachings about how to meet your discouragement. Hear the teachings about how to meet your discouragement, how to use your discouragement as an opportunity to go back to take refuge in Dharma. Use all your afflictions as an opportunity. Now would be a good time to practice. These difficulties remind me, oh yeah, take refuge in dharma, yeah. Go back to the teaching, or take refuge in the sangha. So you said something about the people at Green Gulch are all devoted and blah, blah. But when you're out by yourself, Well, that's why we have sangha. Sometimes you say, well, I got to go someplace where I get support. I need to go someplace where I'm going to be with other people who are like dealing with their discouragement in a dharma way rather than an addictive way. We're dealing with the discouragement like gently facing it, facing it, facing it, being patient with it, not blaming somebody else for it, being practicing the precepts for it,

[47:12]

and all that. I want to be with people who are doing that. It's too hard to be by myself. Well, that's called the Reformation Sangha. You don't have to necessarily even go any place. You just think of it, for starters, that I need help. I need to be with the Sangha. And then sometimes that leads you to go someplace, like take a class here or Green Gulch or whatever. But Just when you think, I'd like to be with other people who are... I'd like to be with a gang of people that are working on dealing with discouragement. That would really be an encouragement. Have a little... What do you call it? A discouragement affinity group, right? That would be great, wouldn't it? Especially if they were using... If it was a discouragement affinity group where they weren't using drugs as the way to deal with it. They weren't using cocaine. I'm not discouraged now. So... I feel quite encouraged. This is great. But in the know that they're using Dharma, that they're using, they're getting together, taking revision in Sangha.

[48:13]

They're taking revision in Dharma. They're studying the teachings of how to deal with discouragement. And they're also remembering enlightenment. And as soon as possible, after we aren't so discouraged, we're going to say, okay, now I feel better. Yeah. Should I still work on wisdom now? Okay. Work on wisdom now. So this is how, this is like the way to do it, you know, or one story about it. Yes? What does it mean? Literally it means, you know, an assembly or a community. It's a community of beings who encourage you to study the truth and encourage you to do all the practices which support you to study the truth. and keeping the community or the beings that support you to understand the truth, to do the practices which will help you understand the truth. In other words, it's the community beings that help you understand the truth and become free of suffering by understanding the truth.

[49:21]

So that's sangha. And sometimes they say, or it can just be one teacher, one great teacher. That's enough. You can't get a whole gang of people. Just have a teacher. But You can also have a group including a teacher, too. They originally said that it was at least four monks or four nuns, the original early definition was. But in the modern world, I think sometimes better to widen the definition a little bit to a significant group of people that you feel inspire and support the practice of the truth, the practice of the Buddha, teaching. Yes? I have a question. Okay. When you were talking about... I think it's very...

[50:22]

Yes. [...] Limitless phenomena meaning the limitlessness of phenomena or the limitlessness of phenomena? The limitless phenomena in that case means not so much the limitlessness, but that you go to the limit of phenomena. Phenomena are limited in certain ways. In other words, you study all phenomena. She was talking about that I mentioned that in the... Samgye Nirmacana Sutra, Maitreya, the bodhisattva of love, said to Buddha something like, you've taught that there's four kinds of objects that bodhisattvas meditate on.

[51:35]

One's conceptual objects, another one's non-conceptual objects, the other one's the limit of phenomena, and the other one's the accomplishment of purpose. So then there's questions about the third type of object that bodhisattvas are studying. Objects There's basically two kinds of objects. One kind of objects are what we call conventionalities, and the other kind of objects are called ultimates, ultimate objects. So part of what the Bodhisattva meditates on are all conventional objects and all ultimate objects. And all conventional objects mean everything. But it's also that you're studying them, understanding that they're conventionalities. In other words, you understand that all the things that you're aware of, all the things that appear to you that are conventionalities, you understand they're conventionalities.

[52:41]

In other words, you understand that they appear in the world and that the world does not refute them, that they're real in the world. You understand that. But you also understand that they wouldn't stand up to analysis. But you know them all, and you meditate on them all. And you know which are the conventional. And then there's the ultimate object. The ultimate objects, the world doesn't necessarily have much to say about them. But the point is that if you would analyze them, if you would learn about them and analyze them, they would stand up to your analysis because they are the way things actually are. So the limit to phenomena means all the conventional truths, all the conventional existent things, and all the ultimate truths. You're going to study them all to the limit to them all. In other words, you're going to learn about everything you can know.

[53:45]

All the things you can know, you're going to study and learn about them. You're going to study, analyze, and penetrate them. You're going to study, analyze, and deeply understand in samadhi. And... Yeah. And those four kinds of objects appeared under the heading of developing wisdom. And the first... The conceptual objects are actually looking at all those phenomena conceptually, and the non-conceptual means that the objects you're looking at when you're giving up discursive thought. So you look at non-conceptual objects when you're developing calm, and you look at the conceptual objects when you're developing wisdom. And then once you can develop calm wisdom, once you're united, then you turn this calm wisdom, you turn it to the limits of phenomenal.

[54:52]

Okay? That was a lot, I know. Yeah. I have another question. When having the relationship between... How would you mean through wisdom versus aspects of wisdom? Or when you're talking about wisdom, you're talking about artists. Okay, so for instance, compassion as a practice for an aspect of wisdom, or are you talking about wisdom as something without aspect, more of a culprit, something like that? Well, let's say you feel compassion toward beings, okay? And let's say you want beings to be free of suffering.

[55:56]

You see beings, you see them suffering, and you want them to be free of suffering. This is compassion. But your understanding may be although you see them suffering and maybe you also feel yourself suffering, and you also want them to be free and you want yourself to be free, your understanding may be still quite affected by ignorance. In other words, you can be compassionate and still be afflicted by ignorance. And ignorance in particular is not understanding the kind of self you actually have and therefore not understanding exactly what kind of others you have. So although you feel compassion and maybe even also want to devote your life to compassion, you have not yet become free of ignorance yourself. Now, ignorance is overcome by wisdom, but there's not much point. to wisdom except in conjunction with compassion because who cares about wisdom because mainly what wisdom is about is this medicine for ignorance which causes suffering.

[57:08]

So the motivation, the root of the whole practice of developing the wisdom of the Buddha, the root of it is compassion. So compassion is really the point, the ground. Wisdom is the way to accomplish it. the wish for beings to be free. So anyway, at the beginning of the practice, under the first item, you can feel compassion. It can be quite well developed, but you can still not be wise. And as you more and more understand that in order to help yourself and other beings become free of this suffering, which is what you want, you need to develop wisdom. So you're developing wisdom. Wisdom itself is not necessarily compassion because your compassion might be pretty much the same except that it's mixed up with your delusions. So your compassion is basically the same except it can get more and more pure as you understand better and better. And what it gets purified of is it gets purified of the belief that the people you're working for are separate from you.

[58:16]

And also it gets purified of your misconceptions about yourself. So you get much more effective at it. But in a sense, wisdom is a partner to compassion and not exactly the same. Wisdom sanctifies all these virtue practices. Wisdom purifies compassion. And compassion is the root of Buddha's wisdom. Compassion is the root of the wisdom which purifies compassion and makes compassion become this great force of good and healing in the world. That make sense? So some people, anyway, are quite compassionate and haven't done much wisdom work yet. But if you keep working on compassion more and more, Buddha will visit you and zap you and you'll get this idea of being Buddha and then you realize, oops, now I got to work on compassion because Buddhas are wise.

[59:20]

Buddhas are compassionate and wise. Pardon? Right. The compassionate person kind of gets it that they have to work on wisdom, right? I get it. Yes? You like to think of them as sangha? You like to think of them as encouraging you to practice? Yeah, that would be good. You'd like to say thank you to everybody for helping you?

[60:21]

You'd like to learn how to do that? Well, I'd like to do that. You'd like to do that? Well, you can actually do that. Well, good for you. OK. Elena, and then Fred, and then, yes? Yes. Yes. Well, that's a big question, but I guess I would say, try to be short about it by saying that It's, I think, okay to sort of be in teacher training, start teaching prior to developing full wisdom, but just try to make it clear to people that you know that you're just trying to learn how to teach and you haven't really necessarily completely understood everything that you're talking about.

[62:01]

But maybe, like at Green Gulch, we have people give Zazen instructions to newcomers. And you might say, well, you know, do these people who are giving meditation instruction really understand much about meditation? And the answer that they might give is, well, I don't understand much about meditation. But it seems to encourage the people for somebody to give them meditation instruction. And it encourages me to give them meditation instruction because when I give it, I always think, well, that sounds like a good idea. I think I'll practice that. And also, as you give meditation instruction, sometimes you start to understand the meditation better as you give the instruction. People ask you questions and you start to realize areas that you're not clear about. So that encourages you to ask your teacher or to study more. So I think if there's some understanding, which I think there is, that some of the people who are giving meditation instruction to beginners are beginner meditation instructors. I think people kind of know that. Maybe we should say, I've given meditation instruction to beginners three times, so I'm not that experienced, so please excuse me, but I'll do my best.

[63:11]

This kind of humility, I think, helps a lot. But if we waited until we had, like, fully enlightened beings before anybody taught anything, it'd be kind of... for people to get started in practice because then it'd basically be just people... I mean, some people wouldn't even be able to find the scriptures without somebody telling them where to get the scriptures. It's the kind of teaching to say, well, they're over there. And if we didn't do any more teaching than that, then people would just be reading the scriptures all by themselves. So you don't have to be a perfect Buddha in order to teach, but you need to know. If you know a little bit more than the student, you can be of some assistance, especially if you say, well, I just know a little bit more than you. I don't know a lot more, but there's a lot more that I need to learn. If that's understood, then it may be okay to teach prior to realizing full wisdom about all the teachings. Can you?

[64:18]

Yes. Yes? Oh, Fred? You can too. You say when the wish to give arises in you, then another wish comes up to not give? Yes. Call it resistance or call it... Yeah, resistance. I'd call it resistance, yeah. Well, we talked about this, and I heard you say, I heard you, I would be wrong, but I heard you say that being a struggle of these two wishes... Yes. ...seizes before giving. Seizes before giving? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah, right.

[65:20]

But I would also say that being engaged in the inner struggle between giving and stinginess, to be involved in that struggle is part of the practice of giving. So in a sense, giving is going on, if you're even considering the struggle between the two, there is a kind of giving there. But the particular topic that you're considering has not yet happened. So if you're thinking of giving somebody a pencil, and then you also think of withholding the pencil, but you're there observing that dynamic, observing the dynamic between the generosity and the stinginess is part of the giving practice, but the pencil hasn't been given yet. And also, if the pencil is given prior to resolving the struggle, And when the struggle is resolved, if it's resolved in the sight of I'm not going to give, then you don't give.

[66:23]

And if it's resolved in the sight of give, resolved means it isn't just, okay, I'll give. It's that you're very, very happy to give. So I would basically say, if you give something... and you're not fully of joy at giving it, and it's basically not an enlightenment experience, then the giving hasn't really been accomplished. But the practice of giving includes contemplating all the kinds of things which you can't yet give. That could be part of the giving practice. So think about it. Well, like I told you, part of compassion is to meditate on is everybody very dear to you? that part of compassion is also part of giving, is to think, is everyone dear to you? Because somebody who's dear to you, really, really dear, like super dear, you have no trouble giving them anything. And you, no trouble means you're very happy to give them anything.

[67:27]

So dearness, compassion, and actual giving with joy are basically the same thing. But when you look at people and you don't yet feel that they're like super dear to you, but you're actually, you're thinking, you don't just look at the person and say, well, you know, he's okay. You look at him and say, well, I haven't yet got to the place where he's super dear to me. Your aspiration to achieve that appreciation and intimacy with beings is right up there in the front. And also your aspiration to be very generous, but generous means joyfully generous that it's out there too but honestly admitting where you are is part of the practice of giving letting yourself be a resistant being is giving and when you can let yourself be resistant and be joyful about letting yourself be resistant then you've accomplished giving on that case and that will contribute to getting over your resistance

[68:31]

But for the moment anyway, you're completely, joyfully giving yourself permission to be the resistant person, to be the stingy person. And there's joy in that, and that's giving. Yes, but what? Well, again, that just basically, I see it as just an extension of the original statement. You're still in the process of the struggle. You haven't really got over it. When you get over it, there's no giver's remorse. You get to a place where you give and you are just... The joy is so great that there's no backlash.

[69:37]

Just like the joy is so great when you actually start feeling that people are dear. You don't say, I wish I hadn't considered them to be dear. You're happy that you can... Compassion is a happy thing. Giving is a happy thing. But to get to that happy place requires lots of meditation. So giving is a meditation practice where you look and you notice your stinginess and you notice your stinginess and you confess your stinginess and you confess your stinginess. But as you confess your stinginess, in the face of wishing that you could be this super joyful giver, which is repentance. Repentance means you remember that it does make sense to you that if you could give with joy, that would really be wonderful. So that's out there, and you want to be that, and you're confessing that you're not there yet. As that confession process goes on and as you reiterate the aspiration, it goes over and over. That eventually melts away the roots of the stinginess or whatever, the roots of the impatience, the roots of the discouragement, the roots of the precept sloppiness, whatever, the roots of the distraction.

[70:52]

and eventually also the roots of ignorance gets washed away. But the process of admitting stinginess is part of the giving practice. People who give joyfully, that's fine, but if there's no stinginess, probably they haven't looked at the full range of things to be given yet. Probably there's some room to grow there. Yes, Kathy. With compassion, it's logical. Logical, the or the compassion towards all people. Yes. And I consider them as one with you. Mm-hmm. And it's work on that. Yes. Is that a teaching because it's logical and it makes sense?

[71:58]

Or perhaps, no, I mean, just gradually it makes sense. Or is it found in a deeper, you know, something deeper than... There is a... ...it all suffering would make me happy and everyone else happy. When you said... Anyway... Is there empirical evidence? Oh, is there empirical evidence for all being born? Well, I'm sorry about that, but, I mean, is there... What is the... Is there something more than a lot to bring up related to why they were born? What happened? Did you say there's something more than logic to it? Yeah. So you do see a logic in it. Yes. You wonder if there's more logic than it? Yes. Yeah, there is. I mean, there's actual realization of that. So you say logic, somebody else could have faith. They could just hear that compassion is the foundation of the path to freedom from misery.

[73:06]

For everybody, but particularly for the person who's working on the compassion. You say, is there any more than just faith in that or logic in that. So that makes sense to you. Is there any more than logic? Yeah. There's the practice of it. And at a certain point, the practice becomes confirmed that you have little or big confirmations of it, that you practice compassion. Or another way to put it is that you're suffering and compassion arises and you feel better. Suffering doesn't go away right away, but you start feeling better, feeling compassion in the midst of the suffering. I believe that, but I just... I just wonder if there was... I mean, it's still... It's been proven to me. Okay, so that's been proven to you, yes? So what's the question? Where did the teaching come from to eliminate suffering or enlightenment or that we are all one, that we're...

[74:09]

What teaching are you wondering where... Are you wondering the origins of some teaching? Yes. What teaching are you wondering the origins of? I think the origins of the teaching of compassion is suffering. Because we suffer, some people notice it. Some people are not on drugs and they notice their suffering. Okay? And as you notice your suffering, Nobody tells you you're supposed to feel compassion, but you start feeling compassion. You start feeling like, you know, and maybe nobody says anything to you, but you, somehow you have the intelligence that you can start to like just think, suddenly make this leap and just come to make this guess, make this theory. Maybe it would be possible to be free of this suffering. You think that. But it comes as a combination of having intelligence and being aware of suffering.

[75:19]

Then you could think, maybe there could be a freedom from this. And then, after you think that maybe they could be free, or even before you thought that, you think, I would like to be free of suffering. Now, it could go the other way, that you think, I'm suffering. I'd like to be free of suffering. And then you could think, maybe it's possible. So anyway, now you're at a place where you actually wish to be free of suffering. And you start noticing other people are suffering, which that happens. Sometimes you notice, oh, [...] oh. And then you think, I would like them to be free of suffering, too. But maybe you haven't even heard of this teaching. Now this teaching sometimes helps us have this, you know, these insights and wake up to this stuff. But some people come up with it without apparently having any instruction to like meditate in this way.

[76:21]

And then they hear the instruction and then they do it even more. Or they say, oh good, I have company or whatever. Other people have realized this too and it's great. That make sense? That's another big question. But basically I would say that the problem comes from innate, we have an innate tendency to reify things. To reify.

[77:23]

Just hear that, reify. Reify. It means to make things more real than they really are. We have an innate tendency to make things more real than they actually are, to make things more substantial than they actually are. We have this built-in innate tendency. Or this also could be called we have innate realism or naive realism. The root of the word naive is to be born with. So we have naive realism that we put more reality into what appears and actually can be substantiated. And I think that's an adaptation of our species that's very useful for us in, you know, building forts and weapons and, you know, dominating other species and humans. There's an adaptive value for the survival of one's life to be able to do this

[78:29]

kind of conceited thing of getting things more, exaggerating the reality of things. So we're born with it. It's developed along with lots of other of our skills, but it is a root problem, and it's wisdom is what addresses it. So we have to, like, part of our study has to be bring out the teachings which show us this exaggerated sense of what's real. And that's what has to do with studying the conventional and the ultimates. See how things, which things actually will stand up, which things which think are real will stand up to analysis and which things won't. And this is part of what sets us free and retrains us out of our ignorance, which is the root of our suffering. And when we learn that, And that's very handy for us who are working on, who want to help other beings. So I have, rather than give you a reading list, I actually just am giving you some literature from the sutras on these three kinds of wisdom.

[79:45]

And if you want to do more research, you know, I wouldn't really advise it because this is about all there is. There's not much more than this. It isn't that much on these three kinds of wisdom, but if you learn what's on these two sides of paper here, you'll be all set. And the other thing I wanted to say... So there's two translations from the Sangha-Nirmanjana Sutra of different sections presenting these three kinds of wisdom. And then on the back page, back side, there's a teaching from earlier Abhidharma work. Abhidharma means it's a scholastic presentation of the Buddha's teaching, which are emphasizing wisdom. And then there's a earlier presentation, pre-Mahayana presentation of the three truths from that text. So they're on this sheet. And I also want to just ask your feedback on what you'd like the next class here to be on.

[80:51]

Whether you want to work more on samadhi or more on wisdom or combine the two, or what do you want to do, or any other ideas, I'm being asked to describe the course that's being offered in July and August. So if you have any suggestions, you can send it to me. What's my email number? Revassist.revassistant? At Hotmail? Revassist or Revassistant at Hotmail? Hotmail.com. So if you have any suggestions about what you'd like to be offered this summer, I'd be interested to get your feedback. Because Donald Moyer asked me to give him a description of the course. This is only a five-week class, and it's kind of a big topic, but I appreciate you, I guess, being somewhat overwhelmed at various points, but still hanging in there.

[82:00]

Thank you very much.

[82:00]

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