The Bodhisattva's Creativity and FreedomĀ 

00:00
00:00
Audio loading...

Welcome! You can log in or create an account to save favorites, edit keywords, transcripts, and more.

Transcript: 

While you were sitting, I said something like, the creative mind loves the objects it knows
and calms down with them and plays with them. Contemplating this situation of a mind that
loves what it knows. I think that this is a universal observation which
I would say of course applies to the enlightening beings because they,
from the beginning of their career, are wishing to live a life of compassion for all beings.
They vow to practice compassion towards everything they know, everything they meet,
and they practice this compassion for the benefit of all beings. But I think that this,
even if a person hadn't discovered this aspiration to be such an enlightening being,
still if they practiced like an enlightening being, to a great extent they would follow
some of the same principles. In this case, I think it would be true even if they didn't
aspire to love all beings. The beings that they do love, or the mind that's loving some phenomena,
calms down with those phenomena. Bodhisattvas vow to love all phenomena and therefore would
also vow to calm down with all phenomena and play with all phenomena.
So I'm suggesting, and when I say love I mean also compassion. Bodhisattvas vow to practice
compassion towards everything they, everything they're aware of.
And when they are successful in the practice of compassion towards what they're aware of, the mind wishes to
develop tranquility and openness as part of this compassion. And then in this openness and relaxation
and compassionate relating, play will, I would say, naturally start to develop.
I asked a question, I thought of a question, and the question was, is it necessary to be creative in order to realize liberation?
And the answer I gave myself was, yes.
But in part two of this course I mentioned something further, and that is that being creative is not the whole story of liberation.
In being kind and concentrated with what we're aware of and entering into a playful relationship with what we're aware of,
we are being creative, we are, yes. And this creativity is the door, or is a door, to the wisdom mind.
The wisdom mind is a further development of the mind of creativity, the creative mind.
Because the creative mind, even before it's able to play with what it's trying to be creative with,
and again I would say that if we wish to be creative but we are not yet calm and playful with what we're working with,
we're not yet being creative. But even when we start to be calm and playful with what we know,
if we still see these things as objects, it's not yet wisdom.
The wisdom mind is compassionate. Of course the bodhisattva's wisdom mind is compassionate with all it knows,
and it is playful with what it knows, but it has no objects.
It knows things, but the things it knows are not out in front of it.
You could say it knows objects, but it doesn't have any. In other words, it knows objects are not objects.
Also it knows objects are not subjects. It knows in a non-dual way.
And this wisdom mind arises out of the mind of creation.
It's a fruit of playing with objects of knowledge until the objects are not objects anymore.
And then the wisdom mind arises. And the wisdom mind is the mind of liberation.
So as I said earlier, trust, which means trust compassion. Trust compassion.
Trust compassion no matter what's happening. Trust compassion towards all the difficulties and insults that may be offered to us.
Trust that we make no exceptions to compassion.
And then we are able to calm down deeply. And also be compassionate towards our calm.
In other words, not hold on to our calm.
Be generous with our calm, just like we're generous with all of our other prosperity.
And then we start to play. And then we understand. And then we are liberated.
Or then there is, when we trust compassion, or when compassion is trusted,
and then there can be relaxation and calm. And then there can be play.
And then there can be understanding that there's nothing out there being played with.
That the play is the play of, for example, self and other.
But other is not an object of the self. And the self isn't an object of other.
Self and other playing, but there's no objects in the play.
When the play first starts, it looks like somebody's playing with something.
But as the play intensifies in concentration, after a while there's just the play.
There's just creation. So the mind of creativity enters creation and forgets itself.
And forgets, not exactly others, because the whole point is,
this whole process is for the welfare of others, but it forgets that others are out there.
It forgets that others are objects. It forgets that others are external.
In other words, it forgets delusion and becomes wisdom.
And what is it? The play doesn't stop. The play of creativity, the play of creation continues.
It just, there's no subject separate from object. There's nothing out in front of the wisdom mind.
So that's the additional step.
The mind of creativity, the creative mind, can still have objects and still be a creative mind.
Which is wonderful.
But it must intensify the creative process to the point where it doesn't have any external playmates.
And it's not exactly playing with itself, it's just the play.
It's none other than the playfulness of all beings.
And then there's freedom.
And then there's freedom, again, continues to plunge into the realm of the objects,
and continue the play of the objects and the subjects.
But now the objects are not external to the subjects.
Okay.
Is Laurie okay?
She's lying down.
She's lying down? Is she not feeling well?
Okay.
Okay.
I now was going to just say something about
the process of the movement from working with things while they still appear to be objects
to the point where that externality of what we're working with is kind of purified.
But before I do that, any questions or comments on what I've offered so far?
Yes?
Well, I have a question about sort of step one that you introduced tonight,
about loving some phenomenon as being similar in practice to what we talked about,
loving all phenomena.
And I'm encouraged by that because I've tried to love all phenomena,
and I fail constantly.
But I'm finding by loving some phenomena,
what I'm loving is my own discrimination about what I choose to love.
I'm loving my own picking and choosing.
Uh-huh.
Even your picking and choosing, which is pretty bad,
really is calling out for love.
Yeah, I've got a lot of love for it.
That's a real tough one, that picking and choosing thing.
One could say, if there's anything to hate, that's it.
Because in Zen we say, the way is not difficult except for picking and choosing.
So that's really the bad guy.
But it's wonderful to play with it, too.
Yeah, but before you play with it, you have to love it.
To start playing with it before you love it is not recommended in this course.
Because sometimes you start playing with something before you love it,
and then it pokes you in the nose,
and you don't feel so playful anymore,
so then you switch to, well, you're going to play being a mean guy to it now.
My grandson one time had this idea.
It was a couple of years ago, they were having a skit night at Green Gulch,
and he and another young boy about his age who lived at Green Gulch,
they were going to stage a fight.
They were going to play like they were fighting.
So they started fighting, but then one of them punched the other one a little harder
than the other one thought was playful,
and it turned into an actual fight.
And the spectators had to break them up.
Because they thought they knew how to play, and in a way they did,
but they didn't know how to be kind when somebody who you're playing with punches you in the face.
So first before you play with this real tough dude called picking and choosing,
and not to mention enjoying picking and choosing,
before you start playing with him, you've got to be kind to him.
In other words, you've got to be really, are you like ready to say welcome to anything he does?
Are you ready to like really be careful of him?
And are you ready to be patient with all that he might do?
And all that he might exclude, including himself?
Him being the picker and chooser?
Are you ready for that?
It sounds a lot like marriage.
Right, and if you can love, marriage is basically picking and choosing, right?
So, if you can be compassionate towards the marriage situation,
then you can calm down with it.
Even when it's like picking and choosing in a committed way.
Then you can calm down with it.
When you calm down with it, then you can play with it.
Yeah, so picking and choosing is a perfectly good example of something to be kind to, to love.
And again, you can see you've got to really be careful of picking and choosing.
Picking and choosing can be the basis of basically the worst things that human beings ever do,
are based on picking and choosing.
And also, if you just set aside picking and choosing, the best things human beings do can happen.
So picking and choosing really deserves a lot of love.
And again, with a lot of love, you can really be calm and flexible with picking and choosing.
And then you can start playing with it.
And then you can enter into wisdom.
And then realize liberation with it.
And then teach other people who are into picking and choosing hell how to practice with that.
And in the meantime, while you're playing with it and still an object,
love the fact that you're continuing to do this thing.
Be patient with it.
And have confidence, hopefully, and enthusiasm about really being, making sure,
you know, really keeping, being honest, which is part of ethics.
Being honest about whether you're really being loving and whether you're ready to play.
Because I think you are kind of ready to play, theoretically, with this.
Sounds like that's good.
But you should actually not start until you're really confident that you're being loving.
We have to really love before we can really play.
And then we have to love before we can really be calm.
And again, loving and becoming calm, we also are loving towards the calm,
which means we don't attach to it, which even makes it deeper,
which makes us able to play with the calm itself and whatever we're calmly meeting.
And then we can actually become free of picking and choosing, for example,
which would really be great.
But the way to freedom from it is not by being mean to it,
which, in a way, you think you're not being mean to it because you enjoy it.
But enjoying it doesn't guarantee not being mean to it.
Because if you're enjoying it, what if somebody says,
okay, hand over your picking and choosing. Could you do it?
If you're being kind to it, you can say, fine.
I was hoping somebody would ask me to give it away.
I was hoping somebody would ask me to give away the thing I enjoy doing best.
Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to hand over my picking and choosing activity.
Can you comment on the similarities and distinctions between the concept of love and compassion?
Well, one of the distinctions between them is that love is four words and compassion is quite a few.
I think it's like nine or ten.
It's ten. So compassion is longer than love, a longer word.
It's more clunky, like the creative mind loves the objects of its compassion
or is compassionate towards the objects.
So that's one of the distinctions.
The other is that sometimes people use love for lust or love for like.
They use it for the opposite of dislike.
Compassion is not the opposite of dislike.
Compassion is not liking or disliking.
Compassion treats like and dislike the same, basically.
It's kind to both like and dislike.
Whereas love sometimes means like for some people.
I like that, I love that.
So I don't mean to be provocative, I'm just trying to play with the word love
and see if you can use the word love in a skillful way,
not intending to confuse people but also not avoiding that word
because of possible difficulties.
Compassion also is not avoiding things because of possible difficulty.
So in a way, yeah.
So, yeah, there's loving kindness.
We sometimes say loving kindness.
Then people don't so much confuse loving kindness with liking.
But again, loving kindness is a little clunky.
So I guess if I use the word love, people ask me questions about what I mean
and then we can remember to notice that it doesn't mean like.
Okay? Is that enough distinctions for you?
Yes?
I'm not clear on something you said, unless it's in a different context here.
The creative mind loves what it knows.
And that would seem to me not to be a creative mind
because if you attach all the time to what you know,
it's almost like the monkey mind.
Yeah, so in that case I don't mean loves what it knows like likes what it knows.
You mean it's comfortable with what it knows?
No. Well, it becomes, through loving what it knows,
in other words, if you know something and you're compassionate to it,
you will become comfortable with it.
Comfortable in a sense that you will calm down with it.
And when you're calm with things, even calm with pain,
there can be a comfort with pain if you're calm with it.
But you become calm with pain when you're compassionate towards it.
In other words, when you practice generosity and ethics and patience with pain,
you set up the possibility of now calming down with it and relaxing with it.
And still the pain's there, maybe, pretty much.
I say the pain's there, what I mean is new pains may be given to you,
which might be more or less intense than the pain you were practicing with before.
But now along with the pain is serenity and flexibility and joy
and ease and clarity and openness that comes with concentrating,
not necessarily on the pain but with the pain, but it could be also on the pain.
So, does that make sense?
And then, you can start playing with the pain.
But if you have pain, as you know, and you start playing with it,
or if somebody else has pain and you start playing with it,
and there's not relaxation in the situation,
you can have all kinds of pulled mental and physical muscles.
So if somebody's in pain and they're tense and you start playing with them,
it's not necessarily a good idea.
But if they're in pain and they're relaxed and you're in pain and you're relaxed,
or you're relaxed with their pain and you're relaxed and flexible with your lack of pain,
it's possible for one person who's not feeling pain
to dance with another person who is feeling pain.
If both people are relaxed and concentrated,
then people together can start playing with the pain,
being creative with the pain, and entering into wisdom with the pain.
I see quite a bit of frowning going on.
So again, part of loving is being careful.
So if there's pain, if there's pain here or there, or in between,
part of compassion is being careful and vigilant and gentle with the pain.
So I have a question there, because my understanding of compassion,
going back to the root of the word, being in the suffering,
my sense was that actually when you're dancing with somebody who's suffering,
you're in a sense relating to that suffering, you're not making that separate.
You're relating to their suffering and maybe you have the ability to play with the suffering
and learn to dance with them in a way that they can't at the moment.
But it's not that you have that suffering, they have suffering,
and now you're dancing with the suffering partner.
You could be dancing with a suffering partner who is able to realize that they're dancing with you.
You can also dance with a suffering partner who is not yet ready to dance.
You can play with somebody who is not yet ready to play with you,
but you still should be careful with the way you play with them,
so that you respect their inability to play.
But you need to relate their suffering on some level,
you can understand all the means of play there.
Yeah, you're loving their suffering.
You can't play with them if you don't love them,
you can't play with them who are suffering if you don't love them.
But it's possible that you would be calm with somebody else's suffering,
not just like, they're suffering and I don't care,
but you're intimately relating with their suffering
and it could almost be as intense for you,
you could feel their pain almost as intensely as they do,
even though it's different.
And you can relax with the pain you feel.
So I think, you know, there's a lot of cases like that,
where somebody sees somebody else's suffering
and they actually feel the suffering,
they feel not the suffering, but they feel a suffering
which is more intense than the other person feels,
because they care so much for the person.
And that they relax with their own suffering,
in that person's presence.
And they may be able to do that before the other person
can relax with their suffering.
The hope, you know, not the hope, the belief,
is that if we keep doing this,
they will eventually learn how to relax with their suffering.
But it may take many, many,
dances before they sort of feel ready
to start loving their suffering,
even though their suffering could be less than yours.
And there's two kinds of suffering
you could bring to the dance.
One is, you could have a big illness,
which they don't have.
You could have a severe, painful illness,
plus you could also have the pain
that comes from you loving them
and seeing their pain.
And so your pain could be actually quite a bit more intense.
I mean, it could be the case
that if they were suddenly plunked into your space,
they would faint from the pain.
But you're actually quite experienced with this
and relaxed with it, and you can play with it.
But they're not yet ready to play with
relatively minor pain from your perspective.
That can happen, you know.
You can take one person and just like, you know,
really put a lot of pain on them,
and they can relax.
Take another person and they can't relax
with much lesser pain.
But the person who can relax
is ready to play with their own pain
and then offer an example of
how they work with their own pain
with the other person.
But the other person still may not be ready
to relax with their own.
So this person, again,
part of their loving relationship
is that they are careful and they notice
that the person doesn't,
and they even ask,
are you relaxed?
The person says, no.
Do you want to relax? No.
Do you want to reject?
How do you feel about this pain?
I want to get rid of it.
So you don't feel like saying thank you? No.
And you really feel love for this person.
So that's why I often use, you know,
grandchildren as an example.
Sometimes they are ready to play with their pain,
and then sometimes they're not.
And when they're not,
it's really good to be respectful of that
and notice that they're not ready to play.
And then, they are,
even though they're still somewhat uncomfortable.
For a lot of people, it's very difficult
to see them dancing in that kind of shape.
And yet, that's what we're showing them.
Yeah.
And we have the example of the founder
of the Buddhist tradition.
He actually did have,
after enlightenment,
before enlightenment he was like
Mr. Pain, you know.
He was like really into pain
before enlightenment.
He put himself in situations that were extremely painful.
And then he said, this is too much.
And he gave up this extreme pain thing that he was doing
and went to a so-called middle way
where he started eating and wearing a little bit of clothes.
Even so, after he became, you know,
sort of
functioning as the Buddha,
and just
humbly mentioning that he was perfectly enlightened,
if anybody wanted to know about what
the teaching was, he was available,
if they really wanted to hear.
He still had back problems
and sometimes could not give his Dharma talks
because he had to be reclining
and had some of his senior students give the talks for him.
And also, towards the end of his life, as you know,
he was sick and he
he was actually had physical pain.
You know, he had dysentery
and he looks like he got dysentery
and was struggling with dehydration.
And, you know,
at one point he said
to his attendant,
Ananda, bring me some water,
bring me some of that water, and Ananda said,
Lord, that water is really muddy.
Ananda, bring me the water,
I want to drink the water, it's muddy.
Lord, bring me the water.
So he was uncomfortable, but he was still the Buddha
and he did have a hard time now, I think.
He was teaching just as well as ever,
but he was obviously
having quite a bit of pain.
How much it was, I don't know, it's hard to say.
But it could be more than
some of the other people who were around him
who were having trouble relaxing
with the pain they felt by looking at him.
And he actually had to be very careful with his students
to make sure they did not do something unkind
to the person who gave him the food
which seemed to have precipitated this dysentery or this
illness.
Because he did not want them to lose their patience with this person
who hurt their teacher.
About ten years ago,
I fell off a bike in Texas
and went to the hospital and they...
Yeah, it was a compound...
not compound, it was...
broke the femur
and they broke the top of the femur
to put a rod down it
so that the femur would come back together
and then they put some pins in
and then they...
and that was it.
And I was somewhat uncomfortable after that.
And I was in bed and people were coming to visit me
and they were saying,
you know,
are you having a lot of pain?
I said,
well, a little bit.
But, you know,
it's not...
you know, the person who's having pain is down the hall.
You can hear her all the time.
So when I hear her I think, you know,
I'm uncomfortable but
this is nothing compared to her.
So actually, yeah.
It wasn't that bad.
Really.
Nothing.
I could tell more stories about that
but any other questions?
Yes, Bill.
Pardon?
Along these lines, yes.
Could it be something be not liberating?
As a matter of fact, yes.
That's the usual situation.
Non-liberation is actually not real.
If it was,
well, that would be it.
We just have to accept that bondage was reality
and how could we fight against reality?
But bondage is not reality.
So, when you realize that bondage is not reality,
there is bondage or not liberation
at the same time that there's liberation.
And the Buddha sees how we're liberated
at the same time that we don't see how we're liberated.
So the Buddha can see
that the situation is not liberated
because people are not able to appreciate it
at the same time, in fact,
people are free.
I mean, the way we are actually together
is free.
And that can be realized because that's reality.
And we can become free of what's not real,
which is,
suffering is not ultimately real.
But it is conventionally real,
and so we respect it.
And in that sense,
sometimes we're not free and suffering.
And the way to realize that
even while we're not free and suffering,
even while we're clinging and suffering,
that that's not reality,
is by being kind to the suffering,
and calming down with the suffering,
and being creative with the suffering,
and then entering into a relationship
where the suffering isn't out there
in front of us anymore.
Nothing is.
And then we're free of whatever.
But the freedom is always there.
It's just that unless the practice is fully evolved,
it's not fully, it's not realized.
Except by the people who are,
the beings who are doing the practice fully.
They're right there realizing it,
but they also see that it's not being realized
by some beings,
and then they're trying to love those beings,
and play with those beings,
and get those beings to start playing with them,
so that...
Okay?
Yes?
May I ask a mundane question?
A mundane question?
A mundane question.
Finally, finally somebody is asking a mundane question.
All these super mundane questions,
it's enough of them.
Finally, a mundane one.
Was that your mundane question?
I'm going to ask Lori how she's feeling.
How are you feeling, Lori?
I'm happier lying down.
Okay, can you hear anything?
Great.
Thank you.
She's fine.
I think she said she's happier lying down.
Anybody else wants to lie down?
Go ahead.
Oh, there's Charlie with the mundane question.
I'm wondering...
I might have done something that you...
Let's check it out.
I pressed this thing here by accident.
Okay, it looks fine.
Everything's okay?
Okay, yes?
I'm wondering how you prepare for these classes,
how you study this material,
and how you come up with these notes that you have,
because you seem to do a pretty good job
and I...
Why thank you.
I'd like to emulate that somewhat.
Well, since you asked,
I've been thinking, you know,
and try not to be proud about it,
but I've been thinking about
for this class and a lot of other classes
that are going on right now,
I'm really enjoying feeling like I'm, you know,
I'm like living in this world of kind of like...
It's like a world of turmoil
of all the different possibilities
of how I can, you know, come to this class
or the other classes that I'm doing.
And I'm really feeling like,
not exactly like I'm being creative,
but like I feel like I'm living in the middle
of a very creative process.
So I'm...
And I said the other night to a group of people
who were in the practice period at Green College,
I said, among my various embarrassments,
one of them is that I'm so fortunate
to be able to be supported
to think about these teachings a lot.
You know?
It's partly because I have so many teaching venues
each week at this time
that I sort of...
Because of that, I'm supported to be...
Like, all day long today, basically,
I was thinking about this class.
So one of the main ways I do it is like,
I'm just thinking about this class all day long,
and I was thinking about it yesterday, too.
And, yeah, I...
And I just feel so happy to be thinking about it
and then trying to do the practices
that I'm talking about...
You know, while I do the practices
in relationship to the presentation of the teachings.
And then I take some little notes,
and I try to take the notes in such a way that
it would be, you know,
what I call bite-size kinds of notes.
So, like, tonight I said some stuff,
but I didn't feel like it was so much
that I felt like I could follow it.
And Kathy's nodding her head,
and she's new to the class, so it's great.
So I...
One of the main ways I prepare
is by thinking about it all the time.
And then part of what I want to do is,
when I get here,
sort of, like, find the class here
rather than in terms of my notes.
So I had these notes,
but I didn't look at them.
I don't know if you noticed,
but I didn't look at them.
But if you look at the notes,
they're pretty wild, kind of.
Pretty wild notes.
They're kind of weird.
They're all over the place.
I'm fortunate that I cannot actually read,
you know, a paragraph.
I just can't do it.
I can't look away from you long enough
to read a paragraph.
So I don't.
Almost never do I read a paragraph
in a class.
If I had the ability to do that
without losing contact,
I probably would try it.
But I can't.
And the contact with you is more important.
But again, I've been thinking about it
all day long, pretty much,
and I was thinking about it
when I'm driving over,
and I kind of look forward
to thinking about it
when I'm driving over.
But I kind of take a little break
after the class is over
on the way back.
And part of the way I work with it
is, in a sense,
I say I think about it all day long,
but that includes,
I think about taking breaks.
Because taking breaks
makes me more,
what's the word,
more enthusiastic when I go back.
I take breaks,
and also taking breaks
helps certain things
that I'm doing sink in.
So that's part of my process.
Part of the creative process
is to rest.
Part of the creative process
is not to keep thinking
about something too long,
just by momentum,
and to learn when to stop it
and do something different.
And to really give you the idea,
it would take, you know,
it would go the whole day with me.
Yes, Michel?
What I'm having a little difficulty with
is about pain,
about suffering.
Even pain,
seeing somebody
just when admitted and logic,
then it becomes pain.
That's right.
And suffering is the same,
but I don't know what's happening to anyone,
the person that I'm projecting.
It's my idea
that there's somebody out there,
so that's the piece of what it's about,
who doesn't have out there.
How can you have compassion?
The compassion I have for the person
that I'm projecting is suffering,
because I objectivize
that I have a compassion.
Instead of honest,
I call compassion
seeing things as they are.
I don't know if that's clear.
No, it's clear.
And it reminds me of
when this baby girl
was recently born
to my daughter.
My wife went down to Los Angeles
ahead of me
and she kept saying,
you know,
describing the situation
and she kept saying,
unbelievable,
unbelievable.
And I said,
is it really unbelievable?
And she said,
no, it's awesome,
it's miraculous.
So,
you could say about the bodhisattvas,
unbelievable,
but really it's more like miraculous.
It's a miracle
that they can feel
deep compassion
for beings
when they don't see any.
There's nobody out there
and yet they feel compassion
for this nobody out there.
It's just kind of a miracle.
And their compassion is this
really pure compassion
because it's only for them.
It's not coming from the pain
they feel from
being separate from the beings.
So they see the beings
but the beings aren't out there.
There's no being out there
separate from them.
They don't have the pain
that we have
from seeing people
separate from us.
They only have the pain
from loving people
who don't understand this yet.
So they do feel pain
when they see somebody
who's not separate from them,
who doesn't understand
they're not separate.
They really feel that pain
and that pain they feel
is their compassion.
And that pain
is the greatest joy
that there is.
And it's a miracle.
So they don't feel the pain,
the fundamental pain
of thinking that things
are out there
external to us.
They don't have the pain
of thinking the universe
is external to them.
They don't have that pain.
They only have the pain
of compassion.
And that pain
is a great joy
and inspiration to them.
But it is a pain.
And they really do...
It's an intolerable pain.
They cannot overlook it
because they care so much
for the beings
who are not separate from them.
Which makes sense
if they would.
But still how that happens
is kind of inconceivable.
And they're teaching us
how to get over
the pain that they've gotten over
so we can have
the pain of compassion
for all beings.
And when we get over
the pain of externality
then we really can
open to everybody.
Does that make sense?
Somewhat?
Well, I can start this other
line of consideration then
if there's no more questions.
Which is,
so even for the
even for the Bodhisattva
with his great vow
and even for the Bodhisattva
who has really developed
lots of compassion
and
compassion for all beings
and also for the beginning Bodhisattva
they have some kind of like
sense
of what they're committed to.
They have some sense
that they're committed to
the welfare of beings.
They have some sense of the path.
They have some vision of the path
that they wish to follow.
They have some vision
of the great vehicle,
of the universal vehicle
of living for the welfare
of others. They have some sense
of the great work,
some picture of it, some vision of it.
And they use that vision
to orient their effort,
to orient their practices
of compassion.
But again,
for a long time the Bodhisattvas
still are looking at their
conscious construction,
their image,
their idea,
their idea of the path,
their vision of the path
is still somewhat dualistic
for a long time.
So the practices
that they have a vision of,
which is not the practices,
but their vision of them,
they still do these practices.
And the more they do these practices
that we've been talking about,
the more concentrated they get
in these practices.
The more you practice kindness,
the more you practice generosity
and ethics and patience,
the more concentrated you become
and the more concentrated you become,
the more concentrated those practices become
and the more concentrated you become.
So in this way,
gradually you get ready
to purify your vision
of the path.
So that your vision of the path,
again, is not out there,
separate from you.
And then you enter into the path.
Your vision of the path is purified
of your idea of what you're doing.
Your vision of all the practices you're doing
are purified of your idea of them.
By doing the practices according to your idea
and also receiving the teaching
that you're doing the practice according to your idea
and that this is not the actual practice.
This is your idea of it.
But the more you do it,
the more you become free of your idea
of what you're doing.
And again, as this practice heats up
and becomes more concentrated,
you move towards the realization of the path
or the practice.
And in the realization of the path and the practice,
the practitioner and the path
are both realized and both purified,
so they're not two things anymore.
Yes.
I think, you know,
I think one of the nice things about,
one of the wonderful things about English
is we can change that.
We can compassion...
You can Google somebody, right?
If you can Google somebody, you can compassion somebody.
So we can start this now.
We can start compassioning people.
Let's go compassion somebody now.
So we can do that.
English allows that, doesn't it?
Yeah.
So we should have this gentle...
Compassionate.
Compassionate is an adjective, isn't it?
Yeah.
We should have this compassionate campaign
to compassion people
and to be patient if people think we're weird
and fight us and beat us up
for saying compassion people.
If any English teachers are offended,
we should be compassionate to them.
But let's start doing it.
Let's do the same thing to compassion
that we did to Google.
Right?
Google originally wasn't a verb, was it?
No.
But it became a verb quite quickly, didn't it?
Google is a noun and it's a verb.
Compassion is a noun and now it's a verb.
I'm not saying it wasn't a verb before this
because some people did try it.
But thanks to you,
now there's a whole bunch of people.
The compassion movement...
Okay, thank you, Stephen.
I've been wanting to do that for quite a while,
to compassion things, but I didn't dare.
Thanks for your...
Because of your suffering,
I'm now encouraged to compassion everybody.
Does that make us compassionate?
I think so.
There's so many...
When I was editing...
There's a book now that's coming out,
published by Rodmel Press,
called The Third Turning of the Wheel.
And when we were working on this,
on the text,
there were some words that we used.
And one of the students at Green Gulch
is an English professor.
And so I looked up some of the words in the book
and they weren't in the dictionary.
And she pointed out that there's a lot of words
that are perfectly good English words
that aren't in the dictionary.
But English allows you to make words out of words
that aren't in the...
Take a word that is in the dictionary
and you can do something to it
to make it another English word,
but it hasn't yet been put in the dictionary.
But it follows the rules of English.
And some simple words that you probably are already using
are not in the dictionary,
but you've been using them
and people are comfortable with them.
And then you look in the dictionary
and they're not in there.
But then if you ask the English teacher,
they say, well, it's not in the dictionary,
but it is an English word.
You can do that to this word that's in the dictionary.
But somehow they haven't put it in there yet.
Yes?
Are there any contemporary Buddhist options?
Are there any?
Well, thank you for asking.
You mean like, for example,
are there any in this room?
Anywhere.
Anywhere.
Well, you know, this isn't a cop-out,
but as I mentioned at Green Gulch recently,
there are scriptures where the Buddha humbly mentions
that only Buddhas can see who the Bodhisattvas are,
especially the advanced ones.
So, and then one of the people who was in the audience,
one of the senior students said,
well then teacher, it would make sense then
to treat everyone as though they were a Bodhisattva
because they might be.
And he said, yes, that's right.
You talk about Bodhisattvas having this awareness
that maybe some of the rest of us don't have.
And how are we supposed to apprehend that in any way?
How are we supposed to apprehend?
Well, fortunately we have ten minutes left in this class
so I can answer your question.
I think, Charlie asked me how do I prepare for this class.
I think quite a bit about how there are innumerable Bodhisattvas,
highly developed Bodhisattvas present in our life right now,
but we can't see them.
I think about that.
It's not exactly that I believe it,
but I believe it enough that I think about it a lot.
Now there's another meaning of Bodhisattva
is a Bodhisattva isn't necessarily a person.
It's a way of being.
Sometimes you maybe think you can see a Bodhisattva
in the neighborhood of a person
because of the way a person's acting.
That a person acts,
you could say the person's acting like a Bodhisattva
or the enlightened being, the being enlightenment,
seems to be expressed by what the person's doing.
So an ordinary human being who is maybe not well established
in this Bodhisattva way of being,
in fact for a moment it looks like,
it looks like that's a Bodhisattva.
So that's another understanding of how there can be a Bodhisattva
is that a person can act as though they didn't think
that other people were outside them.
If you didn't think people were external to you,
you would be able to do various miraculous things.
You know, like you'd be able to love everybody
if you didn't think that people were separate from you.
You look like you're doing some heavy thinking over there.
Well, I mean my question was prompted a little bit
by your use of the word miraculous earlier.
Yeah.
And what does that mean for an everyday person?
I don't think I've ever experienced anything I would call miraculous.
So maybe I could speak to my experience,
or maybe something happened and I didn't know that it was miraculous.
So that's in part where my question came from.
And you were talking about the cultivation of awareness and being,
and that's, you know, in your preparation for this talk,
you know, thinking about it all day,
and it seems like, you know,
the example you gave of somebody acting in a miraculous way
without really being bodhisattva,
but being, you know, having a relationship to whatever was going on,
as if he or she were bodhisattva,
doesn't speak quite to what we're all here.
I mean, you know, we're all trying to understand
maybe we don't need to be here.
So I follow my reasoning,
if we can just, people can just act in miraculous ways
without any preparation, or, you know,
I don't believe that myself, but...
Did you say you don't think people can act in a miraculous way without preparation?
I think people can do very heroic things,
maybe that's my word, and maybe it's just a miracle.
In other words, giving yourself for others,
kind of the ultimate heroic thing.
And I don't necessarily call that a miracle,
but it's not a thing, I'm just getting into a contemplative...
The miracle I was talking about was that somebody could
do this thing which might look heroic,
but the being that's there is also not thinking
of what they're doing.
And they do it even though, in this case,
they do it even though they don't see anybody out there,
separate from them.
And that is the bodhisattva,
is that you do heroic things for other beings
who you don't think are other.
That's the bodhisattva.
And then you could say, is there any being like that
in this room?
And I'm saying, well, in a sense,
that could happen to one of us,
and the word preparation is one word,
but causes and conditions could come together
that that kind of thing could happen
sort of in relationship to a human.
But it could also happen, not as a human,
in this room.
There could be like that very event
you're speaking of could happen in this room,
but if it doesn't sort of connect with a human being,
we often would miss it.
Because we're really concerned that humans
can't usually do that.
And part of what attracted many of us to practice
was examples of humans
who were able to act in a way
that one could act not only
if they cared for others first,
but even above that,
that they care for others without thinking that others were separate.
That's the super miracle.
Because when we care for others
compassionately,
but think they're separate,
then our compassionate activity
for their welfare
will be undermined
by the belief that they're separate.
So part of this training
is not just to try to remember
to focus on the welfare of others,
but also understand that until we understand
that others are not out there,
this effort I'm speaking of
will be a struggle
and will be somewhat hindered.
And the main hindrance of it,
once you're into practicing compassion,
the main hindrance of compassion at that point
is thinking that the objects of your compassion
are separate.
And so the bodhisattva
is not just a compassionate being,
a bodhisattva is a wise being.
They not only are devoted to the welfare of everybody,
but they understand that nobody is out there.
So the miracle is how they could be devoted
to beings who are not out there for them.
Because they don't really...
So that's kind of a miracle you could say.
That sometimes is called the Mahayana miracle by certain people.
Because they don't see anybody out there
and yet they go right ahead and are devoted to the beings
who are not out there.
And then they see miracles all the time.
But they don't see anything different than you do.
They just see everything you do.
If they were looking at what you're looking at through your eyes,
they would just see everything as a miracle.
Even suffering as a miracle.
However, they feel compassion for suffering
and they don't feel compassion for happiness.
They don't feel compassion for freedom from suffering.
But freedom from suffering they see as a miracle.
And suffering they see as a miracle.
They see everything as a miracle
which makes them unhindered in their devotion to beings.
And to really see a bodhisattva,
this is again sort of, sorry to say this in a way,
to really see a bodhisattva,
you have to not see objects.
Because the bodhisattvas are not separate from you.
They're not out there,
bodhisattvas are not external to us.
And buddhas are not external to us.
So if we understand that,
then we would be able to see bodhisattvas.
But we wouldn't see them as objects,
we would just know them.
We would know that function.
Thank you for your question.
May our intention
May our intention
equally extend to every
being and place
with the true
merit of Buddha's
way.
Beings are numberless.
I vow to save them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them.
Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them.
Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to become it.