Thank you all for still being here. And thank you, Neil, for being willing to translate. I went to the dentist this morning. I was close to a dental emergency. I should have gone to Dr. Riedel. Did I pronounce your name right? Riedel. Oh, I'm sorry. But you didn't have your equipment here at the Sashin. Riedel, yeah. I'm a little numb here, but I think I can talk. I don't think about what's the best thing to talk to you about in Sesshink. I suppose the idea occurs to me, but I actually don't give it much thought.

[01:11]

And I find myself talking about something. I don't know where it comes from exactly. And I hope it works out to be useful for you. I make an effort to make it useful. For some reason I decided in this session to link the practice of this very mindless Buddha And the six paramitas, the bodhisattva practice of the six paramitas. This turns out to be actually maybe more than I can do. Yeah, I feel it, but if I can find a way to talk about it, I'm working on it. I've established one thing, I think, is this realm of contact with another person.

[02:32]

In the simple example of meeting someone you barely know. And yet feeling some bond or trust appear. So, anyway, I just used that to give you a sense that there's some kind of realm that happens in relationships. We know that, but anyway, I wanted to emphasize it this week. And I think I also have to speak about the difference between Dharma friendship and personal friendship. And this came up, of course, in the seminar I just did in Münster with the title, I guess you suggested the title, Beate suggested the title.

[04:01]

And there's a difference between personal friendships and Dharma friendships. Now why in this practice of the bodhisattva Which are called the six transcendentals. The six perfections. The six crossing over. That's another way of translating the word. Kumarajiva, I think, did it, crossing over. And so what are the six parameters? The transcendentals. Generosity. Discipline. Patience.

[05:20]

Vigor or energy. Yeah, that's pretty commonplace. I mean, it's important, but are they transcendental? Are they the Are they what makes a Bodhisattva, which is what Mahayana Buddhism centers on? Why is this the case? Well, it's nice to be nice. We all know that. It feels good to be generous and so forth. But still, why are these the practices, why are these the bodhisattva practices? So I'm trying to see if I can sort that out with you this session.

[06:29]

By the way, tomorrow morning I think I'll probably start to doksan. And I look forward to seeing each of you. And I hope there will be time I can see some of you more often than once. And I also have been emphasizing why a phrase is so important. This is also quite extraordinary. Okay, so. A phrase like this very mind is Buddha.

[07:49]

Now somebody asks you, what is Buddha? You could say, swimming. Or, what is Zen? You could say, swimming. Yeah, so what if somebody asks you, what is swimming? It's hard to say what swimming is. It's a lot of things. So what I'm pointing out, obviously, is If we're practitioners, we're always looking at the process of the practice, the activity of the practice. So if you read a sutra or something... Excuse me, the process, the activity of the process. No, the process of the practice, the activity of the practice. The activity of the practice.

[08:50]

So if you're looking at some kind of reading, some sutra say, and you can't feel how to practice it, put it aside till you, because it may be wrong, or put it aside till you can. Yeah, what is swimming? You have to get in the water. And you have to stay afloat. Yeah, those are basics. And then you have to go in one direction. Yeah, it's hard to do sometimes. Okay. So maybe, you know, practices like that, we have to get in the water We have to stay afloat and we have to have some direction. And I thought of, you know, I for some reason remembered something I read years, I don't know, 10, 15 years ago about an archer.

[09:59]

And he hadn't been an archer until he was 18 or so. And he went with some friends to an amusement park. A carnival. I did not like your carnivals, but you know. And they had some kind of booth where you shot arrows at something or other, a target. And this kid, you know, just boom, hit everything, bang, bang, bang, and gave his girlfriend lots of Kewpie dolls. So this was quite... cupid's cupid dolls you know they're literally they have flakes of gold on them and bright colored faces you can get dogs and cats you can get just all kinds of things you don't know what to do with them once you won them but you know they're big and they don't weigh much anyway so it's quite peculiar a whole crowd gathered around this kid

[11:33]

winning all the prizes. So he took up archery. Tried it out. And one year later he was the Olympic champion. And no one could figure out how did this kid in one year get so good at archery. Well, they studied him. And they found out he was capable of standing extremely still. And they found other archers had this skill of simply being able to stand still. But he had it to a very high degree. So anyway, it's... What I'm getting at here is that in some activity, there's some element that makes it work.

[12:57]

I read the other day, too, in the Olympic Games, great swimmers often are born with unusual... Their arms are jointed in a way that gives... There's difference in other people. So I'm asking myself, is the still point in a practice. What is the nub of a practice? Nub means like a plant where the branch starts to come out, that little bump is called the nub. What is the nub or heart of a practice? Now I want to say something then about this nirvana, death and so forth that I brought up yesterday.

[14:18]

If you look at a phrase, again like Matsu's, although it did occur earlier than Matsu's still, about his time, this very mind is Buddha. In that lecture he gave, I told you some of it yesterday, One of the things he said also in it was, be very careful about how you describe your life. How you describe or how you speak, speak appropriately about your actions, he said. And he meant not only to others, but to yourself. Because every action forms you.

[15:30]

So again, this is in the context, every action forms you. Every action remains part of you. This is in the context of, this mind is Buddha. Now again, if we look at the time of Matsu saying this, And look at it in contrast to earlier Buddhism, which emphasized a lot of stages you went through. And what I said yesterday is, Buddhism is unusual in emphasizing enlightenment as the defining moment in life. Neither birth nor death. I mean more than birth or death.

[16:53]

And enlightenment transforms your past and your future. Now I know for some of you, you think, well, geez. I mean, some of you always like me to talk about enlightenment. Some of you always like me to talk about enlightenment. You think if I talk about it, it might get closer. Some of you don't like me to talk about it because you've given up on it getting closer. Yeah, but I've given a number of talks trying to make enlightenment more, something more natural for you. But I can't do that in this session.

[17:55]

So you'll have to come back some other time. Okay. So as I said yesterday, enlightenment and death were identified as nirvana. And only a Buddha was fully enlightened. And our hearts were enlightened with a remnant. But by the time of Matsu, they had replaced nirvana with enlightenment. They replaced death with enlightenment.

[19:04]

And they replaced Buddha also with enlightenment. So enlightenment became represented both being a Buddha and was the defining moment. Okay. So I wish I could give you the feeling of the weight of this for people. Because here you have a whole Sangha, a Buddhist culture, defining existence through enlightenment.

[20:05]

Or defining... Everything that's most important to you, let's throw away the word enlightenment for now, everything that's most important to you would be defined through enlightenment. So say that you are working on a PhD or something like that. Okay. Or like my translator here, a medical doctor. All right, so all that effort you put into being a medical doctor or a PhD... whatever goes into this idea of enlightenment.

[21:12]

A million PhDs are considered insignificant compared to a million. I'm sorry. Yeah. So what Matsu expected was that you brought the kind of intention, attention, work, thinking, value that you brought to, say, a PhD or something equivalent, at least that much to your practice of realizations. I'm not saying you can do this. I'm just saying, and maybe I'm not even saying it's necessary, I'm just saying this is what I'm sure Matsu thought.

[22:42]

But it's not the kind of work, you know, study that goes into, say again, a Ph.D. Or it's more the kind of study like don't be fooled, look closely. What is it? So, what kind of mind can look closely? What kind of mind is not fooled by permanence. And can just look naked, what is it? Now, it's not so easy to... It's not natural. to see impermanence.

[23:52]

It's natural to see permanence. I think of the story of Piaget, the French child psychologist. And the stories remain with me. I've told it before, but not for a long time. Piaget was shown a film of a little blind boy or girl infant crawling around a room. And it was, you know, just a film of the baby crawling around playing with toys and then hunting for the toy, etc. And at some one point it showed the baby being picked up to be put to bed.

[24:54]

And the toy it was taken away from was sitting somewhere in the living room rug. And the film starts again with the little baby brought down the next morning. And in its own darkness, it crawls across the floor directly to the toy and grabs it. It remembered where the toy was. And Piaget supposedly, watching this film, cried out, Eureka! Object permanence! Because the baby, an infant, has to learn object permanence.

[26:04]

If I put a water glass beside my bed at night, I want it to be there in the morning. If it was not, and I couldn't find a reason, I'd be rather disturbed. First I'd suspect the martyrs. I couldn't imagine a martyr carrying off my water glass. Yeah. And maybe a Buddhist parent meanly would, just as the child's about to find the toy, you move it. Ah, object impermanence. This would be very mean of the Buddhist term. We have to learn object permanence. It's what's natural. The garden is different than yesterday, but it's On the whole, pretty much the same.

[27:28]

So you actually have to train yourself to notice impermanence. So it's wise to see object impermanence, but it's not natural. So, again, what kind of mind, trained mind, looks closely? is not fooled by permanence, and can really just ask repeatedly, what is it? Now, these two questions, what is it and who is it, are also very basic, early turning words.

[28:34]

We can call them, maybe today I'd call them Dharma words. It's usually called Wado, which means turning words back to their source. Now, let's call them Dharma words today. Now, in another koan, in the Momonkan, a famous koan, Is Bai Jiang and the Fox. And in it, most of you probably have read it. There's this old guy who's at the back of the lecture hall. It's like I might see someone back there, you know. Gisela is appearing.

[30:01]

There she is. And I say, after a while, I haven't seen Gisela for a while, she comes up, or someone like, just in the back of the lecture, comes up and says, you know, many lifetimes ago, 500 lifetimes ago, That's a very long time ago, 500 lifetimes. It's only 90 between... in the lineage between us and Buddha, supposedly. Now, maybe fox lifetimes, and they're shorter. But they're still, that's a very long time ago. But it means before the historical Buddha. This poor fellow answered a question wrong. That's all he did.

[31:08]

He was a pretty good Buddhist teacher or something or other. And someone asked him, when you're enlightened, are you free from karma? He said yes. 500 lifetimes as a fox. This is serious business. You better watch your tongue. You can get in deep trouble real quick. But that is a totally strange idea. You can hear Matsu saying, Speak appropriately even to yourself about your life. Because every action, every description forms you. So this guy says, Bai Zhang, I've been in the back of your lectures and they're pretty good and maybe you can help me.

[32:13]

Could you please give me a turning word which would free me from being a fox? So Bai Jing said, what's wrong with being a fox? He didn't say that, I'm just kidding. He could have said that. But this man said, this person said, I beg you, give me a turning word. that frees me from innumerable rebirths as a fox. Here again, that simple word from Baicheng, can free him from lifetimes of being reborn.

[33:33]

So what I'm trying to get across to you is the extraordinary importance in a teaching, Zen, which says it's outside words and letters, gives to the impact of a single word. Mm-hmm. Now, unless you sort of get that, it's hard for you yourself to engage in this turning word practice. Death is replaced, let's try saying it another way.

[34:44]

Death is replaced by nirvana, which is in most cultures the defining moment in life. One of the things that was important in European history is when you made a will, near the end you gave your possessions away, but most of it was you apologized for all the things you'd done wrong. It was a document of atonement. Atonement means to make up for wrongdoings. When I said that the other day, Beate said, some people's list would be very long. It depends on whether you kept track or forgot.

[35:54]

Another aspect was that it was considered bad if death was unexpected or sudden. Heroes and saints especially announced their death at least a few days before it occurred. We're supposed to say, I think I will die in the next few days or something. And in Zen, this is, in Buddhism in general, but in Zen in particular, this is important. Not only that you know that your death is coming, but that you participate in the death.

[36:55]

doesn't only come from outside. It also comes from inside. So all a traditional Zen death by a teacher would be, excuse me for saying something so depressing, a partial suicide. Probably. Within a few days, when you die anyway. At least if you're sensible. And you, as Basui did, a 14th century Japanese, famous Japanese master, said cross-legged and Said what?

[38:15]

I told you and died. Dying from inside, by his own intention. So this really reflects a real change in how death is a defining moment. In relationship to your karma, enlightenment is the defining moment. So hence the fox koan. Yeah. So let's start again. We've replaced in Buddhism, death is replaced by nirvana.

[39:15]

I'll stop soon, don't worry. Okay. By Matsya's time, nirvana and death, death and nirvana and enlightenment with a remnant, I replaced by enlightenment with a remnant. Those three, nirvana, death, and enlightenment with a remnant, all become enlightened with a remnant. You still have a body and so forth. But that now becomes Buddha, or the possibility of Buddha. If that's the case, what is it? As I said, if I paint myself gold, it doesn't help. What is it that makes me a Buddha if I'm a Buddha?

[40:33]

Or what can I do to find Buddha nature within myself? If you're practicing this, practice. And I hate to be too serious about it. I don't want to scare you away. I'd like to see you. Maybe I'm tempted to make practice easy. Or make it something you all can do. So then I get to see my Dharma friends more often. Yeah. Yeah, but I can't be satisfied with that.

[41:35]

Because I also want to make this practice clear to you. It only makes sense if you believe it's possible. How can I magically make you all believe it's possible? Maybe you don't care. Then how can I make you care? Believe it's possible. What does believing it's possible mean? It means it must be possible for a Buddha to exist. And it must be possible for us to partake in this Buddha quality. We must also be this light bulb even if it hasn't got the right current yet. So in Marz's time,

[42:45]

They didn't think of Buddhas in the future or the past, but the Buddha was in the present. Where is it in the present then? So Matsya says, mind is Buddha. Mind is Buddha. This very mind is Buddha. Now what have we done? We've taken Buddha now, and enlightenment, and death, and we've replaced it by a phrase. Because it's not just that mind is Buddha, the phrase mind is Buddha is Buddha. Or the phrase is part of the water you get in.

[44:04]

You bring the water of the phrase of this very mind as Buddha into your actions, into your thinking. into your beliefs it becomes a deep intention and a confidence now a phrase, a word I call it a Dharma word because each moment thoroughly perceived This is Dignaga's point and the Yogacara point.

[45:11]

Each moment thoroughly perceived moment or object is momentary and unique. That's assumed that the mind that works with a phrase, begins to know each moment as momentary and unique. To say each moment is momentary and unique is no different than saying everything is impermanent. To say that the moment is momentary and unique is nothing else than to say that everything is infinite.

[46:20]

Dharma is considered, what, a kshana, one sixty... I just heard sixty-five. I wasn't counting, but I'm pretty sure, 64 at least. Well, it's anyway an actual moment of psychic time. Yeah. What can get at that? Because now we have... the Buddha and death and nirvana all replaced by a phrase linked to the idea of a dharma and a kashanic moment. A phrase, a dharma and a kashanic moment. So, this phrase brings you into that kind of space.

[47:28]

One of the gates, as I said this morning, is to find your way into acceptance. At least starting with acceptance of whatever your situation is. Whether you like it or not, that's also true. Underneath that, there's acceptance. This is one of the necessary ingredients of practicing with a phrase. Well, let me just say that, you know, when we're practicing sashin, We're discovering our strength.

[48:37]

It's a mysterious strength. It's not ordinary strength. At least it's a new kind of emotional strength. And it also is deepened through this coming into acceptance. At the same time we're fragile creatures. And often we've been profoundly damaged In our life. And in Sashin that often comes up too.

[49:44]

That damage, that hurt, that being abandoned. How do we find completeness? That's also the practice of bodhisattva. Okay. Thank you very much. May our intentions equally pierce through every sin and every word with the true service of the Buddha's path. O Lord, we thank Thee. [...] We pray to the Lord God to protect us from evil.

[51:05]

We pray to the Lord God to protect us from evil. We pray to the Lord God to protect us from evil. Nibbīyāyāyāyāyāyāyāyāyāyāyāyāyāyā

[52:16]

Satsang with Mooji Thank you very much. Let me start out with some text of Pessoa again, the same poet I gave you something from last evening.

[54:07]

He says something like, I discovered that there is no nature. That nature doesn't exist. There are hills, valleys, plains. trees, flowers, grasses. There are rivers and stones, but there's no hole to which this all exists. Nature is only parts. That feeling, if not fact, though I take it as pretty close to a fact, is certainly an insight of But Pessoa also says there must be some, but there is some way for beings to exist.

[55:49]

There must be some way for existence to exist. For to exist to exist. He also says, I lay down in the grass and forgot everything I was taught. What I was taught never made me warmer or cooler. What I was told never changed the shape of anything. What I was made to see never touched my eyes. What was pointed out to me was never there.

[57:03]

Only what was there was there. You had some feeling of this kind of experience. I laid down in the grass and forgot everything I knew. What was pointed out to me was never there. Only what was there was there. This isn't so different from that quite famous short Zen poem. Das ist nicht sehr viel anders als dieses ziemlich berühmte kurze Zen-Gedicht. Still sitzend und nichts tund, wächst das Gras und der Frühling kommt von alleine. Maybe you overwrote that.

[58:24]

It had a little more meditation than Pessoa and less alcohol. Sorry. A little more meditation and less alcohol. Pessoa drank a great deal. But most Chinese poets drank a great deal, too. So I'm trying to find an entry into this Paramita practice. Yeah, maybe I can just make it very simple. But I still have to, you know, how can we get an entry to this? Is it Bert or Bert?

[59:24]

Bert. Bert Hellinger's Systemic Psychotherapy. I don't know much about, but a little bit. But one of the things he says is that we need to find a place in our heart For each person who belongs in our system, I think he means by that family and key friends or something like that, teachers. And a place in our heart I take to mean that you feel some caring for each person in your system. Maybe you don't like all the people, but you care what happens to them.

[60:30]

I think that's an actual physical feeling we humans have of something warm in our heart. And Hellinger says we feel when everyone in our system has a place in our heart, we feel, somehow we feel complete. I mean, I think he means we don't have to work everything out with them, but somehow they have a place in our heart. They have a place in our heart. Each has a place in our heart. And not only do we feel complete, we feel free.

[61:44]

Yeah, no, I'm not a psychotherapist, but I think that feels true to me, right to me. And certainly in my own experience, it's been true. I've had to find, forgive me for saying something so schmaltzy, but a place in my heart for everybody in the world quite large life I have, you know, with a lot of people involved. Now, the problem with deciding to become a bodhisattva is that every human being in your system Sorry to break the bad or good news to you. Every sentient being is in your system.

[63:01]

So what are you going to do about this? Remember, The story of Piaget and the little blind boy crawling, boy or girl, crawling across the floor. Feeling its way. Then it comes to this toy and it has to, what is it? And somehow Pessoa was able to suspend his fourth skanda, the associative skanda. And say something like, what was pointed out to me was never there. Only what was there was there.

[64:19]

So maybe this little blind child feels something similar. What is it? So I think that Pessoa probably came on his own, though he was the translator of Madame Blavatsky and Leadbeater into Portuguese. Yeah, the founders of theosophy. So he had some influences like that, but mostly I think he just came to this on his own. Maybe after the third or fourth drink, he saw that only what was there was there.

[65:21]

Every day he made the startling discovery Of the... What did I say? Every single day, the startling... Do you remember what I said last night? Nobody remembers. You couldn't even hear the translation. The startling discovery of the particularity of everything. And I think that he came into that feeling or it generated a feeling that made him feel, though he says there's no wholeness, made him feel somehow whole and connected and alive.

[66:36]

There's some way we exist. There must be some way for us to exist. So this practice of the bodhisattva is to take away, to deconstruct the usual way we perceive. And bring ourselves into the uniqueness and, as I say, non-repeatability of each moment. Perhaps also like the blind or one-eyed turtle swimming in the dark sea. So imagine you start from zero. Also, stellt euch vor, wir alle oder jeder einzelne von uns fängt bei null von vorne an.

[67:55]

And here we are in this zendo, swimming in some dark sea. Und hier sind wir in diesem zendo und schwimmen in einem schwarzen oder dunklen Meer. Yeah, and we don't know what's there. Und wir wissen nicht, was da ist. And so, you know, what is it? Oh, it's not Neil. Was ist das? Ha, das ist ja nicht der Neil. What is it? Some human being. So if you start from zero, you're there, you don't know what's there. What kind of person, what kind of situation? The Bodhisattva bases his or her views on emptiness. The bodhisattva basiert seine Sichtweise on emptiness. Now you've really got to come into this, you've got to come to a very even state of mind.

[68:56]

Um dort hinzugelangen, muss man in einen sehr glatten oder ebenen Zustand des Geistes gelangen. Connected but dispassionate. Now one of the ways to practice this is the four unlimited. You practice friendliness or kindliness. And you imagine friendliness radiating out from you. And you notice when you don't have that feeling. Now you're working with your state of mind. In the sentient world. It's pretty easily related to objects. We can all be pretty blissed out and really nice to everyone.

[70:09]

If you're lonely, we can all be pretty blissed out. You're blissed out. And really feeling good about ourselves that we stay alone in our room. But... If you start having friends, jobs, marriages, it's more complicated. I always like the way I hear somebody speak about the person who has authority over them, how much trouble they have with them. But they always assume the people who they have authority over have no problem with that. It's fairly easy to figure that one out, but we tend not to. So testing your developing, maturing your state of mind in the sentient world is the challenge of Bodhisattva practice.

[71:28]

Developing, maturing. testing your bodhisattva mind is the, in the sentient world, is the way to mature it or test it or something. Yeah, I'm sorry. I got mixed up there. Okay. So the first two of the four Unlimiteds, one first is friendliness and kindness. And the main thing is to notice when you're not. The second is empathetic joy.

[72:32]

Can you really take, empathize, take deep feeling of pleasure in other successes? And third is compassion. And fourth is equanimity. Equanimity is an evenness. One way to understand it or part of its understanding is an evenness of mind. An equalness of mind. You can come to each object, each person equally. That's the basis, basis, basis of bodhisattva practice. Can you do that with your mother or father?

[73:45]

Your spouse. We have a little test right here going on. Yeah, all through the room we have little tests going on. You two do it pretty well. They say there's no saying families that sit together stay together. In America it's families that pray together stay together. That's what the advertisements for Protestant churches say. We should have the Dharma Sangha motto, you know. Sit together, stick together. That that means, you know, not that your mood, how can I say it, is that you don't have enthusiasms and strong feelings and lesser feelings and so forth.

[75:08]

But underneath there's some sameness. No matter what strong feelings you have, or likes and dislikes, The foundation underneath it is a kind of openness, caring, evenness. And this is possible. And one of the things that helps is the sheen. I mean, what can be more meaningless, we all experience it sometimes, than a sheen? I mean, especially around the third day it starts feeling really meaningless.

[76:13]

I can barely walk. What are we all running around in this room for? But, you know, if you look carefully at your job, it's nearly the same. Why are we all doing this? But somehow if we stay even in the midst of the pain or the relief from pain, Some deep, wide mind appears. I once said to Sukhiroshi, how do you practice heat yoga? He said, it has to be very cold.

[77:30]

So, you know, I was working with generating heat between my thumbs and moving it up my arms and et cetera. And he said, really, it helps if it's very cold. Luckily, the Tassajara Zendo was very cold. There was no heat in it in the winter except bodies and kerosene lamps. So it was often way below freezing. And it was kind of useful to learn how to do that. Well, likewise, for some reason, this wide, stable, compassionate, Equanimous mind.

[78:43]

Compassion. Accepting mind. It's pretty, really, it's most likely to be developed in everything I know when you have to face a big difficulty or the pain and annoyance Yeah, we could have another kind of family that sit together, stick together. We could have triasashin, seven-day shortcut to big mind. We put it on the internet. Somehow there is truth to what I say. When we can come to, if our legs hurt, it's okay.

[80:14]

If we're caught in a lot of thinking, it's okay. If we had two periods of bliss and it's gone, it's okay. This is some big mind. You can go, somebody can say, go sit there, you sit there. They don't come and get you, you're still there. Anyway, that kind of feeling is this mind of evenness or equanimity. And strangely, one of the ways to practice it and really develop it as well as Sashin is to try to practice unlimited friendliness.

[81:16]

Apathetic joy and compassion. Okay. So now you're swimming in the dark sea with blind turtles. And maybe many small children, blind children. And adults. And we don't know anything. And we trust the situation. We don't plan ahead. Yeah, sometimes you plan ahead. But in a more fundamental way, it's, what is it? What was pointed out to me was never there. So we want to generate a kind of, what is it mind? It's not so like, oh, what is it, so we rediscover the object.

[82:50]

But rather we come into a kind of, I don't know, a what is it mind. Okay, and you're swimming in this dark sea. And you come up and there's a human being. Now, I used to be, I was trained as a lifeguard. In fact, I was the first white lifeguard in the black swimming pool in the hill, the equivalent of Harlem in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. That's a song you wouldn't know, you're too young. You know, they'd never integrated the pools before.

[84:09]

I was the first integrated, you know, experiment in integration. And that summer I saved 13 black people from drowning. More than anyone else, actually. Anyway, when someone's drowning, whether I've also done it on the beach in the ocean, you know, You've got to approach them very carefully. Or you may drown with them. So you get a swim up. What is it? What kind of mind is this person in? So the bodhisattva has some sort of feeling like that. He's a lifeguard saving sentient beings.

[85:12]

So he swims up in the dark. What is it? That's a person. So he or she is starting from zero. From this evenness of mind. This common approach to everyone. This is the practice of friendship, not personal friendship. Personal friendship is based on our self-nature. Dharma friendship is based on our Buddha nature. It's really some light distinction like that. So you swim up to their Buddha nature.

[86:27]

You swim up feeling zero. Or no associations. What Dignaga calls the extreme particular. Only particular with no ideas about it. Only what was there was there, is there. But there must be some way for us to exist. For existence to exist. So we have to bring forth something. So we bring forth the six paramitas. Really the first four. Which are generosity.

[87:30]

You just open giving feelings. Discipline. But discipline, at least in English, has come to mean to be disciplined by someone. To force something on yourself. But at least in English, the root of the word means to learn something from a situation. It's the same word as disciple. To have the skills to accommodate yourself to a situation so you learn from it. So it means to receive from a situation. And the third is patience.

[88:40]

And patience is, maybe we can understand it, is to accommodate yourself to the dharmas. To wait for things to be revealed. And the fourth is vigor. Or vitality. Or the effort or energy of intention. And in the background is meditation and wisdom. The fifth and sixth parameters. And meditation and wisdom are developed through the first four. And meditation and wisdom in turn make the first four possible.

[89:44]

Because without meditation and wisdom you couldn't swim up to each particular with no ideas. Maybe in your self-nature you have ideas. Oh, this is this kind of person or something. But underneath that or around that in your equanimous nature, In your Buddha nature, there's just generosity, caring, receiving. So you can see the dynamic of these four. What you are there at in this sentient moment, You're there with a person.

[90:57]

Let's call it a sentient moment. The sentient moment is giving. receiving, waiting, and readiness. All those together. And it's funny, in the roots of words, they're almost like the way Buddhism uses words. For instance, take and receive are the same. If you both take and receive, So there's a simultaneity to giving and receiving. And waiting and being ready. So giving, generosity, discipline, receiving.

[91:58]

generosity giving, discipline receiving, patience waiting, and vigor readiness. The energy of being ready to act. Now that's bodhisattva practice, really. That's the dynamic of it as a process. No, no, what did I say? You know, somebody could ask you, what is Zen, and you could say swimming. And here we have swimming. And we have swum up to a person. A stranger on the bus, somebody in the kitchen here.

[93:10]

The person sitting beside you. And you can have this feeling of being open, being generous. And being ready to receive. And waiting. Giving them that honor. And having a readiness in that waiting. Mm-hmm. And this, it's amazing, it works. Works at work. Your job. Works in your family. And it doesn't mean, you know, you don't do it sort of looking for results.

[94:18]

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