Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. So we have a bunch of people who weren't here yesterday and a bunch of people who were. I want to do a some review of what we spoke of yesterday and a little more. So We've this practice commitment period with working with beef and ball chips and suture and while charity is about practicing in the world. As we all are here. And so how do we practice in the world? How do we practice helping beings? And at the same time, we're also seeing beyond the conventional ways of seeing the world, seeing something deeper.

[01:08]

In the service of helping beings in the world. So all of this is about doing the Buddha work. By definition, all of us here are children of Buddha. We support the Buddha work, the work of awakening all beings, awakening ourselves, this endless process of awakening and helping, curing the suffering of the world and helping out as you can. So our character speaks of indescribable liberative techniques and practices. How we? Can. Help in all kinds of ways, just by being ourselves, just by expressing kindness.

[02:13]

Just by helping everyone else and others to awaken to the possibilities of. Helping others to wake into the possibilities. And a lot of this skillful means is about patience. About paying attention. About seeing what's in front of us and helping out when we can. About seeing all the difficulties of our challenging world and seeing how we can help sometimes. This is trial and error. It's not There's no instruction on how to do it. Each one of us is different. Each one of us has our own special gifts. Each one of us has their own way of being present and responsive and helpful and seeing deeper.

[03:22]

And in Sangha, we do this together. How do we support each other? I was for each other each to be each each to be. The particular wonderful. Being on your seat right now. Or. Part of what the sutra also. Drops about is. Our world is made up of inconceivable realities. It's not what we think it is. Of course, our thinking is useful and we should use that to help, but we don't know all of the different dimensions of what is happening.

[04:31]

For example, last week of dogs walking along and smelling the world in ways that we can't imagine. Most of us don't understand. How do we go beyond our usual ideas of what our life is and what the world is? At the same time that we fully occupy our life in the world. when we take on our dharma positions to open sense. So dharma positions are not static either. Each of us is shifting, changing, waking up, going to sleep, finding new ways to respond to those around us. And in the Vimalakirti Sutta we've been talking about, there's also this teaching about Buddha fields.

[05:42]

Buddha awakens and then created Buddha fields. So we are in Shakyamuni's Saha world, this world of endurance, this challenging world. So this is about the practice of Sangha, community, cooperation. We try to support and enact cooperation, working together, sometimes across boundaries that we don't understand, that are artificial, but that we create. So how do we take care of this particular saga? It should drag in some games. Wonderful, beautiful people.

[06:46]

Star from here. How do we take care of other songs or other communities? How do we, as Joanna Macy says, be an island of sanity? Well, How do we connect with other communities? Ultimately, we're not separate. Ultimately, we're all in this together. Ultimately, emptiness means that we're all interrelated to everything and everybody else we've ever met or heard about. How do we enjoy that? Celebrate that? Take care of each other. Take care of others. We don't always have to agree. And it's not about converting people with other views to our view. But it's about listening and being open and caring about everyone.

[07:54]

So the Buddha words. Sitting all day on a cushion and chair facing the wall, facing ourselves. This is the Buddha Buddha. And the challenge of the Bodhisattva practice. The Malakirti's practice right in the middle of all of the stuff in the world is how to unfold that. How do we allow it to unfold in various ways? How do we people here are considering making changes in their lives? People here are have been making changes in their lives. People here are in good places without obvious changes. All of this is part of this

[09:04]

dance and process of living it with you, practicing together with others, all the others. So, one of the main teachings of Mahakirti Sutra, which has to say it again in Sanskrit, and the thought of the Dharmakshanti, patients with intolerance of The unknowability, ungraspability, birthlessness, translated in various ways, of things, of the world, of everything, of all of us. And to see the world in each other, not just as things, but as a life. And unfolding. And there we have the examples all around us of flowers unfolding and blossoming. this time of year and spring, we all can feel this unfolding and opening in various ways.

[10:13]

But part of this tolerance or patience with the ungraspability, unknowability of things that we can't pin them down and control them is that we don't have to have control. The world is alive. We are alive. Each other is alive. Carpet and cushions and walls and tables and chairs. It's all alive. How do we take care of this earth field that was alive with the intention of Buddha to Be helpful. And, you know, it's ultimate reality.

[11:19]

In ultimate reality, there is a wholeness. This is what I felt the first time I was in the church. I thought, oh, it's okay. It was a wholeness for me. I don't know that I would have articulated it that way, but that's in the film. So to see that that there is this underlying ultimate reality that we are all connected and everything is connected. Just to see that is great support for working with differences in the world, working with conflicts, working with the suffering and sadness of the world. That's the Buddha work. So it's not that, you know, it's not that you should not try and understand them if you're the type of person who likes to understand things.

[12:38]

We have academics here who understands a lot of things. But how do we see beyond what we understand? How do we see possibilities? Right now, the world is... But to see an immense, traumatized, powerful people who are sadly encouraging cruelty and harm. This is the world we live in. How do we respond without vilifying them personally, but openly looking at the situation around us? How do we express the great compassion? That's the practice of bodhisattvas, working with difficult beings, working with the difficulties in each of us, working with ourselves and others, trying to open up caring and kindness and relating.

[13:50]

So as I said yesterday, we can oppose harmful systems or policies without hating or despising personally those who are deluded into thinking they should espouse those. So doing the Buddha work. How do we allow all of our activity, as it is now, to be Buddha work? We don't have to, you know, go around thinking Buddha work, Buddha work. But just what our caring and opening up and awakening to ourselves and each other is this process. And I mentioned yesterday the precepts and the 16 Bodhisattva precepts in our tradition that Doug then composed based on previous discussions and precepts and ethics.

[15:11]

These can be very helpful to us in terms of seeing how a Buddha might function, might live. And we have coming up next month for the first time in quite a while after the pandemic, we'll have a G-Class ceremony here in the school. Offering precepts, performing the ceremony. Three people who are all here now will be receiving precepts, precepts, precepts. And for all of us, these precepts are what we receive in Zaza. But it's not so much the rules of conduct as ways of seeing how to be helpful.

[16:16]

And also connection to lineage and tradition of awakening. So this is Japanese understanding of what these precepts, precepts, precepts about going back to Dogen and still in Japanese, so to say, that this is about confirming the Buddhist that's already here. This is about verifying It's the Buddha work. For the people on the seating leads. And for everyone else. And connecting with the woman in the age. Verify. Oh, we're just here. So, some people, especially when they first come to this practice, sometimes some people, even long after they begin this practice, have some difficulty with all of our forms and ceremonies and rituals.

[17:38]

But the point of these is just to confirm connection to Buddha. Gratitude that there were beings going back to Shakyamuni Buddha 25 or so years ago, and before him, and to the Buddhist before Buddha. And we can understand that in all kinds of ways, but somehow we are doing this strange practice of Sashin that has emerged from this long tradition. Yesterday, tomorrow, we will be chatting, we chatted, we will be chatting names of the Buddha ancestors. But it's not just, you know, so we have a series of names. But also in each generation, we want many people. We want to support people like this.

[18:39]

We're supporting each other to explore and expand and appreciate the unfolding of the Buddha book. So the ceremonies we do, making offerings to the altar to the Buddha, the prostrations, reciting these traditional chants are all about just expressing appreciation and gratitude that we are connected. Sometimes it's not easy to do this practice. Legs hurt or back hurts or sleeping or mind's whizzing around or whatever.

[19:41]

We feel uncomfortable. And that's part of the practice too, is to be willing to be beyond our comfort zone, beyond what we think of as our usual way of being who we are. To be surprised by how beautiful the world is, the birdsong, flowers, as well as all the stuff that the market gets into, all the difficulties in the world, but not separate. So taking care of your posture, the body-mind, on your seat, and sitting is not separate from taking care of friends, family, and coworkers, neighbors, with all the difficulties therein.

[20:53]

How do we adjust our posture? So we emphasize the physical posture of Zaza. But there's also the posture of expressing kindness and care in our interactions. Patience tolerance. Of the fact. That things are beyond our control. Of course, lots of things are in our control. We don't want his to build a certain time, but. You know, there are things that we can take care of. Very skillful people in this room.

[21:59]

But. We also recognize that there's a lot that happens beyond our control. And I think Buddhist liberation means letting go of a sense of control. Well, it can be very painful. But how do we let go of a sense that we know everything that's happening, what should happen and all those ideas we have. Anyway, this is all part of the Buddha work, the ongoing Buddha work. So, so far this has been a review of where I strongly opposed with traditional, this is show, it was a great Dharma, since corporate flying would work.

[23:14]

The empty field cannot be cultivated or proven. From the beginning, it is altogether complete, undefiled and clear down to the bottom. So that's the underlying reality of the conscious blood accounts, which you sometimes forget or don't see. It goes on, where everything is correct and totally sufficient, attain the pure lives that illuminate thoroughly, fulfilling liberation. Awakening involves enactance. Stability develops through practice in it. So, as we practice this practice, as we look together in Sangha, there's a kind of stability that develops from this. It's not It's not subject to change, but what is the stability?

[24:25]

What is the steadiness that includes change? Birth and death originally have no root or stem. Not just this. Appearing and disappearing originally have no defining signs or traces. Appearing and disappearing originally have no defining signs or traces. We can't put it down. The primal light, empty and effective, illumines the head top. The primal wisdom, silent but also glorious, responds to conditions. So how do we respond? How do we respond to conditions? From this underlying wisdom. This is the question of how we do it. When you reach the truth without middle or edge, cutting off before and after, when you realize one wholeness, when you reach the truth without middle or edge, cutting off before and after, when you realize one wholeness.

[25:43]

just being present in that. Everywhere sense faculties and objects both just happen. The one who sticks out his broad long tongue transmits the inexhaustible lamp, radiates the great light and performs the great Buddha work. When the first not borrowing from others One item from outside reality, outside the Dharma, clearly this affair occurs within your own house. So we take care of the bodies and lungs, we take care of our work, we take care of all the beings we can. And it's not that we, so, to fix this as Buddha's expression of this.

[27:00]

But for Bodhisattvas, we are working towards this, working around this, working with this. And this trial and error, we make mistakes. It's important to make mistakes. That's how we learn. So this Buddha work is a wonderful job. It's challenging, but you've heard about it now. So, okay, this is our mission, to put it that way. But it's also our enjoyment. It just feels to be helpful. It feels good to connect. It feels good to see and hear others and how they are. This is all doing a good work.

[28:01]

So we will have time to discuss this over tea this afternoon. If anybody has, if there's one or two people who have We need comments, responses. We can do that. You can just sit and do the little work, and we'll talk about it this afternoon. Thank you.

[28:39]

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