It's my pleasure to introduce a friend this morning. That is Meikyo Bob Rosenbaum, who many of you know. Bob has been practicing here for 20, 25 years. And he has been a Shuso head student. by from Sojin Roshi. He has worked as a psychotherapist, as a neuropsychologist, as a father, as a writer, the author of a wonderful new book. It's called Walking the Way, 81 Zen Encounters with the Tao Te Ching. And I believe that we have copies store outside.

[01:01]

And I think sometime in the next couple of months, Bob will do a presentation reading of the book and book signing. But I'm sure if you buy one, you'll be willing to sign it. And it just gives me a lot of pleasure to introduce him and to enjoy his drama this morning. The title of this talk is Compassion. And I'd often like to begin these talks with... Maybe that'll work better? Actually, it'll work better if you put it closer to your mouth. Closer. And the suit turns it down a little.

[02:02]

How's that? A little too loud. Keep talking. I'm going to keep talking. Talking, talking, blah, blah. OK. So I often like to start these talks with commenting on the chant we do before a Dharma talk. And it's actually a good place to start on the topic of compassion. So when we chant an unsurpassed, penetrating and perfect Dharma, it may give us the wrong idea. Unsurpassed doesn't mean, wow, this is a really great one. It means completely itself. not comparable.

[03:04]

So it's unsurpassed. There's nothing better than this, and there's nothing worse than this. This is as bad as it gets, and as good as it gets. Sorry. We could take each word But one of the key points is, an unsurpassed, penetrating and perfect Dharma is rarely met with even in a hundred thousand million kalpas. I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Tathagata means, thus come one. I vow to taste the truth of just this. Nothing special. Just this, when we chant the rope chant, here we say, now we open Buddha's rope.

[04:10]

A lot of other Zen centers, it's really interesting visiting other Zen centers, you get a lovely sense of the variety of practices. A lot of other Zen centers say, now we open the rope of liberation. And compassion is certainly about liberation. Now we open the robe of liberation, a field far beyond form and emptiness. Well, what's that? Well, we say the Tathagata's teaching, a field far beyond form and emptiness, is the teaching of thusness. We say the teaching of thusness for all beings by all beings. Everything is always preaching the Dharma. You are preaching the Dharma at this moment, wordlessly. I'm condemned to use words, at least right now.

[05:17]

A little background. About three years ago, I was asked to teach a day-long workshop on compassion as part of a program at CRIS for psychotherapists, a mindfulness and compassion certificate program for people who were already therapists. And I agreed to do that. And then I had a kind of unfortunate realization that I wasn't sure what compassion is. And we talk a lot about compassion but if you look at the Zen literature there's very little written about what compassion is. It's kind of assumed everyone knows what it is and that it just arises from our practice. And as I started thinking about it well okay so what is it Well, it's not just doing good, is it?

[06:22]

Because if it's ... a lot of people who means do good wind up not doing good. to commit daily acts of kindness, but he kept getting behind, so he would do as many acts of kindness as he could in one day, but they weren't quite right, so he'd polish a person's brown shoes with black shoe polish, and he'd make like hell for everyone with his deeds of kindness. It's not just alleviating suffering, if it were, somebody who offers somebody in pain a bottle of pills and says, here, take these pills and don't bother me anymore. Or for that matter, a therapist who said, here, here's a book about how to deal with your negative thoughts. You're just not dealing with your negative thoughts, right? Go away and you'll be fine if you read this book.

[07:24]

That's not compassionate, is it? And it's not just empathy, really. You can be very empathic with someone and not do anything about it. Empathy is kind of a resonance, a reflection of a feeling. So, as Master Hua says, one gives rise to compassion when one sees living beings undergoing suffering, creating evil karma and sunk in confusion. That's, I think, a good statement, but it somehow wasn't didn't get to the heart of the matter for me. So, I did a kind of search through the Zen literature. I searched through the whole Shobo Genzo, and there's really nothing which defines compassion in the Shobo Genzo.

[08:25]

The closest I came to it was Dogen's Faso Koan, Avalokiteshvara. And many of you know the koan, but I think I'll just read the koan here. Yunyan asks Dawu, What does the Bodhisattva of Great Compassion do with so many hands and eyes? And Dao Wu said, it's like someone reaching back for the pillow at night. And Yun Yang said, I got it, I got it. And Dao Wu said, what did you get? And Yun Yang said, all over the body are hands and eyes. And Dao Wu said, you've said it well, but it's eight or nine out of 10. Yinyang said, well, I'm just this. How about yourself, brother? And Dao Wu said, wherever the body reaches, it is hands and eyes. We often talk about reaching for the pillow in back of the head, groping for something.

[09:27]

But we don't always talk about the remainder of the koan. I just want to read it again with a little bits and pieces of Dogen's comments. What does the Bodhisattva of Great Compassion do with so many hands and eyes? Dogen says, it is as many as possible, not limited to any number, unsurpassed, penetrating and perfect. As it is not limited to any number, it is not limited to beyond boundary and measure, It even goes beyond the boundary of beyond boundary and measure. Pretty dope. But it points to how profound compassion is. It's really important. It's at the heart of our practice. Like someone reaching back from the pillow at night, Dogen says, reaching back means groping for it.

[10:32]

At night means in utter darkness. You know, one of the problems with compassion is we think we know what to do to help somebody. But part of compassion arises from utter darkness. From being faced with terrible suffering and just not knowing what can I do? Is there anything I can do? I mean, it's terrible. All over the body are hands and eyes. The hands and eyes do not hinder each other. How you use them is how you let them be used, and how you use them as they are. Suchness, to be compassionate, is to be a vehicle for something larger than yourself. So why does Daowu say, well you said it well, but it's 8 or 9 out of 10, Daowu said, wherever the body reaches, it's hands and eyes.

[11:46]

Yinyang says, all over the body are hands and eyes. The whole body, our whole being is compassion. But Daowu says, wherever the body reaches, it's hands and eyes. And I think this points to something, compassion reaches beyond itself. And it comes back to itself. There's one other saying by Dogen that I found that I really like a lot on this topic. It says, practice with heart, practice with beyond heart, practice even with half a heart. Sometimes that's all we have. You attain the marrow and are invariably transmitted through your utmost and trusting heart. There's no path that comes from anything other than sincere trust, and these do not in the least come from outside ourselves, nor is there any place within from which they emerge.

[12:57]

And it seems to me that compassion has something to do with trust, with finding trust when it seems impossible to trust in the world. in our lives, in our lives and our deaths. So reaching, reaching, well maybe that implies that it's important to cultivate compassion. And Norman Fisher recently wrote a book, a very good book, I strongly recommend it. I know that they've been Well, it's called Training in Compassion, Zen Teachings on the Practice of Lojong. So Lojong, there's a lot of literature on compassion in Tibetan traditions, also in the Kasina tradition.

[14:00]

And Norman mentions, you know, really in the Zen tradition we expect it to just come, but maybe it's a good idea to practice it, to cultivate it. And Lojong involves 59 phrases or slogans that one practices with in order to arouse compassion and practice it in everyday life so that you come back to the phrases again and again. And He actually outlines seven steps. The first is just resolve to begin. And then the second is actually training in empathy and compassion. The third, transforming bad circumstances into the path. Fourth, making practice your whole life. And it goes, the fifth, assess and extend. The sixth, discipline of relationship. and the seventh, living at ease in a crazy world."

[15:05]

So he sorts the 59 phrases into those seven. And he says, well, when you resolve to begin, first train in the preliminaries. That's actually the first slogan in Lojah. First train in the preliminaries. And you'd think, well, that would be the Four Noble Truths. But Norman says, well, really the Four Preliminaries are the rarity and preciousness of human life, the inevitability of death, the inescapability of suffering, and the awesome power of our actions, of our karma. I think it's good to go to those, but ultimately to train in the preliminaries you have to find what's your foundation. When everything's taken away from you, when Buddhism's taken away from you, when Zazen's taken away from you, when everything's taken away from you, what do you rely on?

[16:10]

Every one of us has to answer that for ourselves. When I had a stroke, eight, nine years ago, I really had to think, well, okay, Sazen's not going to stop me from having a stroke, from dying. Qigong's not going to stop me from dying. All this stuff about suffering being inescapable, death being inescapable, it's really true! Damn! part of my foundation is going back to, actually to suchness, what is, and then a lot of times realizing, well, often I don't really like what's right in front of me, and the only way I know to deal with that at such points is through compassion, which seems to arise

[17:19]

And Norman goes on and he goes through the 59 slogans of training in Lojong, and they're all very interesting and very useful, but I want to point out a particular slogan, number 52, don't misinterpret. So you go through your day saying, don't misinterpret, don't misinterpret, knowing that we're always misinterpreting. What we see is not reality. It's illusion. It's filtered through our senses, through our ideas. Don't misinterpret. But here's what I found really interesting. Norman suggests, don't interpret either others or your own emotions, thoughts or actions or speech. That's a pretty big task right there. But he says, if you are unhappy or judgmental, This is a sign you are misinterpreting.

[18:26]

Isn't that amazing? If every time you felt unhappy or judgmental, felt kind of inflated or disparaging, to go, oh, I guess I'm misinterpreting. I guess I'm off base somehow. I've been practicing with that one and it's very humbling. very humbly. And so in terms of not misinterpreting, I want to go back to something which happened about a week ago, during Jake's shuso hosen, when in asking him a question I referred to a patient I'd seen, who when he was a child would be sent to his grandparents on the farm every summer and his grandparents were fundamentalist Christians and they would tie up his feet and hang him from the rafters and take a bucket of water and submerge his head into it until he'd breathe it in and drown and lose consciousness in order to get the devil out of him.

[19:45]

And then they'd pound his back and revive him. and a lot of people had real difficulties with that example and were very upset by it and several people have talked to me about it since then and it's a pretty intense example because my patient cried when he told me about this and he said they drowned my heart So you'd think, as we hear this, we go, oh my, ah, ah, that our compassion is, oh that's terrible, how could those awful people do such a thing to such an innocent child? That's not sufficient compassion. It's only, at most, half the story.

[20:51]

I want to read you another definition of compassion. This is from the Cessation of Notions. Emon asks Nyori, what is called compassion? Nyori says, the transformation body responds without thinking to true emptiness. Benevolence toward beings is free of any intention and springs from an empty heart. If forced to give it a name, it's called compassion. So Emma asked, well what then is the way? And Yuri responds, free of all standards, discriminations, and desires. That's pretty radical. It means when we hear something like that incident, if we want to be really compassionate, we have to do at least two things.

[22:03]

We have to suspend judgment in the sense of not saying that person's bad and that person's innocent. We need to extend compassion to everyone without discrimination. unsurpassed. How awful for the grandfather and grandmother. How awful for the little boy. We need to extend to perpetrators as well as victims and we also need The second part is to see how we're doing it all the time ourselves. Last night I was having a difficulty with a member of my family and you know I had my feelings and stuff about it and in the middle of it I had to ask myself, am I drowning that person's heart?

[23:18]

by my response. I was talking to one member of the Sangha who had a discussion with me about the incident with the young man. And I said, well, you know, I've done that without meaning to. I mean, the grandmother and grandfather, they didn't mean to hurt that kid. They meant to help him. That's what's so terrible. And I mentioned one of my daughters had a very difficult time when she was a teenager and She really lost the sense of herself and lost faith in herself And at one point she turned to me and she said I know when this happened. I know when I lost myself I said what I was singing along with Annie get your gun and I was singing this song and I asked you if I sounded like Ethel Merman and you said no.

[24:20]

And I remember that incident and I remember saying to her, oh no, no, you have a very sweet voice. But for her, it crushed her. It crushed her. I didn't mean to. It crushed her. And we're always breaking each other's hearts. We're always breaking our own hearts. This is why we need to have compassion. Because it's happening all the time with our best intentions. There's another book that I found by a Zen author on cultivating compassion. He calls it Being Kindness. It's by Ezra Beda. I'm sorry, it's called Zed Heart. And he talks about a meditation called Being Kindness. And he distinguishes it from meta-meditation by saying you have to be with what is as it is.

[25:33]

And I thought I'd just read a little meditation that he gives people with a little twist on it that I put in myself at the beginning. So you start, just be aware of the earth below. Feel the earth supporting you. Upholding all equally. The grandmother, the grandfather, the rafters, the boy, my little girl singing, me commenting and hurting her. The earth supports everything. And be aware of the sky above, covering and touching all equally, embracing everything without discrimination. Be aware of how earth and sky offer themselves to each other

[26:37]

and be aware of how you existed the horizon where earth and sky meet. And then, breathing into the heart, as you breathe out saying, no one to be. Breathing into the heart, breathing out, nothing to do. Breathing into the heart. Just being yourself. Breathing into the heart. Attending to the flow of being. Breathing into the heart. Attending to any blocks in the flow of being. Breathing into the heart, being fully present, complete as being is.

[27:49]

Breathing into the heart, extending being, extending the present of presence to everyone. Passion relies on emptiness. Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva, who was practicing deeply the Karsna Paramita, perceived that all five skandhas in their own being are empty and was safe from all suffering. I once wrote a kind of paraphrase of the Heart Sutra, and I'll just read a few lines of it to translate it. Compassion, Avalokiteshvara is the embodiment of compassion. Compassion practicing deep wisdom realizes things do not exist but flow.

[29:01]

Flowing compassion was, is and will be completely liberated. No longer bound, unstuck from misery, all sincere seekers seek here and now. Moments are not different from that right before you. That right before you is not different from moments. Time and place are ungraspable, but appear only as this time and this place. So compassion is profound. It holds us. It relieves us. One of the Lojong sayings is, see everything as a dream.

[30:05]

And it's meant to relieve some of our suffering. Seeing is all illusion. And the next Lojong phrase is, and take full responsibility for everything that happens. We need to do both. But compassion in and of itself errs when it tries to do too much. It's important to allow compassion to be useless. The verse in the Tao Te Ching which treats with compassion starts off, the whole world says my way is great, great but useless. but we would have long been small. I think we too often try to be compassionate by being useful. I have three treasures to hold, to keep, to care for.

[31:07]

The first is being compassionate. The second is being sparing. The third is forsaking being at the forefront in the world. With compassionate motherly love, one can be courageous. With sparseness, one can be generous. With daring to not be at the forefront of the world, one can grow to be a complete vessel, chief of all tools. If you abandon compassion and yet try to be courageous, if you abandon austerity and try to be magnanimous, if you discard unpretentiousness and vie for supremacy, you will surely die. What heaven sets up surround and fortify with compassion's protection. So to access compassion I think we need to follow Avalokiteshvara's lead

[32:22]

Another verse from the Tao Te Ching, reach the pole of emptiness, abide still at the center. I usually can't resist when I give a talk giving some little hint of something I've discovered in the embodiment or the physical practice. To reach the center really helps to go to the base of your spine. It's not easy necessarily to find the base of your spine. I had an interesting experience this morning. I was doing Qigong, and my back has really been doing a number lately, and it's been hard to even stand up straight. And I was doing Qigong, and I was thinking of this talk a little bit, and I remembered and it was suddenly the pain went away it just dissolved came back sorry it's life but for a little bit going to the center everything just was as it as it is and it was a tremendous relief when you go to the center you see countless things

[33:55]

co-arising, see them turn and return, return to their roots, at their roots to be still. That's why it's helpful to go to the base of your spine, to your root. And in stillness, recover, revive, and endure. Stillness. Stillness and suchness. Very close. Compassion is a great stillness which accepts everything, receives everything, offers nothing in particular, but embraces all. I wrote a little poem, which I'll end the talk with, trying to express some of this. It helps, in the poem I allude to

[34:58]

the unborn. Some of you might know Bankei's teaching of the unborn. The poem goes, the sky is an illusion, the earth its unborn twin. One moon, two moons, a never end, a never to begin. My lover on one side of me, The highway sounds afar. The daylight hides the brightness. The night reveals the star. So busy. Ease and worry holding on and letting go. All centers touch the center. Circumference just so. Stop. Go. Commands are senseless. Still, the senses of our mind, uncountable the dusts, unmeasurable, how kind, that what gives life lives not itself, what kills life does not die.

[36:15]

Still, stillness. our laughter, tears, our compass points, the pupils of our eye. That's all I had to say this morning. Maybe there are some questions and comments. to offer two ways of responding if you have a question or a comment and just want to kind of talk about things, just to ask or raise your hand. I'd also like to offer a sort of Shosan type non-discursive response like we do in Shosan or the Shuso Hosen.

[37:22]

And I did want to mention, last time I did this, a number of people liked it. One person asked me, you know, is there ego involved in this? And at the time I said, well, you know, it feels like I'm trying to offer something. And I should have said, well, of course there's ego involved. There's always ego involved. We can't deny that. But, I still like that non-discursive back and forth sometimes, because sometimes something comes up which wouldn't in regular talking. They're both good. And there's nothing special about it. One of the things that I really like about Dharma Rains and Center Up in Portland is they have everyone do shosan. you can be a complete beginner and they'll put you up in the seat and say, okay, here we go. So you don't have to have a green rakuzu to answer questions in a non-discursive manner.

[38:24]

It's just a way of waking something up. So we don't need to do any of that. If you want to do it though, when you have a question, just use my Oh, and I also should mention, at the Leysen Teachers Association meeting, I mentioned that I tried doing this once. And people said that was interesting. And Eve Markle, who some of you may know, said, well, I don't understand if you say discursive, nondiscursive. So when somebody says, make show, what do you do? I said, well, they go, make show. And I go, what? And she said, that's so funny. So anyway, ask however you want. I'll try to respond in each and in whatever way I can. Alan? Discursive. I had several conversations with people regarding the question that you, the story that you told in the context of the question that you asked, Archuso.

[39:35]

And what came to me, because I was relating it to Lori, who's out of town. I got to it and I said, I'm not going to tell you this story because I don't want to place this thought in your mind. And what I'm asking you is, is there an ethical consideration that you might feel in relation to this story. And I think what I've also reflected in the context of this, and you sort of have to be there, and a lot of you were there, was that some of us were, the story, the question was directed at Jake, who responded totally. But it was presented publicly.

[40:40]

to most of a room full of people who've been sitting for five days and were vulnerable and open. And I want to ask you about your reflections on that in an ethical sense. Well, thank you for raising that. I actually hadn't thought of that piece of it before. Well, a couple of thoughts. First of all, if I hurt anybody in bringing that up, my sincere regret, I don't think I'm going to apologize because

[41:44]

No, no, I understand. But I considered, maybe I should. But it felt like something important to do at that moment for Jake and for all of us. I thought his response was so wonderful. It brought something out which was really deepening and good. this issue of when to bring something like that up and when not to, I've never seen the footage of 9-11. I happened to be in the mountains when it happened and actually when it happened and people told us in the mountains about it we went, what? And we were horrified and we looked around and the mountains kind of went And it was very helpful.

[42:51]

So I purposefully avoided seeing it. And if someone showed it to me and I couldn't get away from it, that would feel pretty intrusive. And so hearing the question in the course of the shuso hosen and not being able to get away from it might have felt very intrusive. So maybe in that sense, once again, I participated in drowning people's hearts. But the ultimate meaning from the story is that his heart wasn't drowned. He came out of it. He actually, there's a postscript to the story which is this person who was incredibly rigid and obsessive his whole life, fell in love and it broke down all the barriers and it melted his heart And all I did as a therapist was just be there and kind of hold his hand and say, it's OK.

[43:57]

It's scary, but it's OK. Let this happen. So in my sense, in my perspective, it's a very positive story. But I perhaps was too rash. Thank you for bringing up the question. Yes? I have a comment and also a question. I appreciate what you said, Alan. As a survivor of family violence, it's intense to have something like that dropped on you in a really unexpected way in a contained context. My question is, I felt like in your talk that you explored quite a bit the idea of compassion. I'm wondering if you have anything to say about your personal experience of compassion and how you understand it through an experiential lens.

[45:03]

Well, so many ways. I really do feel the earth as being compassionate and the sky as being compassionate. I really get into a bad place through depression or anger or whatnot. But also one of the main... I've been the beneficiary of compassion so many times. After I had my stroke, just to have people treat me like a human being, even though I was incapable of doing the things that I thought I needed to do for people to like me and accept me was pretty big. I was sexually abused as a child and so I'm no stranger to trauma and the intensity that even a slight mention of something can raise.

[46:14]

I guess I feel that The more it's raised, even though it's very painful for me, somehow each time it gets a little healing. And so I have a general feeling of all told, better to bring it out into the light than not. But what you and Alan have said is also very true, and I don't know how to deal with that. except to appreciate everyone's forbearance and participation. Tomorrow. Just to get the other side, the theme that was being explored was why should bowls, and it was being presented as how you completely drop from experience, each experience, and move on to the next. And there's a danger of falling into what's called Zen sickness. You know, oh, everything's empty, so it's always fine.

[47:20]

The way you talked about the question, you said this image kept appearing in your mind. So it sounded like it was a question that was emerging from a deep place. And personally, I felt that question really balanced the Zen sickness that we were all in danger of falling into, especially in the way that Jake responded. Because Jake's response just totally cut through any Zen sickness that might have been lingering. So I actually thought it was a really, Zen isn't a couch sport. It was a really authentic, powerful moment. Probably one of the most powerful moments that we've experienced during one of those ceremonies. Thank you for your comment, Tamar. Yeah, life's not a couch sport. I do want to say, I didn't intend to ask that question.

[48:22]

I came in with a completely different question. But that image kept coming up for me. And when Murti says, or is it Emam, who says emptiness, basically free of intention, I guess I really trust that kind of spontaneous horizon. And how do we recover a sense of trust? That's a big one. I think we protect ourselves a lot because we don't really trust that things really are okay. Even when they're really not okay, as in that example, they really are in some other way, that it's important to be in touch with.

[49:34]

And it looks like we're out of time. Thank you all very much.

[49:40]

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