I changed my clothes because I'm going to the Chinese Lunar New Year parade in Chinatown. A little girl who calls me granddaddy is going to be doing it. So I'm going to go sit in the rain and watch her. That's why I changed my clothes. I'm going to. What color is your lion? Do you know? Red. Red. Different color of red than your mane. So with all due respect, I'm offering the emphasis on compassion and de-emphasis

[01:19]

I wouldn't go so far as to say compassion rather than control, because compassion is not rather than anything, I would say. Or maybe I'd say compassion and de-emphasizing trying to control. If there was any control, fine. If anybody's in control of this universe, okay. But if anybody's trying to control, I'm not beating the drum for that. I'm beating the drum for let go of trying to control. Not don't. Because that would be another controlling message. ...to the human impulses to try to control. What came to my mind was a memory of this little boy who calls me granddaddy.

[02:39]

I watched him pile up tiny little blocks, blocks, you know, less than an inch less than inch on each side, or quite a bit less. I watched him pile them up with his little tiny fingers into a pretty high tower of blocks. And he was really careful. And I don't know if he was trying to control the blocks, but he was careful. We can do things carefully control. And when he got the, I guess, all the blocks that he could get into this tower of little tiny blocks, then he would knock the tower over and start over. So I didn't really notice that he was trying to control the world, but he was making this pile.

[03:49]

So I just want to say I'm emphasizing compassion towards trying to control. Not encouraging trying to control or discouraging it. Not encouraging it or discouraging it. I would like to encourage compassion towards all human impulses to try to control life. even though I feel. Although I want to do compassion, I do feel and I actually think that trying to control is rather disrespectful. But I'm not trying to get rid of the attempt to control. I'm not. And even if I was, It wouldn't, it's not under my control to get rid of it.

[04:57]

But it's not under my control to remember my vow to be compassionate towards my and other people's attempt to control. I'm betting on compassion. as the greatest happiness. And illusions of control as also kind of happiness if you ever succeed. It's kind of fun. Like, you know, making a pile of blocks, throwing a ball through a hoop from quite a ways away. But again, it is possible to throw the ball up without trying to control it but just trying to get it to go through the hoop. But, you know, that's not because I'm controlling it, it's just what I'd like to see happen.

[06:02]

But also, if I'm not trying to control, could I really be as interested when it doesn't go through the hoop? And that's something you can try out. Throw the ball up, hoop, Try to get it to go through the hoop and see if you feel as good about it going through the hoop as when it doesn't. Is that too advanced? I don't think so. It might be too advanced to feel impartial towards it going through or not. But one of the best ways to test the impartiality is to really try to get it to go through the hoop. Then you can see if you're going through and not going through. Impartiality is really good for happiness in this world.

[07:08]

Then you could apply it to people, impartial towards people, impartial towards this person, and that person are nice to you over the people who are not. So maybe shooting baskets is kind of a warm-up for some more important work. But then some people say, why should you shoot baskets if you don't care about what you do care about? You shoot baskets as a bodhisattva, as an exercise in impartiality. Why would you be enthusiastic about shooting baskets if you weren't trying to get them to go in? You are trying to get it to go in as an opportunity to be impartial about whether they go in. And there's lots of other opportunities too for training in impartiality, which sets the stage for compassion.

[08:15]

Working on impartiality, I call upon you. Not because I'm impartial. I'm just working on being impartial. Maybe I wasn't impartial. But anyway, hello. Hello. I understand that you're not impartial to your vow. You understand what? That you are not impartial to your vow. You understand that I'm not something to my vow? Impartial. You think that I'm not impartial towards my vow? Correct. Oh, I want to be impartial towards my vow. You do. I do. That will help me be more wholehearted about it. That will help me be whole... If I'm impartial towards my vow and I don't follow it, I'm not... I don't want to give up on it. And you say, well, are you impartial towards not giving up on it?

[09:27]

I want to be, because not being impartial towards giving up on my vow will promote my vow. That's the kind of vow I have. It lives on not grasping. Partiality is grasping. So I'm not saying I'm not. I just say I aspire to be impartial towards my vow, I aspire to that for the sake of my vow. I am the servant of my vow. I also wish to be impartial towards living beings because I want to serve them. I'm saying, I'll be a better servant to you if I'm impartial towards you. And you may say, well, I don't care. I still would rather you be partial to me. You can be impartial towards other people if that makes you a good servant to them. But I'd rather have you Be as good a servant, I still have you. Be not as good if you're partial to me. And I'm sorry, that's not my thing.

[10:29]

I'm not saying I don't do that. I'm saying that's not my vow. My vow is to learn, is to be impartial towards all beings. Not just to be impartial, but for the sake of compassion, which liberates them. Many people are compassionate towards people with partiality. That's okay, it's still compassion, it's just not liberating compassion. Where does it come from? I do not know. I can tell you, we could go back over my whole life now and say, you know, well, I read some books, I heard some talks, You know, I heard a strong emphasis on compassion from bodhisattvas told me that. And I thought about it and I meditated on it and I've become more and more convinced. Conviction and confidence are kind of related sometimes.

[11:33]

I have the conviction, some conviction, some confidence in compassion. However, sometimes my confidence isn't strong enough to meet the situation. And if I notice that, I'm sorry. I want to have so much confidence in compassion that I always come up compassionate. They have this, you know this, is bodhisattva of compassion. We have bodhisattva as a compassion on both sides of the altar here. On that side is kind of like a female-looking bodhisattva. Does it look kind of female? Or feminine? Avalokiteshvara, right? On the right is Avalokiteshvara as a kind of intense dude. Bodhidharma. Right? Bodhidharma. Bodhisattva of compassion.

[12:39]

However, if you have confidence, you might also have confidence in stillness and silence. Confidence, like, yeah, confidence in stillness and silence, it's already here. But is that where you put your chips down? I actually go and do a ritual, for example, occasionally, of sitting still, which you do, to help you remember stillness, which you don't do. And the answer might be, yeah, I do. I actually do that. I go and sit there. I do that ritual as an opportunity to remember that I have confidence in silence and stillness, which Bodhidharma compassionately transmitted. Abhi When you receive the gift, the first thing is to give it away?

[14:08]

Yeah, if you're wholehearted when you receive a gift, you're able more and more quickly to let go of it after you receive it. Really, you know, we have this teaching called the three wheels, giver, receiver, and gift. If you're wholehearted, you see those three wheels. And, yeah, you understand, you realize those three wheels. So when you're the receiver, you're immediately then also the receiver and become the giver. If you're the giver, you also let go of being the giver and become the receiver. So, in a way, receiving a gift and immediately giving it is very close to receiving a gift and realizing you're a giver. Or receiving a gift and realizing you're a gift. In the wholeheartedness of the giving process, we awaken to the reality of the intimacy of giver and receiver and gift.

[15:10]

You know, that's one of our little treasures, the wheels, not getting stuck in any position in the process. But sometimes you do seem to be like giving me a gift. Okay. Can I give it away right away? Could you just give it back to you? Then you give it to me again. In the process of wholeheartedly participating in giving, we awaken to not holding on to gifts and also not holding on to the position of being a giver. So as soon as you give a gift, realize you just received a gift. Open your hand and realize as you open your hand to give the gift, your hand gets filled with the gift. That kind of practice. Does that make, like, some sense? Like being a mother.

[16:19]

You receive a baby because you give your motherhood to the baby. The baby gives itself to you and makes you a mother. The baby gives you a gift and also the baby receives a mother. Everything's kind of like that. Yes? Are intimacy, grace, and love all the same thing? Well, the way I would use love would be yes, but sometimes, you know, we have these two terms in the Buddha way. One is loving-kindness and one is compassion. And they live together and loving-kindness is first. So it's like impartiality, then loving-kindness, then compassion. Compassion in a way is the especially great loving-kindness and great compassion, in a sense, it needs the other one. You can practice loving-kindness without compassion. So loving-kindness is like really, when it's mature loving-kindness, is really wishing a being to be happy and at ease and free, that wish.

[17:35]

Really, that's loving-kindness. But some people do actually have loving-kindness, but they haven't yet entered into the practice of intimacy. They still may think that those beings are wishing to be happy. They don't understand that they're intimate with them yet. However, it's hard to practice compassion if you don't have the loving-kindness first. So the compassion makes the loving-kindness intimate. So if that's what you mean by love, either the loving-kindness and or both, what you mean by love is impartiality, loving-kindness and compassion, all three of those could be called love. It's possible to really pretty wholeheartedly have loving-kindness towards someone and still have some attachment to them. That's why the impartiality helps to make the loving-kindness

[18:38]

Does that make some sense? I think so. I think I was connecting love with the idea of Avalokiteshvara. Yeah, that's Avalokiteshvara. That's my definition of love. Yeah, so your definition of Avalokiteshvara would be Avalokiteshvara is the bodhisattva. We don't usually mention that Avalokiteshvara also practices loving-kindness, but Avalokiteshvara does wish for everybody to be happy and free. But also Avalokiteshvara just is intimate with everybody. The intimacy is what does the work. The wish is really good, but the intimacy finishes the job. The intimacy fulfills the wish of loving-kindness. Loving-kindness we wish, we wish for everybody to be at ease. But as long as there is duality, that ease is somewhat postponed.

[19:44]

It's partial. Compassion brings the wish to completion. It not only brings you the wish that people will be happy and free to completion, it even brings people beyond being free so that they're willing to be with, hang out in prisons. So, you know, I think you can call Avalokiteshvara's compassion love, that'd be fine. Like, I'm going to Chinatown, and as you know, if you've been to Chinatown in San Francisco, many of the stores in Chinatown have Avalokiteshvara in the store. altar or in the window. And it's often obloquitester in the form of a female figure or a feminine figure in white flowing robes.

[20:53]

I think we have one of those up in the Kanaan Hall upstairs. Most in English, the word on the streets is that this is the goddess of mercy. I don't disagree with that. Goddess of Mercy. That's one of the ways Avalokiteshvara can manifest. But also it can manifest as an intense dude who really is impartial. But somehow it doesn't necessarily look like it sometimes. So compassion can manifest in the form of being quite strict. Like if somebody wants to study with Bodhidharma, he gives them a chance to demonstrate that they're really wholehearted about it. And if they're not, he says, that's the way his compassion could manifest.

[21:56]

Sonia? My question is in terms of compassion and comes with the concept of taking and receiving, like cancer. Did you say taking and receiving? Giving and receiving. Giving and receiving. Oh, giving and receiving. Okay. Mm-hmm. I thought you said taking and receiving. Giving and receiving, yes? In terms of looking at cancer patients, how can our thinking of giving death, because whatever has happened to that disease, that whatever we call is a blessing or disease, it's a blessing that we get something. And then there's a lot of awakening back there, and also, to me, it's a new life, possibly.

[23:12]

And I have seen a lot of people. How can we teach the people to have this type of something they don't want? And they want to... How can we teach people to be compassionate to something they don't want? Yes. Well, that's a good example. I don't want to have cancer. I don't want to. I'm not wishing that for myself or you, but I do want to be compassionate if I find out that I have cancer. I want to practice compassion with that information or the actual symptoms and the actual prognosis that I'm going to die from this disease. towards the message, towards the symptoms, and towards the diagnosis. Well, again, you could say, I give the energy of compassion to the cancer, or to me, who hears that I have cancer.

[24:15]

or to me who feels sick. I want to give that to me. I want to give that to the thought. But also, I want to receive compassion. And I want to receive compassion so I can give compassion. And the cancer wants compassion. The cancer actually does not want to be killed. It doesn't. It wants compassion. So my body wants compassion and the body wants compassion. Everything wants compassion. So if I'm sick and I'm giving and receiving compassion, then I may continue to be sick, but if I'm practicing it, I'm fine. If I don't have cancer, I don't have the diagnosis of cancer, and I don't feel the symptoms of cancer, and I don't practice compassion with my health, I'm not fine.

[25:38]

I'm not doing my job, because my job is to practice compassion, even with healthy people like me. They go to remission with cancer and they go back to the same lifestyle. That could happen, right. Because they haven't been compassionate with themselves. Or with their disease. Maybe so. But where I have more confidence is practicing compassion with whatever. And that I will be fine if that practice is living in me, plus that will help everybody else. It will help healthy people and it will help my co-sufferers.

[26:46]

If they see me being compassionate to my illness, that will help them. But even if they don't see me, My confidence is it helps all beings everywhere if I practice compassion with my illness. And it helps not just you if I practice compassion with your illness, it helps everybody. Like what comes to my mind, which I've mentioned to somebody before, is Suzuki Roshi, towards the end of his life, before he told me the answer, he said, now Zen Center is getting rather large, lots of students, so people have to have appointments to see me. And like, wait while I'm seeing other people before they can see me. But you should understand, when I'm seeing this person, I'm seeing this person for you. So for me to practice compassion with myself, I do that for you.

[27:49]

And for me to practice compassion with you, I do that for me. And for me to practice compassion for you, I do for everybody. I don't like that. They don't mind me being compassionate towards them. They just don't want me to be doing it for everybody. Yeah, that does happen. And they know that that's silly. They know it's silly that they'd rather not be compassionate to everybody but just for them. Great compassion has no limitation, but there are compassions which do have limitations. That's the sort of beginner's compassion. I'm compassionate to you, but not Nushi, because I like you more than Nushi. So I have, that's the limit of my compassion.

[28:50]

I let my partiality block me being as wholehearted towards you as Nushi and Betsy and Karen. I want to do that, but my partiality might interfere with my compassion. It can happen, but then I have a practice for that. I acknowledge, I want to give that person compassion more than that person, I acknowledge, and that partiality is calling for compassion. But before I get that impartiality, my compassion is limited. It's immature compassion, sentimental compassion. And it has drawbacks which spur us to get over it. Compassion is love. It's just that it can be impartial.

[29:53]

I mean, it can be partial. It can have favorites. These are my favorite people to meet. I really have affection for these people, for these people I don't feel so much affection for, but I'm not partial. Or some people I don't even feel affection towards or not, but some people I'm allergic to. You know? Some people are allergic. You know, they get sick when they get near them. But I vow to practice compassion with people even if I'm allergic to them. And I'm not in control over my allergies. I had a friend one time. She's a very nice person. Yeah. But I was allergic to her. I couldn't get near her.

[30:47]

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