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 a lion dance. So I'm going to go sit in the rain and watch her. why I changed my clothes. I'm going to what color is her lion? Do you know? What color is her lion? Red. Red. Different color red than your name. So with all due respect, I'm offering the emphasis on compassion and de-emphasis on control.

[01:21]

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 it's compassion, emphasizing compassion and de-emphasizing trying to control. If there was any control, fine. If anybody's in control of this universe, okay. But human beings 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. Be compassionate to the human impulses to try to control. Okay.

[02:28]

What came to my mind was a memory of this little boy who calls me granddaddy, who I watched him pile up tiny little blocks, blocks, you know, less than an inch, less than an inch on each side, or quite a bit less. I watched him pile them up with his little tiny fingers. into a very 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 without trying to control. And when he got, I guess, all the blocks that he could get into this

[03:32]

tower, little tiny blocks, then he would knock the tower over and start over. So I was impressed by his care. I didn't really notice that he was trying to control the world, but he was making this pile. 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. 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.

[04:34]

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. 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 up and having it go 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.

[05:55]

But, you know, that's not because I'm controlling it. It's just... It's just what I'd like to see happen. 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 to go through the hoop and 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's not too advanced to look to see. It might be too advanced to feel, what do you call, 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.

[06:57]

Then you can see. if you're impartial towards going through and not going through. Impartiality is really good for happiness in this world. Then you could apply it to people, impartial towards people, impartial towards this person and that person, not favoring the people who 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? 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 or not.

[08:01]

And there's lots of other opportunities too for training in impartiality, which sets the stage for compassion. Being working on impartiality, I call upon you. Not because I'm impartial. I'm just working on being impartial. Maybe I am impartial. But anyway, hello? Hello. I understand that you are not impartial to your love. You understand what? That you are not impartial to your love. You understand that I'm not something to my vow? Impartial. Oh, you think that I'm not impartial towards my vow? Oh, I want to be impartial towards my vow.

[09:08]

You do. I do. That will help me be more wholehearted about it. That will help me be wholehearted. If I'm impartial towards my vow and I don't follow it, I might give up on it. I don't want to give up on it. And you say, well, are you impartial towards not giving up on it? 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 love. 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.

[10:08]

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, even though you wouldn't be as good a servant, I'd still have you. Be not as good if you're partial to me. And I'm sorry, that's not my thing. 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 for the sake, not just of being 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 your confidence come from? Where does it come from? I do not know. I can tell you, we can go back over my whole life now and say, you know, well, I read some books.

[11:11]

I heard some talks. You know, I heard a strong emphasis on compassion from very many bodhisattvas told me that. And I thought about it, and I meditated on it, and I become more and more convinced. Conviction and confidence are kind of related sometimes. I have the conviction of 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 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.

[12:14]

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. Without that confidence and dedication... Stillness and silence is unattainable. Stillness and silence is not attainable. 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.

[13:15]

But is that where you put your chips down? Do you 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. This morning, Rob, you said when you receive the gift, you're supposed to give it away. 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.

[14:18]

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 are the receiver, you immediately then also let go of being 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. That's one of our little treasures, the purity of the three wheels, not getting stuck in any position in the process.

[15:25]

But sometimes you do seem to be, like, giving me a gift. Hmm. Okay. Can I give it away right away? Could you just give it back to you? Then you give it to me again. Anyway, 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 gift. That kind of practice. Does that make like some sense? I know. Yeah. Like being a mother. You receive a baby. if 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 great compassion 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

[16:54]

and they live together, and loving-kindness is usually listed 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 great 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, at wish. 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 that are wishing to be happy are still They don't understand that they're intimate with them yet.

[17:54]

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, you know, mature. Does that make some sense? I think so. I think I was connecting love with the idea of abalakiteshvara. Yeah, that's abalakiteshvara. That's my definition of love. Yeah, that's... So your definition of Avalokiteshvara would be Avalokiteshvara is the bodhisattva of compassion.

[19:01]

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's some duality, that ease is somewhat postponed, is partial. The compassion brings the wish to completion. Not just, it not only brings you the wish that people will be happy and free to completion, it even takes people beyond being free.

[20:03]

So that they're willing to be with, hang out in prison. So, yeah, I think you can call love, [...] compassion, love. That'd be fine. Yeah. Like, I'm going to Chinatown, and as you know, if you've been in Chinatown in San Francisco, many of the stores in Chinatown have Abelok Yateshwar in the store, on an altar, or in the window. And it's often Abelok Yateshwar in the form of a female figure or a feminine figure in white flowing robes, I think we have one of those up in the Kanaan Hall upstairs. Anyway, and most in English, the word on the streets is, this is the goddess of mercy.

[21:08]

I don't disagree with that. Goddess of mercy. That's one of the ways Abhilakya Teshvara can manifest. But also, Abhilakya can manifest as an intense nude. 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, mm-mm. That's the way his compassion could manifest. Sonia? My question is in terms of compassion and the concept of taking and receiving like cancer.

[22:20]

Did you say taking and receiving? Giving and receiving. Giving and receiving. Oh, giving and receiving. Okay. I thought you said taking and receiving. Giving and receiving, yes. Well, in terms of looking at cancer patients, how can I'm thinking of giving that, because whatever has happened to that disease, that whether you recall it's a blessing or in a lot of cases it's a blessing when you get something and then it's a lot of awakening and then also to me it's a new life possibly and I've seen a lot of people how can we teach the people they have something they don't want and they want

[23:22]

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 vow to be compassionate if I find out that I have cancer. I want to practice compassion with that information or with, you know... or the actual symptoms, and the actual prognosis that I'm going to die from this disease. I would like to be compassionate towards the message, towards the symptoms, and towards the diagnosis. Well, again, you can say I give the energy of compassion to the... to the cancer or to me who hears that I have cancer or to me who feels sick.

[24:30]

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 wants compassion. So my body wants compassion and the diseases of my body want 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 fine. 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 they had. That could happen, right. Because they have compassion with themselves. 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.

[26:42]

And it will help my co-sufferers. 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 Szyguroshi... towards the end of his life, before he told us he had cancer. He said, now Zen Center is getting rather large. Lots of students. So people have to have appointments to see me. And like, wait. Or 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...

[27:46]

to practice compassion with myself, I do that for you. 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. And some people 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. That does happen. And they know that that's silly. They know it's silly that they'd rather not have me 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, where 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.

[28:51]

I let my partiality block me being as wholehearted towards you as Nushi and Betsy and Karen. I don't 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. That partiality is going 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 and move on. 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 be compassionate towards rather than, 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. Some people are allergic to some people. 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 into it.

[30:48]

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