So welcome, everyone. Yesterday afternoon, I gave a seminar, almost four hours, on Huayen Buddhism. And several of you here at Ebenezer and I think a few of you online also were there. And I want to talk about just So just to say briefly, Huayen Buddhism developed in China as a kind of systematic commentary on the great flower ornament of a Tamsaka Sutra, which is very flowery, profuse, psychedelic, many visions of the workings of Bodhisattvas. And the Huayen school that developed in China in the, well, in the 5, 6, and 700s, mostly, but it systematized some of the main teachings from that.

[01:10]

So I want to talk just about, focus on one basic teaching, the four Dharmadhatus this morning. So this teaching and Hauyan Buddhism generally was, really fundamental background for, I would say, all of East Asian Buddhism, especially for Soto Zen, also very much for Korean Buddhism. So the four Dhammadhatus from Huayen are based on the earlier Mahayana teaching of two truths. So I want to start with that, and later we'll chant the harmony of difference and sameness, which very much develops from these teachings. So the two truths in Madhyamaka emptiness teaching Buddhism from India are that there is the conventional or the mundane or the phenomenal truth.

[02:13]

That's one kind of reality. And there's also the ultimate or universal truth. Sometimes they're described as the relative and absolute. So these are both realities. We don't ignore conventional, phenomenal realities of the particulars, but also our practice gives us some taste of ultimate, universal reality. The form of Dharmadhatus are a way of putting those together. And again, very fundamental to our practice. And developed further in Soto Zen, in the harmony of difference and sameness, and especially by Dongshan, who did the Jewelmare Samadhi we chant sometimes, and who was considered the founder of Soto Zen.

[03:16]

So there were five main Ancestors or patriarchs, they're sometimes called teachers in Huayen school in China. My teacher, Tenshin Reb Anderson, calls Dongshan the sixth Huayen ancestor. But the Four Dharmadhatus are this wonderful teaching that presents these two truths, these two aspects of our reality and our practice. that were developed by these Huayen teachers from China. So, the Dharmadhatu means reality realms. Dharma means truth or reality. Dhatu is the realm. So, the Dharmadhatu is the whole universe. All phenomena. Somebody asked me yesterday about multiverses and multiple universes. Well, all of that's included in the Dharmadhatu. And from the point of view of Huayen and of Buddha's teaching, the Dharmadhatu is the whole phenomenal universe or multiverse or universes as awakened by Dharma.

[04:30]

So there are many, many aspects to this teaching. So I want to concentrate on the four Dharmadhatus themselves. So the first is, in Chinese, shì, phenomena. phenomenal events, the particulars. This is our ordinary relative world, the world of, well, the world of samsara, we might say. This is the world of ordinary events. That's the first Dharma doctrine. The second is in Chinese Li, which means literally principle, but it refers to this ultimate reality. universal reality. Sometimes these are called the relative and absolute. There are many different names for that, ways of talking about them in suttas that we've talked about as the partial and the complete or the inclined and the upright.

[05:34]

At any rate, so there's the phenomenal world, there's one dharmadhatu, one reality realm, There's the ultimate universal as the second dharmadhatu. And then, third and fourth are very interesting. Third is the mutual non-obstruction of li and shun. The mutual non-obstruction of the particular phenomenas and the universal. Or vice versa, the mutual non-obstruction of the ultimate and the particulars. So there is no ultimate outside of particulars, outside of phenomenal. Some spiritual traditions try to seek the ultimate universal truth and get rid of the world of delusion, the world of particulars, the world of phenomenal.

[06:37]

But in Mahayana Buddhism and Bodhisattva Buddhism, In all of Bodhisattva Buddhism, nirvana and samsara are not different. They're not separate. They arise together. So our practice is not to get rid of delusion, but to see through delusions, to not be caught by delusions, and to see awakening within delusions. So this mutual non-obstruction of the ultimate and the particulars is to see Now, again, there's no ultimate, universal, whatever you want to call it, God or Godhead or, you know, there are many kinds of ways of talking about the transcendent, but that does not exist in some abstract realm. on top of some mountain in the Himalayas or California or someplace exotic like that, that the universal is right in each particular.

[07:45]

Every phenomena is an expression of that. So as William Blake says, to see the universe in a grain of sand. So this is the third Dharma doctrine, that these not separate, and also that they don't obstruct each other. The ultimate is not obstructed or blocked or hindered by the particular phenomenon, the particular delusions. And the particulars are not obstructed by the ultimate, are not hindered by the ultimate. Later, one of the great Saodong, or Soto Zen ancestors, Shuto, Sekito, who wrote the Harmony of Differences, same as we will chant later, said that the wide sky does not hinder the white clouds drifting. Or you could say it the other way, the white clouds drifting do not hinder the great blue sky.

[08:56]

So this is the third Dharmadhatu, mutual non-obstruction of li and shun. And that's the preparation for the fourth dharma doctrine, which I think is sometimes harder for us, even. Mutual non-obstruction of shir and shir. Mutual non-obstruction of the phenomenal particulars with other phenomenal particulars. So for some of you, this is a review of yesterday, but I want to focus on this. Phenomena don't hinder other phenomena. The particulars are completely together with other particulars. This is a very radical way of seeing things. So we usually think of us and them, or we make separations between good guys and the bad guys, or however you want to define that.

[09:58]

that East Coast people are, you know, there's lots of ways of dividing up the particular phenomenal elements of reality. But actually, according to this fourth Dharmadhatu, this fourth realm of Dharma, ultimate realm, they're not at all separate. So each particular event in time as well as in space, because it also talks about cause and effect. Each event doesn't obstruct any of the other events. In fact, is a reflection of all the other events. Each one of us, we kind of feel this in Sangha, in our practice. We sit together in this Zen Do and with friends online and Zoom. And we could say that the Ebenezer Zendo and the Zuma Zendo do not obstruct each other.

[11:05]

And they're totally interconnected, each one of us. So this is, as I said, difficult for us to see because our usual conventional way of looking at things is to make distinctions. And it's not that we get rid of all the distinctions and just everything gets lombed together as one whatever, but that each particular event, each particular quality in the phenomenal world, is in its own way a reflection of the ultimate, of course, that's the third dharma dhatu, of universal truth, and also of everything else. So as we sit here, each one of us, we are completely a reflection, an expression, an embodiment of every person we've ever known.

[12:07]

Of course, some people more than others, but I ask people if they've... So how many of you here in the room or online remember your fifth grade teacher? Okay, some of you raised your hands, some of you didn't. Those of you who raised your hands, how many of you have thought of her or him in the last month? Nobody here in Ebenezer, I don't know if anybody online, one person, oh, okay. So, but they're still part of, that person is still part of what is here on your seat now. So that's an example I use of this, that the mutual non-obstruction, of each particular bit of phenomena with every other particular bit of phenomena. This is the fourth Dharmadhatu. So this is this teaching from Huayan, from the Chinese Huayan school, based on the Flower Ornament Sutra.

[13:14]

So the Flower Ornament Sutra, just to say this, the Avatamsaka Sutra, We do a monthly reading of that, reading online at Ancient Dragon, the first Friday of every month at seven o'clock. So you're all welcome to just show up in our online Zendo. But that sutra that this YN school is based on is wild. Pages and pages of names of different Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and different Buddha realms or lands and different Samadhi texts and all the different paraphernalia of Bodhisattvas, flowers and parasols and just on and on and on. So it's very psychedelic, very flowery. The Huayen teaching, from which the Fourfold Dharmadhatu comes is much more discursive, systematic. So, yeah, this is, thank you Angie, you can continue.

[14:21]

So, yeah. And I talked about it all afternoon yesterday. There's a lot to the Wayan school. But I think this is for Dharmadhatu teaching. It's kind of signature teaching. So I want to talk about what the practice of that is. How that is expressed in our practice. So these, the inspiring visions of the wonders of the universal reality in Huayen teaching and in the Flower Ornament Sutra go beyond our limited perspectives. We get caught within the phenomenal particulars, the physical details, and our conditioned awareness of our everyday life is caught in these particular distinctions.

[15:26]

So this teaching, the relationship between the ultimate universal reality and the particular phenomenal elements of reality is very deep. And it's an encouragement actually to our practice. It encourages us to see possibilities of fresh, deeper ways of appreciating our world. So these teachings can encourage us to sense levels of spiritual interconnections with others, to see that we are not separate from others. The so-called others, Europeans and Latin Americans and Middle Easterners and Africans are not separate.

[16:35]

We all totally depend on each other for our existence, actually. And also that each of us is connected with the wholeness of reality to go beyond our ordinary attachments and prejudices. Of course, as limited human beings, we do have attachments and prejudices. And our practice is not to get rid of those exactly, it's to see through them. Dogen says to practice the way is to see the self. So we acknowledge our ancient twisted karma. We don't try and get rid of it, but we try and see through it so we're not caught by it. So it doesn't affect how we treat others or ourselves. So this is actually a vision of healing.

[17:37]

How do we help ourselves and others to not be caught by the individual particular realities which don't obstruct each other and also are completely expressive of the ultimate and universal. This is difficult for us to get based on our usual ways of thinking. So part of these fourfold Dharmadhatus is to appreciate, direct ourselves towards a more full balance in our practice. So we do get glimpses in our spiritual practice, in our study of spiritual teachings, in our zazen, we get glimpses of

[18:44]

this ultimate universal reality. And sometimes people have deep experiences of that or deep intellectual understandings of that. But then to see that ultimate is to see how it interacts with the particular problems and challenges of our everyday not to get caught on either side. So it is possible to get caught by kind of blissful absorption and awareness of the ultimate reality. Attachment to non-attachment. That's the most difficult, dangerous attachment according to the great ancient teachers of non-attachment. So not to get attached to non-attachment. but to, with this background of the ultimate universal or whatever sense of that we have, to take care of all of the particular phenomena, the conventional realities of our world.

[19:58]

With, again, with some sense of this background totality, that helps us to find balance in our practice. And to inform our deeper sense of wholeness. So, one Soto Zen expression of this, one Soto Zen slogan is, Nemitsu no Kafu, the house style, the style of the house of attention to, literally it's mindfulness of each thread, attention to the details, to taking care of the phenomenal world, to take care of to help beings who are suffering, to help relieve the causes of suffering and all the difficulties of our world. And I could go on enumerating them, but I think you all know. How do we take care of the details?

[21:03]

How do we take care of the particular phenomena of the world? I was gonna say this for the end, but I'll just say, One way to do that now is to vote next month. So please vote to support the rights of women and to support the continuation of democracy and the right to vote, and so forth. All of that's on the ballot. So this sense of the ultimate background reality, the universal reality, the upright, and then how that is integrated with a particular phenomenon. That's core background philosophy of Soto Zen, and basically of all these days in Buddhism. How do we take care of the world? How do we see, you know, this, for people coming to practice sometimes, they want to see an ultimate reality, they want to see an original reality.

[22:05]

So there are branches of Buddhism and branches of Zen The whole point is to have some dramatic experience of awakening or totality or whatever. Suzuki Roshi, my teacher's teacher, used to say that living in San Francisco, walking through the fog in Golden Gate Park, his robes would get wet. So to do this practice, to pay attention to our life, to sit upright, to keep doing this every day if you can, for as long as, you know, to sustain this practice, gives us this sense of rotating, of just bathing in this background ultimate universal. But then our practice is to take that into our particular situation in the world. So maybe it's easier to become caught up in blissful absorption and non-attachment on some mountaintop or in some monastic situation, like in Tassajara, where some of us have practiced.

[23:26]

And that practice is great because it deepens our connection to the ultimate. But the point of it is then to come back out. And as we do in our regular sittings here, at Ebeneezer and online, we go back out into our everyday world. And how do we take care of that? How do we see the particulars infused with or as expressions of ultimate reality? How do we see that the ultimate doesn't hinder, doesn't obstruct all of the particular phenomena? And the particular phenomena are completely, they don't obstruct the the ultimate. There are expressions of the ultimate. And then how do we take care of that? So I can keep babbling, but maybe I'll stop there. There are other things I could say. But I will ask for comments, questions, perspectives about any of this.

[24:32]

from those of you who were at the seminar yesterday, as well as those of you who are hearing about this now for the first time. So comments or questions, please feel free. Responses? Anybody online with them? Nancy has her hand up. Hi. Hi, Tegan, and hi, everyone. It's good to see you. Can you hear me? I can't see you. Oh, I see that there's something on the wall here. That's OK. But can you hear me? I can definitely hear you. OK. I can always hear you. Well, that's because the nature of speech is permanent, and there is no place it does not penetrate. But my question is about, I think I still need more clarification because when I think about the universal, I think of it as kind of principles and concepts.

[25:41]

And similarly, from my riff just now on Genjo Koan, we know that the nature of wind is permanent and that there is nowhere it does not penetrate. And so because there is wind, we can have wind, you know. I guess I wonder if greed, hate and delusion are also part of the universal, as well as maybe coming out of our own attachments. Yes. Yes, to all of that. And we all need further consideration and study of the ultimate or universal. So you said you didn't completely understand it. Well, I don't know that anybody can completely understand it. That's not the point. How do we put it into practice is this integration of these. Okay, but so then you're maybe agreeing that it's not just all love.

[26:46]

All love is totally non-obstructing of all hate. All hate is totally an expression of all love. And, and, um, you know, you were talking about greed, hate, and delusion. Uh, again, our practice, the ultimate practice in Soto Zen is not to get rid of greed, hate, and delusion. Of course, some of our attachments drop away. I've told the story about how a couple of months after I started sitting, I stopped smoking after eight years. Um, but, um, So our delusions and our confusions and our grasping and our anger and our or our aversion is part of this is the this is this first truth of the two truths. This is the realm of particulars. And it doesn't obstruct the ultimate universal totality of the wholeness of all things.

[27:50]

It's an expression of that. So our practice is about how do we work with all that? How do we be helpful? How do we relieve suffering in the midst of all that? So I don't know if that helps or confuses you more. Can you hear me, Aisha? Yeah, I can. It confuses me more. OK, well, confusion and clarity Don't obstruct each other. Okay. Confusion. We need confusion to see through confusion. It's not about getting rid of all confusion, but how do we not be caught by confusion? How do we see our confusion? So this is all our ancient twisted karma. From the beginning is greed, hate, and delusion. Born from body, speech, and mind, we fully evap. We acknowledge. all of the difficulties of conventional particular phenomenal reality.

[29:03]

And yeah, this is a problem. I don't mean to kind of negate the heart of your question, which is coming from desire for total awakening and to free all living beings. And so this is our bodhisattva vow. But this bodhisattva vow is connected to everything and an expression of everything. Okay, so so maybe maybe, maybe the question of whether greed, hate and delusion are universal is not so important, because when we're acting on greed, hate and delusion, we are turning away from wholeness. Yeah, and acting on wholeness is a way of appreciating the difficulties of greed, hate, and delusion. And acting on wholeness and appreciating greed, hate, and delusion are totally together.

[30:14]

Okay. And we can never totally act on wholeness because we are limited, finite. You know, we have limitations of our perspective and just accepting that. Yeah. And also it's because of the limitations and the particulars and the suffering of the world and the greed, hate and delusion in our own hearts and in our friends and in all the beings that we somehow come to care about the whole thing and work towards liberation and relieving suffering. So be grateful for your limitations and for your greed, hate, and delusion, the greed, hate, and delusion of the world because that is where we act

[31:16]

for awakening. Thank you. David Weiner. I'm caught in this. Good. Because I look at the political process going on now, and I see the hate there, and I'm trying to overcome the hate. And you're saying... Me too. At the same time, you're saying, You know, we need that hate. It's not exactly that we need that hate. It's just that that's there. That's part of phenomenal reality, that people often, for reasons of trying to manipulate things to get more power, they will divide people from one another. That's a big illusion or delusion or confusion. And we can see through that and act to try and Reduce hate, eliminate hate.

[32:20]

But hatred is never eliminated by hatred. As Gandhi said. I got it. I got it. Okay, I'm sorry. Go ahead. If Dr. Martin Luther King, that hatred, you can't, you know, hate can get saved. Right. But it's like, I don't know how to express it. I give up. I'll call on you again later. It's like we have to see through the hatred and the delusion and work to end it. But at the same time, we can't end it because it's part of a phenomenal reality. Exactly. It's not about ending it. It's about freeing it from hatred, freeing it from oppression. So we cannot legislate to make all people not be racist, for example.

[33:30]

We can't pass a law that says you're not allowed to hate other people of other ethnicities, or other races, or other countries, or immigrants, we can't pass a law to eliminate that hatred. We can pass laws to help prevent people from acting on that, or to help allow beings to be free from that. So, yeah. I'm saying accept that it exists, but at the same time try to find ways to liberate. Am I correct? Sure, that's one way to say it. How do we help relieve people from suffering? What are practical ways of doing that? So this is the realm of phenomena with the mutual non-obstruction of she and she, the fourth Dharmadhatu. How do we allow

[34:32]

this interactivity of all beings. But then it's not it's these are these these four dharma dhatus are not some, some, you know, doctrines on the wall that we can passively, you know, kind of consider theoretically and intellectually. These are aspects of our reality that we work with, for the benefit of all beings. Did I see a question for me? Well, I was wondering, in the to play the particular universal. So I just came back from traveling. So I'm partly I'm trying to justify the carbon footprint. Um, I mean, it seems to be part of that. So I was wondering, what are the implications for what, what, why you travel and why I travel is what I, I want to learn when I travel, I think some of it does have looking at, you know, different particulars.

[35:38]

Yeah. But getting more incited to the university. That's really, yes, that's a wonderful practical question about particular phenomena. Where did you travel to? So I went to Dublin and Ireland and I went to Brighton. I've never been to Ireland. I'd love to go. I've been to England. in many parts of England, never been to Scotland. Anyway, we each have to decide for ourselves. I think most of you here, as far as I know, have been traveling in recent times. I haven't been on an airplane since mid-2019, and I don't know if this will continue with my personal, so I'm not telling anybody else what to do, right? My personal sense is I don't want to go on an airplane again. And partly it's, you know, carbon footprint and all that.

[36:42]

Partly it's just, I used to like travel, flying on airplanes. They were comfortable and they gave you decent food. And now it's just all squeezed in and it's- Yeah, it's a lot of places in advance. Good for you. So anyway, you know, I think there's not one right way to express This reality, this is the mutual non-obstruction of the particulars and the ultimate. We each have our own way of responding to the situation of our world. And there's not one right way. We each have to consider and find out what is, you know, how to, decide for ourselves. So I used to travel a lot, went to many conferences around the country and some in Europe and Asia, and benefited a lot from traveling.

[37:52]

I haven't been to as many places as Kyoshi has, for example, but she is sharing things when she goes to those places and learning about things that are helpful to all of us. So there's not one right answer to how to express the mutual non-obstruction of the particulars and the universal. And I'm not, you know, I may go on and on at some point, but right now I don't feel like it. But, you know, trying to look at the confusion of everything, deciding who to vote for, trying to vote for the lower down contests, which are very important. This is up to each of us. We have this responsibility. We can each respond to the situation of the world in our own way.

[38:54]

That's the particular and the ultimate. Other questions or comments or responses? Anybody online now? Bunkai, Steve, Tracy, please. Bunkai, hello. We're still muted, Steve. There you go. Can you hear me? Yes. No, I can't. We were talking about pretty much the same thing, and I was kind of holding on to this idea. I thought from Dogen that Samsara and Nirvana are identical. And it seemed like some sort of koan that kind of forces you into dealing, if you hold on to that, they're identical. And in that spirit, I always hold this, I always keep this picture of a 9-11 Carrera in my Buddhist book.

[39:58]

Can you see it? No, doesn't matter. I can't see it here. What's that? I didn't hear what the picture is. You said at some point that identical was not your favorite word for the relation between the absolute and the relative. And I said, I've always liked that word. OK. Good. I'm glad you like it. That's fine. You know, Dogen says, those who are greatly deluded about enlightenment are deluded sentient beings. Those who are greatly awakened to their delusions are Buddhists. So part of what the fourfold Dharmadhatu does, and part of what the five degrees or five ranks in Soto do,

[41:00]

to show the subtleties of these relationships. It's not, it's complicated. So, you know, and sometimes, You know, we could say that samsara and nirvana are identical. I like saying they're not separate, but okay. But there's also, in Soto teachings about the precepts, there's the sense of to be thoroughly, to thoroughly embrace delusions. At the end of all the delusions, there's awakening. And to thoroughly embrace awakening, At the end of awakening, we see delusions. So that's another way of talking about it. But it's complicated.

[42:06]

And if you like identical, great. I also like the idea that if it ain't got that mystery and subtlety, it don't mean a thing. Yeah. Got to have that swing, right? Thank you. Thank you. David Reyes, Amanda. Hey, David. Hi, Tygen. Thank you for this. Thank you so much for the seminar yesterday and for this. So I've been sitting with that sentence, vast clouds of compassion cover all. And I was thinking about Asian's question about love and the political things that people are bringing up. So I'm sure everybody has had a version of this story, but recently somebody sent me a message, somebody that I have respected and loved at various times in my life.

[43:08]

And his message showed all these projects that I'm committed to, like world peace and protecting the environment and women's rights and reproductive rights. And his message said, these things are all leading toward totalitarianism and are going to bring the Antichrist. And my first impulse, I know, I know, my first impulse was to block him. I'm sure everybody's had this impression, this experience. And I was like, Well, he is indeed coming from, I mean, I experienced that as hate, and under that hate is fear, and under that fear is love. Under that fear is his own fear based on the fear of losing things that he believes are worthy and that he loves. There was a Catholic theologian, I think it was Bonaventure, who defined all the sins, and the Latin word that begins every definition is amor. This is the kind of love that does this, this is the kind of love that does that, that it's all love. Yeah. So that's the comment.

[44:08]

The question is about the four Dharmadhatus. How come there's no Dharma realm of the non-obstruction of li and li? Well, because Lee is just everything. How could there be Lee and Lee? I guess I'm just meditating on these non-symmetries of the systems. Yeah, that's good. That's good. Please continue that. But yeah, Lee is just the ultimate. Everything was not... Well, of course, there was a question yesterday that one asked about multiversism. more than one universe. You know, but that's from the Buddhist point of view, the Dharmadhatu includes all of it. So, you know, you could try and divide up the wholeness. I think that's something we do with our limited human intellect.

[45:12]

We divide up reality, we divide up wholeness, we divide up love, as the example you gave. And it's just sad that there are people who think compassion will lead to the Antichrist or whatever. I don't know. It's hard for me to respond to that. I'm not skillful enough. Yeah, I didn't respond. I'm not going to block him, but neither am I going to respond. If people are confirmed in some particular, very limited viewpoint of division, trying to convert them to seeing the reality of the ultimate and the conventional, you know, it's, I don't think we, I think it's kind of a waste of time to try and convert people who are set in some particular view.

[46:14]

At the same time, with skillful means sometimes we can't get somebody unstuck from their addiction to or attachment to attachment or attachment to non-attachment. So a skillful means is tricky. One has to wait, sit and wait. Practice of patience is not passive. You sit and wait, as we're all trained to do. This is our Zen school is training and sitting and waiting. And then but then not to be passive and fall asleep, but to be attentive. Pay attention as you're sitting, whether you're sleepy or whether your mind's jumbling around. Pay attention. And sometimes It may happen that you have an opportunity to respond to yourself or others in a way which unhinges some attachment or some hatred or some habit that is harmful to oneself or others.

[47:24]

But it requires a lot of patience. Is that a hand up, Eve? Hi. The image that came to my head when you were talking about that So the ocean knows that there's herons and other birds, you know, in the river near me. Yes. And in the evening, they sit there and they watch, you know, they're very still, and they watch the fish. Yeah. And then all of a sudden, you see them grabbing fish. I saw one. I saw a bird, you know, with the herons. I've seen that too. That's amazing. And I was just thinking about that when you were talking about the patients, and then being something active, because I guess they're very intense. They're very still, but they're very intent when they're watching. Yeah, great example. And trying to persuade herons to be vegetarians would be a foolish, foolish activity.

[48:26]

Trying to persuade. persuade herons or other carnivore animals to be vegetarians is not awakening practice. We have to see each thing in its wholeness as it is. So the ramifications of this fourfold Dharmadhatu, of this way of seeing reality as phenomenon, as universal or ultimate, and how they don't obstruct each other, how they are each integrated interactively, And then the mutual non-obstruction of particulars with other particulars.

[49:28]

I think that's really challenging. And yet, to look for that, to look and see how that's going on. Neutral non-obstruction. Non-obstruction. Non-obstruction. Of phenomena or particulars with other phenomena or particulars. That they exist each in their wholeness as an expression of wholeness. And of course, there is, you know, as Aisha was asking, there is greed, hate, and delusion involved. And how do we help relieve the harm that that causes? Not like obliterating, you know, some group of people because they're the bad guys. David, if I may make a comment.

[50:31]

What comes to me a little bit, because I have a hard time, part of me just wants to literally destroy all the bad guys. And yet my chaplaincy practice tells me just to be there and understand. And to find out what they are thinking, not so much to impose my reality upon them, but where are they at? And I think what you're saying is that net fourth one, the fourth thing that they don't obstruct each other is that we understand what the other one is and try to find out what their process is rather than trying to say, no, we have to do this. Am I hearing you? Yes. Understanding that using our intellect to try and analyze and understand is one way maybe to do that.

[51:43]

Another way is just to listen and not try and do anything. Just appreciate each thing But, you know, what is helpful is different in different situations. No. And many chaplaincy, not all, because chaplaincy sometimes gets very proselytizing, which is not good, or seen as not good, but it's to bear witness to be with people, to walk with them, that that's the core. Yeah. Witnessing is a key bodhisattva practice. It's the practice of kanzeyana valakiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion. It's the practice of Jizo bodhisattva, who's the bodhisattva of the earth and who witnesses to the suffering of beings and tries to be helpful.

[52:51]

So just to witness and to witness all the craziness and destruction and hate speech and division that is happening in our world. And then to patiently look and see what can I do to help? There are things to do. There are ways to be helpful. There are organizations that are acting to help eliminate torture or eliminate harm or, you know, there are many good people and projects and nonprofit organizations working all around the world. And there's tremendous suffering, there's massive famine and hunger and children dying every minute in parts of the world.

[53:56]

So this is a difficult, so last thing I'll say is that, do you all know about the Saha world? Sophia and Eve don't know about the Saha world. The Saha world is, so we were talking about different Buddha realms and different universes. The one that we live in is called the Saha world. And Saha is a Sanskrit word for endurance. And this is a great training ground for bodhisattvas because there's a lot to endure. There's a lot of suffering. So how do we pay attention, witness, listen, look for ways to respond helpfully? There are lots of things that can be done to help. Our caring is very important. community. So, you know, I think of Ancient Dragon Zen Gate in its widest sense, including all the people online and all the people who've ever been to Ancient Dragon Zen Gate as an island of sanity.

[55:01]

We need those in this world. How do we support that in the middle of the Saha world? So the Saha world is one of the most difficult places to practice. And yet it is said that there are bodhisattvas from many different Buddha fields and world systems who are lined up, waiting, hoping to be born in this world now, at this time. Because each of us, in our own way, it's not one right way, each of us in our own way, can make a huge difference now because of all the suffering and all the hate. So we're all very fortunate to be doing Bodhisattva practice here now.

[56:06]

I won't say Chicago because I know there are people online from all kinds of places, wherever you are, to be just considering Bodhisattva practice in the air, Is this 2022? I think so, yeah. So this is a wonderful time and wherever you are is a wonderful place to be helpful, to try and help relieve suffering and sponsor awakening. So thank you all very much.

[56:46]

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