Well, I don't know if all of you who are here this evening, who weren't here this afternoon and this morning, are going to stay here tomorrow and the next day. But I'm taking this evening as part of the seminar. And we're speaking about compassion and the path of the Bodhisattva in our own culture. And I'm trying to look at it, we're trying to look at it, as a practice that can be part of our own culture, but at present is really not part of our culture.

[01:27]

Or in... I can't say it's not part of our culture. But as a practice, And as a concept of what a human being is and what the human space in which we act is is significantly different or a different emphasis at least from our own culture. And that's part of the excitement and interest and adventure of such a practice. Is looking at a practice because it extends our own, not because it is a version of what we already know. extends our own and puts us in a different territory of experience.

[02:43]

A new territory of experience. Yeah, so, you know, there's a little Zen story. Feng Shui comes in to see Nan Yuan and he doesn't bow at the door. And Nanyuan says, you didn't bow, you should always deal with the host. Okay, so, you know, what does he mean? What's to always deal with the host? Well, this is an example of the practice I have suggested often, is that when you go over a threshold, a door or any kind of change, you mark it with something like...

[04:01]

a bow or something like that. And what Nanyuan meant was that you should observe the host means to I think we can have a feeling for it. To take it as meaning to to enter in a non-conceptual mind. I mean, the simplest thing to say is that as you go through the door, you stop thinking and just feel the room. We can ask what this means in relation to compassion or avalokiteshvara.

[05:32]

What kind of world are we in? Now, just before we ended this afternoon, I spoke about sitting and the satisfaction of sitting itself. To review for a moment. so that your sense of continuity, because we do exist from moment to moment, and if I look at Nico and Gerald sitting in the middle here,

[06:48]

And then I open my eyes. You're slightly different, but basically you're still there. Yeah, and when I leave, I'll either go through that door or that door and they'll still be there. And I mean, even if I'm not looking and I don't look at that door, excuse me for being so obvious, if I don't look at that door, but still I'm quite sure when we finish, if I want to go through that door, it'll still be there. Unless Heinrich has a remote control and locks it or something. Just to fool me. So whether I'm looking or not looking, I'm assuming a continuity of the world. But that continuity is a conceptual continuity, not necessarily an experience continuity.

[08:03]

Now, what is going to be our experience of continuity? For most of us, it's visual and thinking, discursive thinking. But discursive thinking and the visual externalization of the world is called the guest. But Nanyuan Nanyuan said to Feng Shui, you should observe the host.

[09:14]

So Feng Shui somehow came into the room with the feeling of thinking or looking around or observing himself through thinking. And that is what most of us do. But it's not the path of a bodhisattva. Now I'm not suggesting Well, maybe I am. But I'm not saying this is something you should do. I don't know. I'm just presenting this yogic, bodhisattvic culture. Okay, so as I said a moment ago... to sit in the satisfaction, reviewing, to sit in the satisfaction of sitting itself.

[10:32]

The feeling of aliveness. In a way, you're melting your conceptual externalization of the world into feeling. You're melting. Melting your external life, yeah. You melt it into feeling. This is a, yeah, not to, it doesn't mean you're stopping thinking. It just means you're pulling your identification out of thinking. Or you're pulling your sense of continuity out of thinking. Now, that's also, I've suggested at various times, another yogic practice is you go from the particular to the field.

[11:46]

Yeah, from Heinrich or from these flowers or whatever to the field. Now, I can have a conception about Heinrich. I have a few but not many. I'd love for you to sit there so I can talk. But I can't have a conception about the field. Because as soon as I have a conception, forms parts again. So if I tend to notice particulars and think about them, if thoughts arise, but I punctuate that, punctuate with the field, I block thinking.

[12:59]

It's not exactly turning it off, it's just you create a medium where thinking doesn't function. You're probably having a right brain, left brain shift, you know, sort of various biological things or neurobiological things are going on. But you're at least... What? Hmm? Yeah, left to right, not right to left. Either way, I mean, back and forth. We left-handed this. Yeah. Okay.

[14:01]

Now, Avalokiteshvara was a... what's the word I'm looking for, was presented as a male figure up until through the Tang Dynasty. And had a mustache and so forth. But during the Tang and... during the Song and Yuan dynasties, it shifted to being primarily a female figure. The name in Avalokiteshvara means something like one who hears the cries of the world. But in China, the name became Kuan Yin or Kuan Shiyin.

[15:17]

And Kuan Yin means the perceiver of sounds. And it also became the... the sounds of the world itself. So Avalokiteshvara is not some kind of creator deity or all powerful figure. But it's the Bodhisattva of compassion. And it's the one who hears the cries of the world. Or hears the world itself. Now, from the point of view of the practitioner, The practice would be something like shifting from externalizing the world visually to primarily hearing the world.

[16:40]

So that your... The basal sense is sound and not seeing. Yeah. Sometimes it's to see with the ears. Now what I'm trying to look at here is, why is compassion expressed as one who hears sounds?

[17:45]

And either hears the cries of people, you know, others, Or just hears sound. You can't make much sense of this unless you try it. It would be interesting if blind people are more compassionate. It would be interesting to find out if blind people feel the same way. It's too late to ask Ray Charles. It's too late to ask Ray Charles. To ask Ray Charles, yes. But Stevie Wonder probably. Stevie Wonder, he just sang at Obama's... Stevie Wonder, he just sang at Obama's...

[18:46]

I guess that was a compassionate act, I don't know. But the sense of it is, again, you'd have to try it out for yourself. See, I mean, try. Try it, you know, if you try it outside, try it where you don't have to cross the street or anything like that. Try walking with your eyes closed. Or take an hour or something and go through your apartment with your eyes closed. And see if it makes you feel more connected or different or something like that. No, it does seem, I don't know, something like 30 million years ago, the human brain, cranium got bigger and the jaw and everything got bigger at the same time.

[19:55]

And it does seem to coincide with, you know... the beginning of language. In any case, and then we have in Asia, it's not in the beginning there was the word, but in the beginning there was sound. With an idea that underlying everything is a sound. And in Hindu meditation they sometimes concentrate on discovering, finding and staying with this sound. In any case, if you kind of don't walk around with your eyes closed, In any case, you don't have to walk around with your eyes closed.

[21:11]

You can let your eyes and discursive thinking kind of be at rest. And have the more sense of just a field of vision accompanied by sound. When you go places, do things, mostly you're just... You're locating yourself through sound. The other day when I was in Crestone, there were quite a lot of kids running around and I wondered for a moment if one of the voices was Sophia's. And Marie-Louise was translating for me, and she looked at me with some disdain.

[22:14]

Of course, one of the voices is Sophia. And Marie-Louise had me so disdain. You know, penguins and all, you know, a billion penguins are out there, and the mother knows which little cry is her... identical tuxedoed baby. And I don't know if there's really any connection between hearing the sounds and the mother's voice. But it does seem to me that we grow up in this interaction with the mother. So what I'm getting at is a little bit, why did Avalokiteshvara become a female?

[23:23]

Maybe it's the obvious that women are more compassionate or represent compassion more in most cultures. The one who takes care of you as an infant, as in growing up and so forth. But I think it's also in the sound of the mother's voice, the lullaby, the... So if you experiment with trying to locate yourself through sound, in fact, As I said, you can anchor yourself in aliveness.

[24:42]

In the feeling of aliveness, you can anchor yourself. A feeling, at least in my experience, you can most clearly discover through zazen, through meditation. And once you know that feeling, It's not so much, as I said, that you're bringing attention to that feeling of aliveness. But that feeling of aliveness is attention. Again, excuse me for the language, I'm non-conceptual. really non-visual attention. In which we feel a bodily space that's inseparable from the world.

[25:50]

And sounds are like that. You know, I think we may notice it most poignantly at night. It's dark. You can't see anything. And there's, you know, as we always remember in San Francisco, fog horns tug boat whistles. Or there's trains passing, etc. But whatever you hear in the dark, cars, sirens, etc. And in Creston it's animals and the wind. And in this hotel life, I'm in.

[26:55]

You know, I open the window, so I'm... Because it's right in the trees and the wind. The wind-o. Right in the trees and the wind. And it strengthens my feeling in... of aliveness while I'm sleeping. And I think probably people jog or ride horses or something like that because you have an experience of aliveness jogging. It's not just you want more exercise. And riding a horse gives you a feeling of aliveness. The horse itself contributes. So I'm speaking about finding not through a horse or jogging, but the immediate ongoing experience of aliveness.

[28:09]

It becomes again a kind of anchor that you're centered in. And sound can do the same thing. Again, the obvious example of hearing sounds at night. All the sounds They feel near. And they make you feel near to yourself. And if you get in the habit of... knowing all your hearing is your own hearing, then you're always in the center of your own hearing.

[29:16]

And this is also a way to at any moment center yourself. You have a conceptual sense, a conceptual sense of being at the center of your hearing. And that conceptual sense and reminding yourself helps support the experience of feeling. Aliveness as the center of hearing. Or aliveness centered in hearing. Now, if you get a feeling for this, it becomes a kind of, not a kind of, a base from which you live all the time, can live all the time.

[30:44]

Yeah, and from that feeling you can extend into doing things. But it feels like you're folding out into doing things, and as soon as you don't have to do something, talk about something, it folds back into this center. And the externality folding back in, then it kind of melts into a feeling of connectedness without boundaries. Now this is hearing the cries of the world or hearing the world's sounds.

[31:48]

To hear the cries of the world and or hearing the world's sounds. To establish your continuity in this way is the path of the Bodhisattva. And in particular represented as Avalokiteshvara. As Kuan Yin or Kuan Yin. Kuan Yin or Kuan Yin. Because it's a continuity, your own continuity, your own continuity.

[32:57]

From moment to moment. Or as moment as moment. Established in connectivity. In connectedness. Now the words I'm sticking on to this experience are arrows or something like that, but they're not really descriptive. But so is taking the most popular religious figure in all of East Asia, Kuan Yin, represents this folding out of the external world into a boundless connectivity.

[34:04]

But a boundless connectivity where you don't lose your own uniqueness. I might say your own individuality or something. But that goes... in the whole direction of what is an individual, some western idea since the 1500s, etc. Yeah, it's about the time. Since the 1500s. So, what word should I use? your own uniqueness.

[35:13]

Because we are, everything is at each moment unique. As I said the other day, and you had the problem of, earlier today you said the difficulty with the word alterity. We don't really If you have an experience of continuity, it's a kind of generalization. It's a conception that you assume you're experiencing. Assume you're living. What we actually live is an experience of alterity. Just use the word alterity.

[36:15]

And the experience of alterity means at each moment there's alternatives. Alternatives, alterity. Or the continuity of uniqueness. So the Bodhisattva experiences the continuity of uniqueness. And in that continuity of uniqueness, he, she hears the noises, the sounds, the cries of the world. Yeah. Yeah. Suzuki Roshi said, you're not always responding, you're always ready to respond.

[37:24]

So the thousand arms of Avalokiteshvara, which really they always sculpt as a nimbus or an aura, it's an embodied space always ready to help. And that embodied space is not a visually externalized space. That embodied space is realized through shifting one's sense of continuity from the visual sense to the AURAL A-U-R-A-L sense. Yes. Oral. Not oral. Oral.

[38:37]

A-U-R-A-L. Excuse me. Yes. This is... Please. Again, please. I can't ever say it again. This sense of an embodied space, the readiness of an embodied connectivity, is realized, partially realized, entered through shifting our basal sense from the visual sense to the aural sense. Here. sense yeah then yeah then then then since so this there's this bodily

[40:03]

engagement with the world. Yes, it is so. You go into a clinch, so to speak. Engagement is not the right word. How did you say it? No. It's almost as hard for you to say it as for me. Because I can feel and kind of mentally see what I want to say, but I stick a word on it and it falls off, and I stick another word and it falls off. This bodily connectivity, which is also what is meant by compassion, Which, as we talked earlier, even in the etymology of the English language, looks like it's more located in the bowels.

[41:31]

Perhaps the location of love is more in the chest, and the location of compassion, where you receive and feel, is more in the gut. And in the belly and womb. So you know that the name for the world, the biggest name for the world in the universe, in Buddhism, is the coming and going or alterity of womb embryo. And this means really you have a feeling of this world is simultaneously

[42:51]

A womb, a fertile womb. Constantly generating appearance. Appearance is like a fetus or embryo. It's, you know... It's one concept, but we have to describe it as if it were two. So there's this strong sense of the unique fertility of the world, which Nan Yuan calls the host, the source. The source. The Quella. That's the address. We had the name changed. It used to be something else. It's not true I meant that.

[44:08]

So this sense of compassion, sound, connectivity, how it's located in the body, how you discover or enter this human space this human space in which we arise and live which we're constantly generating is the world in which The connectivity is compassion. Now, compassion in Buddhism is always accompanied by wisdom.

[45:15]

Compassion functions through wisdom. Wisdom has its power through compassion. And much in that is the reason why the Dalai Lama and many Asian royal figures are conceived of as incarnations of Avalokiteshvara. Because leadership should be compassionate leadership. The power of leadership should rest in compassion. That's the idea. So Kuan Yin or Avelokiteshvara?

[46:18]

in India and then throughout all of Asia, East Asia, became the definition of how we are most fully human. And became the path of how we sense, know, feel, and act in the world. In the world. Not really act in the world, but act knowing we're inseparable from the world. And to hear the sounds of the world or to hear the cries of the world is to hear all of them equally. Whatever the person is or animal or object. So while this is an archetype and an ideal, it calls forth in the society

[47:51]

particular sense of mutuality. And calls forth in each of us a sense of compassionate inseparability. Which we may not always live or be able to live. But we can live towards. And ideals make it more likely archetypes and ideals make it more likely that we will feel it sometimes. And those feelings can be determinative moments in a person's life.

[49:16]

So in those And in these decisive moments we hear the voice, the call of Avalokiteshvara. Or Avalokiteshvara or Quan Yin has heard our voice. So people have an experience in this kind of categories, this kind of sensorial centering. Sensorial sensitivity of, what did I say? Centering. Centering, yeah. That is... manifest in the millions of images, virtually one in every home, in, for example, China. ...

[50:45]

And the images are only an occasional example, really, of a continuous sense of this possibility. As an active part, a dynamic of our own our own alterity. Okay. Is that enough? Okay. You know, it's one of these nights, I mean, you remind me, I said, told me I had to give a talk tonight. I had nothing to say, so I just sort of thought, I'll see what happens. Yeah. Help. Thanks very much. Thank you.

[51:59]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_73.09