I am not allowed to teach the truth about our national roots. Morning. I've had a cold the last couple of days, so my voice may not be so strong. During Seshin, one of the topics that I talked about was friendliness or relations.

[01:10]

And one of the things, I think, in our practice that gets neglected, in Zen practice, that's easy to be neglected is relations. relationships, relations, not relationships, but relations. How we relate to each other and to people. And because we, Zen so much emphasizes prajna or wisdom. sometimes we don't understand how that applies to relations. So sometimes Zen people are referred to as zombies.

[02:18]

Zen students may act like zombies, but they have feeling. So it's a little different. But anyway, we shouldn't act like zombies, because we have lots of feeling. And because we have feeling, we know that other people have feeling. And we're always dealing with feelings, feelings and emotions and so forth, and interaction. And in Buddhism, there's a whole area where we deal with, that deals with relations. And I always called it the Buddhist love formula. It's not really a formula, but it's a way of looking at love from a Buddhist point of view.

[03:42]

And we studied this before. It's not something new, but it's something that I think we need to bring up frequently and to remember. Do you remember when we studied the Brahma-Viharas? the four abodes, the four viharas, the four unlimited places from which we act. They're also called the Divine Abidings. They come from, actually, from the Hindu. They're very ancient. They come from the Hindu background of Buddhism. But they're very much a part of Theravada Buddhism and very much a part of, very much taught in Southern Buddhism.

[04:56]

And if you don't remember what they are, I'll refresh your memory. The four brahmaviharas. The first one is metta, or loving kindness, it's called. And you know, there are meditations on these four. of very elaborate meditations on these four, but I won't go into the meditations. I just want to describe them, because you can meditate on them in your own way, but we don't have time to go into that. But the first one is Metta. There's a Metta Sutra, which you should know about. So metta is loving kindness and it's how you extend yourself to everyone without partiality.

[06:13]

In other words, we should always, when we meet people or have dealings with people or interaction, we should always be extending metta. And it just means goodwill or giving your best will to whoever you meet. And the counterfeit of metta or loving kindness is greed or possessiveness or desire, actually.

[07:17]

So that means extending good will impartially without having any sort of a desire in it or any kind of ulterior motive. We always have to look at our motives when we do something. Why am I doing this? If we have a motive, maybe we'll say, well, I'm doing this good thing now so that maybe later something good will come to me because of that. That's a kind of motive. kind of desire and It's it's okay, but it's not really pure it's okay to have a motive And within our activities, we do have motives. If I do this for you, then maybe you'll do that for me.

[08:21]

If I'm kind to you, maybe you'll be kind to me. Something like that. But strictly speaking, pure metta is regardless of whether you do something for me, or regardless of whether anything comes back, it's just my practice to extend this loving kindness. And that's actually, if we know how to practice that, it's an actual practice. It's not just something you just think of once in a while, you know, but it's an actual practice. And of course the enemy of loving-kindness is greed or desire, excuse me, hate or ill-will.

[09:26]

Hate or ill-will is the enemy of loving-kindness. This is a kind of classification. But it's interesting, we understand what the enemy is. It's more interesting to look at, I think, the counterfeit. what's called the near enemy rather than the far enemy. Near enemy is something so close, looks the same, like cupidity, looks like love. But there's so much desire in it that you get mixed up, you know. If you have a relationship with someone, because of your desire you invent, your mind invents. reasons why you love someone. And then when the cupidity runs itself out, the cupidity energy runs itself out, you look at the person and say, well, I don't like them so much after all.

[10:31]

It's very easy to fool ourself. Very easy to create an imaginary kind of love. So, in order to be really clear, we should know a person in many ways before we decide what kind of relationship we're going to have with them. And love, you know, we say hides many faults. you fall in love with someone and you don't see their faults, or you say, oh that's okay, I can accept that, or I didn't see the mole on their cheek, it's okay. But later on, after you have kind of worn off the high of the relationship, then you say, oh geez, you know, that mole on their cheek is really pretty ugly.

[11:41]

Or, you know, I don't like the way she walked, really. Something like that. You know, pretty soon you're down to just seeing the person as they are, without your own desire creating some kind of So, and this is a big problem between men and women. How to love women, how as a man you can extend loving kindness to women impartially, or as a woman you can extend loving kindness to men impartially. That's a big challenge. How to not let it get mixed up with your desire or your emotions. And it's something we have to practice all the time. constantly. And especially someone like me, who has to relate to lots of women, lots of men, and to actually have desire come up, and be able to

[13:02]

not create a fantasy, or not take up a fantasy, and to be able to relate from a pretty pure standpoint. That has to be at the basis of the practice, so we don't get ourself mixed up in our goodwill. Otherwise, you cause a lot of trouble and you go down in flames, crashing down in flames. So, the next one is compassion or karuna, it's called. strictly speaking, means to identify with someone suffering or to suffer with someone.

[14:21]

But not to suffer that other person's suffering. That's kind of an interesting point. You suffer with someone. When you suffer with someone, you suffer your own suffering. But you can't suffer another person's suffering. You can't step into another person's shoes. You can only sympathize with that other person. It's like you can't take over another person's karma. What happens to another person will happen to them, and what happens to you will happen to you. But we have a sympathetic understanding with people. and which leads us to help them in any way we can because of our sympathy. But compassion, sympathy is a kind of compassion, but compassion is a little bigger than sympathy.

[15:24]

In the Theravada system, compassion that the counterfeit of compassion is when we feel sorry for people who don't get what they want in the material sense. You know, if John doesn't get his Mercedes, we feel sympathy, but we don't feel compassion. And if Mary doesn't make $100,000 a year. We feel... We don't feel anything. But, you know, for the people in El Salvador, we feel compassion. And for people who don't see what's making their suffering, we feel compassion.

[16:34]

So this is what compassion means in Buddhism, mainly based on the suffering that people have because of their ignorance, or because of their lack of ability to change their lives in some way. Of course, the far enemy of compassion is when we cause suffering to people. Anything that causes real suffering is the enemy of compassion. And the third one is sometimes called gladness, but it's more usually called sympathetic joy.

[17:47]

Murita. Sympathetic joy is to be able to enjoy other people's happiness or feel sympathetic with other people's happiness. because its enemy would be jealousy or envy or something like that. So it's freedom from envy, freedom from competition, competitive feeling. And if something good happens to somebody, we feel good with them, for them. rejoice in their good fortune, even if it's someone who we don't like particularly.

[18:49]

That's the hard part, even if it's someone we don't like. But that's hard to do. And the kind of counterfeit of sympathetic joy is Joy when somebody gets some toy or something nice in the material realm. So in the Theravada system, this sympathetic joy is more for extending toward people's real welfare, true welfare. in a fundamental sense. If you realize your essence of mind, we feel sympathetic joy for you.

[19:51]

If you make some progress in a spiritual sense, we rejoice in your progress. But I would not begrudge you saying, wonderful if you've got your new automobile or stereo set, something like that. But strictly speaking, it doesn't apply to that. It applies to real welfare, real progress. That's in its purest sense. So you must realize we're speaking here of these things in their purest sense. But we should also be able to come down a little bit and enjoy people's impure success and joy.

[21:01]

And the fourth one is upekka, or equanimity, it's called. Equanimity means to see things impartially, to have a balanced view, and to be able to see everything every situation as it is, impartially, and to be able to decide something from the point of view of impartiality. Now, the counterfeit of impartiality is indifference. It doesn't mean to be indifferent, but It means to not be partial, not to be influenced by anything other than what's really present in the situation.

[22:22]

It's maybe the most difficult thing to do, but it's the basis for all other decisions. And in our meditation, in zazen, maybe impartiality is one of the strongest factors present in zazen. And maybe that's why people think of Zen students as zombies sometimes, because they have a kind of aloofness or impartial feeling. But when it turns into indifference, then it's a big problem.

[23:26]

And it's the thing that we have to be most careful about. It's kind of easy to walk out of Zazen or Sashin, you know. see something happening and you just kind of have a kind of indifference to it because you've been practicing impartiality. And if you're not used to practicing loving-kindness or compassion, then you won't respond, maybe, immediately. You know, you just look at it, you're kind of indifferent. It's one of the problems that we have to be very careful about. If you see something happening that's not so good, you should respond to it.

[24:37]

should be able to respond. If someone talks to you, you should be able to respond. And I think that a kind of pre-training, a basis of training, should include these four factors. In a Buddhist country, people would, even if people don't study Buddhism, Buddhism is so infused into the part of the culture that people understand these things. But still, this is not strictly a Buddhist kind of understanding. Christians understand exactly the same thing.

[25:39]

And if you're brought up in a Christian country, we should understand the same things, or a Jewish country, or whatever. Just basic. It's not particularly Buddhist. I think that These four Brahma-viharas are really just basic modes of understanding and conduct that are basic to wherever you're brought up. I may be wrong. Maybe equanimity is not so stressed. Maybe the way they're stressed or the way they're presented is not exactly the same, but the essence is the same, the basis is the same. But before we study Zen, we should already know these things.

[26:49]

But they're not easy to practice. They're very difficult to practice. because of our desire and various emotions which tend to stay in the way. But if we consciously practice, really consciously practice, then if you practicing loving kindness, you know, and desire comes up, then you can see that. You can see what's coming up in your mind, and you have a way of practicing with it. Or if you see people in distress, you know, and various feelings come up, you know how to practice with that. You know what to do with it. We should know what these factors are.

[28:16]

I mean, you know, we're dealing with them constantly. We deal with them all the time, but we don't deal with them as categories. So it's kind of helpful to see them as categories, so that you can focus on them. So I think it's a good idea for everyone to remember, to memorize these categories and what their counterfeits are. Counterfeit is called, that's my word, in the Visuddhimagga it's called near enemy. The thing that tries to take over, but it's very close, so close, and tries to take over. called the near enemy, and the far enemy is its opposite. The far enemy is usually obvious, much more obvious.

[29:18]

You don't have to think about it so much. But what you really have to be careful, most careful about is its near enemy or counterfeit, the thing that looks like it, but is very dangerous. If you know how to extend meta to everyone that you meet. You find that your life changes a lot. You find that people respond to your unguardedness and they become unguarded. even at some risk, you may do it. You may extend it. Sometimes just walking down the street without any, having any kind of motive in mind.

[30:22]

You just say hello to somebody. You should, if you don't do that, you can try it. Just walking down the street and some black person walks by and you say hello. And it's, hi. But there are different meditations on these four. And the meditations are very elaborate. And you start out extending. The meditations are pretty much the same for all four categories. But they are different. But basically the same. And for metta, you begin by extending loving feelings and thoughts of loving kindness to yourself until you feel that you can do that.

[31:33]

You may not be able to do it. You may not be able to feel good about yourself. But before you can feel good toward someone else, you should be able to feel good about yourself. You should have the same feeling for yourself as you do for others. So if you feel good about yourself, then you can also feel good about other people, whether or not they're really bad, or whether or not they're harmful to you or others. You can still have a basic feeling of goodness toward them. So the first one is to extend feelings of love or goodwill toward yourself, and to be able to just sit in that feeling. And when you've settled on that feeling, then you can extend that feeling to a friend, someone that you know or like.

[32:42]

That's pretty easy. Maybe easier than extending it to yourself. But then when you can do that, then you extend it to someone who is indifferent, or you're indifferent to. Someone you don't have any feeling of good or bad, or any particular feeling about. So you can just extend that feeling to that person. And then when you can do that, Then you extend to someone that you don't like, someone that maybe you hate, someone that you really feel bad about. You should start with someone that's easy and gradually work up to the more difficult ones. That's what is recommended. Start out with the easy ones and work up to the difficult ones until you can completely open yourself It's called eliminating the barriers.

[33:49]

And then, you do the same with compassion, except that the order is a little different. And then you do the same with sympathetic joy, and the same with equanimity, pekkha. The Brahma-viharas appear in their most elaborate form in the Visuddhi-magga, but there are other places where it's a little more abridged. But these definitely should be our practice. And it really balances out our wisdom practice, sanskrit practice.

[35:04]

This is like maybe the Avalokiteśvara side of our practice, whereas the other side is the Manjushri side. Do you have any other questions? Robert? You said a few words about false love between men and women that's based on cupidity. I wonder if you could say also a few words about true love between men and women and what this basis is. Yeah, well, cupidity is a little different than sex. I think, strictly speaking, Cupidity, sex is a part of, may or may not be, part of a love between men and women, an expression.

[36:13]

Cupidity is where you have an ongoing sexual propensity outside of that. So it's just sex for sex's sake. Love between men and women. It's a big subject. Hard to say. I mean, I could say something, but what to say? It's... What should it be based on? In the old days, people used to get married through arrangements.

[37:21]

And then they would have to learn to love each other. And in our society, we go the other way around. We say, first you fall in love with somebody, married. And those are kind of like the two ways of going about getting together. And both ways have their good points and their bad points. But either way, when when someone is chosen for you, you don't really have a choice. You kind of find out who that is and then you find your way around with that person until you learn how to get along and how to work with that person.

[38:39]

And through work, or through activity, you grow closer together or farther apart, but you kind of have to grow closer together. It's like you're medical to somebody and you have to learn how to live with somebody without really the illusions of first having had a choice. And that learning how to live together creates a kind of deeper understanding, a deeper love. But it also, you know, can be terrible for someone, for people who just can't get along with each other. That's the other side. In our system, we allow our fantasy to have full play. And because

[39:41]

We create such fantasies of marriage and so forth. What we want is this great joy. We have this fantasy of great joy together. And when that doesn't turn out, we feel very disappointed, and we feel that marriage was a rip-off, and we get divorced. And so everybody's getting divorced. because it's not turning out the way we planned it. So, sometimes it works very well because we have the person that we wanted. But other times, because of our fantasy, we have the person that we thought we wanted. But when the movie is over, we find that we have somebody that we didn't really want. And then we have to learn how to live with that person.

[40:44]

Or, you know, so I can go either way. But we have to be able to see the other person really exactly as they are. And if we can accept that person exactly as they are, with no illusions, then that's a kind of basis for marriage, for getting along with each other. To have no illusions. about the other person. You see all their moles. Don't hide anything. Don't gloss anything over. And you know that they get angry. And you know that they have certain propensities. And you say, well, I can accept the It's good if people have something really strongly in common.

[41:47]

If they don't have something really strongly in common, then they're just going two different ways. In America, women now are coming up, are having the same status in that they can do whatever they want, that men do. So men have always been goal-oriented, and women have always been family-oriented, according to the system. Now women are goal-oriented as well as men being goal-oriented. So if a man and woman come together and their goals are not the same, it just doesn't work. They may stay together for a little while because of some attraction, but that attraction is not enough. They have to have the same goals and the same... If you have two people that are leaders, then you have a two-headed snake. going this way. So somebody's got to say, OK, you lead. And then they go this way, or they go that way.

[42:53]

Or you can lead this way, and I'll lead next way. Maybe. But somebody has to decide. I mean, they both have to decide. Who's going to be the leader? You've got to do it. Even if they have different careers, you have to decide who's going to be the leader. You can say, OK, the woman can be the leader. That happens. But leadership is a funny thing. It doesn't mean necessarily dragging the other person along. But even though two people talk about what they're doing, Still, one person always has the tendency to be a little stronger than the other. And that person usually, no matter what, always turns out to be the leader anyway.

[43:54]

So you have to... And if you decide to change your course in the middle, you have to be very strong to do that. If one person decides to change their course in the middle, the other person has to be very flexible to allow them to do that. So when you get married to somebody, you say, well, I'll do whatever I can to help you, to be you. And the other person says that to the other person. I'll do whatever I can to help you be you. But it doesn't mean that you can just go ahead and do whatever you want. I'll help you to be you within this situation. So you have to come to some agreements. If you don't come to agreements, then it doesn't, you can't go anyplace, you don't have any goal. So, you know, we have to, primarily we see each other as Buddha and treat each other as Buddha.

[45:09]

That's the basis. And next you have some agreements about how you're going to live together. And you may or may not love each other in a romantic sense. It may not be necessary to love each other in a romantic sense, because the romantic sense doesn't last always. It's a kind of marquee or something, a facade over the thing. And it's great if it does last. You can't expect that. How you work together is the basic thing. How your life comes out of your work. So people with children have something to work with. People that don't have children either have to have an awfully good case for each other or else have some work in common that they can relate to.

[46:10]

Because you can't just keep relating to each other. You've got to relate to something outside of yourself. You've got to have something that you can both relate to, that's not each other. It's just, if you're only relating to each other, then this is nice as long as you're dancing, but when you stop dancing, then you can't stand each other. It becomes too narcissistic. Because you just see your faults in the other person, and the other person sees their faults in you, and pretty soon you don't know who you are. So, you have to have something outside of yourself that you relate to, be it politics or business or something. Children is the usual thing. That helps you too, you know. Somehow, a third thing keeps things moving. But the romantic couple that lives forever as a couple, it's very rare.

[47:22]

Yes? Well, I must say that I don't like to hear you talk about, I mean, I react, and I say personally, you say that leadership is necessary, or that there has to be a leader. Isn't it possible to have equality more? That is equality. Obviously. That is equality. Equality means that the weak one takes a weak position, and the strong one takes a strong position, and creates a system that works. If you have perfect equality, then you have perfect equilibrium, nothing can move, can't go anywhere. Or you have two things that are so equal that they pull each other apart and there's no dynamic.

[48:31]

So sometimes, this is the whole secret of our practice, to know how to move things and to be moved by things. And if you're unequal, it doesn't go anywhere. You don't marry someone that's your equal, you marry someone that's stronger than you or weaker than you. What about democracy? Doesn't a democratic society move? I mean, that's sort of... I don't... A democratic society is really not... there's nothing equal about the parts. The parts are not equal. Equality does not mean that everything is the same. Means that everything fits in according to its disposition, or its weight, or height, or length. Therefore... Probably towards the end of our time. But why label differences strength or weakness?

[49:37]

There are always differences. There are differences. Strengths and weaknesses are part of difference. I didn't say they were good or bad. I'm not making a judgment. I'm just saying stronger or weaker is not making a judgment. I know it's hard not to think of it as a judgment, but it's not a judgment. Weaker is necessary. Stronger is necessary. You know, if you have a circuit, you need a fuse in the circuit. The fuse is a weak point in the circuit. If you have too much voltage and you don't have the weak point in the circuit, then the house burns up. If you have that weak point in the circuit, then it breaks when there's too much and everything is saved. The lights go out, but the system is saved and your house is saved.

[50:41]

So the weakness is a virtue. I'm not talking in terms of judgment. I think it's just a problem that we collectively have with the words, with the way that it's described. But there's also what you said about when we're practicing, know when to lead and when to follow. It's not that this person's always strong and this one always weak. But in situations, one knows more about it or has more intuitive relatedness to some particular thing that's going on. And it just changes that way. Right, so knowing when to lead and when to follow, following doesn't mean weakness. It does mean that we say, to move things and to be moved by things.

[51:54]

When we're moved by things, then things are strong and we're weak. And when we move things, we're strong and things are weak. That doesn't mean weakness in a judgmental sense. It means knowing when to give and when to take. That's not weakness. Our strength is in being able to give. Yes. But I am not talking in that way. No, but this is something that is very ideal, and applying it, you have to be careful, because it can easily turn out this way.

[52:56]

Yeah, but you should know that I don't talk about that in that way. Yes? The word strong and weak, these days, have relative meaning that for someone to be really strong, they see how weak they are. Yeah, being strong means to be able to see your own weaknesses, and being weak means that you don't, in that sense, it's very true. Consensus is always the best, but doesn't necessarily mean that people always agree. But even in a consensus, you have stronger people and weaker people.

[54:01]

It's just that everyone agrees. But you don't have a leadership You do have a leadership of everybody together when they all agree, but that still doesn't mean that there are not stronger and weaker. When the weaker agree with the stronger, then you have consensus. It's interesting to watch children play, because in order for two kids to play with each other, they have to play on the same thing. And the usual thing is that one of them invents a game, And the other one follows. And then they sort of play it back for a while, and maybe the other one will switch after a while. But in order for the kids to play together, it's not very rarely do I see them sort of coming up with half the idea. And what you observe after a while is that certain children tend to be the inventors

[55:07]

with kids older than that, she'll tend to excess energy or whatever to dominate what happens. And very often it's a factor of intelligence or If the children are to be truly equal in a kind of mechanical sense, then we'd never be able to play. Then we'd lack spontaneity in that play. I think the follower enjoys following in that situation, enjoys the pleasure of sort of learning something new from somebody else who is presenting it.

[56:12]

Okay, this has to stop. I'm sorry. We'll take it up again. Thank you.

[56:22]

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