Well, does everybody have a copy of the three handouts? The principal text is Meditation in Action and it's a really good book and you can buy the whole thing at Cody's or on the Avenue at Shambhala, certainly. You can get a small copy for $6.50 and always have it in your pocket. so we have just Xeroxed the last, about the last half of it and in fact two of the Pyramidas are left out or skimmed but it's a really nice experiential discussion of the others so I hope by next week that everyone can have read that And then the other two handouts, one is from the Diamond Sutra.

[01:09]

And Fran and I had a discussion about, there are two different places where I found the Diamond Sutra, and one is quite different, one Diamond Sutra is quite different from another, so I suppose they're excerpts or something, anyway. the Diamond Sutra is part of the larger Perfection of Wisdom Sutra and the Perfection of Wisdom Sutra from which the Heart Sutra that we chant every night comes is really the major sutra that talks about the Bodhisattva, what the Bodhi, who the Bodhisattva is and what the Bodhisattva path is and I think that it's the It's certainly the major sutra in which the Paramitas are presented. So, copy the section on the Paramitas. Yes. Why copy? There are several pages missing. Is it meant to be that way?

[02:12]

91 and then it goes to 94. It says the Diamond Sutra? That's what I called it. Yes, that's where it's supposed to be. Yeah. Well, it should all, in my copy it's all here. Maybe some of the copies got messed up. Let's deal with that at the very end, if you think your copy is incomplete. So, we're going to talk about the six paramitas in this class, and I will talk about tonight the introduction and the first one, Dana, and then Sheila, and I guess the third one is Kshanti, Patience. And then Fran will talk about the last three in the last three weeks.

[03:13]

And it's probably pretty evenly divided between us because I do the introduction and Fran does Prajnaparamita. which is the slipperiest. I realize I cut myself a bad deal. So what we have talked about and what we hope is that not more than 40 or 50% of this class, not more than 40% will be material presented And the rest will be discussion. And we'd like to have some homework, some experientially based, or perhaps some study homework. We have some ideas for that. And I thought I'd stop at 10 of nine so that we could talk more about what the homework could include.

[04:18]

the point of this class is that as we study the paramitas we really want to have experience in using them and to share that experience because we'll all do that differently so my intention tonight is to present a very brief historical background about the Bodhisattva ideal, and a little bit about how that arose, and relate it to various chanting practices that we have here, and then talk some about how we use the Paramitas in our daily practice. You can probably just turn that off if you want. The last class we gave, Alan and I gave, talked about the rise of the Mahayana.

[05:32]

You know that the first turning of the wheel was during Buddha's lifetime in the 500s BC. And then, and the basic doctrinal practices were laid down at that time. The Four Noble Truths and Dependent Origination and the Three Marks of Existence. The map that we practice with was laid down and many, many more practice rules evolved. And Buddha was regarded as the historical Shakyamuni Nirmanakaya Buddha, the man who lived and died. And then towards the, just about the time that Christianity was percolating, a second turning of the wheel, the Mahayana, began. And that second turning

[06:33]

was probably in response to a great deal of codification, the earlier teaching, and also just some new wind that was blowing. And the new doctrine, the Mahayana, talks about the timeless Buddha, the different bodies of the Buddha. the three different bodies, or the seven Buddhas before Buddha, and Maitreya Buddha, and the Buddha that transcends the historical person, the Buddha that is present everywhere, the Buddha body, the live Buddha body that pervades everything, fundamental Buddha nature. And we talk about, we talk about all we talk about the historical Buddha in our chanting in our in the chance that we chant here.

[07:51]

For instance, the Metta Sutta that we chant on Monday morning is a nice example of the old style, the Theravadan Buddhism that begins, may all people be well, happy and peaceful, and extends that. and then ends with lines to the effect that the person who is able to just continually live with this wish that all beings may be well, happy, and peaceful will be freed from the cycle of suffering for now and forever. And that's a Theravadan point of view, because the Mahayana point of view is that the Bodhisattva, that nirvana and samsara are the same, are identical, practice and enlightenment are identical, and the Buddha never leaves the world, and we never leave the Buddha. So we just recently, just last Saturday, we did a full moon Bodhisattva ceremony.

[08:59]

and that the first thing we do there is all my ancient twisted karma I now fully avow that is all my all my ancient twisted difficulties I recognize I acknowledge it's the first step and that's the beginning of practice and then the next stage is What is the next stage? It's homage to the Buddhas. Homage to the seven Buddhas before Buddha. See, the point is that Buddha has always been present. And then homage to Shakyamuni Buddha. And then homage to the three bodies of Buddha. Is that right? No, we don't say the three bodies of Buddha, no. That's the meal chant, we say the three bodies of Buddha.

[10:03]

We do Buddha and the man... We do Maitreya and we do Manjushri, the aspects of Buddha. The aspects of Buddha. And then we do the homage to the ancestors. So that's kind of the complete teaching. And then in the meal chant, we pay homage to the three bodies of Buddha. The Dharmakaya Buddha, the aspect of Buddha that's just always present and undifferentiated kind of Buddha ground. And then Sambhogakaya Buddha, which is the expression of that ground, the joy that comes from it, and then the nirmanakaya buddha, the form, the particular form that buddha takes, many many different forms. So we practice with all of these traditions,

[11:13]

A kind of familiar and clear way of thinking about the rise of the Mahayana is the poem that the Sixth Ancestor wrote on the wall of the monastery, and probably everybody is fairly familiar with that story, that the Sixth Ancestor had been enlightened as a young man by just hearing once the Diamond Sutra. And so he went into the monastery where the fifth ancestor was, Abbot, and was really immediately recognized in a certain way by the fifth ancestor, but told to go underground for a while, and so spent some time in the kitchen. And then there was, the abbot wanted to test his students and choose a successor, so he asked people to manifest their teaching by writing a poem.

[12:21]

And the obvious successor wrote, the body is the Bodhi tree, the mind is like a clear mirror, movement by movement, wipe the mind carefully, let there be no dust on it. So that's a pretty good statement of Theravadan practice, that the mindfulness practice of continually watching what's happening and clearing away the hindrances. And when the dust, when the hindrances are cleared, then the natural bright mind shines forth. But then the sixth ancestor came along, illiterate as he was, and had somebody write his poem for him. Bodhi really has no tree. The mirror has no stand. From the beginning there's nothing at all. Where can any dust alight?

[13:23]

And that is written from the Grand Mahayana point of view. And that's the introduction to the Bodhisattva. The Bodhisattva is the being who stands on no ground and yet has a position on that no ground. Bodhi really has no tree, the mirror has no stand, from the beginning there's nothing at all, where can any dust alight? Trungpa, somewhere, talks about the narrow lens point of view and the wide lens. Part of our practice certainly allows for the subjective and objective world that we live in. We live in a dualistic world and we have to train ourselves in that.

[14:28]

with the various traditional practices that are offered. We have to look at the mirror and wipe it clean again and again. And that's the subject-object narrow lens point of view. You can talk about what's going on to a certain extent. But when you get the wide-angle lens, the wide-angle view, then it becomes very difficult to talk. then we are beyond dualism and what can you say and I think that we experience that in our sitting you know sometimes we sit and we are very aware of the mind activity and we are trying to focus ourselves and concentrate and remember our posture and remember all the things and clean the mirror continually.

[15:33]

And then other times, we're just sitting. We're just Shikantaza. And it's this wide angle view. It's the wide angle being that Suzuki Roshi talks about the frog that just sits on the rock and waits for the bug. And when the bug comes, the tongue goes out. and then the frog goes back to wide angle view. So it's very hard one doesn't know what's going on in this wide angle view. We're just there and we're not limited and on the other hand doesn't feel as if we're enlightened either but there we are just wide angle. So the enlightening, another word for bodhisattvas is enlightening beings.

[16:39]

The enlightening beings have this wide-angled view and I guess it's Cleary who talks about enlightening rather than enlightened because enlightening beings it's just the activity is continually interrelated. A very nice fundamental metaphor is Indra's net, that our existence is just a net of dual mirrors. And when a speck falls into one mirror, it falls into them all. And when one mirror is cleaned, they're all cleaned. So we're just always and it's a kind of exotic metaphor but of course it's really very true that is our life and it's hard to live it that way but that is our fundamental life we are inexorably interrelated and there's no getting out of it it's just it's terribly difficult to see it that way so

[17:49]

We say that we have a Bodhisattva ideal, but the reality of our lives are that we are living in a Bodhisattva situation, but we don't know it. We don't act on it so much. So the big difference between the Arhat and the Bodhisattva is that the Bodhisattva knows that she is engaged in saving all beings just as all beings are saving her because she, he, is interrelated. And the Arhat is more taken by, perfect by doing the inner homework. and of course these are all aspects of our practice. So the Bodhisattva who is sitting in the Indra's net knows that fundamentally she, he has no point of view.

[18:58]

The point of view is only this great ongoing, universal reflection. It's not a point of view, it's a process. And so the Bodhisattva operates not from knowledge of the doctrine, but from this new Mahayana term, skillful means. that the teaching is always going on and everybody receives the teaching in a different way because each person is a unique manifestation, each person is her own beautifully framed little mirror. So the Bodhisattva in her effort to help always is able to make a very exact and intimate relationship with each being that is being held and that's skillful means.

[20:09]

Alright, this is a very extreme little trip. So, Paramitas. Paramitas are the principle way that a Bodhisattva trains for this activity. That the Bodhisattva essentially is devoted to saving all sentient beings while knowing that there is no such thing really as sentient beings and knowing that there is no such thing as her himself and that there is no such thing as saving. So this is the tone of the Prajnaparamita Sutra and it's good to read these original settings and see how the puzzle with which they're written. How do you wipe out everything and still have something. So we have this situation, we chant every single night, every single morning.

[21:35]

No eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind. So at least twice a day, if we're chanting with some curiosity, we're asking ourselves, what does it mean? What does it mean? And there's a movie out now called Blade Runners, and It seems to me that the Bodhi, this no eyes, no ears, no nose is like a Blade Runner. I don't know what the movie is about. You want to know? No, I don't know. What is it about? Well, it's about, it's a sci-fi movie and Harrison Ford is a futuristic detective in L.A. And L.A. looks like Hong Kong now with a lot of text. And his job is to hunt down and kill these, whatever they are, cyborgs, or these manufactured human beings, whose job it is to be assassins.

[22:45]

So he's going to kill the assassins. threatening, menacing way. He goes to this plastic surgeon, this underground plastic surgeon, and the guy says, I just do eyes. He's an eye specialist. You think Blade Runner and a Heart Sutra, no eyes. Well, this guy does eyes. like now and it's really the mother of all these sort of sci-fi future terror movies.

[23:49]

So it's about thought constructions. From a Buddhist point of view, if we showed it on Friday night video here, we could probably talk about it. It's about really the state, the corporate state versus the individual. It's political. But there is one interesting aspect as far as... one self-perception. There's this one android, which is a young woman, and she doesn't know she's an android until somebody breaks the news to her. and everything in her. She thought she was a real person. She thought she was a real person. That's interesting. That's getting there, isn't it? I'm not seeing that. And there's a famous owl, is it like, you know, a mechanical, biomechanical owl that's in the Mr. Big Business

[25:39]

All right. Back to no eyes, no ears, and the Paramitas. So, the Bodhisattva, the Blade Runner, whose territory is somewhere between eyes and no eyes, finds her way, first of all, by making impossible vows, you know, we make four impossible vows fairly regularly, by really setting the intention. We not only make impossible vows, by setting the intention. and also lives by these paramitas. Para means other, and mita means one who has already arrived. So sometimes the paramitas are called the six perfections, sometimes they're called the six transcendent acts.

[26:57]

So the paramita is the accomplished leap to the other shore. You know, when we say at the end of Seshins, we say, I take refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, the Sangha. I take refuge in the Buddha as a perfect teacher, and so on. And then the third line, I always keep wondering about, now I have completely taken refuge in the Buddha. Now I have completely taken refuge in the Sangha. Now I have completely taken refuge in the Dharma. And I sort of walk out wondering what I've done. So, those are the questions that, how can we say that? That's a question to keep thinking about. How can we say that and also retain our, not be grandiose?

[28:01]

How can, it's really, enormous leap of faith in certain respects. And in another respect, it is just being completely natural. Um... Oh, I also wanted to say, the bodhisattva, there are three traditional vehicles or three forms of practice. There were the śrāvakas, that means listeners, who listened to the Buddha's word and who did all the practices and hopefully became arhats, that is, they completely eradicated the traces of their greed, hate and delusion and then there were the Pratyekabuddhas and the Pratyekabuddhas were people who were loners and these three categories again refer to our own practice experience the Pratyekabuddhas are loners who

[29:29]

who learn the Dharma and who practice the Dharma from their experience, from their insight into dependent origination. You know, just as you live, you begin to have a much more healthy appreciation of what goes out comes round. And you're less able to live in the rather careless way that you may have started out as a young person. you gradually appreciate the consequences and deepen your understanding of life. That's the Pratyekabuddhas. They're called Buddhas, but they can't teach because they don't belong to any school. They've just learned from their own experience. And then the third way we practice is as Bodhisattvas. So again, these are three sides of our practice. We learn by our own development in the world, our own psychological development, and we learn by our sincere practice, and we learn by coming home to our natural interdependent position.

[30:45]

There's three different ways. Well, I was gonna read a little from The Perfection of Wisdom, but I don't think I will, because you can. So, how do you practice the parameters? They seem so, from the way I've described them, they seem so transcendent and impossible, so on.

[31:56]

Zen is a very matter of fact about them. I encourage people to read. It's always good to keep going back and reading pieces of Zen Mind Beginner's Mind. You know, there's a chapter in repetition It's a good place to start rereading, just to reread the chapter on repetition. And, you know, just to keep these little chapters going, cycling through, is really helpful. So, on page 62, Suzuki Roshi talks about no trace. And this is the way in our school, the principal way, that we talk about the paramitas. When you do something, you should burn yourself completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself. If you leave a trace of your thinking and your activity, you will be attached to that trace.

[33:03]

For instance, you may say, this is what I've done. But actually, it's not so. In your recollection, you may say, I did such and such a thing in some certain way. But actually, that is never exactly what happened. And of course, if you think of our experience as mirrors, it's just a delusion that we own our own experience. When you think in this way, you limit the actual experience of what you've done. So, if you attach to the idea of what you've done, you're involved in some selfish idea. In order not to leave any traces, when you do something, you should do it with your whole body and mind. You should be concentrated on what you do. You should do it completely like a good bonfire. You should not be a smoky fire. You should burn yourself completely. If you do not burn yourself completely, a trace of yourself will be left in what you do. You will have something remaining which is not completely burnt out.

[34:05]

Ancient twisted karma. Zen activity is activity which is completely burnt out with nothing remaining but ashes. That is the goal of our practice. This is what Dogen meant when he said, ashes do not come back to firewood. Ash is ash. Ash should be completely ash. The firewood should be firewood. And when this kind of activity takes place, one activity covers everything. It really is wonderful. That's really quite digestible. And it's wonderful to think of that, and I'm also reading the Avatamsaka Sutra, the Flower Garland Sutra, and there's full of these marvelous, enormous, cosmic images of a single blade of grass holding all the atoms in the universe, the whole teaching.

[35:06]

That's right. Sudhana finally, you know, after, and how many people does he, I think there's 88, is it? Or that's the number of keys on the piano. But anyway, he goes around and talks to a large number of bodhisattvas, or enlightening beings, and asks them all the same question, what is your practice? And he always gets the same answer, surprisingly. from children, and women, and monks, and lay people. Yeah, it's the one... But that certainly... I don't know what came first, but that is a sutra that certainly introduces the Bodhisattva way. It's more... Yes, it is. It is. And the Buddha way. Yeah. Cleary's introduction to the second volume is really marvelous.

[36:19]

It compares it to all the other sutras. Right. It's very slightly technical and very interesting. Yeah. Yeah. So, Maile, what's the answer? How do you practice the Paramitas with totality? Is that what it is? That as long as you're total? As long as you're doing it 100% with nothing extra, that's all there is. Now you know there's the... Now there's another way of saying that which is case 89 in the Blue Cliff Record. The whole body is hand and eye. You could probably are familiar with that. When the entire body is the eye while seeing you do not see. When the entire body is the ear, while hearing you do not hear. See, this is another variation, right?

[37:21]

Ears and no ears. When the entire body is mouth, while speaking you do not speak. When the entire body is mind, etc. If there is no mind, how do you think? If you are familiar with this point, you are in the company of the ancient Buddhas. However, putting aside being in the company of the ancient Buddhists, with whom do you study Zen? Main subject. Ungon asked Dogo, what use does the great bodhisattva of mercy make of all those hands and eyes? Dogo says, it is like a man straightening his pillow with his outstretched hand in the middle of the night. Ungon said, I have understood. Dogo said, how do you understand? Ungon said, the whole body is hand and eye. Dogo said, You have had your say, but you have given only eight-tenths of the truth." Angan said, how would you put it? Dogo said, the entire body is hand and eye. So, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing left out.

[38:27]

And just one more, and then to go back to Dogen, a nice recapitulation of all of this is in the Genjo Koan. probably the most famous part of the Genjo Koan. To study the self, to study the way is to study the self. So our first practice is to look inside. To study the self is to forget the self. You know, you have to know who you are before you can forget it. You have to be something in order to not be something, in order to forget it. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by the myriad things. To forget the self is to be actualized by the myriad things. Again, this mirror. So when you really know that you are one in all the millions of the mirrors, then you are

[39:37]

Actualized by the whole thing. Body and mind and body of mind of others drop off. No trace remains. And this no trace continues forever. Quite a wonderful... Captures that in quite a wonderful, mysterious way. the no trace continuing forever. So that is the background of our Paramitas. And I'm going to begin on the Dharma Paramita. Unless somebody has something they want to say now, which would be a good thing. Yes. Is it, would it be paraphrasing it to say that when one is seeing totally with no dualistic idea of self, then there are no eyes because seeing is not reflexive, in other words, like looking back at the self.

[41:08]

Seeing, I know this is, speaking is dualistic, but When one does anything totally, there's no thought of, I'm doing this. It's like the doing is all that's happening. So that's what they mean by not leaving a trace. Everything is completely done in the doing. Well, let's see, you know, for example, you're sitting in Sahasran and you manage to count three breaths and you say, wow, I just counted three breaths. Right. You lost it. Right. Yeah. Now that sounds good to me. Dun, dun, dun. You know, gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhisattva, dun, [...] gone. So there's never, there's never an accounting. The accounting is the Yeah, the merit.

[42:15]

I mean, we can really, we do want to account and we do want to accrue merit. But then how does that go with mindfulness if you're, you know, if you're, you know, trying to look at what is coming up? Yeah, and you're trying to look at what's coming up, and you see it, and then you forget about it, and then you remind yourself. You mean that whole process? Yeah, well that's the shravaka part of our practice, that's totally necessary, the effort side of the practice. So and then the other side is just okay so it's there and I saw it so now let go of it? Well now this gets to very tricky ground and then I'll be glad for help.

[43:23]

But on the one hand we're doing the mindfulness practice and we're noticing that we're doing okay or now we've fallen off and we're not doing so okay. That's going on. And then also we are sitting there kind of just manifesting ourselves. You know, we're just sitting there. And that's a very deep practice. So on the other hand we say you don't judge your Zazen. That whatever you do in a Zazen period is okay. Because if you miss that side of your practice, then you can get into zealotry, you know, and wars with yourself, and all kinds of violence, inner violence, about I'm doing this right, I'm doing this wrong, which we all get into. You know, I've wondered for a long time if this isn't sort of like being a little child again.

[44:26]

but not going backwards, coming around full circle. I can remember not feeling like I was separate from anything. Whatever I was doing, I was really doing it. I had no thought about it at all. I can even remember watching my brother throw a balsa wood glider and being so involved in watching it that it hit me right in the face before I came to. Is that it? That kind of totality? Yeah, that's it. But the trouble is, as a child, you get right hit in the face with it. You don't have any way of navigating. Yes. I can see how it's normal. We haven't really lost anything. It's like you have to go through life and go through the pain of becoming self-aware and adding your peace to reality all the time and go through the discomfort and the dysfunction of that, and then come around again so that you incorporate it all.

[45:35]

And that's what I was thinking about, the mindfulness, that we are Homo sapiens sapiens, man who knows he knows, we can't get rid of that. that quality, but we can learn to live with it in harmony. That's right, and we can use it. Now I didn't copy the very nice chapter in here about the manure, you know, the manure aspect of our practice. It's a lovely chapter. that, as you say, we're innocent, and then we fall, and we have to deal with the fall, but it's the particular way that we fall, and the way that brings us our rich manure, and then the way we pour out the manure on the Bodhi field. Trungpa is Mahayana and Tantric, And so he's really going for the energy of the hindrances and how we really can use them.

[46:37]

There's also the wonderful koan, Does the Baby Have the Sixth Consciousness? It's one of Djoser's koans, and it's about that. Well, I'd like to start a little bit on Dana, on giving and maybe just present that for a few minutes and then talk about it and then next week do Dana and Sheila. Again, starting with Suzuki Roshi, there's the chapter on no traces, which seems to me to be the kind of background of the Paramita, and then the chapter following that is God-giving, where in fact he runs through the Paramitas.

[47:56]

And God-giving is non-attachment, that is, just not to attach to anything is to give. Not to attach to anything is to give. And again, that is our fundamental position, that we pretend that we attach and we believe our pretense, Dogen Zenji said, to give is non-attachment. That is, just not to attach to anything is to give. It does not matter what is given. To give a penny or a piece of leaf is dana prajna paramita. to give one line or even one word of teaching is dana prajnaparamita. If given in the spirit of non-attachment, the material offering and the teaching offering have the same value, with right spirit, all that we do, all that we create is dana prajnaparamita.

[49:03]

So, Dogen said, to produce something to participate in human activity is also dana prajnaparamita. To provide a ferry boat for people or to make a bridge for people is dana prajnaparamita. Actually to give one line of the teaching may make a ferry boat for someone. Continuing that thought, I would like to read a poem, which to me is one of the most beautiful poems I've ever read. And I've been reading it for some years, and every time I come back to it, I'm just wowed. And it's by Czesław Miłosz, the Polish poet. who was born in 1911 and lived through World War I, World War II, was exiled from his country, and knows a lot about losses. And so I'd like to read this, I'm going to read it twice, as a background to our Dana Paramita.

[50:12]

and there's the I of the poem and the you who are being addressed. You talked, but after your talking, all the rest remains. After your talking, poets, philosophers, contrivers of romances, everything else. All the rest deduced inside the flesh which lives and knows not just what is permitted. I am a woman held fast now in a great silence. Not all creatures have your need for words. Birds you killed, fish you tossed into your boat. In what words will they find rest and in what heaven? You received gifts from me and they were accepted, but you don't understand how to think about the dead. the scent of winter apples, of hoarfrost, and of linen.

[51:16]

There are nothing but gifts on this poor, poor earth." That's really our situation. Nothing but gifts. Poor, poor earth. So I'll read it again. So the you is, you know, we who talk. and who make distinctions and who kill with our words. And then it's the silence speaking. You talked, but after your talking all the rest remains. After your talking, poets, philosophers, contrivers of romance, everything else, all the rest deduced inside the flesh which lives and knows not just what is permitted. I am a woman held fast now in a great silence. Not all creatures have your need for words.

[52:20]

Birds you killed, fish you tossed into your boat. In what words will they find rest and in what heaven? You received gifts from me and they were accepted, but you don't understand how to think about the dead. the scent of winter apples, of hoarfrost, and of linen. There are nothing but gifts on this poor, poor world. So I would just like to and this kind of introduction to Dana, and you talk, by next week you can have read the Trungpa, and we can use that as a kind of basis.

[53:28]

These different ways of giving, and I just happened to look at an article in a very recent New Statesman, called Jerry's Kids. Now, I hadn't heard of them, but it's hard to miss the Jerry Lewis Labor Day telethon. Jerry Lewis's mug and the smiling faces of poster children seem to be everywhere. The more than 200 stations in his love network broadcast 1991 televised pleas. 30 million households every year tune in to the award extravaganza and so on. Lewis pleads for dollars to help his kids The more than one million people the Muscular Dystrophy Association says benefits from its research. And so on. No one is negating research or the individual desire to be cured, says Jerry's Orphans, founder Chris... See, there's this group called Jerry's Orphans in response to Jerry's Kids.

[54:43]

Choosing to be cured is a very personal decision that we make no judgment on. What they object to, she says, is the paternalism reflected in the telethon, the attitude that stresses that no matter what one does, life is meaningless in a wheelchair. Now that the Americans with Disabilities Act has gone into effect, many disability activists view the telethons of the Cure charities as their next battleground. Groups like Jerry's Orphans and ADAPT, the activists who fought for lifts on buses and nationwide, are now battling the nursing home industry and call the charities' fundraising tactics demeaning and insulting. And so on. They particularly hate Lewis, who insists on calling adults with muscular dystrophy Jerry's kids. Calling a disabled person a kid is no different than calling a black man a boy, fumed somebody, who started a Tune Jerry Out campaign, and so on.

[55:44]

Once a new understanding penetrates public consciousness, the understanding that there may be better things to do for victims of disease than curing them, that things like civil rights might be more important than the whole edifice can ultimately be toppled. Just little excerpts. But how easy it is for us to take a generous benefactor position, how easy it is to fix it, to be a helper, to get some in our dilemma to step back, take some position, attach to some inner point of view, and how that is not the Paramita, and how difficult it is not to do that. I work at, I do some work at the AIDS Center in Oakland and it's just a day center and people go in and it's not entirely clear who are volunteers and who are clients.

[56:57]

And it, I think everybody finds it extremely difficult just to go in and hang out at first. Because you are a well person and they are sick people. You know, and how do we, it takes a great deal of work to, and a great deal of courage, I think, for all of us, just to be nothing but, you know, whole body, eyes and ears. Eyes over the whole body is very, very difficult. and then suddenly, you know, something happens and you feel some kind of shift and you sense that from this awkward kind of being together anytime, with anybody, you know, then there's a shift and suddenly there is a real relationship between you and you're aware that you are in the same struggle together

[58:16]

And that your solution is her solution. There's no different. So my experience is just back and forth. And just, you know, that's the same kind of stuff just between us. Sometimes we're together and, you know, they're just the two people and we're trying where is the common ground and we're negotiating that has its awkwardnesses and difficulties and so on and then does that turn? So what are our experiences of giving? Yes? Hello?

[59:32]

It's a mixed bag. I mean, there's probably some great things being done by that telethon year in, year out in many ways that's hard to quantify. And yet, when we see the truth published on the page, it really can be discouraging. Yeah. Now, that's an interesting question as to whether the recipient, how much of the inner struggle of the giver the recipient is aware of. That's an interesting question. Right. I mean, from one point of view, yeah, from one point of view, there are no secrets. Yeah. Yeah. What difference does it make? Well, it makes a difference from the point of view of karma. Because this is really about karma. Okay. And so, if the act is self-centered, then it's producing karma.

[62:36]

It's a karma-producing activity. And the Bodhisattva is always trying not to create more karma. That's what we've been tracing. Right. And from the Buddhist point of view, thought, body, speech and mind are all sources of creating karma. But the recipient's consciousness, how does that influence? It doesn't matter whether they're conscious or not. That was my question. The karma of your thoughts will bear some fruit. Right. But I still have to do it. And that has become increasingly painful, how inept I am at this, and seeing so clearly what a foul motivation I have sometimes. And I just think Jerry Lewis is icky. I just think he's icky.

[63:38]

And I'm just like him. And that's why I can't stand him, that smarmy, blather, you know? That exhibitionism is every bit of it. And I've caught myself lately a lot right in the middle of it saying, I still have to do it. There's no way around it. Even with, you know, even while I'm thinking, my, aren't I wonderful for doing this? Or, You know, at the same time, that watcher is right there saying, geez, you're as icky as cherry lips. But see, the people who are attacking him in the articles, they're not looking at that side. They're not saying, what I can't stand about him is that I'm like that too. No, no. And so that's two sides. It's just another side of the same door. I think that's a big part of practice, is cultivating that observer. Yeah, it's sort of like Zaza, you know, geez, I'm not doing it.

[64:41]

Or it's the wide-angle view that you see all the different positions in their dissonance, but you still see them. I think that it's really a common experience, certainly for me, to do nice things or to do things that are pleasing to other people. And so it's all, everything, the primary element involved is me, not them. And I think that, I think that if one is not, is truly not doing it from a me point of view, or for example, if somehow, when we, I mean, aspiration is to do in such a way where the self is not present.

[65:52]

It has nothing to do with what we're doing. And I think that that's really difficult. That's an incredibly high aspiration, at least from my present position. I think that one could, I think if one wanted to be like, there's no escape as long as you're, as long as yourself is, as long as you're relating from the point of view of yourself, there's no escape. You could not give, you could, you know, when people, you could never do anything generous for anyone else, but you would still be motivated primarily by yourself. So whether you're giving or not giving, it's all kind of selfish. Yeah, but I'm not sure it's that high. It is a very high aspiration. On the other hand, I'm sure that you have had experiences of being with somebody else who's in a lot of pain, and you first...

[67:02]

feel some distance and you wish them well and then you get drawn into their suffering you give up the idea of trying to fix it and you're just with it and you begin to feel kind of adrift and confused you know because there's nothing you want to be with them and there's nothing you can do and you're just being there and you're kind of well where am I anyway you're getting a little edgy about it, because it doesn't feel comfortable. Well, I think that that's just an excellent position to be in, really. That is, that's the beginning of just giving the old self up and saying, yeah, I'll just be with you. Yeah, I was going to say, I think that that understanding for me comes, this understanding of what is the deeper sense of what it is to love. When the extremes of emotion fall away, and there's even a sense of loss, then it seems like a purer ability to give.

[68:28]

I was thinking about when my friend was dying of cancer. And just what you said made a lot of sense. The moments that were spent mostly in silence were the strongest times of this feeling of being able to give. Because there really weren't any words that were meaningful. But it was from a sense of real loss that that was able to come forward. Are you meaning the impending loss? What loss? I think of loss as being ongoing, you know, a process. So it's in the present because she was literally fading away and then it was probably the impending loss.

[69:31]

I think often some degree of confusion is very wholesome. Yeah. Well, the one nifty thing about this whole thing is, even if you sort of fall off, you know, your path of, you know, ideal, you know, what you wanted to do, ideal, if your intention is to do some good to somebody, at least you're not doing them harm. I mean, so, it's not their problem. You know, you're not putting that out to somebody else. Unless you're really... Yeah. I hate to say Jerry Lewis, but I mean, Jerry Lewis. I mean, who has an offensiveness about it? But there's not a lot of that around. I mean, even in small kind of ways. I mean, if you think about just all the people who, you know, who go out to, and I work in situations with volunteers a lot, and they want to do something, and they want But I was thinking more in terms of the community, as this group is talking about it, and as we are trying to be right.

[70:50]

But we're not different from those people either at times, and we often don't know it until it's known. Right. Attached giving can have, you know, maiming consequences. Parents and children, after all. You know, his parents were very good examples of attached givers. And we, in turn, have been recipients of our parents' attached giving. And, you know, it takes lifetimes of therapy to overcome. Well, that's right. Not everybody is the world's greatest gardener, but everybody who gardens is taking care of the garden. I mean, if I've learned one thing in this practice, Do something, you know. Just don't sit there. Do something too. Do something. Yeah. Yes. You know, I spent the day today, half the day with the husband and the other half with the wife.

[71:54]

They both needed the space and the permission and the acceptance of their pain and their suffering. I did nothing but stay there and listen. without judgment. The husband needed to cry and cry for a long time. Part of the day I went to the school where she teaches and stayed with her at the school. She needed to do the same thing. So the only thing I could say is that they needed somebody that would listen I wasn't confused. It was not hard for you just to be there? No, yeah. What's there to be confused about? It just is a situation of living. Okay, one more and then we need to stop and think about what we're going to do.

[73:01]

Just about talking about giving in the most simplest manner, it seems to me that, you know, All of us have possessions, we have things, or we may have jobs, material security, or whatever, certain advantages. And then around us are people with less than us, or maybe almost nothing. Now, if we were giving, pretty soon we would have the same as all of them. And to me, it seems like, you know, when reading about giving in this very old Buddhist sense, I mean, monks, early students, Buddhist disciples, they basically were beggars. I mean, they had bowls, and they prayed for alms, and that's what they did. They didn't have, you know, rent-controlled apartments or something. And so, and I guess what I'm trying to say about it is, I think we're all sort of like, you know,

[74:04]

holding that in abeyance, you know, that kind of giving that was done then. And we're sort of looking for a way not to give quite that much. I mean, that's how it seems to me. And I think that when you're not accumulating, like all of us, you know, if we have even the most modest little pile of And why are we holding it together in this one spot? It's because of the self, which we believe to exist. Because if the self did not exist, there would be no need to gather stuff. Well that's a very good question and Trungpa has a great story about yaks to embody that question and so we can read his yak story and talk about how we tend our own yaks.

[75:11]

It's a very, very perplexing question. So now We, Fran and I, thought it would be nice to have some, more or less, some idea of homework or what we would do in these weeks, intervening weeks. And we're up for ideas. For instance, one idea would be for each person to think about some aspect of giving. You suggested something. Well, I was thinking about keeping some sort of journal as a sort of a mindfulness practice, if people were interested in doing that, just in relation to what we're reading and whatever this class brings up, just some kind of spending a little bit of time every day or a few times a week, or when you think of it, just reflecting

[76:21]

And it could go along with sort of the paramita of the week. I'm going to do something with the paramita of the week and recording the experience of it. Well, you suggested to practice some kind of giving situation which was a little on the edge, a little difficult. Uh-huh. Yeah, I've done a practice and getting along with the people they live with, of trying to do something nice for somebody at a time when you particularly didn't feel like it, or when you were particularly annoyed with them, or tired or whatever. I remember asking a warring couple to do this And I asked them separately to each of them do something nice for the other one.

[77:26]

And they both ended up on the way home driving past one of these people who said, we'll work for food. And they were stopping at the store. And these people had very little money. And they went home with their groceries, made some sandwiches, and took them back to the sky. and they stop it. You know, I wouldn't mind doing that, but I'm a little unclear on... You know, some people are really toxic, and it's dangerous to do something nice for them. Right. And our sense of not wanting to give to them is maybe survival. I don't want them to get a clean shot at me. I don't mean people in the street, I mean people you know, that you have experience and you know that they take a bite out of you.

[78:36]

You mean like anatomy people? I was thinking my mother. Poor mothers. Well, maybe we can all think about giving and... Have something to report. Of stinginess. Think about someone you really detest. You know, maybe Jerry Lewis. Or maybe Kissinger, Richard Nixon's always a favorite of mine. A little gift. A very warm, love-led person. Instilling their virtues and praising their humanity. and trying to be honest about it. In ways that you feel this approach is sincere. Yeah. You're sick me a trophy. Well, part of the perfection of giving is giving the, what is it, the essence of one's own virtue.

[79:41]

And the sort of donation of one's very aspiration. of giving. Right. The best gift for the giver and the recipient is always the gift that the giver would most like to receive. And what would you most like to receive? Why are we here? Understanding. Unconditional love. Right. And also, isn't part of the problem with what you were bringing up, the intent with which we approach someone that we previously had experience of toxicness. Actually, what I've heard the best, if you're confronted with a toxic person, the best measure is to ask a favor of that person.

[80:47]

That really puts you in a more open and available position. And it works. I mean, I've tried it with people that I've been having trouble with, asking them favors. It changes things. Allowing them to get a gift. Also, so next week I think we'll talk about Dana and also begin on Sheila. Now Sheila, discipline is often thought of as the 10, comprising the 10 precepts. And so perhaps you could, again, familiarize yourself. I'm not gonna go, I think going over the 10 precepts in less than an hour in class is a kind of dry way to proceed. but maybe you could look at the precepts and pick one that you're going to involve yourself with or that you are already involved with and that would be a way of getting rid of that.

[81:55]

Is that something that you're saying that we should, we'll be thinking about doing a follow-up? That's right, because next week we'll finish up on Donna and begin on Sheila. And I think it's important to remember that the, you know, All these paramitas are really the prashna paramita, and the prashna paramita is the teaching of no-self. Whatever you learn, that's the context. It's kind of looking at what is reflected back, and realizing that it's not difficult. We're not that different from Jerry Lewis and the types of people in our life that are reflecting something that's also us. Ascension beings that we're here to save are moving around here.

[82:59]

So is there a Donna homework? It looks like it's kind of a write your own homework. We'll share it. It's a small enough group, so I think that we can hear from everybody. I've already started the homework. I'm sorry? I've already done my homework today. Today, you spent your day doing it. All this marriage is very full hearted. I think I've given the opportunity to Once they have given the opportunity to give expression to all these feelings, they are at peace. All right, thank you.

[84:17]

And Ross is in a good position to accept Donna.

[84:21]

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