One of the ways to talk about what we do here is in terms of bodhisattva practice. Can you hear me okay in the back? So the bodhisattva, the awakening being or enlightening being, is dedicated and committed to benefiting all beings, helping everyone, and especially helping everyone to wake up together, to realize together our fundamental awakened nature. So I've been trying to find ways to study what is the psychology of bodhisattva practice. How do we actually do this? And one of the ways is through the different bodhisattva figures.

[01:06]

So in Mahayana Buddhism, the Buddhism of North Asia and East Asia, there are a handful or so of major bodhisattva figures. And each of them is a kind of force out there to help us, but they are also kind of guides, inner guides, to how do we find our own way, our own strategy, our own approach to doing spiritual life. So in a way they're all the same, they're just helping all beings, but they also offer us particular flavors of this practice. So actually there are many, many, many bodhisattvas. Some of the sutras, some of the Buddhist scriptures, have pages full of lists of names of different bodhisattvas. And bodhisattvas can be anywhere, and actually as soon as we start to do, to take on this practice, we are amongst the bodhisattvas.

[02:12]

But they're also kind of special bodhisattvas, sometimes called celestial bodhisattvas, who I'm talking about as archetypes of spiritual practice. And sometimes they come disguised in unusual forms. Some of them have many different forms. Sometimes they appear as a couple of hundred people listening to a talk at Green Gulch Pharma Sunday morning. But these handful of main figures, well there are a number of them, and there are two of them particularly in the room now, or images of two of them. So this is Jizo Bodhisattva, the Earth Womb Bodhisattva, who always appears as a monk, but I think of him as the Earth Mother Bodhisattva. He goes down into the earth, down into the after world, down into the depths of hell even, for the benefit of beings.

[03:14]

The other one in this room now is in the middle of every zendo, in the middle of every meditation hall. And he's the large figure in the main altar. And his name is Manjushri, which means noble or gentle one. So I want to talk today about Manjushri, Bodhisattva, and some of the background about what he represents in the traditions, cultures of Buddhism, and how he is a resource for us, and what aspect of our own spiritual practice can we see embodied, enacted, enlivened by Manjushri, Bodhisattva. So Manjushri, the name means noble, gentle one. In Japanese it's Manju, in Chinese, Wenji.

[04:18]

And his main focus is wisdom, the perfection of wisdom, the pranya paramita, the completion of wisdom. So he's known as the Bodhisattva of Wisdom. And he's also a great teacher of emptiness, the teaching of emptiness, which some of you may have heard about in Buddhism. And this word emptiness, this English word emptiness, is kind of misleading. This does not, this isn't about nothingness. Emptiness is kind of a technical term. It means that each thing is empty of separate existence. Each thing totally depends, each being, each one of us totally depends on everything else in the whole universe. So each of us sitting here is actually all the people we've ever known, our family and friends and all the things we've ever done

[05:22]

and the places we've been are also right here, and all the places we will be. So everything is totally interconnected and everything is totally alive. We are empty of separation. We are empty of estrangement. We are essentially, fundamentally empty of alienation. We don't always realize that. We get anxious and go through various dis-eases, but all of these are due to the conditions of our life. The conditioning that prevents us, the ignorance that prevents us, the anger or greed that prevents us from seeing how things really are. So what Manjushri is about is showing us the way things really are, showing us this realm of emptiness, this realm of interconnection, interconnectedness.

[06:22]

And particularly, the Manjushri is about seeing into the essence with each thing, seeing into what's really fundamental here, what's the most important thing right now in your life, in your being. And part of this is not getting stuck in all of the ideas, all of the views, all the preconceptions, all of the ways in which we identify ourselves and limit ourselves and imagine that the world is dead. The way our minds work is that we think of ourselves as subjects and the world out there as objects. So I'm talking to all of you. That's the way our usual conventional mind works. But actually, we're all doing this together. I couldn't be up here without each of you. When we see the world as a world of objects out there,

[07:30]

then we imagine that we are manipulating the world and that the world is dead, but of dead objects. Or maybe we see ourselves as the object and the world is victimizing us, doing things to us. So this is our usual way of thinking, the conventional worldly way of thinking, that we're separate from the world, that the world is a bunch of dead blobs walking around or whatever. A bunch of objects. So Manjushri teaches about how to see through this, how to see through all of these ideas we have that prevent us from being fully alive, prevent us from seeing how we can actually wake up together, how we can be together. So this is not about... This wisdom that Manjushri talks about is not about some knowledge that we acquire by reading books or talking to people or whatever.

[08:33]

This is something that we already fundamentally have. This insight, it's also called insight, this wisdom or pranayama. It's not something we have to get. It's not something we have to learn. It's not something we can acquire if we practice hard or whatever, study hard. It's something we already know. It's something so close that we forget about this. It's something that arises from inside us. So it's not some calculation or analysis. We can do that too. We can use our intellectual faculties that we have those, but this wisdom is something deeper than that. And there are various ways that that's symbolized in terms of Manjushri. So there's a particular iconography about Manjushri. Often he carries a sword held up

[09:37]

to slice through all of our confusions and delusions. So there's a side of Manjushri that's very fierce, even though he's noble and gentle. Sometimes he carries a scroll, the text of the Prajnaparamita, the perfection of wisdom. There are many sutras, many scriptures about this perfection of wisdom. Many, many pages of writings about it. And Manjushri is also known as the teacher of all the Buddhas and all the Bodhisattvas. So when we do this practice, we learn, we become Bodhisattvas through this insight. We have to see this emptiness. We have to see this interconnectedness to begin doing this way of living, this way of spiritual life.

[10:37]

So Manjushri is considered the teacher of all the Buddhas, even the Buddhas before Buddha. Even though he's a Bodhisattva, he's one who is not yet a Buddha or has given up being a Buddha. He's decided to work in the world as a Bodhisattva. As an awakening being. He teaches all the Buddhas and all the Bodhisattvas. There's another figure associated with Manjushri called Prajnaparamita, the perfection of wisdom, who is a kind of goddess, a female Bodhisattva. And she's known as the mother of all Buddhas. So what gives birth to Buddhas and what gives birth to Bodhisattvas and gives life to our own spiritual life and quest and practice and way of being in the world is this insight into our interconnectedness, is this insight into the emptiness or the non-separation of all things, our connectedness. So in addition to carrying a sword and sometimes this wisdom scroll,

[11:41]

actually the one Manjushri in our Zen do here is carrying a teaching staff. And sometimes he carries a lotus. So the form changes a little bit. Often sometimes he also rides a lion. So that whole altar we have there is a kind of lion for Manjushri. But often he's sitting on a lion, mounted on a lion. And usually the lion is kind of not fierce looking. Most of the lions I've seen that Manjushri rides, they're kind of noble and stately and the king of beasts, but not particularly fierce, not particularly threatening. Manjushri is sometimes paired with another one of these Bodhisattvas named Samantabhadra, who's the Bodhisattva of practice in the world. So Samantabhadra is the Bodhisattva who kind of embodies the functioning of this wisdom in the world, benefiting beings.

[12:44]

And that Bodhisattva rides on an elephant. So often you see next to, surrounding a Buddha figure, there's Manjushri on a lion and Samantabhadra on an elephant. The elephants tend to be more expressive than the lions I think. Sometimes you see these elephant figures laughing hilariously. They're really amazing, these amazing grins. Anyway, there are various images of Manjushri, slightly different forms, but the sword particularly and the lion and the teaching scroll are common. Another important aspect of Manjushri is that he's always considered to be young, youthful, a young prince. Which I find very interesting. Sometimes he's seen as a 16-year-old. He's got this youthful energy. He's this energetic, kind of wise guy kid in some ways.

[13:47]

And if you think of child prodigies, you can see kind of Manjushri energy, kind of youthful brilliance. So I think of Mozart as an example of this seeing into the essence of music and then coming back and making this wonderful music for us. Or a more modern example I think of Bobby Fischer in terms of chess, completely mastering and expressing how to see to the essence of that, that particular language as a young, very young person. So again, this wisdom is not something we acquire by experience, by age, by study. This wisdom is there from the very beginning. So young people often have a lot of insight. And people often can see very clearly what's going on. There's a story, probably you all know, The Emperor's New Clothes.

[14:54]

You all know that story. So everybody in the whole kingdom is fooled into thinking that this emperor has these wonderful new clothes that only wise people can see. But the real wise person is this kid who says, look, the emperor's naked. So Manjushri is like that. He sees through all the pretensions. He sees through all the fancy clothes and all the roles that people take on and all the positions and status. It's just cutting through, the sword that cuts through everything and sees what's fundamental, sees the basic fundamental sameness that we all are. So it's also particularly significant that Manjushri is in the center of the meditation hall, in all of the meditation halls in Buddhism, because this insight, this wisdom is connected to meditation.

[15:56]

It's connected to samadhi, to our settling on ourself. So Manjushri is also involved with ethics and discipline. This is part of the precondition, part of the ground that we need to develop to be able to settle very deeply into ourselves in meditation. So there's this kind of side of Manjushri that's very pure, this sword ready to cut through anything, riding on this lion without being budged. Some of the Manjushri figures I saw in Japan, he was a monk. So usually the bodhisattvas are like this main figure we have here, kind of wearing a topknot or a kind of crown-like pattern after the princes in India. With ornaments and fancy robes. But some of the Manjushris in Japan, in the meditation hall there, a monk riding on a lion, kind of sitting side-saddle on a lion.

[16:58]

And both the monk and the lion look very contented and happy to be there. So it's not that we meditate in order to get this wisdom. It's not that we meditate, and if we meditate very hard, if we practice very hard, we will become wise. It's that right there, just when we settle ourselves, when we cross our legs, or sitting in a chair, whatever, settle ourselves into ourselves very deeply, that pranayama, that wisdom, that insight is there. It comes out. So all we have to do is just settle into our seats, settle into our life. So another aspect of Manjushri that I feel is very important

[17:59]

is his work with language. I think Manjushri is particularly associated with language. So a lot of our delusions, a lot of our confusion, a lot of our conditioning comes from language. So we have to be very careful about that. We have a particular way of thinking. Sometimes we might be able to think in terms of music or images, but mostly, most of us think most of the time in words and language. And depending on what our mother tongue is, we have a particular grammar and syntax and way of arranging that language, and our thoughts become patterned after our language. So a lot of what Manjushri does is to cut through the ways in which we're conditioned by our language, to show that we are caught by our language, we're confused by the patterns of seeing ourselves as subjects and verbing objects out there, or being verbed by subjects out there.

[19:02]

Our thought is so conditioned by the way in which we're conditioned and the way we see words. Of course, we know Eskimos have many words for snow. So depending on our language, we see things in different ways. Our whole world is conditioned by that. So part of what Manjushri does is to cut through the ways in which we're caught by our language. He unpacks our language and shows us that we don't have to be caught by it. And part of what Manjushri does is he talks about this a lot. He's a great orator. In many of the sutras, he's the main questioner who is asking questions of the Buddha. Another name for Manjushri is Manjugosha, which means melodious-voiced one. So particularly, he's involved with talking about these problems of language. So I want to give you just a little sampling

[20:05]

of the flavor of this rhetoric that Manjushri uses to talk about emptiness, to try and unpack and cut through the ways in which we're confused by language. So in this sutra, the Buddha asked Manjushri, how should one abide in the perfection of wisdom when cultivating it? Manjushri answered, abiding in no Dharma, in no thing, or no teaching, is abiding in the perfection of wisdom. The Buddha asked Manjushri further, why is abiding in no Dharma called abiding in the perfection of wisdom? Manjushri answered, because to have no notion of abiding is to abide in the perfection of wisdom. And the Buddha asks again to Manjushri, if one thus abides in the perfection of wisdom, will his good roots increase or decrease? Manjushri answers, if one thus abides in the perfection of wisdom,

[21:07]

his good roots will not increase or decrease, nor will any Dharma, nor will the perfection of wisdom increase or decrease in nature or characteristic. World-honored one, Buddha, one who thus cultivates, this is Manjushri again, one who thus cultivates the perfection of wisdom will not reject the Dharmas of ordinary people, nor cling to the Dharma or teaching of saints and sages. Why? Because in the light of the perfection of wisdom there are no Dharmas to cling to or reject. There's nothing to hold on to, and there's nothing to push away either. Furthermore, if a person, when cultivating this perfection of wisdom, does not see any perfection of wisdom, and finds neither any Buddha Dharma to grasp, nor any Dharmas of ordinary people to reject, that person is really cultivating the perfection of wisdom. So, this is Manjushri's style of cutting through our ideas of abiding, our ideas of increase and decrease, of gain and loss,

[22:09]

our ideas of holy and ordinary. All of these are just ideas. And the more we can see that we just have these ideas, that we have things we want to increase and things we want to decrease, and we have some things that we think of as holy and some things we think of as ordinary and worldly and trivial, not worth taking our time with. These are just our ideas. Manjushri cuts through all of them. Basically there's nothing to hold on to and there's nothing to push away. We don't have to get rid of anything. So Manjushri is about experiencing this. This is why he's in the center of the meditation hall. We're brought here and we settle into this kind of space of seeing through, doing this work of seeing through the ways in which we're caught by our language and caught by our ideas, caught by our preconceptions. So this kind of talking that Manjushri does

[23:15]

later on in the Zen tradition and Zen stories and the koans, this develops into turning words, using words to cut through words, using words to turn around our way of seeing things, using words to turn around the way we're caught by words. So then we talk about living words and dead words. And if we see the words as dead objects or if we see them as just gently living tools that we can use to share with each other our experience of this perfection of wisdom. So there are many other aspects of Manjushri. One I wanted to mention, since we're here at Green Gulch Farm, it's very relevant to us, is that Manjushri is also, particularly in early China, was considered the bodhisattva of agriculture. So cutting through the ground

[24:18]

to open up the possibilities of fertility, to open up the seeds. There's a mountain in northern China called Mount Wutai or Wutai Shan, a five-terrace mountain. It's west of Beijing a little ways, but that far north almost. And since very early in Chinese Buddhist history, even in India, this was known as the home of Manjushri. So there are other places where people have gone on pilgrimages to see Manjushri, but particularly this mountain. Many pilgrims throughout history of Buddhism in Asia have gone to Mount Wutai to find Manjushri. And one of the stories about that mountain is that often Manjushri appears as a beggar or a homeless person to test the pilgrims to see how they will treat a beggar.

[25:22]

So every time we see a homeless person, we might be meeting Manjushri. And there are many colorful stories about this. There's one story of one of the temples on Mount Wutai where I was giving a feast and some peasant woman, ragged, poor, pregnant, peasant woman showed up, and they treated her very well. And then she transformed herself back into Manjushri. There's another story, one of the old classical stories from a thousand years ago of a noted monk traveling to Mount Wutai and finding a temple and going in and finding Manjushri is the teacher there and they have some dialogue. The monk leaves and just after he steps out of the temple, he turns around, out of the gate, he turns around and sees the temple has vanished into the scenery of the mountain. So there are all these kind of folklore stories about Manjushri appearing in these forms

[26:25]

and not being stuck on one form sitting up there in the altar. There's another story that's more modern. There was a Chinese monk named Suyon, Empty Cloud, who died in 1959. He was 120 years old when he died. He was the teacher of Master Hua who died this summer and was the founder of the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas up in Ukiah. Anyway, he had a very interesting life. Just living to 120 is quite a feat, especially since a couple of times he was tortured and beaten. In 1916 they thought he was a leftist so the government tortured him and then in 1951 he was tortured by the communists. He managed to survive. I guess they were practicing up for the Tibetans.

[27:26]

Anyway, he tells a story, though, in his autobiography of when he was in his 40s, so this is about a century ago. He decided to make a pilgrimage to Mount Wutai. The reason for his pilgrimage is that his mother had died in childbirth and his father had also died when he was young so he wanted to go to Mount Wutai and ask Manjushri to help them in their rebirths and to help their spirits. So he walked for a great distance and he did this kind of austere practice that some Chinese monks have done where he would take two steps and then do this full prostration and take two more steps. So it took a couple of years to get there. At one point he found a little shack to stay in and was caught in a snowstorm

[28:29]

and it snowed so much that he couldn't leave. After seven days he was pretty close to death, actually. He was freezing and had nothing to eat and some beggar came by and helped him, built a fire and nursed him. So he was able to continue and it turned out the beggar was from Mount Wutai and gave him some advice. Places to stay along the way and so forth. And then sometime later Su Yun tells that he was caught in malaria and was again very sick and the same beggar showed up and helped him and nursed him. And then carried his baggage as he walked and prostrated himself. So, you know, these stories are kind of not part of the Buddhism that we usually hear about.

[29:31]

These are kind of popular Buddhism, the devotional side of Buddhism from Asia. Anyway, he got to, finally Su Yun got to Mount Wutai and he asked after this fellow that had helped him and nobody knew about him but then he told one monk, he said, oh, that was Manjushri. So, anyway, that's a more recent story about Manjushri. So, anyway, Manjushri appears sometimes as a beggar, as a homeless person. Manjushri doesn't take any particular form. Usually he has a sword and rides a lion but he could be anyone. There's another side, the last main aspect I wanted to talk about of Manjushri. Particularly in the Zen tradition, there are these stories about Manjushri's leaking. There's this kind of, I don't want to say shadow side of Manjushri but this kind of, there's a kind of gentle criticism of Manjushri in a lot of the Zen stories.

[30:34]

So I want to talk about that too. So in the very first story in the Book of Serenity which is a collection of old Zen stories, Manjushri is in the assembly of the Buddha and I guess he's like the daoan. He's hitting the signals for the lecture and Shakyamuni Buddha, the historical Buddha who lived in the 6th century B.C. in India, walked into the assembly hall and came up to his seat and Manjushri pounded the gavel or hit the bell and said, clearly observe the dharma of the king of dharma, Shakyamuni. The dharma of the king of dharma is thus and hit the bell again. After that there was nothing more for Shakyamuni to do but get up and walk out. So this is a wonderful story.

[31:39]

Manjushri is pointing out just this, just this dharma of the Buddha. So the Buddha is also here, sitting in front of Manjushri on our altar is a smaller statue of the Buddha and I think that represents that the Buddha is the student of Manjushri. Manjushri is the teacher of Buddhas. In this story, Manjushri says, clearly observe the dharma, the teaching of the king of dharma is thus, just this. So reality is just this, this, this, this. All of our words about it are just babble in a way. But the verse commentary to this story goes, the unique breeze of reality, do you see? Continuously creation runs her loom and shuttle,

[32:41]

weaving the ancient brocade, incorporating the forms of spring. But nothing can be done about Manjushri's leaking. So there's this sense of the reality, the ebb and flow of reality, the interweaving of the ancient brocade of reality, this unique breeze of reality. So Manjushri doesn't need to say anything. Why did he, you know, hit the bell and make the Buddha leave? There's a kind of sense here of Manjushri as a smart-ass kid kind of telling everybody what's so obvious. Nothing can be done about Manjushri's leaking. I remember Kadagiri Roshi, who was the abbot of the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center and was also abbot here for a little while and practiced with us. I remember him saying, when you go outside and you leave the meditation hall

[33:43]

and you see a beautiful flower or a beautiful sky or a child smiling, whatever, and you say, oh wow, that's already too much. Just saying wow is too much. Just to see each thing is the point, just to be there. We don't need to say anything about it. And yet Manjushri persists in spewing out all of this talk. Nothing can be done to stop Manjushri's leaking. So there are a number of stories that relate to this. There's another famous story from a sutra called the Vimalakirti Sutra. And Vimalakirti was a famous, very wise, very enlightened, if you can say such a thing, layperson who lived at the same time as Shakyamuni Buddha in India. And the story goes that

[34:49]

the Buddha heard that Vimalakirti was sick. Vimalakirti was ill. He was not well. So he asked his disciples and the Bodhisattvas, can someone go please and call on Vimalakirti and see how he's doing? And one by one, each of the disciples says, well, I'm sorry, well-honored one, I'm sorry, Buddha, but I don't feel like I'm up to going to pay my respects, pay respects to Vimalakirti. The last time I ran into Vimalakirti, he started questioning me and completely invalid, completely showed up. What I thought was my strongest practice. So each one of the disciples, one by one, Vimalakirti in his last encounter had shown how they really hadn't fully realized specifically the area they were most known for.

[35:54]

And all the Bodhisattvas also beg off. They don't want to get there, too embarrassed to go see Vimalakirti. And finally, Manjushri, who is this noble prince of wisdom who is not afraid of anything, says, okay, I'll go and talk to Vimalakirti. And then suddenly all of the other disciples, the Bodhisattvas and the heavenly beings all witnessing this say, oh, that should be an interesting discussion. Let's go. And Vimalakirti knows they're coming and empties out his small 10-foot room and somehow they all fit in there. Anyway, the various things happen, but there's this one section I wanted to mention that Manjushri, after some talk, says, well, gee, we have all these wonderful Bodhisattvas here. Let's talk about non-duality. How do we enter into non-duality? So non-duality is another way of talking about this non-separation, this emptiness, that we're not really separate, that there is this way in which we're totally interconnected. So how do we enter into this?

[36:56]

So this is Manjushri's question. One by one, the Bodhisattvas give some little expression of what non-duality is for them and how they entered into realization of non-duality, these wonderful little teachings. Then Manjushri says finally, well, you know, those are all very wonderful, but actually you're all subtly kind of missing the point. Just by the way you're using your language, you're all caught, and all of your talking misses it a little bit. And he turns to Vimalakirti and asks, O Vimalakirti, wise one, what can you tell us about the entry into non-duality? And Vimalakirti... So this is known as the thunderous silence of Vimalakirti.

[37:59]

And Manjushri says, oh, you know, you're far beyond me, and goes on and on about it. So there are a number of stories in Zen tradition like this. There's one about a tenzo, a head cook in a temple on Mount Wutai. I don't know if Lee is still here. Is the kitchen still here? They have to go off soon and prepare the soup for lunch, I think. But in this one temple on Mount Wutai, the tenzo is the head cook, was preparing soup, and he looked up on the shelf above the oven, and there was Manjushri sitting there. And he went back to preparing his soup, putting in the ingredients and tasting it. Manjushri was still up there, and Manjushri kept coming back, and finally the tenzo took his spoon

[39:01]

and just started beating Manjushri, get out of here. And he said, even if old man Shakyamuni came, I would beat him up. So this is the tenzo's practice. It's just to make the food to feed everyone. So just taking care of, so the Zen attitude is just taking care of our daily life, of all the things we have to take care of, our friends and family and relationships, cooking our meals and getting the kids off to school, and all of that, that's the essence of Zen practice. That's the expression of our meditation. Even going to the meditation hall and sitting with Manjushri is less important. This is the sense of this story, that just to take care of each thing is the expression of this perfection of wisdom. And there's Manjushri going on, leaking, babbling on. So it's a little funny because here I am,

[40:05]

sometimes some of us up here babble on about this stuff. There's really nothing to say. It's all just a commentary on silence. So there's another kind of leaking that I hope doesn't happen with Manjushri. It's a more kind of serious problem today because I guess there are protests right now about the French nuclear testing. It just so happens that Japan has been involved in developing a nuclear reactor, a fast breeder reactor to develop more plutonium, as if we didn't have enough of it from all the American and Russian warheads. So a lot of us are concerned about what the Japanese are doing

[41:08]

to create more plutonium in the world. It's a very dangerous substance that will be dangerous for a very long time. So the Japanese are also importing plutonium from the processing plant in France and shipping it across the oceans. It's very dangerous. And it happens that they've named this reactor Manju, after Manjushri. So I hope this Manjushri doesn't leak. I think somebody thought that maybe giving it this nice name would be a kind of blessing and make it secure or something. But I'm offended. Anyway, part of talking about these different Bodhisattva figures is to see in what way they represent aspects of our own practice, our own Bodhisattva practice. And there are a number of, as I say, half a dozen or so of these main figures. And each one of them kind of gives us a different aspect or a different flavor of what this Bodhisattva practice is.

[42:11]

And the point of it is to see how that's useful for you, in what ways this resonates with some aspect of your own practice. And I've been trying to see how to kind of make these figures more accessible to us by thinking about people in our own lives or people in our own culture who exemplify some aspect of these different figures. So maybe we can discuss this in a discussion period later. Some of you may have some stories about your own encounters with Manjushri or examples of people who you think of in connection with this Manjushri force in us and out there in the world helping us. But I have a few examples just to get that started. People in our own culture. So the first person I think of is Albert Einstein. So relativity, his theory of relativity.

[43:17]

Relativity is another translation for sunyata, which is usually translated as emptiness. We're all interrelated. So seeing into the essence of the essential nature of atoms, seeing what that is essentially, seeing the fundamental nature of matter. And this is kind of a Manjushri activity. And Einstein particularly fits this because he had his main insights when he was young. And I've been hearing stories lately about when he was older, he was at Princeton and people used to come, pilgrims used to come to kind of see Einstein, this great man. I've heard that he used to just bicycle around there and smile and wave at everybody with his wild hair. He dressed rather shabbily. Sort of like the Manjushri beggars. I heard the story about him being up at an award ceremony

[44:19]

and someone noticed he was wearing two different color socks. And my father has a picture on his study wall of Einstein wearing this kind of a little bit grungy old gray sweater and wild hair. And apparently the photographer had gone to Princeton to take a picture of him and found Einstein like this. And over the corner of the picture is an autograph, but originally there was a big hole in the sweater, which is what appealed to my father. But then the photographer thought to cover that up a little bit. So this is just an example of someone who represents some of this Manjushri energy. And I mentioned before, you know, Mozart as a young person seeing into the language of music or Bobby Fischer with chess. But I also think particularly Manjushri has to do with poetry and literature and Manjushri's constant trying to tell us about this.

[45:21]

This leaking that is part of Manjushri's commitment and dedication is to kind of keep trying to talk about this emptiness stuff. To keep trying to work with language to expand our ways of thinking, to cut through our traditional ways of thinking. So it happens that our abbot, Norman Fischer, is doing a workshop this weekend on poetry and enlightenment. I think they're over in the yurt now, but it kind of fits in with Manjushri. I was thinking of different poets and literary figures who represent this also. So, for example, E.E. Cummings, the poet, playing with the form of the language on the page and breaking lines in the middle of words and making the shape of the poem part of the poem. Helping us to play with language in a new way. Or Gertrude Stein. So I think Manjushri might have said very easily,

[46:25]

there's no there there, even about Marin, much less the East Bay. I don't know if he would have said a rose is a rose is a rose. Maybe he would have said a rose is no rose is a rose, or a rose is no rose is no rose. Anyway. And I particularly think of James Joyce, who's very difficult to read and I don't understand, but there's this very difficult. Okay, this is from Finnegan's Wake. Television kills telephony in brother's broil. Our eyes demand their turn. Let them be seen. And wolf bone bale fires blaze the trail most. If only that merry nothing may burst her bibby buck she. When they set fire, then she's got to glow. So we may stand some chances of warming to what every circa batcher, tom or hum would like to know.

[47:29]

The first Humphreys latitudinous beaver with puggery behind. Calibus belong, Big Boss belong, King Kang the toll. His foreign hand bow, his elborum surtout. The refaced unimaginables of gingerine hue. The state's slate umbrella. His gruff woolsily wellsily with the fin-brin knots and the gauntlet upon the hand, which in an hour not for him solely evil had struck down the might he might have been, d'Estere, of whom his nation seemed almost already to be about to have need. I have no idea what that means. It sort of sounds like English, doesn't it? So the last example I thought I'd give one of my favorite poets who seems to fit the Montgomery mode very well is Bob Dylan. Of course, writing very penetrating lyrics,

[48:35]

cutting through, showing us aspects of problems in our society and problems of being a human being, pain and desire and loss and so forth. So he's also particularly, his art is particularly singing, performing more than writing, so that fits Montgomery too. He's this great orator. And even though Dylan's performances these days are great, as good as anything he's done, and a lot of his recent songs I like a lot, but he's probably still most known for his songs when he was very young and he sang about being forever young. And then he kept changing, he keeps changing what he does. He doesn't get pinned down into any particular shape or mode or mold. So he's always upsetting his audiences by changing his style and changing his contents. So I think of that as also Montgomery not abiding in any particular mode.

[49:37]

And there are a number of Dylan lines which remind me of this too, like, there's nothing, really nothing to turn off. And this wonderful question, are birds free from the chains of the sky? So this is also turning our idea of freedom and emptiness in the sky. Anyway, we can, if some of you have other ideas of how you've encountered Manjushri in your own life or practice or other people who kind of represent this, we can talk about it in discussion. So, thank you, Manjushri Bodhisattva. They are in... ... ...Ringo, it seems like it's their first time. There are a lot of first-timers. I am not a first-timer. What is a Bodhisattva? Do you have to take the precepts

[50:40]

or are you just automatically a Bodhisattva? Well, basically a Bodhisattva is just anyone who's dedicated to awakening all beings, including themselves. You know, all beings is out there and in here, but just making that commitment. So there are various... So, you know, everybody here is a Bodhisattva, obviously, but there are various levels of formal ceremonial activity that one can do to kind of align oneself with that. So we have ceremonies of taking lay ordination, taking precepts. I mean, these are all parts of, in this particular tradition, of ways of aligning ourselves with that. So the particular precepts, the particular ethical precepts we take here, they're actually the same for laypeople and for priests. And it's the ceremony we use for wedding ceremonies and for funerals. I mean, it's the basic ceremony. All the ceremonies are patterned after it,

[51:42]

and there are 16 precepts. So formally, taking refuge is kind of the basic thing, taking refuge in Buddha. And that just means taking refuge in living for awakening, living in awakening, awakening. So there are various... So there are practices one can do. There are lots and lots... There are libraries full of practices one can do to develop one's capacity to do this practice. But basically, everybody who's doing it is in some sense a bodhisattva. And when I was mentioning people that we know in our culture who I think of in connection with Manjushri, for example, those are... You know, I don't... And I think there are people who are Christians or Jews or Hindus or Muslims or who are atheists or who don't care about Buddhism at all who are bodhisattvas, very clearly, from my point of view, which doesn't mean that they're Buddhists.

[52:42]

I don't care about that, really. They are doing that work in the world. So, to some extent, it's just seeing how to benefit all beings. But then there is, in this tradition, practices that are offered that one can do. I don't know if that covers your question. Yeah, it's hard to include... I mean, I want to try and include people who are here for the first time when I talk here, and also people who've come every week because I know there are people who do that. And so, you know, I'm always failing a little bit. Yes? I'd like to ask you if you're a bodhisattva, you can dress what you consider to be a fairly decent life and do what you have to do and not forget your life. Well, that could be part of it. But part of being a bodhisattva is also being aware of the suffering and problems of the world and responding in some way. But there are different ways.

[53:43]

So, Manjushri's way of doing this work is to try and articulate something about what the teaching is. So, different bodhisattva figures have different kind of emphases. There could be many... There's a particular set of half a dozen archetypes or main figures of bodhisattvas in the East Asian tradition, but we could make them up, too, and probably that'll happen as Buddhism settles into America. If I may just ask, I was struck with what the cook said last time in one of the lectures, the tonso, I guess it's called? Tenzo. Tenzo, the cook. Just cooking and preparing the food and serving it to people and obviously enjoying what he was doing very much. A great feeling. And that struck me as being an awfully good way to do a lot of good. To a lot of people. Yes. But, I mean, what's wrong with that?

[54:45]

I don't think anything's wrong with that. I think sometimes we get carried away with trying to save the world and I don't think that one person can do that. Well, the bodhisattva ideal is that one person can do that, but all together we can do that. One person can be committed to doing that together with everyone. So we can't do it alone, but together we can do it. And each person has their particular role. This is why there are many different teachings and sutras and schools and traditions of teaching in Buddhism. This is why there are many different spiritual traditions in the world aside from Buddhism. This is why there are many different bodhisattva figures because each of us has our own way. Each of us has our own special gift, our own way of sharing spirit with the world and encouraging everyone to wake up together. So, yeah, we each have our own way to express it. There are as many different bodhisattvas as there are people

[55:47]

intending to do that. And there are ways of deepening ones. No matter what one's approach or style, no matter what the psychology that you're using to express it for yourself, there are ways of deepening that and widening one's capacity to... Maybe you could cook for two people and next year cook for three people. I don't know. There are ways of developing that. But it's not exactly that you get something new. It's something that we're already doing. Yeah. I want to say that it was very helpful this morning. I've always had difficulty with so many figures of the Buddha and all the different statues. It felt like idolatry to me or something. This was very helpful in making me understand how it was used to teach and each one had a different way of teaching and represented something different. So I thank you for that. Oh, you're welcome. Yeah, it's not that we bow down to a statue. We bow down to the spirit of the Buddha in all of us,

[56:52]

in all beings, or to the spirit of Manjushri. I've been to a thousand Buddhas in Japan, and it's like, oh, come on. Enough Buddhas, enough, enough, enough. Well, there are some Zen centers where they don't have any Buddhas, and maybe those are the places for you. I don't know. Well, no, it's all right now. Yes, hi. I was interested in what you said about language and how it influences not just the way we relate to each other, but also the way we even think about our spiritual life and how limiting and how limited it is because of our language. And when I'm in Asia, I'm struck with how easy it seems to be for Asians to practice Buddhism

[57:53]

and how much of that is influenced by their language and how much by their culture. I think Westerners in particular are very caught up in pronouns, me and my and I and not you, that kind of thing. And it has a strong influence in the way, not only in the way we practice, but the way we even can conjure up some of the ideas of Buddhism. You know, this I thing that we have in the West that doesn't exist so much in Asian countries. And maybe if I could speak a little more to that. Well, I could start babbling on for hours about that, so I'll try not to do that. Yeah, you're raising questions I'm very interested in

[58:56]

since I work translating Chinese and Japanese end texts and I'm very interested in how do we put these ideas or these teachings into English? How do we understand them in the original language? So, yeah, how we see these things is very much a part of language. And, you know, in some sense Chinese and Japanese maybe have some advantages over English. Often there's an understood subject, it's just understood in context. They don't use pronouns, as you say. They don't use singular or plural, it's understood in context. Chinese and Japanese are actually very different. The verb is at the end of the sentence in Japanese, so in a sense you have noun, [...] verb. The subject-object separation is maybe not quite as stark. And English is particularly about precision, which is why English has taken over the world, because it's very good for, you know, science and mechanical things and instruction manuals and things like that, it's very precise.

[59:58]

So, yeah, we could look at those differences in English, and particularly translating, we have to think of the, if I use a word like emptiness, which is kind of the literal meaning of shunyata, but that has all these associations to us of nothingness, which is not what it's about. Or if we talk about faith in Buddhism, it's very hard not to get confused because we have these notions of belief and faith from Judeo-Christian tradition. So a lot of, there's a lot, we need to unpack our language and, like, think about what do we really mean when we're looking at these teachings. But the other side of it is that even if you're Chinese or Japanese or, you know, if your native language is Sanskrit, still, any language, you know, still there's a separation in our mind. So, you know, the Chinese and Japanese have the same problem we do, you know, finding how to see everything connected. I mean, there are ways in which Japanese culture strongly reinforces kind of harmoniously working together.

[61:02]

So that has its advantages and disadvantages. So a lot of it is cultural, I think. But the point is not to get rid of language, also. I mean, we have to connect with silence, so we connect with silence, maybe with a deeper silence, maybe in a meditation hall, and then find out how to use it when we're cooking, you know, or talking. But the thing about Manjushri is using language to kind of point out the difficulties and limitations and inadequacies of language, to use language to turn around the ways in which we're caught by it. So all language has its problems, and all language can be used to kind of look at what those problems are. Yes, ma'am. In response to this language and the quietness and everything, Richman, I remember, speaking one time and said that we are very uncomfortable in America and in the English language with silence, and the Japanese language are very comfortable,

[62:03]

but the silence is in between, they don't say anything. And I wondered if you could respond to that from your understanding. I could talk about it too, I guess, but... Does that fit? I think, yeah, there are cultures where they have... Ritual is about silence in a way. Ritual is about moving around in silence, so all of the forms and rituals that we have here, which are inherited from Japanese monastic Buddhism, not just monastic, but they're all about how do we move and function in silence, you know, bowing, offering incense, eating bowls, and when we're eating in the zendo, moving around in the meditation hall in silence. So those are chances for us to experience that. So, yeah, I think our society is pretty noisy,

[63:05]

and there are more rituals and ceremonies and things like that as part of everyday activity in Japanese society, and that reflects the way, maybe, that Buddhism has influenced Japanese culture and aesthetics. But we can also kind of over-romanticize that too. I think we have to work with where we're at, you know, so how do we practice with rap music, or I don't know, whatever is in the world that we're in, how do we work with that, I think, is really... Just being quiet and listening to what's going on has been very valuable. It's a time where I was always filling up the air with questions or with advice or whatever. I've been practicing being quiet lately, and it certainly has great rewards. Yeah, Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, talks a lot. The Bodhisattva of Compassion is named Avalokiteshvara,

[64:07]

Guanyin or Kamsayon, different names, but her name means to hear the sounds of the world. So compassion in Buddhism has a lot to do with empathetic listening, just hearing suffering, hearing sound, just being present with it. Yes? Well, I'd like to preface my question by saying the first time I've had contact with Buddhism was the talk this morning. And something I have been struggling with in recent years is, as I hear about the heinous crimes and so forth taking place in the world, what is the appropriate stance to what would appear to be an obvious enemy? And when you spoke this morning about... You just made reference to the communist practicing Tibetans and then the plutonium situation coming out of France. And I find myself imagining if one of the people responsible for these things

[65:12]

came to the doors of the Zindo... Well, the Zindo is a formal situation, apparently. What would be the response of the perfect Buddha to the presence of someone like that? I don't know about the perfect Buddha, but... Well, this is why we try not to talk about politics too much, because we want everybody to feel welcome. In fact, the head of Lawrence Livermore Labs for many years was a regular student at the Berkeley Zen Center. So... Please check. Part of my practice is working with Buddhist images. I was fortunate enough to spend ten days with the Gyuto monks, assisting them in the preparation of a number of statues for consecration. And I was doing the metal work. I was training one of the monks in my process in doing the metal work.

[66:14]

And I put a small kit of tools together and advised him that he should put an anvil together to flatten out some of the metal, and that a piece of railroad track makes a great anvil. And I said to him... I also said, well, as a joke, you know, I said, well, gee, it was my impression that Chinese railroad track might make very good anvils. And he chuckled a little, and he looked at me and said, His Holiness the Dalai Lama has instructed us to regard the Chinese as our teachers. Yeah, so that's a particularly good example. You know, this is the Tibetans and the Chinese because His Holiness the Dalai Lama refers to them as our supposed enemies or something like that. That... There's a wonderful story that Joanna Macy tells about meeting a...

[67:20]

talking with a young Tibetan lama who was telling her stories about what happened in his monastery and about his friends and fellow monks being tortured and murdered and all in front of his eyes. And she saw a tear. And he said, those poor Chinese, they will have such troubles later. And he was crying for the Chinese. So this is a level of understanding which is hard for us to imagine. But, you know, the enemy is not any particular people. You know, the enemy is intolerance. So the enemy is misunderstanding, the enemy is ignorance, the enemy is the sense of separation. So this is difficult to practice with. But, you know, Pat Robertson is not the problem. The problem is the idea that some people are right and the other people should be rounded up or whatever. What we actually do with that, I think, sometimes there's nothing you can do.

[68:21]

I mean, reading, you know, to kind of hear the cries of the world, to kind of, you know, be aware of what's going on, maybe even to read the newspaper, is part of being alive and aware in the world. What we actually do is to respond when we can. So there's a student who lives here who went to Bosnia, and she's actually of Croatian descent, and she went to Bosnia and was working in refugee camps. And there's some people who could actually do something to help in situations like that. The point is when there's something in front of you right now that you can help with to do it, you know. I had some association with the Hindi tradition and was told that we should regard our enemies as stepping stones to heaven. Excuse me for mentioning Pat Robertson, if there are any, you know, conservative Republicans here, I welcome their viewpoints. Yes? My own resistance to awakening

[69:23]

makes most bodhisattvas rather unwelcome. How so? Well, in other words, that which I judge to be uncomfortable or disturbing or not practical or not in line with my form of thinking is usually something bringing me a message. And it's in learning that bodhisattvas aren't all classic, classic Chinese beggars, that some of them are in very uncomfortable situations and people that are bringing me a message. But I have a lot of resistance to not receiving. So bodhisattvas aren't all Santa Claus. I think some of them are very, very scary people. Yeah, this is an important point. Just to see that is very, very important. That's just to be aware that everyone's on resistance. So the places where we widen our capacity

[70:24]

and develop our ability to help everyone do this together are particularly those places that are difficult for us. The other thing that struck me in your talk is that embracing the concept of emptiness, that separation from anything is an illusion. As a bodhisattva, I'm really self-serving in that nobody gets off until we all get off, the cycle of birth and death. How is that self-serving? How do you see that as self-serving? Well, if ever am I going to singularly, within myself, go beyond karma, or do just everything? Am I separate? Or is it a process of everything?

[71:26]

Is it my own? Am I separate from it? Or is everything part of it? Yeah, well, the bodhisattva teaching, the Mahayana teachings, this way of looking at the world is that you're not separate, that it can't happen except together, actually. That you can purify your own defilements and do all these austere practices and go off into the desert and do hundreds of vision quests and be this glowing person, but if there are homeless people in misery down the street, there's still some work to do, right? So we have to do it together. But then the other side of that is what a Buddha is, is someone who sees it. Actually, we've already done that together. So the fact of a Buddha is that what the Buddha sees is that everything is awakened. That's what it is for a Buddha to awaken, is to awaken with everything. So in a sense, we are the adornments of Shakyamuni Buddha's Buddhafield right here, right now, and we're just kind of working out all our karma

[72:29]

and helping each other to realize it. It's already been done. It's already taken care of. We're all already okay. And yet, and yet, and yet, there are terrible things that happen. So how do we deal with that? How do we be with that? How do we help each other with that? So you were talking about bodhisattvas. There was something else you said that I wanted to say something else about, about bodhisattvas being scary. Yeah. There's another thing in the... Yeah, I think bodhisattvas can be scary. You know, the people who actually are helping us, who are actually our teachers, are the place, are the things that make us uncomfortable. You know, when we're feeling uncomfortable and everything's taken care of, that's when we're trying to abide in something, when we think we can hang out someplace and we've got it all figured out. That's where we're,

[73:29]

we're really going to have a problem because, like the Chinese, thinking they can conquer Tibet and kill all the Tibetans, it's going to come back somehow. There's this thing in the Vimalakirti Sutra also which says that, which says that only a bodhisattva can hassle another bodhisattva. So, you know, once you're, once you're working in your life to really acknowledge and take care of everyone and do your best to be, to live your life in that way, and, you know, it doesn't mean you have to, it doesn't mean you have to do anything different from what you're doing right now, but how do you do it and to be aware of it. When you're, when you're moving in that direction, when you have that intention, then the people that come and give you a hard time are, you know, helping you. But it's not, it's definitely not always comfortable. I mean, maybe it might be sometime, you know, just, just for a change of pace, but... Yes? By helping you to see

[74:35]

how you can develop your capacity to be in this other situation that is, that you haven't done before, to be able to, if you're used to feeding three people, that somehow you have to feed ten, and to see that you can do it, or to learn how to do it. You know, you can't learn how to do it by thinking about it, you have to actually be forced to do it sometimes. Or whatever the situation is, to be in a situation that stretches your capacity to, you know, care about yourself and everyone else. That's all. Yes? Thank you. Sometimes people will talk, you know, just about anything. It's easier to relate when you talk like that. The reason I'm speaking is

[75:35]

I've been feeling strongly about this idea for a long time. And the idea is true psychology. What I'm experiencing is the teachings of emptiness are great. My fear is that we'll hear it, and it'll seem wonderful, it'll seem boring or something. But what I'm saying is that there's a perspective, we have a reference point. And that's what I'm trying to say, is that all these teachings are in conjunction with our basic sense of body and mind. So I just wanted to stress that. Because these are big issues, if we talk about them. And usually like the practice tradition will take care of a lot of it. But I'm trying to say we're all unique individuals on a certain level. So like, for example, in China a lot of these great men and women who got profound teachings, their master knew them or they were part of a greater culture

[76:37]

where they had a sense of who they were as individuals. And the reason I'm saying this is I'm trying to share like there is such a thing as true psychology I've heard from great teachers. I think there is. I don't know. But I've heard this from Catholic people and Islamic people that there is such a thing as true psychology. What do I mean? Well like, we can understand ourselves on the most simple level. On the simple level. We don't have to guess. We don't have to like feel uncomfortable and hate somebody else. Being mindful of that is part of true psychology. And that to me, we have to have that perspective and the idea of emptiness. That's what I'm saying. If I just sit here like Oh, I just got off the book from Middle East and I heard about voidness and that's great and then there is no integrity there. Kind of that kind of idea. That's what I've been thinking about. So I just wanted to share that because I learned that and I'm sure it's part of this practice but I just wanted to share that with everybody that it's not like this big boat of emptiness

[77:40]

and we're all going to get under or somehow emptiness will rain on us. It's like there's an actual process of understanding. Yeah, this is a really important point. So it's not... So emptiness, first of all, this emptiness thing is not nothingness. It's not... I think that some people come to Buddhist philosophy or to meditation and think they can kind of abide there. Think they can hang out there. I think that's, you know, okay, I'll just, you know, everything will be empty and it'll, you know, groovy, you know. We can just hang out there and whatever goes, man, go with the flow and all that. And that's not what it's about at all. So, right, we each have to use this particular... We have to do this. We have to connect with this in the particular life that we're doing. So Manjushri is like, you know, in a way the first bodhisattva. He's the entryway. So the entryway to bodhisattva practice is having this insight into our connectedness but then there are different bodhisattvas

[78:42]

to help develop different aspects of what do we do then? And emptiness, you know, the greatest disease in a sense in Buddhism is to be stuck in emptiness. So Nagarjuna, who was the great teacher of emptiness in India, said the greatest attachment is attachment to emptiness. And in all of the Zen literature there are traditional warnings about being stuck in bliss states in meditation. So the point isn't that you hear about emptiness and just hearing about it, then you think everything's okay and, you know, let's all go home and watch TV or whatever. You actually have to do it and you have to then... The implications of that in your life is the true psychology. What I gather is what you're talking about in terms of true psychology. How do we then, each of us in our particular situation, take our dharma position, take our uprightness, be who we are most fully

[79:42]

as the total representation of everything? Each of us is a particular expression of the whole of interconnectedness. So we have to take responsibility for that then. So it's not that we have to... Again, it's not that we have to find something or be someone that we aren't already. It's not that we have to reach some other state of consciousness or being or anything like that. We already have it, but then how do we practice with it is very involved. Yes? I was just wondering... This has occurred to me a number of times but for some reason I'm on the fence about how everything that you've been saying here today kind of has been mulling through my mind around this. That idea of, for instance, the Tibetan destruction by the communists and incidents like that. Is it possible... I mean, I look at the world

[80:46]

and I sometimes wonder there must be a good purpose, a bodhisattva teaching, a value for these events to take place. And I wonder, is it possible that we're getting stuck in some spot and maybe even within the realm of a great religion like the Tibetans, that maybe they were caught in the mystical too much and maybe the communist movement brings you back into a whole different point of view. Maybe we need to have other points of views placed upon us, even through, I know it sounds terrible, but this violence. I just... I keep questioning, what's the value of it coming into our circle of teaching? For all of us. It's not just those people. They may be the people that are demonstrating for all the rest of us to see. Yeah, there's lots of ways to see that.

[81:46]

There's a little problem in that too. I mean, there is this sense in which everything that happens has some reason. I mean, everything happens according to cause and effect. Everything has some... Everything that we do will have some result and everything that happens, there's some totally complex chain of causation behind. And maybe everything that happens on some level is okay. You know, this is the best of all possible worlds. Excuse me, but a dawn line came to mind. There is no mistake in life. As some people say, and it's true that sometimes you can see it that way. You know, there is this side of things that everything happens for a reason. And that's fine from the Tibetans' point of view. So going back to the story of the Chinese and the Tibetans, from the Tibetans' point of view, okay, maybe they are now sharing their teaching with the world and getting... meeting the modern world and having to deal with the problems of theocracy

[82:50]

and does that work and so forth. From the point of view of the Chinese, though, who are going in and using Tibet as a nuclear dump and torturing many, many, you know, tens of thousands of Tibetans and so forth. For the Chinese, it's a problem. Now, it's also a problem for the... I don't want to say it's great for those Tibetans who are now in torture camps and prison camps and labor camps, but it's very complicated. And our understanding of what is good and what is bad and what is right and what is wrong is, you know, just based on our own language, based on our own views, based on our own conceptions. So we don't always know what the result of things will be. There are lots of stories about something that seemed to be terrible happening that had some wonderful result or vice versa. So we don't know how things will turn out, but still we're responsible for what we do. And it's not that, you know... If you see somebody harming somebody else,

[83:50]

you should try and, you know, and stop that, if you can. Oh, hey, Charlie. Hi. Bodhisattvas often exemplify right helping or correct action in helping. Could you say something about correct action in helping or correct helping? Right helping? Yes. Well, there's this... One of the perfections after wisdom is skillful means. Actually, the one right after wisdom in one of the lists is skillful means or helpful means. So having the tools to be helpful in different situations, that kind of skillfulness, that level of helpfulness is kind of the art or the craft of spiritual life, bodhisattva practice, whatever. So there's also a perfection of knowledge

[84:55]

that is kind of complementary but different from the perfection of wisdom. The perfection of knowledge is knowing about how things work in the world. Knowing how to build a house, knowing how to fix a car, knowing how to take care of certain kind of people when they're in certain kind of situations. So this is not like knowing facts and being able to regurgitate them on tests. It's like knowing how to take care of situations once you've already kind of had some sense of this insider wisdom or the sense that we're all connected and understanding that we actually have to live our life kind of trying to help everybody. I don't think we really have much choice in that. I mean, people can try and accumulate as much as they can and build their little fortress on the hill or something, but we actually are connected. That is not sustainable.

[85:57]

But once you see that and find your own way of... It's not about being guilty and it's not about being... You don't have to go off in this wonderful Mary Oliver poem. You don't have to crawl across the desert. Just wherever you are and whatever life you're doing to find a way to be helpful. And then knowing about different things and how to be helpful in that situation is this kind of art or craft that we develop over time and from the help of people who give us a hard time. That helps us to learn different skillful means. So one of the images for that in the Bodhisattvas is the Bodhisattva of Compassion, who I didn't talk about today, the Avalokiteshvara, who hears the sounds of the world, often is depicted... One of the many, many forms she takes is this figure with a thousand arms, and each hand has an eye in it, so a thousand eyes also. And each of the hands...

[86:59]

They have these statues over in Asia and Japan, these amazing statues of standing or seated figures with these... Sometimes there's only a hundred hands representing a thousand, but each of the arms holds, like, different tools. And there are all kinds of things. Some of them have Buddhas or suns or moons or flowers or vases or axes or, you know, all kinds of things. Rope. So all of those tools are how we respond and how we develop helpfulness. And there's a particular Zen koan about those thousand arms and eyes. One monk says to the other, Why does the Bodhisattva of Compassion have a thousand hands and eyes? And the other one says, It's like reaching back for your pillow in the middle of the night. So it's not that you kind of try and figure out how to be helpful. It's like when you're actually doing this, when you're actually seeing your life this way,

[87:59]

these things come to hand, what's needed is there. And gradually doing this, we develop tools, we develop capacity, we see things from, you know, whichever of the hands is most useful at that point, and we use the implement that we have to be helpful. So it's that kind of just this immediate response, hearing the sounds of the world and just responding. It's not that we have to figure out, calculate, how are we going to, you know, fix the problem in Bosnia. It's like, what can I do right now? So that's one aspect of that. The Bodhisattva Samantabhadra, who's the Bodhisattva of the wisdoms functioning in the world, of helpful practice in the world, takes on various social roles and actually works at kind of some of the social issues and social problems that may be our difficulties. So there are various ways of working with it. And again, the thing is to find out what is helpful,

[89:00]

what can I do, you know, given my situation and who I am, how can I be helpful? So we each have that. Yes? One of the things that you brought up in your talk, at the very beginning, you said something about, well, a lot of the things you said I could totally relate to from experience in my life, and so many little points I picked up and brought up, little stories of my own. And anyway, you said, if we can see the world, something like this, not as like blobs of something like objects, and see the world as, well, what I thought of as like light and energy, and seeing it all as light, which to me is seeing the God within each of us, it makes it much easier to see the connection. And I think people are getting too involved in,

[90:04]

you know, what's that, like you say, abiding, where's that space we can abide in, where we can be safe, where, you know, we have all the answers and all of that. And I think the only answer is, as you were saying, it's like being at that place where you can enjoy everything from that point of view, where it's all part of you, because it's all about life, that love, and life, it is just life, that's all it is. It's life and life only. But people are always asking the question to me, and probably to everyone else who believes in anything, okay, if you believe in Jesus or Buddha or whatever, why do all these bad things happen? Why does this go on? Why did your house burn down? Why did you get run over by the car? Why did, you know, and as you were telling this lady, well, we don't know. But what can you say to someone who is looking for,

[91:05]

who says, I have a problem with Jesus, or I have a problem with Buddha, or I have a problem with believing in anything? Where do you start, you know, to try to help? And when you see the beggar on the street, someone will say, you know, invariably, oh, if we give him money, he'll just go and buy booze, or, you know, how do we know when we're being, the question going back to, how do we know when we're being helpful, or what that help would be, or what's the appropriate position in love to take? Thank you, that was great. That was a bunch of questions there. I was trying to say, you brought it up, with Bob Dylan, and so many other things you said, you brought it all up. And I'm like, saying, okay. Yes, thank you, this is Manjushree.

[92:06]

Very good, thank you. Yeah, me too. Let's see. Two things, two parts of that anyway, I'll respond to. One is the thing about giving, and the other is about belief. So this is, the thing about, you know, giving some money to somebody who's going to use it for booze, this is like a tiny little kind of corollary of what you were saying, but it's interesting to me. Part of it is, well, that we don't know. So I think there's a side of generosity, or the perfection of generosity in Buddhism, that you just give without making judgments. I mean, we may have all kinds of ideas about what's good for somebody else. But maybe you just give, and if Manjushree goes off and gets another bottle of liquor, I don't know.

[93:12]

Now, there's also effective work in the world, and how do we actually take care of things? So those are two different sides. But generosity is about you just give. And of course, you just give doesn't mean that you, you know, it may mean that you take care of yourself too. So you have to recognize your own limits of giving. It may be that somebody asks you for something, and you have to say, I'm sorry, and I have to take a walk, and I'll come back later and see you later, I can't do this right now, I need to take a break. That may be giving too. So our ideas, our conceptions, our views about what is giving, and what is generosity, and what is effective, I think part of developing tools and capacity is being more effective, but how do we know what effective is? I mean, Buddha knows, but I don't know. So that's one thing. But then the thing about belief, part of what Manjushri is saying is that

[94:16]

something we believe in is automatically already not the point. That's the definition of delusion. So to believe in Buddha is not the point. Faith in Buddhism is about you just do the next thing.

[94:31]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_93.9