There are a lot of you out there. Okay. Okay. Two sides to our practice. Can everybody hear me? We talk about our practice having two sides, okay? Please raise your hands when my voice drops. One side we say is wisdom or insight, analytical wisdom.

[01:15]

Wisdom, represented by Manjusri on the altar. And the other side, represented by Avalokiteshvara, represents compassion or the heart. Actually they're one, heart, mind. But sometimes for convenience or for concentration or focus, we might separate and say we'll talk about analytical practice, study the processes of the mind, and sometimes we might concentrate on heart or compassion practices. How does the bodhisattva help serve all sentient beings?

[02:22]

Is everyone basically familiar with the notion of a bodhisattva? Is there someone who's not? Bodhisattva in Buddhism is actually all of us. Bodhisattva idea, the ideal of the being dedicated to saving all other beings, grew out of a tendency in Buddhist practice for the monks to separate themselves from the general public, from the general population, and to concentrate on their own liberation, their own salvation.

[03:26]

In the early years after Buddha's life, he asked the monks to go out and teach and to spread the Dharma, and in return the laity provided alms. But after a few hundred years, this practice degenerated a bit. The monks were more interested in doing their own practice of understanding their own processes, their own mind and body, and rather abandoned the general public, everyone else. So in the midst of this, the idea of bodhisattva practice arose, that the bodhisattva's work of liberating herself can only be done through the liberation of others.

[04:31]

There is no separation between self-realization, clarifying my own life, and working intimately with everyone else to help everyone understand and clarify their lives. The bodhisattva stays behind. The bodhisattva isn't going anywhere. The bodhisattva is not trying to arrive any place other than where she is. The bodhisattva is quite content to stay right here, in the muddy water, in delusion, in confusion with everyone.

[05:32]

And the bodhisattva doesn't try to separate herself from that confusion, to stand outside and to point out to somebody how they're confused. The bodhisattva is quite willing to not know how to do that, to be willing to be in the world and not quite know how to help. So somewhere around the holidays, you know, Christmas goes on and on and on, and then suddenly it's over, and then there are more sales and more sales and more sales. So sometimes during the Christmas, the pre-Christmas, I must have been thinking about this kind of thing, because, you know, the newspapers, the media did such an excellent job of presenting us every day with information about homeless people and hungry people

[06:35]

and people freezing to death on our streets. So it wasn't so easy to go around enjoying a warm apartment and enough food, and not knowing quite how to join the situation of the whole society, the whole culture, how to include what was already a part of my life, but to make it more active, to confront it, to confront it for myself and to be one with that situation. So thinking about this and looking at it, I found myself driving along the Panhandle. Some of you know the Panhandle in San Francisco? Beautiful. It was dusk.

[07:37]

And I was doing my usual, you know, driving as smoothly as I can, you know, taking advantage of every move that was made so that I wouldn't have to slow down if somebody slowed down ahead of me. And I was executing my usual maneuvers when what came to my mind was the Bodhisattva doesn't try to get ahead of anybody, even on the freeway. You know, these insights, when they arise, they're so obvious. Our practice seems to me to be continuously arriving at the obvious, you know, like when Dogen returned from China and he was asked what he learned, he said, I learned my eyes are horizontal and my nose is vertical, you know? But that's a deep insight to know that with your whole being, you know?

[08:39]

When he said it, he knew it completely. So I don't mean that I had this insight as deeply as Dogen knew his eyes were horizontal, but I had this insight about driving with a great force for me because it was something I needed to learn about how to coexist with every other driver on our freeways. And the Bodhisattva is willing to be stuck in traffic. The Bodhisattva is willing not to get the advantage in traffic. The Bodhisattva is willing not to push ahead at the post office in line, you know, at Macy's at a sale, grocery shopping. The Bodhisattva is willing

[09:43]

to be in those situations without an advantage. That was really a big one for me. And thinking about it a little, I realized the Bodhisattva's way, we are one body. It's like the hands can't get ahead of the fingers or the nails or the elbow can't get ahead of the stomach. The idea that I can get ahead of anybody is already a perverted view because each of us exists absolutely in our own absolute unconditioned nature.

[10:45]

And there's no comparison between my being in my dharma position, exactly where I am in my life and where anybody else is in her life or his life. Each of us is exactly where we are and where all the internal and external causes and conditions of our life have created us to be. Each of us is just where we are. Whatever the circumstances, that's where we need to be to understand and work on our life. So the idea that I can have more understanding than you or you can have more understanding than me and that makes me feel bad or I have more understanding than you and that makes you feel bad, that's a deluded view. We complete each other. I can't have any understanding

[11:51]

that you don't resonate with, amplify in your own life, stretch, extend, work with, experience, manifest in your own life. Otherwise it's of no use to me. We always, you know, we always know something that we need to tell somebody. Let me tell you about something, you know, let me tell you about yourself. Usually that doesn't help because that's from outside the situation. That's separated. It may not even be the other person's experience of their own life.

[12:53]

It's from our point of view. And ahead and behind are always relative to our point of view and to our focus, what we're concentrated on, what we're evaluating ourselves about at that time. Another thing about freeways is that we all collectively create the freeway. You know, Dogen Zenji, the Buddhist teacher who brought Buddhism, this tradition, from China to Japan, he says somewhere in the Genjo Koan, his seminal fascicle, something like, the bird makes the sky and the sky makes the bird. This is a little license on what he said,

[13:55]

but something like that. Bird makes life and life makes the bird. The freeway doesn't exist outside our participation in it. That's a Buddhist truism, that nothing exists outside of us. We don't just enter the freeway and zip through it and get off as fast as we can, trying to make the whole event as unconscious as we can so that we don't need to be disturbed by it. The freeway creates us. The freeway brings us forth and we bring forth the freeway. We create the driving conditions and the whole event. And by our understanding, by our willingness to join that collective event,

[14:57]

we can actually make a difference in what happens on our highways and make a difference for our own life. And I must say that since I decided to include driving as a real part of my life, I have developed a considerable respect for it. Instead of trying to close it out as some little passage I was going to zip through, I actually have opened my life to that part of it which I spend driving, which is actually a considerable amount of time. And the corollary insight, again obvious, is that when we are willing to open our lives to what we are actually doing, that creates real time.

[15:59]

You know, I realize we have real time in our lives, you know, like coming to a lecture or giving a lecture is real time, or doing zazen sometimes is real time, going to work is usually real time, maybe having dinner out, going to the theater, various things. And unreal time is something like, you know, getting dressed to go to work, stopping for gas on the highway, stopping to make a phone call to say you are going to be late because traffic is heavier, going to the toilet. All the things we don't want to do exactly, aren't so interested in, or are automatic and kind of unconscious for us. When we open ourselves to what we are actually doing,

[17:04]

that becomes real time. It's real that I am in this car and that somebody is passing me and that I have the option of being generous and making space for the person or trying to get ahead, you know, and beat him out. Thich Nhat Hanh talks about this in his book, about how for busy parents it's very hard always to have time for their children. And as long as we don't include the child's time with the child as real time in our life, there's tension, there's irritation, there's a problem for us, and we don't feel good and the child doesn't feel good. But when we turn to that event, and whatever it is in your life,

[18:07]

it may be washing dishes, or it may be cooking, it may be cleaning house, whatever it is, when we turn to it, our life opens up and a soft feeling comes into our body because our muscles, our cells, are holding this tremendous tension of trying to avoid knowing what we're doing, trying to avoid knowing that I'm actually driving and I'm actually on the road, you know, for hours with other people. And how I accommodate myself to them and how I understand how they accommodate to me makes a difference in how we live our life. And the bodhisattva's vow isn't something we just chant and think, someday I'll figure out how to save all sentient beings.

[19:09]

But in the moment of driving, in the moment of standing in line at the post office, whatever it is, that openness and willingness and acceptance of that situation actually liberates people from their own frustration, their own irritation, their own tension about being in a bind, in an uncomfortable situation, something we define as uncomfortable and we don't allow enough time to include in our lives. The bodhisattva is willing to have no special advantage in life

[20:14]

and also willing to accept whatever death arises. And that's a hard one for us because even coming to do zazen, coming to this practice, means we want to change our life in some way. We think about it as improving our life. But the improvement of our life is the openness to what it actually is, to the obvious, to our breath, to our imperfect, perfect body, to our tensions, to our continuous irritation, to our unwillingness to really be present

[21:21]

and to live our actual life, to continuously want it to be something else. In the midst of that, the bodhisattva is willing to indulge in those delusions that we're continuously wanting another life and that we're continuously living this one. I think about death. I've started a few weeks now doing a little hospice work. And at Laguna Honda, in the hospice unit, people die a lot. You don't die in a hospital. You don't hardly get to meet them before they're dead. And we were talking about how each person's death is a little different.

[22:22]

And my own experience of being with people in those conditions is that each person, there's a kind of perfect completeness to each person in their dying and in their death. And any idea of comparing one death to another, you know, the idea, I hope I have a good death, I hope I don't suffer too much, that's when we become ugly. I've realized that each of us is quite beautiful in our own perfected being. And it's only when we want it to be or think it should be some other way that we become a little ugly, meaning we're a little different from how we think we ought to be.

[23:29]

So that's basically what I wanted to say. I can quote one of my favorite quotes, but maybe that's not necessary. Sorry. I realized in thinking about how to be with you this morning that the way Suzuki Roshi was with us was what was really so helpful. He said some very wonderful things, but what really kept us in the practice was not so much the things he said, but the way that he was with us. And we're such a verbal culture, we don't trust events. We sort of want them to be verbalized for us so our mind can remember it.

[24:42]

There's one story about, you know, people were pretty much in awe of Suzuki Roshi. He was a pretty awesome character. And there's one story about in the early days they were putting out the Wind Bell, the periodical that Zen Center publishes. And the person working with Suzuki Roshi, everybody was a pretty new student in those days, he was pretty uneasy and pretty nervous and he kept spilling and dropping things and falling all over himself and was pretty embarrassed. But pretty soon Suzuki Roshi was spilling and dropping things and falling all over himself and got ink all over. And the Wind Bell got out. So how we help each other is being willing to be

[25:44]

completely in the situation with each other. I was thinking of, again, the dying. I don't know if sitting with somebody who's in excruciating pain and putting your hand on their brow or holding their hand helps them. Or maybe just being willing to sit there and endure their suffering without trying to change it. Just being willing to be present with them in that situation. Maybe that's more helpful, I don't know. The Bodhisattva path talks about the highest form of wisdom

[26:48]

or compassion is when we have no particular relationship to somebody or to events and without trying to do something, without trying to help the situation, we just act spontaneously and whatever we do is beneficial, is helpful. So it bypasses that whole duality of I can help you or you can help me, which has such a burden of reciprocation and gratitude. And when we're not actually trying, we're just being ourselves in our own life, that has the highest potential possibility for help. Suzuki Roshi used to say,

[27:49]

the teacher doesn't teach what he thinks he's teaching. We don't usually achieve what we intend to do. What we're doing is at a different level, how we really are being with each other, interacting, interpenetrating with each other is at a much deeper level than the mind can understand or define. And it's only through the wisdom of the sitting practice that we begin to touch that place in our body and mind

[28:50]

that meets the deep connection with others, with everyone. Thank you very much for coming today. If you hadn't come, I wouldn't have come. And I wouldn't have tried to think these things through. And if 2,500 years I hadn't come, and hundreds of teachers hadn't studied and practiced and understood and transmitted this teaching, I wouldn't be here gladly passing it on or sharing it with you today. So we're all very intimately

[29:53]

interconnected and all in the same place. Isn't that wonderful? Thank you very much.

[30:03]

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