Good morning. I have to say that there's a part of me that wonders what we're all doing inside on such a beautiful morning. I've mentioned this before, but it comes up for me again this morning particularly intensely. Sitting in this seat facing this image of Manjushri, this reminder of the possibility of wisdom, and saying this chant, which we say together at the beginning of lecture, I always feel close to overwhelmed with the configuration of it all. and say to myself, what I can do is to offer my best and hope that we can together be willing to be taught by each other and to cultivate our ability to listen to the teachings that arise in every instance of our engagement one-to-one and in circumstances such as this.

[01:32]

I would like this morning to talk about cultivating the qualities which in the Buddhist tradition are described as the six paramitas. Ethics or morality or virtue, if you will. Sounds a little old-fashioned, doesn't it? But so important. Generosity and patience. enthusiastic perseverance, mindfulness. And using these qualities, the cultivation of these qualities, they can become then the method for the cultivation of wisdom. And in considering the possibility of cultivating these qualities, these capacities, I ask myself the question of, how do we begin?

[02:42]

So what I really want to talk about is the beginning part. Where is the first step or where are some of the first steps that we might take in our lives? I find that I am helped a great deal if I keep reminding myself that every being, everyone in the world wants happiness and does not want suffering. I particularly find that I'm helped by reminding myself of that when I'm in the face of someone who looks like an enemy or with whom I'm having some difficulty. can I remember that it is true of this person as well as of myself? And so far, anyway, I haven't found anybody for whom it isn't true. We have feelings.

[03:48]

We have feelings of attraction. We have feelings of repulsion or avoidance, and we have feelings of indifference. And specifically with respect to other people, we tend to arrange the people that we have contact with in our lives in categories that parallel these feelings. There are those people to whom we are attracted. There are those people we wish to avoid. And there are those people with whom we are indifferent. So we have a kind of roller coaster of feelings. We don't have a certain degree of evenness or equanimity. So perhaps the place to begin is with cultivating

[04:55]

an evenness of feeling with respect to other beings. And of course I think it comes up for most of us as a strong and not always easy practice with respect to other people in particular. Although right now I find that I'm also having some difficulty with fleas. We have five dogs and the commensurate number of fleas apportioned to a household with five dogs, maybe even more than our share. There is a practice of asking oneself to consider the ways in which other beings have been kind. So I can ask myself over and over again, are there ways in which this person that I'm thinking of or who is in front of me or that I read about in the newspaper or whatever, is there a way in which I actually understand the kindness of other beings?

[06:19]

If I don't actually see the ways in which others' kindness comes to me, I cannot appreciate that kindness. I have to actually think about it and investigate this possibility. I think it's pretty easy to do it with our friends, with the people that we love, unless, of course, we have an argument with them, and then this opportunity to really investigate comes up in a quite different way. But what are the ways in which someone we consider our enemy, what are the ways that person has some kindness for me? Over the last few days, I've been thinking about this with respect to particular people.

[07:27]

I've learned a great deal from so-called enemies or people with whom I have had some difficulty, some strong negative experience. And what I have come to realize, although I may not see this initially, but if I'm patient, what I come to realize is that these are the people from whom I learn most the things that I need to learn. So this kindness of others has brought to me lessons about the impossibility of being in control of many things, perhaps most things. the complexity, the difficulty, the limitation of resistance, the hazards and grief that arise from blame and judgment sufficient to convince me to put down those habits which I may have of judgment or blaming of myself or others.

[08:51]

I've benefited greatly from watching others fool themselves or deceive themselves, not tell themselves the truth in a way that has been an enormous help. And I find myself feeling deep gratitude for those lessons and out of that friendliness and compassion for the person or people who have taught me those lessons and continue to every day. My so-called enemies have taught me a great deal about the nature of fear and the many faces and clothes that our fear may have. have helped me to see the prison of misunderstanding, the way in which we can put ourselves into a box from which we feel we cannot move or cannot see or hear.

[10:07]

And most powerfully, These people have helped me understand something about what happens when we are so preoccupied with ourselves that we lose our ability to hear and see the abundance of everything around us. I have a friend with whom I have at times had rather a difficult time. And I realized the other day that this friend has taught me a great deal about the difficulty that arises from thinking that anything exists independent of myriad other things. So I'd like to suggest this morning a practice that we can all do, which is to think about the kindness of others in the detail of our lives.

[11:19]

For example, if I think about my car and I think about the particular kindnesses that bring me this strange and amusing little car that I drive around in, almost unending list of kindnesses when I actually examine how the car came to live at our house. The frame was built in 1967, and the body was built in 1977, and the engine was built in 1983. And it was driven around by a Frenchman, and then it was driven around by an American who raced it and put a roll bar in it, which makes my son feel happier when I drive it. And another friend drove it to our house from Washington just when the bottom of my old car had rusted out.

[12:26]

Almost literally a gift. But what about the road? The road is also there for me and others to use through the kindness of many beings, including the ones that got rolled over in the course of making the road, including the crew that was out a few days ago carefully painting the lines along the side of the road. which are a great help in the rainy, foggy weather, helping us all stay on the road and not going over the cliff. What are the kindnesses of others that produce the clothes that I wear? The garden, which I enjoy enormously.

[13:30]

I had an experience this morning of the kindness of others in particular. I have this gray shirt on, and it was at the bottom of the drawer. I have not worn it for quite a long time. It was especially fresh and ironed. So I pulled it out this morning because I needed a fresh shirt to put on. And I unfolded it. And as I picked it up out of the drawer, I realized there was a piece of paper inside of the shirt helping it stay fresh. And when I opened it up, the paper that fell out was a paper from Delhi with the date December 27, 1985. So I was reminded of the young man who had done the laundry that included this shirt. It was actually a young man who did the laundry when I was in Sarnath.

[14:35]

And I suddenly remembered many kindnesses from this young man who came every morning and took the clothes away and came back at the end of the day with a stack of beautifully washed and ironed laundry. I never had anybody iron the underwear before. And in remembering this young man in particular and thinking about his kindnesses, I remembered one lesson that happened for me and the young man with whom I was traveling. He was just 18. And he had included his heap of dirty clothes along with mine, and the young Indian boy had taken everything away. And my friend, whose name is Gondon, had carefully made note of each piece of clothing that he'd given to the laundry man.

[15:38]

He was completely convinced that this man was going to steal something from him. So he noted everything. And he did it in such a way that he thought he might catch him at some thievery. At the end of the day, when the young man came back with our clothes, he handed Gondin a $100 bill, which he had found. Gondin had a pair of trousers, which was mostly pockets. And there was a pocket, as you may know about, a pocket in the leg in a very unlikely place down below the knee. And Gondon had, some months earlier, when he was with his family traveling, his father had given him a $100 bill and said, I want you to put this somewhere where it will be safe so that as you're traveling alone, if you ever get caught or you have some trouble, you'll have some money.

[16:45]

And he had carefully folded the $100 bill into quarters and put it in this unlikely pocket in the leg of his pants just below his knee. So when the young Indian man was doing the laundry, he opened up all the pockets and turned everything inside out and discovered the $100 bill. For any of you who have spent time in third world countries, and particularly in India, you can appreciate that $100 is a very large amount of money. This was a young man who was doing a mountain of laundry for less than a dollar, and he carefully handed the $100 to this young man and said, I found this in your pocket and thought you might be missing it. It was an incredible experience for my friend Gondon, who said something to me at the time about appreciating

[17:58]

the difficulties, the twists of his own mind and not that of others. And for me as a witness, it was a very strong lesson. I felt very moved by that young man. And when I unfolded my shirt this morning and the slip of newspaper fell out, immediately that whole experience came up. I would like to suggest that one of the ways we can practice constantly, daily, with this examination, investigation, noticing of the kindness of others is to do it in particular with the people that we live with and work with, the people we see every day. To do it with our families, if we live with our families,

[19:05]

or with the people that we are spending our days of work and study and practice together. That if we can genuinely and deeply and in particular know the kindness of those around us, the consequence will be a harmonious life and a happy life. This is the way to cultivate love and understanding love and compassion and can be the ground from which we can begin to cultivate these qualities of generosity and patience, virtue, enthusiastic perseverance and mindfulness. I've been thinking a lot in the last several weeks about what it means to live a life which has about it the quality of harmony, harmoniousness.

[20:21]

How when we have a life which has a good bit of harmony about it, we almost don't notice it. and yet how wonderful it is to have that quality with those around us. So if we can pick this up as a practice, what it means is that in the detail of our daily life, with those that we live with and work with, the entirety of our Dharma practice can come alive in each moment, in whatever happens. we can, in fact, see the possibility of studying and practicing quite deeply. The Buddha has said not to get caught by the person, to be awake to not the teacher but the teaching.

[21:25]

And from this focus, we can begin to see the possibility of being taught by anyone and being taught by anything. My experience in working with the cultivation of this attitude is that it is in fact quite accurate as a description of how things may be. And that it does not mean being a kind of Pollyanna or not seeing things that may be troublesome, but constantly turning myself and whatever happens around me into an opportunity to learn something which I may not necessarily be thrilled to be learning, but which is probably just what I need. I think this is where the patience comes in because sometimes seeing that dimension of things may take a while.

[22:28]

I have a friend who just left to go to Texas to see her grandfather who's in his 90s. And she came for a visit just before she left to talk a little bit about what to do at the time when her grandfather finally dies. She's very close to her grandfather. And I asked her to describe him to me. She said, well, what I can say most clearly about my grandfather is that he is grateful for everything. I immediately found myself thinking about my mother who is 80 and who is not grateful for very much and who suffers a great deal, is suspicious and fearful of almost everything. And I was struck listening to my friend's description of her grandfather.

[23:40]

By the contrast, because my mother has actually practiced her fear and mistrust for as long as I can remember. And my friend was describing her grandfather as someone who had practiced, had expressed, had touched his feelings of gratefulness for as long as she could remember. She said that when she was a young girl, everyone in the family used to make fun of her grandfather because they thought he was a Pollyanna. How could he so continually be grateful no matter what happened? But of course, in his old age, what has happened is a kind of happiness, which I think is directly the fruit of all those years of gratitude. It reminds me again of the fact that apparently when Gandhi died, was shot unexpectedly and died, he died with the name of God on his lips.

[25:02]

I imagine he said the name of God over and over again many, many times to have that be what was his utterance at that moment of unexpected dying. If I think about the kindness of others, what arises then is the possibility of, or the inclination, the instinct to repay that kindness materially and spiritually. And, of course, the place where there is some fruitfulness, some opportunity, is when I have to spend some time, make some effort to begin to understand a particular situation as an instance of kindness, where it is not so readily apparent that what is arising in my life is a kindness from so-and-so, enemy number one of the day.

[26:26]

to not take on the practice of seeing, understanding, experiencing the kindness of others and of wanting to repay the kindness of others in a way that's on the surface, but to allow it to arise deeply and authentically as it will. And to ask myself the questions that arise about repaying or having some response of kindness to others where there may be some ignorance or delusion in what it is I'm seeing and doing. So to keep in mind the long-term effect or benefit of the actions of others and of the actions in my own life. to have some clarity and truthfulness about what I see and what I engage in.

[27:38]

It includes examining that which is difficult or may easily be described as unpleasant. As long as I stay stuck in the afflictive emotions of fear or irritation or anger or greediness or confusion, then it is in that circumstance that I experience what I would describe as suffering. And that's certainly what I understand in paying attention to the lives of others. This last week I went to a three-day teaching that Tara Rinpoche gave on the text by Atisha on the illuminated path.

[28:52]

And he spent some time in one of his talks looking at the virtuous actions, the ten virtuous actions of body, speech, and mind. I find working with the precepts, the description of virtuous or non-virtuous actions. We usually think of the precepts in terms of a list of do not, do not kill, do not take what is not given, so forth. But to think of the list in positive terms, a description of virtuous actions. That is, those actions which are the antidotes to the afflictive emotions is another way of thinking about them.

[30:00]

And I'm continually amazed at how useful it is to keep reminding myself of what those virtuous actions are. the actions of body, speech, and mind? What does it mean to walk around in the garden, for example, with some mindfulness about not killing? What does it mean to not take what is not given? What does it mean to not intoxicate mind or body of self or other? What intoxicates? At a gross level, perhaps we are talking about drugs or coffee or chocolate or whatever.

[31:05]

We each have our own private intoxicant. not to engage in sexual misconduct, not to lie or slander or use abusive language, not to participate in idle gossip. I find that particular... that particular precept troublesome and very useful. The particular version of it which keeps coming up and which I appreciate more and more is the one about no third-party information, which is a particular way I use that precept about idle gossip, which I find quite helpful. What are the precepts of the mind?

[32:13]

To notice what our intentions are, And to pay attention if there is some intention which seems harmful or covetous. To practice as wholeheartedly as possible non-possessiveness. And most particularly, not to harbor ill will. I hope that we can all see the possibility of practicing with those that we see every day with this intention to be as awake to everything as possible. To actually begin to open ourselves to being taught by whoever we are with, whatever circumstance we are in.

[33:19]

We have a great opportunity in our lives together to go very deeply on this path. We don't have to go to someplace special and wear special clothes. We can illuminate the environment of our daily lives so that it is the place where our deep intention to be happy and not to suffer can show itself. I find it very helpful to keep in mind that I can in fact take teachings from anyone. And my ability to do that does not depend on the other person, but depends on my own capacity to cultivate a listening mind, to nurture and care for an ability to hear.

[34:32]

I've been thinking recently about the aging process as my eyesight becomes steadily worse. And I noticed yesterday as I was driving home from Mill Valley, there was a young man walking down the street whose feet were not placed in the usual way, but this way. He was walking from the bus stop. And I suddenly thought how grateful I am that I in fact have basically a healthy body, that I can walk. Maybe I don't see as well as I used to, but I have glasses that help, that I can hear, that I can read. texts which help me. I can listen to teachings.

[35:38]

I can hear music and hear the songs of the birds. What would the hearing capacity for hearing be like if I became deaf? Would I still be able to hear in some other way? Watching that young man walking along the side of the road, I suddenly was struck with gratitude for what I take for granted. And I felt some inspiration with his energy as he walked along with difficulty, but walking with his backpack, clearly with obvious intention going somewhere. not stopped by the limitations of his physical body. So I invite you to join in this cultivation of appreciating the kindness of all beings.

[36:55]

It is our great opportunity to live our lives with happiness and to allow suffering to lessen for ourselves and for others. We are very lucky to be living here in this beautiful place with good air and sunshine and enough to eat. We are most fortunate. Thank you very much. May our...

[37:39]

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