Tonight, I'd like to focus on what's called the fourth perfection, or the fourth paramita, or the fourth virtue, that bodhisattvas train in to develop their selfless compassion. The Sanskrit is viriya, which is related to the root viril, I mean to the English word viril, thank you, and the root meaning is bull. The root meaning is bull, you know, like the veer is bull. Bull, like the male cow, the male cattle, male four-legged bovines. The emphasis is on strength, energy, maybe

[01:45]

also a little bit, although the female usually represents just a little bit of sense of fertility, or anyway, a germinal energy, viriya, and it's translated as effort, diligence, endeavor, enthusiasm, zeal, heroic, courageous effort, endeavor, all these words trying to get this great fueling power of all the bodhisattva virtues. This energy, this effort, also is translated as energy, this heroic energy is applied to the previous virtues and the following

[02:47]

virtues. Without this, there wouldn't really be practicing of giving ethical discipline, patience, bodhisattva concentration, or wisdom. So it's in the fourth position, but it is necessary for the others. Maybe it's in the fourth position because at this point you're able to really get into it. If you practice the previous three, you can really fully get into this fourth perfection. It must have been involved somewhat in practicing the previous three, but also we need to practice the previous three in a sense as a preparation for practicing this fourth one in its nearly completely full sense. Of course, it can't be really full until

[03:47]

we realize the last two, but you'll see, probably. Before doing that, I want to bring up two things. One is that the instruction that I offered during meditation is actually an instruction which is the center of the next perfection, the next virtue of the bodhisattva's concentration practice. So next week I'll go more into that concentration on the mind of enlightenment, the mind which wishes to live for the greatest benefit for all beings. The other thing I wanted to bring up was a follow-up on the question that came up at the end of class, a story that was told by Marilyn about finding yourself in a very challenging,

[04:54]

difficult meeting with someone, and feeling that this person was very upset with her, and even that this person was wanting to and was attacking her, and feeling pain of this in this situation, and some stress, but trying in the midst of that painful interaction, trying to help the person, even so. Trying to be helpful, not thinking, oh, I think maybe what I'll do is I'll get rid of this person and attack back. I didn't hear about that. She managed to not wish this person ill. It sounded like she was pretty successful in not wishing the person ill, and even that finally the person was helped by the end of the interaction,

[05:59]

that the person stopped attacking and even could calm down, and even have at least some glimmering that Marilyn did not feel ill-will towards her, and actually had helped her work through this distress. It's kind of a success story in practicing patience, and not just patience, but also practicing giving, I would say, and also practicing ethical discipline because she was being careful and trying to be helpful, trying to give help, and also being patient with the pain of the interaction, the pain of what sounded like being insulted or falsely accused, and these kinds of things. But the problem she had was that she felt afterwards kind of wounded or wasted or something

[07:06]

like that. I said some things, but later I thought of some other examples. If you see someone drowning and you go out to try to help them in the water, they will often try to push you down under the water, almost intentionally, in their fear. They might actually push you under the water. Or if someone's in some kind of hysterical fit and you try to help them, and you don't get angry with them, but you actually try to help them and protect them, they may punch you in the face on purpose while you're trying to help them. And then in the end, maybe they are helped and they're grateful to you, but you still got wounded in the process of helping them. Mothers try to take care of their children. They give their children their body, their breast,

[08:14]

and the children bite them. And sometimes they try not to hate the children for biting them. And sometimes they're successful and they don't hate the child. And the child feels that patience, but they're still wounded by the attack. So it's not just that when you're helping people and they're attacking you, or you're trying to help them and they're attacking you, and then finally they feel that compassion and they're converted from their ill will and their hysteria, but you sometimes get hurt in the process. So not only do you have to be patient with the attack, not only do we have to learn this, but still it doesn't mean that we won't get hurt. And then we can be patient with the injury that we get in the process of helping people. There are many other stories about this, but I think that's why we need patience not only

[09:21]

with the attacks, but the effects of the attack. Because sometimes people are trying to attack us and we don't really feel much pain. We can see they're trying to hurt us, but it doesn't necessarily hurt. Sometimes we can see that they're trying to insult us, but it doesn't really hurt. If someone tells me I'm a terrible piano player, it doesn't really bother me that much. It would be better to say that I was a terrible Zen priest or something. That would be more likely to hit something. But if you see people insult things about me where I have no investment, it may not really hurt. I may not feel attacked. I could tell they're trying to, but they're not scoring any hits. I've told this story before, but it comes up again here. My daughter used to say to me,

[10:22]

you know, I hate you. I think she called me something like a bum. She called me some stuff over a number of years. I wasn't very skillful in it, but in fact I did not feel hurt by her attacks. I could have just quietly listened to her, but I often would laugh when this person who I really felt really loved me and adored me was saying that she hated me. A person who really respected me who said she didn't respect me. I'm kind of sorry that I did laugh at her because that kind of hurt her, I think. She was trying to get me. She wasn't necessarily trying to hurt me. She was trying to get me. She was trying to touch me in some way. She saw me as

[11:22]

this big thing. She wanted to feel like she could affect this big thing. This great father. She was quite old, actually, maybe almost a teenager when she finally got me. She was gratified when she finally got me. I don't know how gratified she was, but she was also somewhat gratified that part of the way she got me was that I didn't laugh. She kind of stopped me in my tracks. I didn't retaliate, but I did sort of convey to her, not intentionally in a way, but just by the fact that I was stopped, sort of dead in my tracks, she could see that she got me. She could see that she reached me and affected me

[12:23]

in a way that would stop me, it would change me. She could see me change in a way. That was a great moment that she felt that she could reach me. So in a way, when people insult you and they don't get to you, in some ways there's not as much an opportunity to connect as if they insult you and it hurts, and then you really accept that. Your acceptance is like a big act. It's like you're not doing anything else. The main thing that's going on now is you're registering what this person has done to reach you. So there's a real connection there and a real meeting, even though it could

[13:25]

be a little or very painful. It wasn't super painful, it wasn't really painful. It was just painful enough for me to be kind of like stopped, and there was no laughing or no sense of how funny it is that she was trying to hurt me. There wasn't any of that, and that's what she was looking for for years. So it was both her becoming more accurate and finding something that wasn't being said just to hurt me, but was being said to try to tell me something. When she said, I hate you, I wasn't skillful enough to try to find out what do you mean by that? What are you trying to get at by I hate you? I just thought it was so funny that she would say that because I didn't believe it. I thought it was kind of like a joke. But I could have said, what are you trying to tell me by that? And she might have been able to tell me years before,

[14:28]

but this time I could stop and say, and tell me more about that or what are you trying to get at? And I wasn't the least bit angry with her for this education that she was giving me about how she felt about something that we were doing. I felt grateful to her, and she felt all that. And her mother was witnessing the whole thing, and her mother was very happy for us, too. So, if it doesn't hurt sometimes, there isn't maybe not as much of a connection. And Buddhas and bodhisattvas are on a path of really connecting with people,

[15:33]

and one of the ways we connect is that people kind of have to criticize us or tell us some big problem they have with us. And we have to learn to feel that or recognize what the feeling is there, and not be ungrateful. I don't know if we can go on from here, but I'd like to now go back to the effort and again mention that the principle here that's being applied in this presentation is the virtue that follows depends on the preceding one. So this practice of effort or zeal or diligence depends on the practice of patience, which connects to the stories we were

[16:42]

just talking about. Being patient, we can receive harm without having ill will towards what harms us. And also, being patient, we can see suffering as, you could say, a path, or as part of the path to Buddhahood. By practicing patience, we can see the suffering that arises in relationship to others, but also just in terms of our own efforts. We can see suffering as a path. So that second part of patience is very important in the practice of effort, because sometimes

[17:46]

effort is really hard, really difficult. Not only do people insult us and then we're trying to practice, we're now wishing to practice patience, but patience helps us be enthusiastic about practicing patience when we're hurt. But also, patience helps us be enthusiastic when we're doing something that's really hard, just that really hard work. Patience helps us be enthusiastic when it's time to give a really big gift, which we weren't able to give before, and now we're developing this enthusiasm to such a point that we'll be able to give greater and greater gifts. And sometimes giving the great gifts is

[18:46]

difficult, so knowing how to be patient with difficulty will help us be enthusiastic about other virtues that are difficult. And just looking back, practicing giving helps us be not attached, which supports our practice of being careful and vigilant. Sometimes when we're doing things, we have things to do, we're busy. Sometimes because we're attached to these things we have to do, we sometimes aren't careful. This is really important. I don't have time to be careful. I've got to get it done. This is really important. I do not have time to be careful. I've just got to do it. I've got to finish it. By such and such a time, I do not have the luxury

[19:47]

of being a bodhisattva. So I can't do this and be careful. So I'm attached to doing this thing and getting it done. So I'm not really practicing generosity fully, so then I'm not careful. Or I'm too busy to be vigilant and watch what's going on with me while I'm doing things. Again, generosity makes it so that when we're doing good things, yes, it's good to do good things, that's good, but it's also good to be vigilant while you're doing it. Because you can give people gifts and not be vigilant. You can give people gifts and not be careful. But if you're really practicing giving, that will help you be careful when you're giving gifts. And with this kind of vigilance and carefulness, then we can practice patience. And by practicing patience, now we will be more ready to practice enthusiastic practice of all the other virtues, including this virtue.

[20:55]

So the basic definition of this virtue is feeling joy about practicing wholesome action. Feeling joy in practicing virtue. Feeling joy in practicing what is meritorious. So it's actually more emphasizing the feeling of joy in practicing these things, these virtues. It's not so much the practicing of the virtues, but sometimes the virtues are called diligence. Some of the things we do with this joy, they are called diligence, or they're called enthusiasm, or they're called endeavor, because they have this spirit in them of joy in practicing them. So that's the basic definition. And then right away, what is opposed to them?

[22:18]

What is opposed to them is called, actually, the summary word is laziness. And this laziness has different aspects. Maybe it's better not to call it laziness. But anyway, there are opposing factors, and one of them kind of applies to all the other ones. It's called laziness. And the Sanskrit word for laziness is alasha, which means not to make use of. So the basic thing here of practicing effort is joy in practicing virtue. And so the basic laziness is to not have joy in practicing virtue, to not really want

[23:26]

to practice virtue. Like virtue, I'm not interested. I don't want to. I mean, I'm actually not interested. I don't care about virtue. I don't feel the desire to practice giving and carefulness and vigilance and patience. I don't want to practice meditation. I don't want to practice concentration on the welfare of others. I don't care about wisdom. That kind of attitude, or even a little bit softer than that, like, well, I just don't feel like it. I don't know, some kind of mild disinterest. Anyway, a lack of wishing to practice virtue, failing to want to practice it. That could be called laziness, or in some sense it's fundamental to it. The next one is being distracted by negative actions, or being attracted

[24:39]

to negative action, being attracted to unwholesomeness. Like actually wanting to have ill will towards someone, and actually feeling it, feeling good about it. I think it's really cool to call up congresspeople and wish them ill, or whatever. It would be neat to lie right now, or to exaggerate to such a point to entertain people, even though the exaggeration actually could be called a lie, and I'd like to do it. It sounds fun, and might actually be a nice distraction from my suffering, too, while it's going on there. So anyway, that's the second one. First is not to be interested. Next is actually attracted to, and distracted from, from the point of view of being a bodhisattva. You're distracted by unwholesome activity.

[25:45]

The next one is despising oneself out of despondency, or self-depreciation, and defeatism. You know, this bodhisattva thing is, well, let's just put it this way for now, that it's just, I am a sinner, and it's just too much for me. I never would be able to do these practices. I couldn't do the practices, plus I never could attain enlightenment. I never could make a gift of my life for the sake of realizing Buddhahood. That's just too much, to the point that I really would say I'm not interested, or even that it's stupid to talk about such things. But a little bit more like, first of all, it's like, actually, it's too much for me. And people

[26:47]

do sometimes come and tell me that they're not interested in living for the welfare of others, and is it okay if they stay at Zen Center and keep practicing? And I say, yeah, it's fine. You can be at Zen Center even though you do not wish to realize Buddhahood for the welfare of all beings. Even if you don't have that spirit, you can still be at Zen Center. But I'm not saying I'm never going to bring this up again in your presence. And I'm not bringing this up to harass you, who says you're not interested in it. I'm bringing it up because I like to bring it up. And there's a lot of people who actually do want me to bring it up because they want encouragement in practicing what you're not interested in. But if you want to stay here and hear some people talk about this all the time, you're welcome to stay. Actually, not all the time. We are quiet quite a bit of the time. You can have some quiet

[27:49]

periods where nobody's telling you about this bodhisattva path. It's okay. And actually, you can avoid the talks where we bring it up if you want to. Deep in my heart, I know this person is going to become a Buddha. So I'm not actually worried about it. So they can go and say, can I be a half-hearted bodhisattva for a few more eons? Sure, definitely. You are welcome. And if you think what I'm talking about is stupid, you're welcome to tell me about it, because that gives me an opportunity to practice patience. Thank you. And practice generosity by really supporting you to be who you are. And then other aspects of this laziness are

[29:07]

undue pleasure in the taste of idleness. Undue pleasure or attachment to the pleasant taste of idleness. I think it's called Essays in Idleness or something like that. It's a book of poetry which was written by somebody who made quite a bit of effort to write these poems. And he made considerable effort to go into his little hut and write these poems about idleness. Sometimes idleness or indolence does feel good. It sometimes is pleasant, especially after you've been working hard. To rest sometimes when you've been working hard,

[30:12]

like to climb a mountain and then walk across the top of it, sort of on a horizontal surface, when you make this effort to get up there, and then it's like no effort. And sometimes you're like, oh, this is really wonderful up here. It really tastes good after this great effort to just be walking across the top. But it's the undue, it's the attachment to the pleasure of the idleness after big effort, or after even not much effort. Idleness can be pleasant even when you've been idle for quite a while. It's the attachment to it that's laziness. It's like the Bodhisattva climbs a mountain, and then they drag 50 people up the hill with them, and they get to the top, and it's easy for a while, and it feels almost like indolence, and it feels pleasant. And then you say to the Bodhisattva, can we go up another steep cliff now? And they say, yeah,

[31:20]

let's go. They don't say, no, can we have a little bit more, or a lot more? It's the attachment, it's the undue, undue, not due to you, pleasure of the indolence that interferes with this heroic endeavor. And another one is, another one is, another one is not feeling sorrow about the suffering of samsara, not feeling sorrow over the suffering, the repeated suffering. Bodhisattvas do not feel sorrow over the difficulty of bodhisattvas. They don't feel sorrow over the difficulty that people who are making effort for the welfare of others, they don't feel sorrow over that difficulty. Is that clear? They see people helping people. They see people having

[32:23]

a hard time. They see Marilyn trying to help this person having a hard time. They don't feel sorrow about that. They sympathize that she's having a hard time, but they feel like, very good. They're happy to see somebody making a difficult effort for the welfare of others. But to see people suffering out of self-clinging, and spinning around that self-clinging thing, and agonizing and self-giddy, that they feel sorry about. And that kind of lack, that kind of numbness or indifference to the suffering of endless self-concern, that feeling neutral about that, or not having being untouched by that, and not feeling sad about that, that's kind of laziness. That again interferes with practicing virtue when you see someone suffering, and practice

[33:32]

that virtue for them. So those are the lazinesses. And then right away, after introducing the lazinesses, the Indian sage poet Shantideva just spends quite a bit of time encouraging the practice of meditation on impermanence. He doesn't exactly encourage the practice of impermanence, but he doesn't need any encouragement. He practices meditation on impermanence. At Zen Center, most people accept that it's part of the deal in Zen to meditate on impermanence, that it's part of the deal to reflect on and be mindful of death. We don't

[34:43]

necessarily remember it all the time, but most people are down with that. We live in a culture that's big on being mindful of death. And the reason why we're mindful of death is to keep us ready to practice virtue. Being aware of death helps us be sober and encourages us to practice virtue, and encourages us to make effort in practicing virtue. So when we meditate on death, reflect on death, be mindful of death, then referring to ourselves, we think, since I'm going to be around only a little while longer, it would probably be a big mistake to not

[35:44]

practice virtue with what little time I have left. Or, let's joyfully make efforts to practice virtue, since we're not going to be around long. And then in terms of meeting any sense of this path of virtue, this path of living for the welfare of others, this path of realizing supreme awakening in order to help others in the most effective way,

[36:46]

but you could also just say it's the path of wishing to help others in the most effective way. That includes the supreme awakening. So this path is just too much for me, because I'm just a poor, ordinary human being. And then there's various teachings of the Buddha who says stuff like, even mosquitoes, house flies, bees, insects, and other animals like this, if they persevere in the practice of virtue, they will become Buddhas. The Buddha teaches that.

[37:52]

And some people might say, well, actually, I can see how bees might become Buddhas. They're really cool. And also, I think some people could say, well, ants, they're very selfless. I can see how they'd become Buddhas. And I would add to the list fungi. They're very much like bodhisattvas, their life. But not me. No, the Buddha says all living beings, if they make diligent effort in practicing virtue, they will become Buddhas. And then again, it's time maybe to emphasize again that the behavior of the Buddhas, I should say the behavior of bodhisattvas who have become Buddhas,

[39:06]

in the life of Buddhas prior to becoming Buddha, their life as bodhisattvas, they did various practices which were difficult for them. So if we aspire to be Buddhas, part of the deal is we would aspire to learn the teachings about what practices Buddhas have done. And then we would hear those teachings and we'd say, I would like to practice the practices that Buddhas have done. Except now that I hear them, I don't know if I can because they seem so difficult, some of the practices that Buddhas have done. So this is a tricky point. If you actually hear about some of the practices that Buddhas have done, you might think, I can't do that. And it may be true that you can't do it now. For example, in the practice of giving, I use this example at Green Gulch. If you feel like you can't practice giving at all,

[40:20]

you might just take something and put it in your left hand and then pass it to your right hand, and then pass it back from your right hand to your left hand. And just do that for a while until you kind of get the feeling of giving. It could be something valuable, too. Take one of your most valuable possessions and pass it from your right hand to your left hand. And just keep doing that for a while and then pretty soon you could pass it to Fred. And then if you give it to him, he might keep it for a while, but then he might pass it back to you. And then we could also start practicing giving people some herbs or something, or give people some leaves. Sometimes people give me, especially in autumn, they send me fallen leaves in letters. And also if the letter takes quite a while to get to me, oftentimes the color is gone from the

[41:32]

leaf. But I know that when they put it in, probably it was very pretty. And they probably thought, oh, I want to give this leaf to him, this beautiful yellow or orange leaf or red leaf. And by the time it gets to him it might be brown or gray. But anyway, now I wish to give this. And by doing this practice of giving over and over, we gradually come to a place where we can give our flesh, give our body. And the Buddhas sometimes are asked for their bodies, parts of their body, and they give them. Not the Buddhas, but the children of Buddha do that. And by being willing to give whatever is beneficial and being able to do so,

[42:33]

one becomes a Buddha, or the Buddha body is realized. The body gets transformed by the practice of being able to give the body. However, at the beginning we're not ready to do that, most of us. Yeah, let's see.

[43:44]

The kind of suffering that people go through when their top agenda is benefiting themselves, the kind of suffering that people go through when they're concerned, first of all for themselves, and what is theirs, like their friends and their family, that kind of suffering is, I would say from the point of view of the Bodhisattva, that kind of suffering is really terrible. That's really horrible suffering. The suffering that comes from self-concern is really horrible. That's why the Bodhisattva tries not to be at ease with that suffering. They try to be calm with it, and gentle with it, and patient with it, but it is really,

[45:06]

it is very, very intense and terrible suffering, the suffering of cyclic existence, of self-concern. It goes on, it has been going on, and without changing the modus operandi here, it will continue. It's really terrible. But the suffering that one encounters when one's living for the welfare of others, although in some sense the pain may be at the given moment kind of like the pain that someone else is feeling, it's really just something to be patient with, and it's not really a problem for the Bodhisattva, because it's pain under the circumstances of making effort for others. And it's not, relatively speaking, it's circumscribed, it's not endless,

[46:16]

it is limited. It's still big, really big, but compared to the suffering that comes with self-concern, there's no boundary on that, because the only way to put a boundary on it is to change the perspective and the motivation. Once the motivation has changed, the suffering is bounded and infused with joy because of what you're doing in that realm of suffering. Again, the pain of childbirth. If the mother is primarily concerned for her own welfare when she's having the baby, then she's in this terrible kind of suffering, but if she's suffering and she's focused on the welfare of the baby, although the suffering is intense, it's also a joy. The path of the Bodhisattva is hard, but it's relatively comfortable compared to the path of self-concern.

[47:36]

And the hardest thing about it is not the pain of it, but doing the practice wholeheartedly. That's the hardest thing. The hardest thing is to be really, fully mindful. That's really hard. The hard thing is to be completely yourself. That's really hard, but it's also pretty comfortable, relatively speaking, because it's infused with the joy of practice. And in order to do it that fully, you have to be joyful about doing that practice. So here you can see the close relationship between patience and this strange enthusiasm of the Bodhisattva. And here's a statement which is kind of shocking. Speaking about Bodhisattvas who are really into the practice,

[48:40]

Shantideva says, their bodies are happy due to their practice of virtue and their minds are happy due to their practice of wisdom. Even if they remain in cyclic existence for the sake of others, why would these compassionate ones ever be upset? Another way of saying it is, by the merit of giving and ethics and patience and so on, they have a sense of physical well-being. And because they've realized selflessness, their minds are in bliss. Even if they're in samsara, which means in samsara they have a body which gets old, which has illness, diseases, because they're in samsara. They're going through the same

[49:54]

stuff that the other people are going through. However, because they're practicing virtue, while their body is deteriorating, they have a sense of physical well-being in their disease. Which again is very encouraging to the people, and that's why they're there, is to encourage others to say, I've got a disease something like yours, and I have a sense of physical well-being even though they say I'm sick. And I don't argue with them, I'm just saying I also have a sense of well-being. I say, well, how about if they're insane, would they also have mental bliss? And I would say, yes, that if they were insane and realized emptiness in their insanity, if they had wisdom in their insanity, they would be blissful. And they would go into insanity if people needed them to go into it. Well, shortly after I moved into Zen Center over in Japantown in 1968,

[51:02]

I read this book about these Zen students who took their teacher to the insane asylum. And I thought, well, how can a Zen master go crazy? And then when the students take their teacher to the insane asylum, are they still the teacher's students? Or they say, well, we used to be his student, but we're not a student of this crazy person. I wondered about that. And then here's another shocker. By the power of this bodhi mind, of this mind of enlightenment, by the power of the wish to live for the welfare of others, by the power of the wish

[52:05]

to realize Buddhahood for the welfare of others, the bodhisattva consumes his previous evils, the harvest of the ocean of merit. So bodhisattvas do practice ethics. That's part of their practice. They practice being careful. They're committed to being very careful about everything they do and to be vigilant about everything they do, including practicing virtue. They don't just practice virtue and say, well, I'm practicing virtue so I need to be careful. No, they are careful, they are vigilant. However, they have a history like everybody else. Everybody's on this evolutionary path, long evolution leading up now to this practice of bodhisattva.

[53:10]

And this wish, this bodhi mind consumes, it doesn't negate, it doesn't stop the results of past karma. It embraces them and eats them up. And the consequences of past action, the consequences are now that they become food for this great heart of compassion. That's their consequence. They do have consequence. The teaching of the Buddha is not denied that karma has consequence. It's just that this is its consequence for these bodhisattvas. Now the next big phase of this teaching about heroic effort, about diligence, is to talk about

[54:18]

the four main factors in developing it and then two additional helping practices. These four are aspiration, steadfastness, joy, and rest, or relinquishment. Those are the four factors. I underestimated the amount of time that would be involved in getting to these four. I thought I would be able to do these four tonight, but if I do, I'm afraid that there will be no time for

[55:23]

discussion. So I think maybe it has to bring up next week what these four are. But I would just say briefly what they are. The first, aspiration. Aspiration means to aspire or be intensely interested in the teachings of the Buddhas, which means to aspire to the practice of virtue and wisdom, in brief. I hope to go into more detail with that later. Next comes steadfastness, which is closely related to not getting into the laziness of thinking that you can't do this practice. To develop steadfastness is a kind of self-confidence that goes with this heroic effort

[56:34]

or this zeal. I guess I would like to talk to you about that more, too. The last one, which is very similar to the basic definition, is joy, which is basically to just think about how wonderful it would be to do these virtues, to think about how wonderful good is. Not getting into whether you can do it or not, that's the previous one, but just to think about how good good is, and to think about it and think about it until you're filled with a great joy at the prospect of doing it. The last one, rest, means when you're doing something and you're doing it well, and you've done it long enough, stop. Or when you're doing something and you're starting to kind of lose it, getting fatigued,

[57:39]

stop. It also means don't try to do something that's too advanced, like don't try to give your body away before you're ready. That's basically it. For me, I like to emphasize that this rest is related to the earlier one of not taking undue pleasure in indolence. So don't take undue pleasure in resting, and also when you do rest, without taking undue pleasure in it, rest as an act of virtue. Rest for the welfare of all beings. Rest, so rest and really look at what you're doing, and really rest so that you

[58:44]

can perform these heroic deeds. Rest with the intention of, I wish to live for the welfare of all beings, and now I wish to rest so that I can live for the welfare of all beings. I maybe told you this example before. My grandson doesn't do this with me anymore so much, but when he was little, and he was on me all the time, now he has other friends at Green Gulch to play with. But when it was just me and him, I sometimes would have trouble keeping up with him, and I would say, just let me take a five or ten minute nap, and I'll be able to play with you better if you let me do it. And he'd say, no, no, no, just five minutes. No, no, no, I really will be able to be more fun, I'll be able to be more with you. No, no, no, and finally, okay. And I'd go just take a little nap and come back, and he'd say, yeah, you are more, you are more, that's good. So now he lets me take naps.

[59:46]

I go to bed around eleven, he goes to bed at eight-thirty, and I get up at four and he gets up at seven, so he does sort of have an advantage too, besides being younger. Anyway, I really look at myself when I'm taking naps, and I do take naps for the welfare of all beings, and I do try to go to sleep at night for the welfare of all beings. That's not a break. Resting is not break time for bodhisattvas. It's a practice. It's part of heroic effort, is to rest. But also, sometimes you're doing something, and you're doing it well, and that's fine, but you kind of want to keep doing it, because you're good at it. But actually, it's enough. Stop. You didn't do enough of that. Maybe it's now time for you to take another, do something else. Don't overwork. So, in a sense, overwork is a kind of laziness. Overwork is a kind of undue

[60:55]

attachment to indolence. You get in a groove sometimes, it's actually you're being indolent. Those are the four, and then one more big one I'd like to just say, this is the big deal, this is not one of the four, there's just another point which is related. It's similar to the resting in the form of, don't take on something too advanced. Unless you have a teacher, a bodhisattva preceptor, you probably shouldn't donate body parts without consulting with your teacher, and or your spouse, and children, or parents. Particularly, if you're doing it as a bodhisattva act, you should have a teacher, to see if the teacher agrees that you're ready to donate body parts. Even if it's something more conventional, like one of your kidneys,

[61:57]

which people are doing now quite regularly for their siblings, but even that you should consider. There's other kinds of gifts which might be helpful to people, which would be good to give, but only if you can really feel joy in it, and not regret it. It's very bad to make donations and then regret it. It's probably better, again, not to give and then resent. It's better to not give than to give and resent. On this path, the bodhisattva path, better to not give than to give and resent, not to mention give and hate. You forced me to do that. I hate you. Plus, I'm taking it back, even though it's ridiculous to take it back because I can't get it back. The principle here, which is another tough one, I'll just give it to you.

[63:04]

You can consider it. We can talk about it more next week, maybe. Before you make a gift, part of the joy of giving is to think about if you're actually currently able to give and follow through. If you feel like you're not able to give and follow through, again, it's time to rest. Give it a rest, or put it aside for a little while. Probably better to do that than to give it, and in the process of doing something good, change your mind and try to take it back. Aside from the fact that it could be very disastrous, again, if you try to change your mind,

[64:09]

in the middle of donating some body part, that could be a big mess. But, in some sense, even worse is to get in the habit to set the precedent of starting to do something good and then quitting in the middle. That can have very harmful effects on the practice. To start doing something good and not follow through. I think a lot of people have trouble with this when it comes time to receive Bodhisattva precepts. They think, well, if I can't follow through on these, maybe I shouldn't try in the first place. But that's a little different. To make a vow to practice the precepts is one thing, but to come to a specific act of doing a specific example,

[65:10]

rather than the general commitment to practice virtue, a specific act of virtue, that's where I would say that this is talking about. To look at that particular one and see if you can follow through on that one. And if you can't on this one, maybe better not to try it and wait until you feel like, I think this time I can, this example, now, today, right now, I think I can do this. I might be wrong, but it's good to start that way. Excuse me for talking so much, but I appreciate you listening to this. And, Charlie? A question about how zeal, or this armadillo that we're talking about, relates to two other similar concepts, one being excitement and the other being fun. Excitement and fun? How do they relate to excitement?

[66:17]

If there's some way that the word excitement is a virtue to you, tell me about it. I was hanging out with some teenagers recently, and I told them I was going to go meditate. They said, are you excited? You know, everything's about excitement, to them that's a good thing. But to me, I also see them in their excitement, getting to shut the door and blowing past a lot of things. So, briefly, when you give gifts, it's when you really get into it, and especially if you're giving gifts without expectation of reward, you will be assailed by great joy. And it's possible that in that joy that you won't be careful. Like that, I don't remember exactly, I should memorize this more carefully,

[67:25]

but there's a Yeats poem which goes, Once there was a mermaid who found herself a sailor boy. She hugged his body to her body, and in her joy, she plunged down into the water. She forgot that sailors weren't mermaids. So it's possible with this joy to actually do something harmful. That's why the joy of giving is followed by being careful now. Are you being careful with this gift? I've noticed myself that even adults say, I'm so excited about this thing, and they say, Are you excited? And being a Zen priest I say, No, I'm happy about it, but I'm not excited. I'm supposed to be calm, right? So when they say, Are you excited?

[68:27]

I say, I'm happy. Are you excited to see this person? I say, I feel joy at the prospect. But I feel like it's my responsibility in joy to also be centered, mindful, careful, and calm. But if we mean enthusiasm, I feel enthusiasm at this prospect, and then people say, Do you feel enthusiastic about this? Or do you feel zeal about this? Or do you feel diligence about this? And diligence also has the root of to delight or to like. I think diligence is related to delicatessen. And we have this chant talking about the awareness of the jewel mirror. The old translation said, If you're excited it becomes a pitfall.

[69:29]

So if you're practicing giving and you get too excited, the virtue of giving can become a pitfall. Even the truth, if you get excited about it, the truth isn't a pitfall, but the excitement around the truth can become a pitfall. Now of course, if you hesitate, that's a problem too. And they say it's like touching the jewel mirror, grasping these practices, grasping them, especially wisdom. Grasping it is wrong, and turning away is wrong, because it's like a mass of fire, a great mass of fire. If you turn away from these virtues, you'll freeze. But if you grab them, you'll get burned. So how can we be mindful of them and stay close to them without grasping or forgetting? So yeah, meditation, we are totally devoted to it,

[70:31]

but we don't grab it. We don't grab anything. But we also don't turn away from anything. And that is the meditation. And you can be enthused about that and calm at the same time, hopefully. Yes, I think, yes, it was Nancy and then Bill. I have some friends who talk a lot about their pain or their suffering. I listen, and often I try to give them suggestions. Maybe I'll share about this glass, or I'll share about something else I do that brings me joy. It doesn't bring them joy? She just keeps suffering, so now I don't know what to do anymore. Well, okay, so you're offering your description of your practice.

[71:36]

It sounds like there's a little bit of expectation that when you give gifts, it will help. So that's not the giving here. What do you do when? I do the same thing you do, and I watch to see if I have any expectation. If I see any expectation, I say, on my part, then I go, Oh, Rebi, I love you, but you're not doing the practice properly. You're expecting something from this gift, and when you expect something from the gift, the gift is not as beneficial to them. It's somewhat beneficial. The main benefit of giving a gift to someone is to give it in such a way that they can feel on some level that you have no expectation that you're going to be rewarded by them feeling better.

[72:38]

And people can, on some level, especially children, vis-a-vis their parents, when their parents give them helpful things, they can feel if there's some expectation on the side of the giver that the child will be helped by what they give. And if they do, basically we're just repeating the same pattern of trying to get something out of life. So we need to learn to give something wholesome, like, I find this helpful, I'd like to give this to you, and that's it. But in my heart, I'm looking to see, do I have an expectation this will be helpful? I think it might be. I hope it will be. And I have no expectation, no attachment of getting the reward that it helps them. And I'm suggesting to you and to me that if we give in that way, that will be actually more beneficial than the other way of giving. And sometimes you give the other way and the person gives you a reward. They say, oh, I feel so much better,

[73:46]

which is fine, of course. And then you might have another gift to give them and say, you know, when I gave that to you and you felt better, I had some expectation that I would get rewarded by what you're giving me. And now I'm giving another gift, which is my confession of the impurity of my giving. My giving was good and I'm glad it helped you, but it had this defiling thing of me trying to get something. And that's another gift I'm giving to you. And this one I give to you without expecting anything. And then they may not give you the reward. However, you have just implanted the spirit of enlightenment in them and it will mature. You're welcome. Bill? Is it possible?

[74:53]

The proposal here is yes. Yeah, it's much easier said than done. Almost always easier said than done, except for once in a while it's easier to do it than to say it. Once in a while. But there's many examples of Zen where the teacher takes the students who are in the quiet monastery and they're able to be present and centered in the monastery, you know, and then take them into the marketplace and move through the marketplace and then watch to see, and have them watch themselves to see if they're able to continue to be as mindful and centered in the hurly-burly as they are in the quiet mountains. And oftentimes the answer is no. So one of the early stories I read about Zen

[76:06]

was this young man who trained for quite a few years with his teacher. And his teacher said, I have nothing more to teach you. He said bye-bye. And the student went down into the capital of Kyoto and started hanging around with the beautiful people. And he noticed that he couldn't continue his practice, he couldn't continue his mindfulness, he couldn't continue these practices we're talking about here. And he went back and studied six more years. And then he went back and he was able to be in the city with all its amazing events and to do these practices. But it takes a lot of training and a lot of testing and finding out that we're not able to do it. And the more training and testing back and forth, but that's the aspiration of the training, is that we'll be able to extend it into all realms. What just comes to mind

[77:08]

is Christmas Carol. And I think it's the ghost of Christmas future who takes Scrooge to visit all these different areas of suffering. And the ghost of Christmas future says, I go into all realms of woe. So Bodhisattva vows to go into all the realms of excitement and depression and fear and turbulence, to go in there. And because of practicing these things, have a sense of ease and happiness, and then to transmit these practices in all these realms. That's the aspiration, the outrageous aspiration of the Bodhisattvas. So next week I'll talk a little bit more about diligence,

[78:13]

and then move into the Bodhisattva's concentration on the mind of enlightenment. And then we have one more meeting after that, right? For us to realize perfect wisdom. Thank you very much. And if we don't finish, hopefully we'll live a little longer. Thank you very much. That hit the spot. Did what we taped last time work?

[78:58]

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