This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Thank you all for being here. I had no idea there would be so many in attendance. Happy to see it. Thanks to Heather and to... Eli, and to Neosho on welcoming me here and inviting me here. So I'm really happy. This is my first visit to Green Gulch. It's wonderful to see it. And to see you. Okay. I'm going to talk about a person whose name came to be Shantideva, Lord of Peace.

[01:02]

Mic okay? All right. Lord of Peace. But that wasn't a name he was known by during his many years at the grand university of its day, Nalanda University. You may have heard this name. But he's famous today because he was the author of a book called The Way of the Bodhisattva. the bodhisattvacharya avatar, entering down into, penetrating, going into, and assuming the activities of a bodhisattva, one whose aim is enlightenment only in order to liberate all beings. And in doing so, he wrote a poem in the 8th century, 918 verses. of the way of the Bodhisattva through an explanation beautifully rendered, like your Dogen Zinzi, beautifully rendered, succinctly rendered, of the six paramitas that the Bodhisattvas practice.

[02:20]

It's so-called transcendent activities. And they are transcendent because they are selfless. activities performed without recognizing a self, internally or externally. Or as Dogen would say, you know, to study the way is to study the self, to study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things. That is because of what some have translated as identity action, But I think, bad translation. Dogin meant, as in the last line of that verse, actions performed with the barriers between self and others disappear. Actions that we're all performing together.

[03:21]

We're all in the same boat. We're part of the same organism. So when I act, you're acting, I'm acting. Because you're acting, we're acting together without separation. I think it's better than identity action. At any rate, the way of the bodhisattva. This is the Shambhala, I think the first edition. One was blue and one was red. This might be the second edition. But... It has a great endorsement, this book that Shantideva wrote. It's endorsed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. And here is His Holiness saying, if I have any understanding of compassion and the practice of the Bodhisattva path, it is entirely on the basis of this text that I possess it.

[04:25]

High praise. Read it if you haven't. The Way of the Bodhisattva. Author, Shantideva, about whom I'm going to speak today. I went to the, this is another, this is an aside, I went to the Nobel Prize Museum in Stockholm and everybody who'd ever been given a Nobel Peace Prize was asked to contribute one item And, you know, I went to see what Bob Dylan had put there. I went to see what Martin Luther King had put there. And I went to see what His Holiness had put there. And His Holiness put this tiny little text in Tibetan of the Bodhicharya Vataar and some rimless glasses in this cage. Just that. So he really means it. He thinks highly.

[05:27]

of this text. Okay. So I said he wasn't known by that name for most of his early life. He entered Nalanda and he was known by the name Busuku. Now, very important to understand what Busuku means. It's a real put-down. The monks bullied him. They thought he was a lazy, good-for-nothing bum. See, all they saw this guy doing, all right, he's supposed to be a monk here. You know, monks have obligations. They took a rotation on reciting sutra. This guy always came up with some excuse why he couldn't do it that day. So he kept missing the rotations he didn't recite.

[06:28]

But at any rate, I'm jumping ahead. All the monks saw him do was eat, and he ate an inordinate amount, taking five times what was normal at each meal. And then they saw him walking around, and then they saw him sleeping a lot. And they said he was eloquent and defecating. Now, boo is taken from Sanskrit verb budj, which is part of bhaktish, if any of you have been to India. He ate boo. He slept a lot from... Su Slopna's dream. Ah, timing off here.

[07:31]

Excuse me. He slept a lot. And ku. Ku means kaka. In Tibetan as well, Sanskrit, if you see ku, that's what they're talking about. So I don't know how you get a reputation like this, but that was his reputation, and everybody called him that. Even when you see his life stories, it's the life of Busuku. In this edition, another writer wrote about him, it's the life of Busuku. That's not very pleasant. Busuku. Meanwhile, Busugu is the author of this text, right?

[08:34]

Okay. So I want to tell you a little bit about him and about this name and what his life story might teach us. Now, I mentioned that... The name we know him by with this text is Shantideva, Lord of Peace. Remember that. But everybody thought he was just a slob, a sloth, lethargic, cared for nothing, lazy, lazy, lazy. He had a kindly abbot who said, you know, your fellow monks don't care for you much very, very much.

[09:38]

And I think it would be well if you participated sometimes in the recitation of sutras. And Bustakou, who I know of Shantideva, said, but you know what it is? I'm just a bad scholar. I'm just a bad scholar. He didn't say he was a bad poet. He said, maybe I'm just a bad scholar. You wouldn't throw me out for that, would you? The abbot said, you have some more chances. But then, at Nolanda, there were groupings of 700, you know, like having a college within a university. There were groupings of 700 and groupings of 300. Somehow he got... into the smaller one. He was the second son, so he went in. And when he went in, the abbot who accepted him must have thought he was smart enough.

[10:41]

But then he began to show these habits. And then the monks were just fed up and named him Busuku. Well, apparently his fame got to be known by the king as well. And so... There came a day when the monks revolted and said, no, he must. He must recite a sutra. The king at the time, Devapala, came. The monk had become famous for being busuku. And so even the king came to attend when busuku was about to recite. The abbot came and said, buddy, you better get ready, because tomorrow it's going to happen. And he said, you know, you're kindly, I haven't done anything wrong, but I'll do whatever you say, he said to the abbot. And the abbot said, well, maybe, maybe, just maybe, if you do this recitation of Manjushri, shortest mantra, gee, [...] gee.

[11:54]

Helps your memory. D-H-I. D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D. Maybe if you do that. He had offered him the longer mantra, shorter mantra of Manjushri, but then he looked at him and he thought, maybe I better give you a shorter one. So he gave him D. That's as short as it gets for calling on Manjushri. Okay. So... Shantideva was convinced he was going to do it because he really did want to, apparently, remain at Nalanda. All right, so he gave up on the lintier mantra. It was just seven syllables. He gave up on that one and said, okay, I'll do it. Thank you, Abbott. And Abbott goes away. And Shantideva, who likes to sleep, apparently, says, configured a contraption to keep himself awake by tying up a leg and tying up a knee and tying it up to the ceiling.

[13:04]

Now, I don't know if you've been to Kathmandu. I always thought it was very interesting that in some of the shops right around, you know, you can buy various Tibetan trinkets and jolas and things. One year, I went to Abodnak, and there were these shops that were selling red bands. I mean, just, you know, a knot of this thing. Red. And these are actually used in tantric practices for yogis who don't want to lean over and go to sleep. So Busuku, even in a century, he rigged up a way to keep his head up. But in these shops, I thought, this is really strange. They sell these things.

[14:05]

They're called gomtaks. Gomtaks belong to yogis, not to Western tourists. They don't know what to do with them. You know, it's a band that goes around your head and around your knee when you're sitting half yoga. You know, you put it like that. You know, if you fall over, you'll wake up because you'll hit the eye. But that's a nontag. He ridded up a system of ropes. He was determined. He was going to do what the abbot had said and do his manjushri mantra. Okay. Because he had to recite the next day. So then he suddenly came awake. the story goes, because he somehow managed to fall asleep anyway. So he was jolted awake, and there was this resplendent Manjushri sort of floating there.

[15:06]

And he says, what happened? Who are you? And Manjushri said, you've been calling me all night. It's me. What you want? So he said, oh, oh, oh, Manjushri, oh, please help me tomorrow. I have to recite sutra and I don't know any. And Manjushri said, don't worry about it. Don't call me anymore, but don't worry about it. Just take the stand and take your seat and you'll be all right. So he disappears. Okay. So the next morning, even the king... King David Paul came because he wanted to see this person, famed for eating and sleeping and eloquent and defecating. So everybody was there, and it was a big show. And the monks had built an especially high throne, it said.

[16:10]

A high throne, higher. They tried to make it the case that he couldn't even get up onto the throne. But they looked, they saw him, and the next thing they saw, he was on the throne. And his first words were, please tell me, would you like to hear something old or something new? And they said, well, you're best at eating, you're best at walking around, you're best at sleeping, you're best at sitting. Give us something new. And Shantideva began reciting this book, these verses. And he recited them. There's the six paramitas, and there's a chapter on wisdom at nine.

[17:17]

And in verse... In chapter 9, verse 34, he begins to rise up from that seat. Full lotus, he begins levitating. The monks began scribbling because it's been such a wondrous text to that point. They're scribbling, trying to catch every word, and then it's the case that they can only hear the words as the words are rising up into the sky. Shantideva is usually depicted with a cushion underneath and his body rising. And the text was something marvelous to behold or to hear. Tibetans run through the fields, shouting at the top of their voices, verses from the Bodhicaryapalata. Why? because it's said that if hearing verses of this text, even the gnats and grubs will attain enlightenment.

[18:30]

So Tibetans make it a practice just to sing in the fields, reciting these verses. I thought it was strange the first time. Monks, nuns, they're just running. What are they reciting? They're reciting Bodhicharyavatar. So the gnats and the grubs and the bees and the ants, will attain enlightenment. Oh. So, I have a question for you, or a couple, for our Q&A. For our Q&A. Do you know anybody like Shantideva? Ha-ha! Ha-ha! How do you know? What is that person really doing? Hmm? Aren't we ourselves eager sometimes to know about another person or to judge another person?

[19:41]

Don't we do that? Don't we judge people before we know them? I don't, yeah, not a shred of... All the barriers between self and others disappear. So you're enlightened by all things, you know? Has anyone here ever seen the movie The Soloist? Really? Tassajara at the city center? No one had. The Soloist is a movie. It's been the 1990s. It's connected, believe it or not. It's a movie about a homeless person. It's a true biopic, you know. A homeless person who was playing violin on the streets of L.A. His violin had only two strings.

[20:41]

And he had a cart, you know, and he lived outside and everything. And a journalist... played by Robert Downey Jr., who was working for the LA Guardian and wanted a story. And the homeless person was played by Jamie Foxx. Now, the story is that Robert Downey, the journalist decides to speak to a homeless person and then to write about it. So he chose. the two-string violinist. And they struck up a conversation. And the rest of them, so the homeless person asked his name. He says, oh, I know you. You're Mr. Lopez, Mr. Lopez. And he calls him Mr. Lopez throughout the movie. I may pick out a porn in the movie you didn't think about. And the journalist calls him, he learns his name, and he calls him Nathaniel throughout the movie.

[21:48]

Yesterday at the city center, I talked about the very simple practice of knowing another, respecting another person. I talked about respect. So this is not a point of the movie, but it is. The journalist becomes, in that movie, the homeless person's great white hope. He liberates him, you know. He gets some one of his readers to give a cello. And he gives it to Jamie Foxx and he starts playing the cello. Why? Because the journalist discovers he's been formerly a student at Juilliard. He's now a homeless person in L.A. In that movie it said almost 90,000 homeless in L.A. I think there's more now. And the movie highlighted the LAMP organization founded on Skid Row to help homeless people.

[22:53]

Okay. So this comes up because one of the points of the movie is you can't judge a book by its color. That people have rich lives. They have rich life stories that we might not know if we just judge immediately and let them go. Right? And also one notes. So it's good to, I'll give you this as a practice suggestion, not a teacher, not an habit. Just try it. If you're not in a dangerous situation, try speaking to someone. It can be about anything. Like, I'm from Atlanta, so I say to someone seated, boy, is it hot.

[23:55]

That's a good icebreaker. Sure is. It's hot out here. And then, you know, then I might be able to move to, do you know the Presbyterian Church over down the square? They have lunch every, they serve lunch, free lunch every day at noon. Yeah? Mm-hmm. Just if you're wondering. In other words, it was good for the journalist to talk to a homeless person. The movie shows the LAMP organization, which is still operating in LA, even though there are lots and lots more homeless people there, and it's been part of a recent election, right? All that. But the point for me is... It's not, oh, very good to judge a person by appearance when you first see them. And then they fall into a pattern, oh, you know people like that.

[24:59]

So then it becomes fixed. You know that person really now. When you don't know that person at all, you never tried. One of the points of the movie. And the other point was respect. Respect. Throughout the movie, the homeless person says, Mr. Lopez, Mr. Lopez. And his white savior says, Nathaniel. That caught some people's attention. So let's go back to Shantideva. He's writing this text. Now I want to tell you about another influential Buddhist poet. Philosopher. Whose name was Nagarjuna? Hmm? Nagarjuna, too, lived four centuries before Shantideva. Six centuries before.

[26:00]

Second century AD. Okay. Nagarjuna's second century. Shantideva's eighth century. That's sixth century. But of course... Shantideva was quite well-educated. He wrote two books, The Way of the Bodhisattva and A Compendium of Mahayana Sutras. He had read them all. Okay. Nagarjuna had, in addition to writing Mula Madhyamaka Karakas, all about Sunyata in the 70 verses, where the term Sunyata is never used. Wrong. Between samsara and nirvana, there's not the slightest thread of difference, Nagarjuna said. The only difference is in our view. The same facts, entities, with attachment, samsara. Without attachment, nirvana.

[27:06]

The difference is only in our view. Nagarjuna was so good at, as Dogen was, capturing experience in words. Okay. Shantideva certainly read Nagarjuna, and Nagarjuna too had written a little book called The Practice of the Bodhisattva. And more pertinent, he had written a smaller book inside the book, a little shastra, a little commentary. that was called The Provisions for the Bodhisattva Man. And in the Bodhisambharasastra, Nagarjuna had said, he had commented on how we can, how one can tell a genuine Bodhisattva. How do you spot a genuine Bodhisattva?

[28:07]

And he said... A genuine bodhisattva works for dharma over personal benefit. A genuine bodhisattva. This is a way of talking about the eight worldly dharmas. But in four. A genuine bodhisattva works for dharma over personal benefit. Two. Works for good. over fame, works for beings over personal happiness, and does all these things while accruing virtue, doing them in secret. Dharma over benefit, good over fame,

[29:08]

Beings over personal happiness in secret. Second question for you. You know when you're doing stuff in secret, you open yourself to... Rumors. And expectations and judgments. Oh. I mean, some people might think you're lazy. No, no, no good. You might be working on doing good all the time. I mean, you know, you don't publicize it. But you might be doing it.

[30:14]

Good. But in secret. You might be accruing virtue. But it says, do no harm. Practice what is good. Discipline the mind. This is the teaching of all the books. But you don't need to advertise it. So maybe he was, do you think? Maybe he was doing all these things in secret because he wanted to spring it on them later. Maybe he was getting ready for his, no, I don't think so. I don't think so. Not at all. But I didn't throw it out there. He was working in secret. Oh, a genuine bodhisattva.

[31:17]

We shouldn't, I don't know. I say we, you know, I don't mean any harm, but I know how easy it is to judge someone before you know them. That's easy, isn't it? Don't we do it? Hmm. Boy, I wonder where that comes from. are doing that. Are we protecting ourselves? I mean, what do we get out of it? Does this make life easier? Oh, I know that person. I know people like that. I don't want to have anything to do with them. Now, where'd they come from? No telling what they've been up to, girl. She was gone for two years. Mm-mm. You know? You sure you're over there in India?

[32:21]

We do it on big things. We do it on little things. We know exactly that we know what that is. And so often, if we sweep, if we just go by it so fast, We miss an opportunity. So quick to judge. Shantideva gives us in his meditation chapter in the Bodhisattva Avatar. He gives us two ways. I guess this is Dogen again. I guess I'm thinking about Dogen. Here, with you master practitioners. Thinking about Dogen, thank you. I appreciate that. About judging.

[33:43]

Shantideva in his meditation chapter. says there are two practices people reading this should actually try. One has to do with what he calls exchanging self with others, and the other has to do with what he calls equalizing self in others. And he does specific practices. You'll see His Holiness do them, and they are rational. That's the thing. They're not sentimental. But some ask you to make yourself another person and feel like them. See how it feels from their point of view. Then visualize yourself as the other person. See how it feels from that point of view. So you know both points of view. It's interesting. And in the back of the Shambhala books, there are two appendices.

[34:44]

One is the meditation. on exchanging self with others, another good reason for buying this book, and the other is equalizing self in others. Now, in the Tibetan practice, they say everyone's exactly the same. You've probably heard this, His Holiness say this, in that we all wish to be happy and we all wish to avoid suffering. In that respect, we are exactly, exactly, exactly the same. So why judge? You know I'd slip that in. And the other, equalizing self with others, is to catch us up on how readily we are comfortable with assuming we're better than others. You know, the conceit of I, you know, in Buddhism, I want to get rid of that I. That I is attachment. It's a simple, simple thing. We wake up and we see the world from our point of view.

[35:46]

And we think that's the correct point of view. So we make judgments every day about the colors of rooms and about things our minds don't register. We're making these judgments all the time. And we do the same with people. And that conceit of I actually says not only I can do this, I do this, but I'm better than it. That's a really dangerous one. And we all have it. I think, maybe you don't think that. So this tendency to judge, even when we think we're doing something good. Oh, Shantideva tells this story, and I think this will be my last story. Shantideva in this book, The Way of the Bodhisattva, he says, One day you step on a thorn.

[36:49]

I told this yesterday. You step on a thorn, and your hand reaches down and pulls it out immediately. Doesn't think about it. The hand, Shantideva talking, the hand doesn't say to the foot, oh, silly foot, you did it again? Oh, silly foot, I told you not to. He's talking about this as you know, the way we judge. He says, rather than recognize you're part of the same organism and acting naturally to correct it because part of you was suffering, you say, oh, stupid foot. Don't do that. Don't get to say the same thing when he says the barriers between self and others fall apart. You're in the same boat. We're all pulling to get out of suffering together, so why rank ourselves in that endeavor?

[37:56]

Oh. Yeah. I think I'd like to stop here. Encourage you to read The Way of the Bodhisattva. Think about the fact that The author was working in secret on something that has helped hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, with the Bodhisattva way, while he was being called busaku every day. And that maybe Shantideva was more appropriate for him because he proved himself to be a lord of peace. He didn't get angry. He just kept his head down, kept working, doing his thing for the benefit of beings in secret.

[38:59]

All right. Thank you so much. I'd love it if we could do Q&A. A few questions, if you'd raise your hand. Thank you so much. This was incredible. I am someone who has struggled to build confidence and believe in myself. But when you said that I'm better than someone else in the judging other people, I was like, oh my God, that's me. So it's like, what's that line of healthy confidence or I guess anything about the I'm better than someone else in judging, that hit me hard. Okay. I want to tell all these stories. In the Tibetan tradition, I'll start there. I know that a little better. In the Tibetan tradition, a teacher and a student can't begin that path of growth until the student's mind is ready.

[40:16]

And sometimes that means the student has to get knocked down a peg because they come in thinking they know it all. But sometimes the student comes in with not enough confidence to think he or she can actually do this path. Or, like myself, when I first met, my teacher, friends would say, who also met him, would say, oh, he's so compassionate. And I would say, early on, I remember doing this. How dumb. I remember saying, oh, lots of Tibetans are compassionate. It's like, who needs compassion? I did. But the flip side of not being sure of yourself is being even more prideful.

[41:23]

I said to them, I need wisdom. I don't need compassion. Okay. Because I was scared all the time. I was deflecting. So here's the thing. Famous, famous Tibetan story. Milarepa. Milarepa. Oh. Everybody doubted Miller's ability. His father died young. His mother said, you'll never amount to anything. Like that. And then his mother said, I want you, son, to go and learn black magic and destroy all these. That's my timer. And destroy, sorry, I'm so sorry. And to destroy my enemies. And he says anything to please his mother. Miller Rape was the type that wanted to please, wanted to please. Everyone else wanted to please. He wanted to be loved. So he went and he learned black magic.

[42:25]

And he killed 35 people because the people in the village stole from his mother and stole from him and they left them paupers. The mother wanted revenge. She thought Miller couldn't do that either, but he said, I'll learn black magic and I'll take revenge on those people, and he did. So then he has, in addition to worrying about his mother, who the town runs out of the town after that, he's worried about the karma horts that are on his tail because he knows he's killed 35 people. So when he meets a teacher, he's dragging, if you will, guilt, self-loathing, I mean, this is a young man who was just trying to please, right? When I met Lama Yeshia, I had been raised in the South. I had been told I didn't know my place if I stood out. I'd been told I was worthless. You know, I lived in a place where old black men would call boys all their lives.

[43:30]

I didn't feel like I had much worth. So I... I try to be strong in the world. So I met Lomayesi. I was carrying all this self-loathing and shame. And so my friend said, he's so compassionate. I said, who needs compassion? Lomayesi had to work with me to first get me to know I was OK. That took, he loved me up, which was what I needed for 15 years before it took. So I'm saying this. Don't beat up on yourself. Be kind to yourself. You are worth, you are lovable. Everyone is.

[44:34]

Not just you. Everyone is. It's important to have a healthy mind to start the path. And the healthy minds mean, I'm okay, I can do this, I set my mind to it, nothing I can't do. I have a question. I wonder why you think Shantideva didn't stay at the university after he ascended and gave his talk. I think he'd made his point. By the time they were trying to hear and scribbled all those notes, there were hundreds of different notes on this. He said, I left a copy in my room and a copy of something called Shikshisamuchaya, which is a collection.

[45:36]

In my room. Now, we only have what happened to Shantideva in the numtar after that episode in which he levitates. He goes in the numtar and takes on a whole other life. He goes in the service. I think it's just an amalgamation of stories. He goes in service to work for a king, whereas he's some kind of guard and soldier. He wears a sword and it's reported to the king. He's killed all sorts of animals in the countryside over there. And when he's called before the king, he says, no, this is the sword I use, king. And the king says, let me see that sword. And he says, it's really dangerous. It's very dangerous. There's another story altogether about Shantideva that's told. in the numtar that shows him rising up. I think it's just the two stories came together.

[46:38]

In any way, in the second part, he shows the king his sword. The sword is not metal. It's made of wood. He says no animal at all ever died, and all the animals reappear. So that's a very tantric take on Shantideva's life, which I think somehow came into the... This more traditional story, Busuku. So I think it's two different stories. He didn't stay at the monastery. I don't know. Maybe he stayed at the monastery. We don't know. I think he probably passed away or he just went to another place. The second part of the story we aren't sure about. To God. Thank you so much for your talk, and it's really wonderful hearing from a social justice perspective. I have a question about, so your story is really lovely, and it's very striking, and in this one, you know, eventually, Busuku gets sort of this really big public recognition of, you know,

[48:01]

his virtues and what he's been working on. Do you have any tools for working with, because there's probably sort of a busuku in all of us or maybe people we know or groups of people we know that maybe in this particular lifetime, you are faced with certain intersections that will cause you to inevitably be perceived or misperceived or maybe you know people you know are misperceived and maybe you never get that moment where you're levitating off a cushion and everyone can actually see what you you know who you really are and appreciate you and so do you have any advice for you know how do you navigate the grief or the frustration of that Maybe it's back to your concept of doing things maybe in secret, maybe when there isn't always public recognition.

[49:05]

I'm not sure I understand the question. Well, okay, so let me try again. So in... I think the question is... So in Shantideva's experience, he was misunderstood and then had this moment of really grand public recognition that actually he wasn't a lazy bum. He's, you know, this wonderful scholar in the background. But I'm wondering what do we do sort of in our personal lives or maybe when we see you know, other people where there are, you're faced with misunderstanding and there isn't that kind of public platform to ever sort of have this vindicating moment where everyone sees actually, you know, what you're made of.

[50:13]

And maybe in this lifetime, that's never, that's not gonna be fully possible. We have tools for coping with maybe the grief or frustration or how do you feel into your inner Shantideva when you don't get that big levitation moment? Okay. I don't think Shantideva was waiting to spring in on people. He was just doing his work. He was just writing. And he was writing poetry that he hoped would help people. Though he says... First verse, maybe this will help some people, but I only did it to remind myself. So he's just writing. And I don't think he was thinking at some future point, I'll get a chance to levitate before them and I'll show them. I think it's probably common enough.

[51:16]

Yeah. No, I don't think he... I don't think he was a charlatan, right? He's not waiting to spring it on him. I think he's a model of being patient while others cast dispersions everywhere. He's the model because he didn't get upset with that. That's our lesson. You know, like, can we go through life and not want to rant and rave the whole time? Now, I'm a black. person in America, right? I know that I'm judged often wrongly. I know that even my parents worry about me when I'm in certain parts of the South because I'm direct and look people in the eyes. When there are still lots of places where I'm supposed to look down as though I have

[52:18]

A hat in my hands. I mean, okay. It's too long a story. Unbelievable things, you know. So my parents worry. I'm going to get in trouble because I'm sort of too direct or something. Can I see such and such? I asked 26 different places when I was going to visit probate courts. 26 answers from white clerks. Oh, where are you from? Never veering from, where are you from? I was out. They wanted to say, you're out of your place, aren't you? You're not acting deferentially enough to me. That was what they were saying. I never got a, oh, it's over there. So. There are a lot of indignities, right?

[53:20]

And you can choose the one you want to fight. But I don't think Shandideva was about that at all, right? And I think there's something to be said for Buddhist training. Let's get back to the discipline. It is not easy not to, what is it called? Huh? Lash out. Oh, thank you so much. Yeah. Yeah, instinctual. You know, like, mm-mm. So, it takes discipline. Remember that Dhammapada verse I mentioned earlier. The Buddha says so succinctly, do no harm. That's not always easy. Practice what is good. Discipline the mind.

[54:20]

Because if you don't discipline the mind, you can't do those two. These are relational activities you do with others, right? And disciplining the mind is absolutely necessary. So Buddhists are really fortunate they got methods. Oof, you got methods. Mm-hmm. I marched with Martin Luther King. Martin Luther King wrote in his sermons, we are told to love our neighbors. How are we supposed to do that? I said, praise the Lord. He said, how? Because that's what I wanted to know as a child. How do we do that? Our neighbors don't particularly love us. They make it clear. And Martin Luther King says, you've got to be tough-minded. Even though you're tender-hearted, you've got to be tough-minded. And then he went into, these are steps for how you love God. Someone who's presenting themselves as an enemy. Read it.

[55:22]

It's a sermon on loving your enemies. In the strength to love. Title says it all. Strength to love. Take strength. Okay. Martin Luther King says, here's what you must remember. One you must remember is godly to forgive. Okay. Okay, Baptist preacher, what else? What else? It's godly to forgive. Okay, what else? How, how, how? He says, Tibetan say, I'm sure, so does in Buddhist say, confronted with a so-called enemy. Discipline the mind. This is not all of this. This is not all they are. A Klansman, I've seen them up close, take off that robe, pick up a kid, kiss a wife.

[56:27]

They know how to love, though they might not be showing it to you right now. This is not all of who they are. Tibetan nuns who were captured by Chinese soldiers and tortured every day for aid. I know this, my torturer, is not all I see is more than this. This is not all of who they are. They have wives. They have kids. That's a rational way to confront an enemy. This is not all of who they are. I only see this part. I only see 1%. I know that they are better. Yeah, I know they're better. I'm not witnessing it right now, but I know they're better. This takes discipline. This takes discipline. And the training I got with King, the discipline was, you do your absolute best to love them.

[57:32]

This is why nonviolent resistance is transformative. Don't want to repeat everything I said yesterday. Nonviolent resistance. Resistance is transformative to both self and others. Why? Because you look an enemy in the eye and see them as a person and respect them and show that you realize this is not all of who they are. And they have to see you as a human being. And that transforms them. And it transforms you. It lets you know you're in the same boat. It lets you know about the value of a human being. Non-violence is respect for life. Respect for life is valuable. I don't know if I've answered your question. I'm hoping to say that I had to, that there are. I was happy to know there were methods for help.

[58:33]

Okay? Hope so. Thank you. That's very profound. Appreciate it. Thank you. I see some hands back there. Unfortunately, this is all the time we have for in here, but if you are able to be at the tea after the talk. I'm happy to be at the tea. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[59:28]

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