Good morning. Good morning. I'm always curious to know for how many are... new today for the first time at Green Gulch. Welcome. And a welcome to Young Urban Zen. Did they come to the lecture? Yes? Welcome. I recently returned from a trip to Indonesia where I attended the Daughters of the Buddhas Sakyadita International Buddhist Women's Conference.

[01:13]

And I did not know very much about Indonesia at all. And embarrassingly, I probably couldn't have found it on a map. In telling somebody that I was going there, I emailed someone and they said, well, have a wonderful time in Thailand. So I think a number of people perhaps don't know where Indonesia is or what it is. Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in the world. And we were in Java, which is kind of center. There were almost a thousand people at this conference, mostly bhikshuni ordained nuns from many, many countries. Malaysia, Mongolia, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Burma, Myanmar, Thailand, Western countries.

[02:26]

and Korea, Vietnam, China, Taiwan. So the gathering was very, very harmonious, very joyful as we proceeded for seven days to listen to one another, practice together, chant together, eat together. The serving of the meals for almost a thousand people was was quite a feat, delicious vegetarian food. So in today's talk, I wanted to bring up something that was presented at that conference that hit me very strongly in the context of — I'll come to it a little bit later — in the context of our practice of The bodhisattva vow, or living for the benefit of all beings, sometimes talked about maybe non-Buddhistically as altruism.

[03:41]

So I wanted to talk about that, connected with the bodhisattva of infinite compassion. So just one other thing about this Indonesian visit, after the conference was over, we did a tour of temples, and there's a very old Buddhist temple there from the 900s called Borobodur. Have any of you been to Borobodur? Yeah, it's an incredible monument, incredible temple shaped like a three-dimensional mandala. And as you go around and go higher and higher, the bottom layer has a bas-relief, a frieze of sculptures about daily life, then the Jataka tales, then the Buddhist life, and then the Gandhavyuha sutra, which is the

[04:51]

travels of a pilgrim going to talk with many, many teachers, and you wind around up into the top, which is a huge stupa, and then many smaller stupas with Buddha figures in them. And it's enormous and sits in the middle of a kind of a plain surrounded by mountains. And we visited it at dawn as the sun was coming up. between these two mountain peaks. And we all sat, meditation perched all over this temple, really. It's a temple that was used in teaching about the Buddhist life and practice and one's own path. And it's Mahayana, which... kind of in Southeast Asia, I was surprised that it was Mahayana, Vajrayana teachings there in Indonesia. Another connection with what I'm bringing up about altruism or bodhisattva vow is that there was an Indian monk named Shantideva who taught in the 800s in the Landa University in India.

[06:13]

and wrote Guide to a Bodhisattva's Way of Life and spoke eloquently and passionately, fervently, zealously about the thought of enlightenment or bodhicitta, the mind of living for the benefit of all beings. And there was an Indonesian teacher who went to Nalanda, was strongly influenced by Shantideva after this was later. and had an intense and deep experience of bodhicitta, this animating him to carry on the bodhisattva's vow and teach. When he came back to Indonesia, he was known for this, and Atisa, a Tibetan teacher, came to Indonesia to study with him and brought back Shantideva's teaching to Tibet. So this was This was all very interconnected with Indonesia as being a kind of center of learning and teaching.

[07:17]

And it's a beautiful, beautiful country. And not only that, right now, anyway, even though the history has been troubled It's very harmonious among different religions. It's a Muslim, Hindu, Christian, and Buddhism are all in the country. Buddhism is about 1.4 percent of the population, but because it's so populous, that's a lot of people, but mostly Muslim and Hindu. And it seemed at this conference, because many of the people who supported the conference were not Buddhist, there was a kind of feeling of convivienza, or living together harmoniously, convivially, which reminded me of Spain before Ferdinand and Isabella expelled the Jews in 1492. There was a convivienza in Spain for hundreds of years where Muslim, Christian, and Jews lived together in harmony.

[08:28]

I felt like I saw that. same spirit in Indonesia, at least right now. So altruism, the word itself may seem very lofty and, you know, for very special beings who, you know, live without thinking of themselves first. However, altruism, The word comes from the word for other in Latin, alter. And the meaning of altruism is an unselfish living for the benefit of others. The goal is that others' benefit be advanced or be taken care of others

[09:29]

happiness, others' well-being. Now, for decades now, or maybe a hundred years or more, there's been a very strong, almost dogmatic view that human beings are selfish, out for themselves, live with selfishness as their main motivating factor, and theories of psychology and economics and other ways that we live together have at the bottom this, which now is being disproven by research, you know, recent research about kindness and evolution and the fact that human beings actually do cooperate, help one another, and want to benefit not only their own families, but one another.

[10:36]

This is a kind of upheaval of this very now dated view, evolutionarily and psychologically, that human beings are basically selfish and read of tooth and claw. Wow. So this is... very interesting and in Buddhism I think the understanding that human beings have not only the capacity but are except because of their delusions and ways in which they have been formed and imprinted at their basic way of being in this world is with harmony and loving kindness for one another. This is a kind of basic goodness, I think, it's sometimes called.

[11:42]

So altruism, thinking about the benefit of others, the benefit of other beings, other animals, the earth itself, seems like, in this day and age, the only way that we're going to survive, actually. It's not just, oh, isn't that a lofty and lovely sentiment, but it is really our own survival. We need to look at this and take this up and study this altruism for the continuation of the earth and the species and all species. So this may feel surprising, or maybe you're all up on this research and all about the nature of human beings. But Buddhism, I think, for centuries has understood about

[12:45]

compassion, loving-kindness as being capacities of human beings that can be nurtured, developed, and that can transform us. So the definition, I would say, from a Buddhist point of view of altruism, it has two facets or two phases. One is loving-kindness or altruistic love, which is the wish that all beings might find happiness and the causes of happiness. Now, when I say happiness, I don't mean some pleasantry or fun or some pleasant thing for the senses, but the real happiness, what really supports our happiness and well-being.

[13:58]

And I think as we know, we often think something will bring happiness and try to receive happiness from some activity or substance or relationship, and we find this This doesn't bring happiness or the causes of happiness, but the opposite. And we might let go of that and then we try something else. So this altruistic love is the wish that beings find happiness and the causes of happiness. And part of it is a kind of strength and inner freedom and flexibility in order to... maintain this even in the face of people who are not kind to us, who maybe don't want our happiness at this moment, or who are actively thwarting us or trying to hurt us.

[15:01]

How can we, with this altruistic love, still wish for people to find happiness and the causes of happiness? And part of the real causes of happiness, we need to have wisdom to know what that is, what really supports happiness, and what are we not fooled by. So that's one part of altruism. The other face or part is compassion. And this... would be defined as the wish for all beings to be relieved of suffering and the causes of suffering. Now, there are many, many causes of suffering having to do with material comforts or lack of comforts, emotional suffering, psychological suffering.

[16:06]

underneath all of those, that array of sufferings, are the causes of suffering which this wish is bringing forth, the wish to relieve beings of suffering and the causes of suffering. And also, to really see the causes, we have to have wisdom about the way things really are, our reality of existence. Without that, it will be hard to see what causes suffering and what doesn't. So these two parts of altruism, the loving kindness or altruistic love and compassion are together, but they have different objects for their wish, for the wish. One wish is happiness and that we might find the causes. of happiness than the other, the alleviation of suffering and the causes of suffering.

[17:10]

So they have different objects, but they work together. I wanted to also bring up empathy. And I'll bring that up a little later when I bring up what was presented at the Sake Dita Conference about empathy. So empathy we might confuse empathy and compassion. They might seem like, aren't those the same thing? But they actually are not quite the same, although linked. And there was an experiment done recently. I was at another conference called Compassion and Science and Contemplative Practice, or I think that was the name of the... And in this conference, Mathieu Ricard, who maybe some of you know, he's a monk of decades in the Tibetan tradition, a French man who was and is, I guess you could say, a scientist and monk.

[18:25]

He was part of the subject of a research experiment on the brain and transformation of changes in the brain of those people who meditate and have meditated and have these practices meditated for years. So he was, I guess, hooked up to various electrodes. I don't know if you've seen these pictures. It looks like the olden days with a permanent where you had all these things all over your head. Anyway, he was hooked up to this and in some kind of machine and he was supposed to meditate on empathy or bring up empathy. And he was practicing, and they said, no, no. They're watching the screen where things are being lit up on the screen of his brain activity. And they said, no, no, not compassion. Empathy. So the brain was lit up in different ways.

[19:30]

With compassion, actually, the entire system, the entire brain is... lit up. Empathy, it looks different. So he had to try his darndest to just do empathy rather than compassion, which, you know, wanting people to be relieved of their suffering and the causes of suffering and wanting to also act, you know, to relieve it. So it's a full body event. Empathy is a little different. Empathy is the affective resonance or emotional resonance with another person's emotional state where you can feel their emotion and the intensity of their emotions. It doesn't necessarily include the wish that they be alleviated of suffering and wanting to you yourself do something. This moves into compassion.

[20:32]

However, empathy helps to galvanize compassion. It's a necessary component. If you can't feel or are indifferent to another person's suffering or emotional state of any kind, both the loving kindness and the compassion can be cut. You may not be able to activate that or access it in your own heart. So empathy is is very important. However, empathy without compassion can be very draining, can lead to burnout where you feel another's emotional state and this can be draining and over time lead to a lack of meaning in one's work or profession or compassion fatigue. I think it's sometimes called, but I wonder if it's not really

[21:35]

empathy fatigue. And there's studies that are being done on this. So empathy is important to help transform into real compassion for others. So... The paper that I wanted to reference was given at the conference by a professor from Taiwan named Xiao Lan Hu, a woman who was a professor of religious studies and gender and women's studies in Taiwan and also at Temple University. And her paper, which I found extremely interesting, useful had to do with Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of infinite compassion and empathy and respect.

[22:52]

Before I say a little bit more about that, I wanted to go back to the necessity for understanding, for altruism, and have wisdom about how it is that we exist together. And part of this lack of ability to have this kind of wisdom is from our ignorance. And when I say ignorance, I mean not just, I don't know where Indonesia is on the map, but the ignorance that out of which flows actions based on the ignorance that cause suffering, harm, ill will, jealousy, all the afflictive emotions, and a misunderstanding of how we exist together.

[23:58]

So the... teachings that Buddhism offers all throughout Buddhist history and in many different ways to help us to meditate on and look at and open to a whole new way of understanding or not understanding, but a whole new way of looking at how we exist together, what our life really is. And it may be surprising and it may be discomforting, it may be a little destabilizing sometimes when we hear these teachings at first. So I understand that, and yet I wanted to offer some, just lightly, a few of these teachings about the nature of reality, the nature or the characteristics of the appearance of phenomena.

[25:04]

And there's various, through the years and the different turnings of the wheel of Dharma, the wheel of the teaching, there's been different ways of bringing this up. But I wanted to bring up, in the third turning of the wheel, the way of looking at the phenomena and our experience as three characteristics of our experience. And those are, I'll name them, the first is, the imputational, the second is the other dependent, and the third is the thoroughly established. These are characteristics of phenomena, so this might sound strange, but I'll start with the first one, which is the imputational. So to impute something, to impute is to kind of slather on top of anything, any phenomena, another person or this lectern or anything, we impute onto it our... We kind of create a meaning in front of us and we give it a kind of substantiality.

[26:28]

This exists. This notebook is right here. It's just... that it's here, it's separate, it's here, I'm here, it's over there, you're over there, I'm here. And we impute that. And we impute, the imputational character is a kind of, it's a kind of fantasy, actually. Because what this is, or what you are, or what I am, is really beyond your quick, sense of, oh, I know who she is. And we do that all the time. We see certain characteristics, certain signs, certain way someone dresses or walks or looks or age, and we immediately impute meaning or impute that we know who they are, what they are, how they're going to be, whether I like them or not, just very fast, before we even know it. And we impute a kind of separateness to them.

[27:33]

or essence. So we can't stop ourselves, really. And we need to, because when we impute in this way, we also make concepts and words, and then I can talk with you, and you can see me, and we can get along together conventionally in our conventional reality. So this is that each phenomena has three characteristics, three characters, and this is the imputational character. The second characteristic is called the other-dependent. Now, this is a very basic teaching of Buddhism, the teaching being when this comes to be, that comes to be, or when this is, that is. dependent on this, this comes to be.

[28:36]

Dependent on the bell ringing and calling you to the lecture, this lecture has come to be. There wasn't a lecture with, there isn't some lecture that is there outside of all of us coming together to do this together. And it's created by us. It didn't A lecture can't create itself. We create a lecture. It's dependent on us. And my own speaking right now is dependent on you being there. You create me as the lecturer. I create you as the listeners. We are other-dependent. And this way of existence is a co-dependent arising, moment by moment, appearance after appearance. And how this happens is an inconceivable, ungraspable mystery.

[29:37]

And concomitantly, because this is happening in this way, where we're each dependent on everything else to appear in this way, and dependent for our very life, for our very food and breath and way of being is other dependent. We don't do that ourself, even our breath. You know, we say things like, my breath, my breath is such and such, but how it is that I'm breathing is dependent on all sorts of factors that are, and I can't stop my breath, maybe some yogis can, I can't, but it'll stop when the causes and conditions are right, are ripe for it to stop. And it's not dependent on, it's dependent on, it's codependently arising.

[30:44]

So this is the mysterious, inconceivable way that we all, and everything exists. This is the other dependent. This is the second characteristic or nature of phenomena. And the third is called the thoroughly established. And the definition of the thoroughly established is sometimes, well, one definition is the absence of the imputational on the other dependent. So when we stop placing our concepts and ideas and beliefs and sure opinions and stereotypes and everything else, mainly that things exist separately, when the absence of that in the middle of this codependent, arising, mysterious inconceivableness is called the thoroughly established. And also you might say it can be called suchness or suchness.

[31:47]

So this is pointing us towards the wisdom that is necessary to understand the causes of suffering and to break open our ignorance which results in actions of body, speech, and mind based on these misunderstandings and that then cause harm and clinging and self-cherishing and disregard for others well-being, or animal's well-being, or the Earth's well-being. So the wisdom is so necessary for us. It's part and parcel of altruism, really, is to understand how it is that we are together. And then its self and other opens in a new way

[32:54]

And living for the benefit of others is living for the benefit of self. The motivation to help another isn't for our own goal, but our goals of well-being are satisfied as well. This is all embedded in, I don't know if embedded is the right word, but in the heart of wisdom. This is necessary. So the pain, imputation, imputing not just a separate self, which is kind of the most basic and deepest, but imputing all sorts of things on one another is extremely painful. We all experience it. where someone treats us in a certain way or doesn't see us or we're marginalized or someone who's not in the norm or the majority is not included.

[34:05]

And because of these imputations and our education, it all can be transformed. This is not set due to the other power or the The second characteristic, that everything is moving and shifting, including the way we think, is transforming, both in the unconscious and in our active life. So this is always moving and changing, and there's always possibilities. But I think we all know how painful it can be. And one of the areas... that is extremely painful for people is around gender issues. And we, the majority, you know, and for who knows how long we've had this kind of binary understanding of human beings, they're either male or female.

[35:12]

And gender is, gender is different from biological body parts or the sex that we were born as and assigned at birth. Gender is an inner sense of who we are and an inner knowledge of who we are, whatever we were assigned. If there's a match, an alignment between the sex... or biology and the sex we were assigned with our inner understanding of our gender, then that's fine, that's called cisgender. But that's not the case for everybody. The inner understanding is not, it's neither a binary thing, it's something in between or something different, non-normative. So the pain and violence and suffering around these issues is extraordinary and has become more and more clear to me and what practice places and meditation centers can do to inform ourselves, educate ourselves about these issues, gender issues, and make

[36:39]

that reflect the reality of people's circumstances and situations. This is part of altruism. This is part of wishing for the happiness and finding happiness and the causes of happiness and having in the appropriate situation an appropriate response, which is also part of compassion and wisdom as well. Xiao Lan Hu's paper on Avalokiteshvara and empathy and respect, gender issues and empathy and respect, brought up the Lotus Sutra, which is a marvelous sutra, for those of you who haven't studied it, that is with stories and poetry and narrative offering practice and

[37:43]

the truth that all beings without exception have awakened nature. And Avalokiteshvara is the bodhisattva of infinite compassion. Also with other names, Avalokiteshvara is one, and that's often in a male form or an androgynous form. And then over the years there was transformation of the Bodhisattva of Infinite Compassion into a female form. We have on the altar there two forms of the Bodhisattva of Infinite Compassion, one right when you come in the Zen Do in female form, Guan Yin, and also Bodhidharma, who is an Indian teacher who came to China, is another form. Avalokiteshvara, or Guan Yin, in the Lotus Sutra, Chapter 25, and also in other sutras, made a vow to, if people call on this bodhisattva, the bodhisattva will come and help no matter what, and will come in the form that you need this bodhisattva to come, whatever form you need.

[39:03]

And in the Lotus Sutra, chapter 25, there's 33 forms. But there's really infinite number of forms. Whatever you need, compassion, if you need compassion, and this is what the sutra says, if you need compassion to come in the form of a Buddha, it will come in the form of a Buddha. If you need it to come in the form of a minister or a king, and they name all these, and in this list of 33, there's Men, and there's women. There's bhikshunis, nuns and monks and laymen and laywomen. And children, young girls, if you need compassion to come in the form of a young girl, it will come in the form. If you need guanyin to come in the form of the wife of a minister or a chakravartan king, all these different forms, compassion will transform into whatever you need.

[40:05]

And then there's this list of forms that Avalokiteshvar takes, the Bodhisattva of Infinite Compassion, which are these names that we may not be familiar with. For example, if you need the Bodhisattva to come in the form of a Gandharva, the bodhisattva will come in the form of a Gandharva, or a Maharaga, or a Yaksha, or a Garuda, or an Asura, or a Kinara. Well, what are these? If you look in Mahayana Sutras, you can find this list of beings. And these beings are neither male, they don't fall into a binary category. The kinaras, for example, are half, some are half man, half horse, some are half bird, half woman, and there's celestial musicians that float in the air, and there's the gandharvas who are musicians, there's the woodland sprites, there's some that love very deeply their partner,

[41:19]

their beloved, and don't have offspring. This is the definition of these beings. There's beings who are in the earth and take care of the earth. So in this paper that she delivered, which I found so fascinating, she was positing, and this can't be proven, but it resonated so strongly with me as one more turn of the wheel of compassion which is in these ancient times, the Lotus Sutra was, you know, B.C. and like until 200 A.D. it was written. So the authors of the Lotus Sutra, in their compassion and in their respect for beings in all different situations and states, which may not be the normative binary state, offered these different beings as a way that compassion will come forth.

[42:24]

It's very, very respectful. If you need compassion to come in the form of a kinara, it will come in this form, which is this kind of being that you might say, well, that's an imaginary being, but maybe not. Maybe it's some way of relating to bringing up and including with respect and empathy all different ways that people appear in this world, in the mystery of our other dependent, codependent arising. And when we impute, oh, I know what you are, what you're feeling, or who you are, without allowing each being in their unrepeatable unrepeatable and amazingness, ungraspable arising.

[43:27]

If we, with our own imputations and bias and stereotypes, think we know and act from there, this is not only painful, it can be dangerous, violent, hurtful. So Avalokiteshvara takes any form to meet beings. The bodhisattva of infinite compassion, whatever we need. And the sutra says, call on the power of infinite compassion. It's powerful to have beings who want your happiness, want the happiness of the world, want the relieving of suffering of the world, and all therein, the animals and plants and the very earth itself. This is This is the wish-fulfilling gem. This bodhisattva who's behind me is carrying the wish-fulfilling gem.

[44:27]

This is this bodhicitta or altruistic vow to live in that way and wish it. And this is not a kind of generalized, or wouldn't it be nice if? We do say often, may all beings be happy. But if we leave it at that, a kind of generalized, abstract, nice feeling, it will not enter deeply enough into our body-mind for transformation. I recently did an eight-week course at Stanford on developing or expanding compassion, I think it was called. It was about developing compassion. And one of our exercises, our meditations, was to bring to mind someone we love, who's been of benefit to us, who's been kind to us, and then feel how much they have benefited, feel how we love them, how they've cared for us.

[45:32]

And this is a meditation, so you had time to, you can do this yourself. And then imagine that that person is suffering. And I had someone in mind that I care about very, very deeply. has been a great benefactor for me and is not well. And what I felt was a kind of pain in the heart area, like a wound that reverberated throughout my body. It was about this particular person wanting them to be relieved of suffering. and the causes of suffering, wanting their well-being. So to start with someone very particular is one way to enter, to begin, and to feel it in the body.

[46:35]

And I did, as a Chogyam Trungpa calls bodhicitta, a trembling wound in the heart. And I had read that before and kind of thought, I don't know, I couldn't quite relate to it, but this time in entering around one particular person who was meaningful, I felt like I felt what that is, to want someone to be relieved of suffering. Not that you're even able to do it, but wanting it, wishing for them. And what that does to our transforming, unconscious, the conditions of the unconscious and the conscious, and also, you know, physiologically, how the brain transforms. So His Holiness, the Dalai Lama mentions, you know, to start with someone very particular, not an abstract, and that's where the power of this practice can be felt, and from there you can broaden and strengthen

[47:45]

So we're not able to take, you know, to some degree we change and change our form. You know, if I take off these ropes and get into running clothes, people will see me differently. We can take different forms to some degree, but Avalokiteshvar changes completely. And it's not like then they go, she or he or... or in between or outside of the binary he and she, whatever form, infinite compassion doesn't go back to then they've got their regular form. It's constantly changing and constantly transforming according to people's needs. So our empathy with one another can be a way that we change and we transform and we enter and help feel another person's situation.

[48:53]

And empathy is not just the emotional affective resonance. That's wonderful. There has to be a cognitive part to it where we understand their situation, the circumstances, how it is it's come to be in this way, to be able to have help and... actions that follow from that. The emotional is wonderful and necessary. It's not all, it's not enough. So our empathy can transform us into the bodhisattva of infinite compassion of which, you know, these figures, these practice figures are just practice figures to open and open to our own capacity for this way of living. I think I'll end there.

[50:09]

Thank you all very much for your attention. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[50:39]

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