This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Tonight I'd like to talk with you about great compassion. in the path of the enlightening beings, the bodhisattvas, those who are on the path to realize awakening in order to serve the welfare and liberation of all suffering beings. These are the bodhisattvas. Great compassion is... very important and we have a bodhisattva who represents great compassion and we call that this bodhisattva the bodhisattva the bodhisattva regarding the cries of the world or the bodhisattva

[01:32]

Regarding the cries, that's one name. Regarding the cries, regarding the sounds of all suffering beings. But another name is regarding the cries of the world, of suffering beings. That's one of the names of the bodhisattva of great compassion. And there's another name which is much less common. And that name is the Regarder of the self-existence. Regarder of self-existence. Or the self-existent one

[02:33]

who regards. Those are two different names and I'd like to say a little bit tonight about the difference between these different aspects of great compassion. The more common name for this great being, the Regarder of the Cries of the World, that That name appears in many teachings of compassion. The second name, the name which is regarding the way the self exists or the self-existent regardor, that appears in the only scripture I know that it appears in is the heart of perfect wisdom scripture. So in the heart of perfect wisdom scripture,

[03:38]

The bodhisattva of great compassion is teaching wisdom. In many other places, the bodhisattva of compassion is teaching compassion. The compassion which leads to the compassion which is coming to fruit as perfect wisdom. And in terms of the shape of the statues, the statue here is a standing statue. And it looks like a female figure. And in her right hand, she's holding a vase, and the vase is pointing down. Although this statue, you don't see any liquid coming out of the vase. But in some statues, you can actually see water coming out of the vase.

[04:40]

And sometimes in her right hand, she's holding it up like this, sort of teaching. But in some statues, she's holding a lotus flower. So sometimes you could imagine she has this vase with a lotus flower in it, and she takes the lotus flower up, holds it up, and then pours the water... of great compassion out onto all beings. This statue emphasizes the bodhisattva's compassion towards all the cries of the world. This bodhisattva is standing on a dragon. So I could imagine this bodhisattva is standing on a dragon. The dragon... In the turbulent sea, she's riding a dragon.

[05:42]

She's able to stay balanced and upright on a dragon. In the turbulence of all beings' suffering, she can stay upright and minister to people. She's able to listen to all the cries with compassion. And of course, she is also able to listen to cries within herself with compassion. Sometimes people come and talk to me about having difficulty listening to other people's cries with compassion. But more often, people come and talk to me about their difficulty of listening to their own cries with compassion. One might imagine the reason people have trouble coming and telling me that they're having trouble listening to other people's cries with compassion is maybe they would seem to be unkind, you know, to these beings who are crying out in suffering.

[07:01]

Sometimes crying out in the form of insulting the person who's talking to me. Of disrespecting them. Can you imagine that? Some people come and tell me that people treat them disrespectfully. Can you imagine that? They don't necessarily tell me the names of the people. But they tell me people are treating me disrespectfully. Somebody's treating me disrespectfully. Somebody's not appreciating me. Somebody's criticizing me. Somebody's treating me harshly. And I am not having a compassionate response to them. I'm actually, yeah, I don't feel compassion towards them. That's a little harder for people to report, although they do sometimes report it. It seems easier for people to report to me that they're not being kind to themselves when they're being disrespectful of others or when they're being angry at people or when they're criticizing themselves or when they're observing that their thinking is very confused and superficial or when they're afraid

[08:27]

They come and tell me about this and I ask about how do they relate to themselves and they're often not very kind to themselves. And if I bring up the possibility that they could be kind to themselves, they might actually be open to that, but not know how. Well, how would I be kind to myself? if I noticed that my thinking was scattered, distracted, superficial, confused, petty, degrading of others and degrading of myself, if I noticed that kind of thinking, how would I be compassionate to those kinds of feelings? And if I was feeling... I was feeling those.

[09:31]

And I say, well, you start by, if you wish to be compassionate to what's going on in your body and mind, we start by practicing generosity. We let our pettiness, we let our selfishness, we let our confusion, we let our fear, we let our disrespect of ourselves and others. We let those difficult cries, we let them be those difficult cries. We give them to themselves as an act of generosity. We say thank you to them. We say welcome to them. And we say it until we mean it. It's not that we like our disrespectful thoughts towards others. It's not that we like our fears, it's that we love our fears.

[10:34]

We love our disrespect of ourself and we love our disrespect of others. What do I mean by love? I mean you actually totally let it into your life or as total as you can let it into your life because it is in your life. You don't push it away. You learn to totally welcome what's happening with you even though it's really difficult, even though it's a really difficult guest. This is the first step in compassion. If you notice anger in yourself, towards yourself or towards others, if you wish to practice compassion towards it, if you wish to welcome the being of great compassion into your body and mind, then the first step is to welcome every moment, no matter how terrible it is.

[11:37]

That's what this figure says she does. She welcomes all living beings, with no exception. They're all welcomed into her heart. And as they enter her heart, they begin the process of becoming free. and enter the process of freeing others. The next step in compassion is to practice ethics. To be careful of everything you think and say and every posture you embody in response to these difficult cries of the world. To all these cries of pain and confusion and fear and unskillfulness that are appearing within you and around you. Be careful of everything you say and think and every posture.

[12:41]

This is ethical training. Be careful not to slander any cry. Even a bonafide, stupid cry. Even, you know... and unskillfulness that everybody agrees is unskillful. Do not slander it. Do not speak of it in a way that would make anybody care less for this cry. Or you could say this crying person who's crying, not just going, ah, like a baby, but going, ah, you're an idiot. You're worthless. You're ugly. You're unskillful. You should be kicked out of this community. Those kind of people, be careful of them, not if you've let them into your life. And then be patient with the pain of hearing the cry of pain and hearing the cry of unskillfulness and fear.

[13:57]

and hatred and violence be patient with the pain of it this is the unfolding of great compassion and then be diligent and if we can be generous if we can be compassionate by being generous ethical, patient, now we can be diligent There's some energy involved in those first three practices, but now we can develop the energy more. And how do we develop the energy? By looking inward and seeing that we actually aspire to be very great, compassionate beings. And we aspire to that and we really do want to be compassionate. And we think about that we do want to be compassionate until we start to feel some... real joy at the prospect of being compassionate towards every form of suffering, inwardly and outwardly.

[15:04]

It's not that we are that way yet, but we aspire to it. And this aspiration, if we reflect on it, it is the root of great enthusiasm for the practices I've just mentioned, and enthusiasm to be diligent, and enthusiasm then to move on to practice next aspect of compassion which is to develop a mind that is open and relaxed and focused open and focused and relaxed and tranquil and flexible or we sometimes say a concentrated mind but concentrated doesn't just mean focused It doesn't just mean undistracted. It means focused, undistracted, and open to everybody. And flexible with everybody.

[16:06]

Then with this compassionate mind, we're ready to look at the next aspect of Avalokiteshvara, which is the aspect of entering wisdom. order to enter wisdom with all suffering beings, we have to be really pretty fully compassionate. We actually cannot be completely compassionate until after we enter wisdom. But we can be compassionate enough so that we can leap into reality. And in the leaping into reality, we not only practice compassion towards beings, we enter into the liberation of all beings. And from there, the complete compassion, the great compassion, is realized. So I have these two statues.

[17:16]

One is standing. as I said, sort of ministering the waters of compassion on beings. The other is sitting. And she's sitting with her hands, looks like pretty much, but not quite, in our meditation mudra. This is the meditation mudra we usually use when we're sitting. We place it here at the center of our body. This statue, it looks like Anyway, something's sticking up there. I don't know what it is. It looks like one of her fingers is sitting in the air. This great bodhisattva is doing a sort of unofficial meditation mudra. Avalokiteshvar is busy, compassionately, generously, ethically...

[18:20]

patiently, diligently interacting with all the cries of the world. And now she's ready to enter into a deep state of open, undistracted presence with the beings. She's ready to, as we say, wholeheartedly sit with all beings. But to wholeheartedly sit, to actually be able to wholeheartedly sit or stand, to be so wholehearted that you leap into wisdom, needs to be grounded in these practices of compassion. So at the Heart Sutra, we're the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, we're the Bodhisattva who's regarding, the way the self exists.

[19:21]

That bodhisattva we say is practicing deeply the perfection of wisdom. But we could also say that bodhisattva is wholeheartedly sitting. That bodhisattva is wholeheartedly being herself. She's contemplating herself being herself. She's generously letting herself be herself. ethically letting herself be herself. She's patiently letting herself be herself. She's diligently, joyfully cultivating herself being herself and now she's ready to calmly, totally have the self be the self. She's ready to contemplate the body breathing and the breathing body to totally be that person who's sitting upright and breathing.

[20:26]

And she can be totally there because she's been kind to all the cries of the world. All the cries of the world are already being welcomed and embraced, so nothing distracts from this presence This is called deeply practicing prajnaparamita. When the bodhisattva of great compassion deeply practices the perfection of wisdom, she clearly sees that all phenomena are empty and thus relieves all suffering. When the bodhisattva of great compassion wholeheartedly sits or wholeheartedly stands where she is, she sees the true nature of all phenomena.

[21:32]

And seeing the true nature of all phenomena based on being compassionate to all phenomena, she sees the true nature of phenomena. Because she's compassionate to everything and everybody, because she's compassionate to everybody, she gets to see the true nature of everybody. And seeing the true nature of everybody, everybody becomes liberated by that vision. We have to love the whole world in order to save the whole world.

[22:35]

We have to love all beings in order to save all beings. These bodhisattvas want to save all beings. They want to be kind to all beings and liberate all beings. So they practice loving all beings and their love moves towards great concentration and great wisdom. they're kind to everybody they can trust everything to their breathing in and breathing out I would say that if I'm not kind to everybody then I may not be able to completely trust breathing in and breathing out I may think, if I'm not really kind to every cry I hear, every person I meet, every cry I hear in my own self, every fear I feel myself, every doubt I have about myself, every doubt I have about other people, if I'm not kind to these things, I may be distracted from simply, completely trusting this body that's breathing in, this body.

[24:00]

that's breathing out. But this bodhisattva, because of her great compassion to all cries, she can completely trust her breathing in and out. And she leaps in that trust of what's happening. She leaps into perfect wisdom. She leaps into the womb of light. She doesn't look back. and she goes forward from that leap into wisdom to continue then the practice of generosity and ethics and patience and diligence and concentration and she completely trusts her breathing in and breathing out and she leaps again into wisdom and doesn't look back and again goes forward into these practices round and round cultivating compassion into complete, wholehearted practice of wisdom, and then leaping into reality, and then coming from reality back into the same practices from which we leaped into reality.

[25:21]

So these two aspects of Abbalokiteshvara show this cycle of compassion to wisdom and wisdom to compassion, round and round. We sometimes also say, just wholeheartedly sit and thus drop off body and mind. Just wholeheartedly sit. Drop off body and mind means just wholeheartedly sit and let go of all your attachments and enter reality. And thus you can carry on Buddha's great teachings and Buddha's great work. But in order to wholeheartedly sit, we must be compassionate to our sitting. And this sitting...

[26:27]

Avalokiteshvara represents the wholehearted sitting. The sitting Avalokiteshvara represents deeply practicing the perfection of wisdom. And in seeing, in practicing wholeheartedly, sitting, she sees the true nature of all things and seeing the true nature of all things from this wholeheartedness. liberates all suffering. Thanks for coming. But even though all suffering is, even though she wishes to liberate all beings, Avilokiteshvara wishes to liberate all beings, And she works on that wish by practicing compassion towards all beings.

[27:29]

She also understands that there's no beings to liberate. Because she's so wholehearted, she doesn't believe in the idea of beings that she's saving. And because she doesn't believe in the idea of the beings she's saving, her wish to save all beings is unhindered by the belief. in beings. And because she's unhindered by the belief in the beings she wishes to save, she goes right ahead with her work to liberate beings. There may be trouble ahead So while there's music and moonlight and love and romance Let's face the music and dance Before the fiddlers have fled Before they ask us to pay the bill And while there's still a chance

[28:54]

let's face the music and dance soon we'll be without the moon humming a different tune and then there may be teardrops to shed so while there's music and moonlight and love and romance let's face the music and dance if you wish to sign up for practicing compassion towards all the cries of the world you can

[29:55]

Just look at the moon. Abhilokiteshvara is sitting up there and she'll take your commitment. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma Talks are offered free of charge 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.

[30:35]

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