This morning... is April 1st. It's sometimes called April Fool's Day. Did you know that? Did any funny things happen today yet? Hmm? Yeah? I don't know if you can see in the back, but up in front are lots of children. And this morning, the program for the children, I think, is going to be considering the idea of new life.

[01:05]

Is that right? And I wanted to talk with the children a little bit about being happy. And some of you may not know what It means to be happy, and some of you may. I don't know. Andrea? Do you have your little girl here? Yeah. Great. Do any of you know what being happy is? Any of the children? You don't know? Do any of you know anybody who's happy?

[02:06]

You do? Who's happy? Who? Your father's happy? Oh, you're happy. Okay. And do you want anybody else to be happy? Do you want your mommy to be happy? Wow. Do any of your kids want your mommy to be happy? If any kids want their mommy to be happy, would they stand up, please? One, two, three... Uh-oh. More. So all the kids who are standing want their mommy to be happy?

[03:10]

Is that right? Not all the time. How many people want their dad to be happy? Stand up, please. Okay. Great. Thank you. Sometimes we, in this room, sometimes together we say, may all beings be happy. May all beings be free of unhappiness. May all beings be free of sickness and pain and fear. And I wondered if, do you sometimes wish that your mother and father would be happy?

[04:12]

Do you wish that they would be happy sometimes? You want them to be happy. Do you sometimes say, I wish my mommy would be happy? Do you sometimes say that? Do you sometimes say, I wish my daddy would be happy or my father would be happy? Do you sometimes say that? Do you ever wish that your grandfather would be happy? Or your grandmother? No? Do you wish that your brothers and sisters would be happy? And do you sometimes wish that you would be happy? Good. Good. But do you know what happy is? Okay. I wanted to sing a song with you. But then when I looked at the song, the song starts out by saying, if you're happy and you know it.

[05:24]

And I thought, well, what if the children don't know that they're happy? But I thought we could, even though you may not know it, Maybe we could still sing it. But I did feel a little bit, I felt a little, well, I felt a little pain about this song if some of the children don't know they're happy. I didn't want to force any children into singing this song. So I thought later we could do some different ways of saying it, but maybe we could start by just doing the, singing the song even though we're not sure if we're happy. Is that okay? Would you please stand up, children? Please stand up. Maybe you know this song already. And the adults, maybe some of the adults know it too. So it goes something like this.

[06:27]

If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands. if you're happy and you know it clap your hands if you're happy and you know it and you really want to show it if you're happy and you know it clap your hands if you're happy and you know it stamp your feet if you're happy and you know it stamp your feet if you're happy and you know it and you really want to show it if you're happy and you know it stamp your feet if you're happy and you know it Now I'd like to do another version of this, another song, a similar version.

[07:33]

and substitute for happy living. Okay? You want to do that? And of course, you want to do that? You want to stand up and do that one? You want to stand up and do living? Okay, kids, you want to stand up and do living? Okay, ready? If you're living and you know it, clap your hands If you're living and you know it, clap your hands If you're living and you know it, and you really want to show it If you're living and you know it, clap your hands If you're living and you know it, stamp your feet If you're living and you know it, stamp your feet If you're living and you know it, and you really want to show it If you're living and you know it, stamp your feet If you're living and you know it, shout hurrah.

[08:36]

If you're living and you know it, shout hurrah. If you're living and you know it and you really want to show it, if you're living and you know it, shout hurrah. If you're living and you know it, do all three. Thank you, children. Now, is that enough? You are our new life. Please go do it for us. There's seats up in front if you want to sit in the front.

[10:05]

Another version of this song, which I was thinking of doing with the children, but I thought it would be a little shocking. But I would like to ask you to do it with me. Would you please, those of you who can, would you please stand up? So we did happy and we did living. And now I'd like to do dying. I don't know if it would have been good to do it with the children here or not. But I'd like to do with you. If you're dying and you know it, clap your hands. If you're dying and you know it, clap your hands.

[12:06]

If you're dying and you know it, and you really want to show it. If you're dying and you know it, clap your hands. If you're dying and you know it, stamp your feet. If you're dying and you know it, stamp your feet. If you're dying and you know it, and you really want to show it. If you're dying and you know it, stamp your feet. If you're dying and you know it, shout hurrah. If you're dying and you know it and you really want to show it, if you're dying and you know it, shout hoorah. If you're dying and you know it, do all three. If you're dying and you know it, do all three. If you're dying and you know it, and you really want to show it, if you're dying and you know it, shout hoorah. please enjoy your new life.

[13:37]

I've been thinking about and meditating lately on... And in particular, I've been meditating on the teaching that enlightenment is the silent bond among all beings. The silent bond among all of us, but also between us and... the mountains and the rivers and the great earth, and also the silent bond between us and all beings who have realized, fully realized, this silent bond. My experience is that most of us have not fully realized this silent bond among us.

[15:03]

most of us have not fully realized enlightenment. So one way that things are is enlightenment. That's the way, that's one way that things are right now. And that one way is the way that you and I are bonded silently in a way that's beyond anything we can say about it. I can say something about it. I'm just kind of talking about it right now. But this bond between us is, my words will never reach it. Your words will never reach it. It's silent. The way we are in close friendship with each other and with all things, animate and inanimate, That is what I have been meditating on as enlightenment.

[16:10]

And included in things being this way are beings who do not accept, do not understand, that they're in a silent, close friendship with all things. And these are called sentient beings, like most of us are sentient beings, I guess. We don't fully understand this. And so for us, that's the way it is. The way it is is that we do not feel, we do not understand that everybody is our close friend. Not everybody is our best friend, because there's no best or worst. Everybody's close. And the way we're close is the way we are. And each of us is different, but our difference is the way we're close to each other.

[17:22]

And another way I've been meditating on this is I've been thinking about and meditating on beauty. And another way to think about this is I've been meditating on happiness, which led me to this song this morning with the children. There is a kind of worldly happiness, which I think we have... we may have some familiarity with. It's a kind of happiness which can occur when we get something we want. Or when people speak well of us. Or when we hear that people speak well of us. And we feel happy when When that happens, or when something pleasant happens, when pleasure happens, sometimes we get happy.

[18:39]

In other words, we feel good about it. We feel a positive sensation and we feel happy. It isn't just pleasure, we feel happy about it. Pleasure is not the same as happiness. But sometimes when we feel pleasure, we feel happy. And then there's also, that's what we call worldly happiness. The happiness that comes when we feel pleasure. The happiness that comes when we get something we want or we get something. The happiness that comes when people speak well of us or we hear that people are speaking well of us. These are worldly happiness. And then there's worldly unhappiness, which is when we feel pain, sometimes feeling pain is not the same as being unhappy.

[19:41]

But sometimes we feel pain, and then we feel unhappy. And then something's taken from us that we want, and we feel not just that something's been taken, but we feel unhappy about that it's been taken. And sometimes we Someone speaks badly of us, and we feel unhappy. And similarly, sometimes we hear that someone has spoken badly of us, and we feel bad. This is worldly unhappiness. So there's that kind of happiness and unhappiness. But there's another kind of happiness, which is the happiness that comes with realizing... Enlightenment. And when we have that kind of happiness, the happiness of realizing that all beings are close friends, then these other kinds of happiness pretty much, either they don't arise anymore, or they're really...

[21:03]

have almost no motivational impact. So you, in other words, you come to be a person when you realize this enlightenment or when you enter into this enlightenment process. When you're on this path, you experience pleasure, but you don't get jacked up by it. You just feel pleasure. And then you feel pain, but you don't get pushed down by it. In fact, we don't get pushed down by pain and pushed up by pleasure. We get pushed up by pleasure because of the way we think about it, because of our habitual, what we call, because of our intentions, because of our karma. But when we realize enlightenment, we experience pain, period, and pleasure, period. We experience gain or loss, period.

[22:08]

We hear people insult us, period. We hear people praise us, period. That's all. And we also aren't motivated to get people to speak well of us and to avoid having people speaking ill of us. And we don't get motivated to get more pleasure. and to avoid pain. We understand now that pleasure is our close friend, and pain is our close friend, gain is our close friend, and loss is our close friend. All things are our close friend. Life is our close friend. Death is our close friend. Health is our close friend.

[23:10]

Illness is our close friend. Illness is beautiful. Health is beautiful. This person is beautiful. That person is beautiful. Realizing enlightenment is the same as being able to see the beauty of all things. To be single-mindedly focused on the beauty of all phenomena, of everything we experience, of every experience of everything. There are various paths leading to this various path leading to the path.

[24:35]

The path of enlightenment. The path of being aware of this close friendship with all things. Various paths leading to the path. the path of being intimate with the beauty of all things. There's various ways to enter that. One way is to train our love or our appreciation of something in which we already sense beauty. And it has been recommended from ancient times to train children, to train young people, to love and appreciate physical beauty.

[25:45]

Physical beauty of plants and animals. and human bodies. And I would suggest that each of us, as we begin to train our love towards appreciation, towards loving beauty, towards loving goodness, As we begin this, in a sense, we are young. We are young again. We are like children when we begin to learn this. But the childlike quality, the immature side, is that we see at the beginning of the practice beauty in some physical forms.

[26:54]

That's the child part of it. As we proceed, we learn to see beauty in more physical forms. This is one path. And more and more. And then to learn to see beauty in mental forms. To see beauty in certain types of activity and certain types of studies. To see beauty in mathematics and literature and music. In thought forms. And finally, to see beauty in everything. And the beauty which is in everything... is the same beauty which is the bond among all of us.

[27:59]

That's basically a path to realizing enlightenment. This path, however, has certain difficulties in it, in that we... We experience the limits of what we can see as beautiful. Or we see the limits to what we feel is beautiful. The limits to who we feel is our close friend. And so on. The limits to where we see goodness. Working with these limits... of our vision, is part of the path. Noticing that you sense that someone is not your close friend, to be aware of that.

[29:19]

because you're trying to learn how it is that everyone is your close friend, to be aware that you don't feel that is a normal and almost always necessary part of the process. To notice that you don't think something is beautiful is part of the process. of giving up all your ideas of what is beautiful. So when you start to love beauty, when you start to appreciate beauty in some physical form, or some mental form, anyway, some living form, and living forms are physical and mental, when you start to appreciate it, you have some ideas of what is beautiful.

[30:26]

That somehow are probably coming with your appreciation of this beautiful person. I would say you're right that everybody who you think is beautiful is beautiful. And you're right to think that and feel that. However, your idea... of their beauty, which may be there, with the feeling that they're beautiful. That idea of their beauty is not their beauty. It's nobody's beauty. It's an idea of beauty. And in the case where you feel someone is beautiful, when you're enjoying someone's beauty, or you're enjoying some physical... non-living things beauty at that point you do you may have an idea but the idea needs to be dropped because beauty is essentially free of all ideas of beauty and still even though we have ideas of beauty we do sometimes receive the blessing

[31:50]

of opening to the beauty even though we have ideas. Sometimes our ideas let us feel the beauty anyway. Sometimes we even are allowed to feel beauty in relationship when we have an idea that this is not beautiful. Sometimes we don't get caught by our idea of this is not beautiful and we accept that it is anyway. So the hard part of this path is renouncing all of our discriminations of beautiful and not beautiful. Of close and not close. Recognizing and realizing that someone's your close friend is not the same as having the idea that they're your close friend. But if you can give up the discrimination...

[32:52]

between close and not close, in not giving up, you will open to the closeness that is actually waiting there to be enjoyed. But it's not easy to give up, discriminating between close and far, of course. We're highly attuned and tuned and geared and wired to sense close and far. It's a big... adaptation we have. It's like an instinct. So this will be difficult. But in a way, simple. So I'm meditating on enlightenment. I'm meditating on how all of you are my close friend. I'm meditating on the close bond between all of us in this room and all of us in this room. with all enlightened beings throughout space and time, and all inanimate beings throughout the universe.

[33:59]

I'm meditating on that, and I'm also meditating on any discrimination I have of close and far, near and far friends. And I wish to study this feeling until it's dropped. Study this discrimination. until I realize it can't be grasped. Then I can let go of it and open to the actuality and learn to see the beauty in everything, to tune into that beauty, which is the beauty of everything. And again, I suggest that this way that we're related is the true beauty. Is the beauty which when we see that beauty. All other beauties. Which have in the past. Made us hot and bothered.

[35:01]

Made us have burning foreheads and parched tongues. Those beauties. Although they might occur for some reason or other. Just for fun. They may not occur anymore. What occurs is. a serene, infinite happiness. And this happiness happens in a moment, but it can be practiced. The practice which allows it, that can be consistent. We can learn to practice continually, to be concentrated on this way of being so that we can tune in to this path even though each experience is fleeting. Everything I meet, every person or thing I meet, is an opportunity to check

[36:20]

Do I see beauty or not? And at this point, if I do not see beauty, I consider it just a simple limitation on my wisdom. Not even my wisdom, a limitation a limitation on the wisdom of the moment, of this moment's wisdom. This moment's vision doesn't see the beauty. And I generously accept that this is a low-grade wisdom. A wisdom which does not see the beauty, which I'm pretty clear the Buddha teaches, is in all things.

[37:32]

The beauty of each thing is not itself. It is the way each thing supports all other things. and the way all things support each thing. That's the beauty of each thing. I recently read about the birth of Eros, which can sometimes be translated as love. Eros, I thought Eros was Aphrodite's son. And Greek mythology or Greek religion is not highly well organized. So there's lots of different stories about the gods and goddesses.

[38:39]

So maybe there's some stories about Eros that he's Aphrodite's son. That he's the son of the goddess of love and beauty. The goddess of love and beauty. The beauty of the goodness of all things. He's the son of her. But another story is he was born in her presence. And his parents were poverty and abundance. And one of the things about Eros... who is said by some to be neither mortal nor immortal, neither God nor human. One of the things about him which I thought was very interesting was that he was described as lacking, as lacking all the things that surrounded him at his conceptions.

[39:52]

And I thought when I read that, we're all like that. We all lack all the things that surround us at our conception. Every moment that we're born, every moment that we live, we lack all the things that surround us at our birth. We lack those things because we don't possess them. We lack them. We do not have them. We are them. We are all the things that surround us. Every moment. We don't have the things that surround us. They surround us. They support us. We are all the beings that we are closely related to.

[41:04]

And we are nothing in addition to that. We are nothing in addition to our relationships. And each of us have different relationships. Therefore, each of us is a different person. And we lack all the relationships... that surround us. We lack all the beauty and goodness that surrounds us. And the way we lack it is the true beauty. And all the beautiful things that support us, their beauty, which supports us, is the way all things support them. This is why it's difficult.

[42:10]

The way I'm talking now is to open us to give up our ideas of beauty. But it's part of the reason why we want to hold on to some idea of beauty. Because we want to hold on to some idea of what we are in addition to everything that surrounds us when we're born. Because we have some aversion to lacking it. everything that surrounds us. We think we're supposed to be something in addition to our total support system. This talk is in hopes of initiating us into An intimate awareness of true beauty.

[43:13]

An intimate awareness of enlightenment. An intimate awareness of the silent bond between all of us. With generous feelings... with a generosity towards our unwillingness to open to this practice. A patience with our unreadiness to do this practice. Even our unreadiness to notice and be generous when we feel someone is not close to us. And generous when we feel like we are something. I am something in addition to all the beings who support me. I appreciate your support, but I'm something a little bit more than just your support.

[44:15]

No, that's not true. But if I think so, I want to accept that I feel that way and notice what it feels like to feel that way. And the way it feels, the way it feels is that it's called suffering. The world of suffering is the world of suffering. where we do not accept our close relationship with all beings. And in that world, all the kinds of happinesses of that world will be frustrated. And in that world, we will be... Here comes a fire and brimstone. In that world, we will be driven voraciously with voracious desires and lusts, we'll be driven to try to get more of that same kind of happiness which will not satisfy us.

[45:17]

And we will be driven in this process as long as we don't accept enlightenment, which is one way that things are. And it's one way that we can resist enlightenment. And we can resist. And it's called the world of suffering. And this world is the worst of all possible worlds. But in this worst of all possible worlds, where we have not yet accepted this teaching of enlightenment and this practice of enlightenment, we can still start to practice enlightenment. We can still start and admit Well, I'm trying, but I'm still holding back a little. That means I'm still feeling like so-and-so is not my close friend. I'm still feeling like so-and-so is not beautiful.

[46:21]

I'm still caught by some idea of beauty which I'm holding on to by habit that makes it hard for me to see this person as beautiful or to see the beauty which all things share the one beauty which all things are sharing every moment, I can't see that now. And if I admit that, I'm on the training program to learn the practice of enlightenment. Although I may not be very far on this path, just that I notice some beauty, Or even if I don't notice any, at least if I notice I don't see any and I accept that I don't see any, I'm on the path of seeing it everywhere. I propose to you that the path to realizing Buddha in this world, to realizing enlightenment, is to meditate on enlightenment.

[49:27]

That enlightenment is available. That it is the way we are related to each other right now. And there's a practice of opening to that. And then again, opening to it usually involves being aware that you're not completely open to it. And becoming aware of that lack of openness and revealing it, disclosing it, and using that as a way to return, to look again, to orient again towards this silent bond, towards the beauty of all things, towards the goodness of all things, is the path of happiness and harmony in this world.

[50:34]

I guess maybe that's clear. Is it kind of clear? At least that I'm saying that anyway. And maybe we can, if you want to, we can have some discussion a little later. And I don't know what song to sing at this time. Old Man River. Blue sky. Blue sky. Nothing but blue skies. On a clear day.

[51:58]

People who need people. People who need people. People who need people. Row, row, row your boat. I can see clearly now. Once I had a secret love. You all decide it's not. How can I keep from saying it? Boom, boom. i want i'm in complete control don't need anybody else got a mind of my own

[53:19]

I can do what I want. I'm in complete control. Don't need anybody else. Got a mind of my own. I'm in complete control. Don't need anybody else. Gave myself a good talking to. No more being a fool for you. But then I see you. And I remember how you make me want to surrender to Buddha away. You're taking myself away, Buddha way. You're making me want to stay with Buddha way.

[54:22]

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