to find the best to connect to the community and to work with it on a bundle. It is just that it may be [...] that Good evening. I am completely honored and delighted to be here this evening, to be invited to this place.

[02:53]

I came in 1973 And I think I opened the door and peeked in, looked around a little bit on a trip to this area because of this book, which I think was the first Dharma book I ever read, this one, and a small book by Trungpa Rinpoche called Meditation in Action. That was the beginning of stepping onto the path of Dharma for me. And so I feel very connected here, even though I haven't been here in so many years and have never really spent any time. So I'm very grateful for the invitation and so pleased to be here.

[03:59]

there is a feeling of Roshi being here. And he seems to be in every tatami and in every piece of tofu today. And in the just spirit of the forms that Meri and I were taught just a few moments ago, we could feel him in our bones. And we are so... grateful for him coming to this country, for him teaching, for all of you who are carrying on his lineage. He and Trungpa Rinpoche had so much love for him and respect. Do some of you are familiar with Trungpa Rinpoche's teachings? I think Trungpa Rinpoche was just less lonely because Suzuki Roshi was in his life.

[05:06]

The topic of the talk is called Compassion and Bravery in Everyday Life. So I was thinking quite a bit about everyday life. Everyday life, it has a little bit of body that does tasks, gets up, makes breakfast, cleans up, goes to work for some of us, goes and buys groceries. The tasks of everyday life. And then There's the conversations of everyday life. Every day we have conversations with people. We listen to what other people say, and we say things.

[06:16]

And I think today, kind of a relaxed day, I could account for eleven or twelve conversations. one very short conversation in the BART with a woman who was helping me find the right place to get off, and some long conversation today with Mary about work and how the Dharma could be expressed in many ways, how we could help each other. So the speech of every day is so much of our life, our conversations, the beginnings of conversations, how they unfold, what we actually hear, how to listen, and how to speak from our own heart, and then how those conversations come to some kind of closure.

[07:21]

And they're such jewels, our conversations. And then everyday life has a lot of thinking, decision-making, considering what's the best thing to do, what to wear today, what to buy, who to speak with next. Thinking about things, mulling them over, and then making choices based upon our thinking. So these Thoughts and conversations and actions sometimes involve our family, sometimes involve our friends, our workplace, our sangha, our communities. How we are in an ever-changing dance on every day with our world.

[08:23]

And most of us probably in this room every day Life includes a little meditation, some of you quite a bit of meditation, and some of us maybe not so much. Some opportunity to be a simple human being, human being practice, zazen, shamatha, vipassana, meditation. What it is to just be a simple human being, to see all of our thoughts coming and going, our emotions going up and down, but what it is just to rest in our own basic goodness, in our own now-ness, in our own being present. What is it to rest there? And also most of us probably do a little study of Dharma every day,

[09:27]

we read a little bit of teaching. And through meditation and contemplation, we let our Dharma practice inform our everyday life, enrich our everyday life. Some mindfulness comes into our gestures, comes into our speech, some awareness can bring the details of our life to this, or we're aware of the sacredness of each of the moments and details of our life, the beauty of our life, the noticing what we hear and see and taste and feel. And also our meditation practice brings this gentleness into our being.

[10:37]

We become more soft, more tamed. Dharma is kind of chewing on our bones, munching on us, making us less opinionated, less judgmental. We have less agenda. We have less me that gets in the way of everything. me and my opinions and how we should do it my way, starts to soften up a little bit, just because we can let more spaciousness and openness and softness into our life. And then likewise we can reflect on how our meditation practice brings more clarity into our life, more precision.

[11:38]

We're more able to prioritize. We're less speedy, less cluttered. So already when we begin to meditate, we feel that our life is held by our Dharma practice, by our meditation. And as we study, those of us in the Zen Buddhist tradition or Shambhala Buddhist tradition, in the Mahayana traditions, we start to consider the teachings on emptiness and compassion, Buddha nature, And many of us have taken vows in the Mahayana tradition. We take vows to live the life of the bodhisattva, of the great bodhisattva warrior.

[12:46]

We take vows to dedicate our life, our everyday life, to the benefit of all beings. That's what we said we would do. Everything we say, every conversation, every action, every task, every consideration, is helping others. And we have these examples, right? Suzuki Roshi of Chumbh Rinpoche. every single thing they said and did was to help others, was for us, to help us wake up, to help us soften up, to help us come out of confusion and preoccupation with ourselves. So we take that vow as a Mahayana Buddhist, the great path to do that.

[13:54]

do that in our everyday life. Not someday when we've done more practice and we're more together. Not someday when we are going to be enlightened. But today, we're going to do it today. And that will be the practice of enlightenment. That is the practice. So that's the vow that we take. And particularly this evening, we're going to be looking at what it is to to help others, which is another word for saying what it is to live compassion, to live this sense of being able to identify and empathize with the suffering of others. So the bodhicitta, the awakened heart, is completely natural. We notice it.

[14:54]

We notice that Naturally, we want to be of help, naturally, without any effort. We want to be engaged. We want to have a meaningful life. Every being does. Every being wants to live a good life. Nobody gets up in the morning and says, I'd like to live a really meaningless, crummy life. Just nobody ever does that, whether they've ever heard of Dharma or not. Everybody appreciates something, and everybody wants to contribute to life in some way. So we recognize through meditation, but just through how we are, that we love this world in certain ways. But we also notice that we tend to pick and choose. Well, this one's worth loving. My family member, my friend. But that one, I'm not sure about that.

[15:57]

So the Mayana path says every being, everyone, has awakened heart, the bodhicitta, the heart that is vibrant and loving and awake. Everyone. So how do we... how do we honor that? How do we celebrate the awake heart? And this is how we start, with this sense of recognizing in ourself this not only seed, we often say the seed of Buddha nature, but the full-blown brilliance of it in any one moment. How do we do that? Because compassion is not just a kind of one-upsmanship.

[16:59]

Like, I have a little Buddha Dharma practice and I'm kind of better than other people. Like, I have any kind of sense of looking down on others. That is not true compassion. And nor is it a kind of guilt. Like, I should be good I have privilege and I should be good and caring about others. But bodhicitta is this completely non-business deal, non-right answer, openness of heart, a willingness to just be there. And particularly when we talk about compassion, it's to be there when the times are tough. It's to be there in suffering, with one's own pain, with one's own irritation, with one's own feeling of inadequacy, with one's own holding back, with one's own sadness, and with that painfulness

[18:22]

others, of seeing others, seeing what others burden, what are others holding, what is their burden, what are they carrying that is a heavy load for people. So compassion is being able to feel that in other people, not just the ones we love who you know, have lost a job or someone has passed away and they're grieving or they're suffering with health issues. Of course, the people that we know and love. But how do we stretch open our hearts, keep stretching open so that we actually can feel the journey, the life's journey, of other people as well.

[19:25]

Because it's difficult, you know. It's difficult to keep open to painful experiences. It's difficult to keep open to people that are angry with us or to people that are very needy and to people that are just constantly depressed. It's not an easy thing to do that because it's so easy to just get lazy about the whole thing, to become complacent. Like when I was on the BART this morning, I look around and I say, you know, people look pretty cheerful. I know that people suffer, but you know, they look fine. I'm not sure what compassion means right now at this moment in the BART. You know, when I look at people and they look well and they look, you know, some are reading and some are looking out the window or listening to the earphones.

[20:35]

And I think, I want those people not to suffer, you know. I want those people to be happy for there's some kind of loving kindness and compassion here in the BART. But I actually think, do I really feel anything? Do I actually feel the rawness of human life? Or am I just kind of going along slightly numb and slightly kind of disconnected? So I feel that with many of us, it takes bravery, which is what we're... topic is here compassion and bravery to go beyond what's comfortable to go beyond where we have capacity to go beyond where it's convenient to go beyond really what is expected in a certain way of being a human being to really stretch into where there's what we call in Shambhala the setting sun

[21:51]

where there's a sense that the life is riding on people, rather than one is riding on one's life force energy. It's almost that daily life is pushing people down. So there's a little bit that Chumbra Rinpoche writes in this book that I thought was helpful to read. He says, We can't just view the world as if nothing bad had ever happened. That won't do. We have to get into the world. We have to involve ourselves in the setting sun. So in Shambhala, oftentimes samsara or the world of suffering, the world of kind of fearfulness is called the setting sun. When you first see a person, you see that person with Great Eastern Sun possibilities.

[22:59]

So Great Eastern Sun is the wisdom, innate wisdom of all human beings. So when we see people and situations, we say, oh, it's basic goodness. It's Great Eastern Sun shining through. And this was how Trungpa Rinpoche was. You could go to him with your problem of this and that, but that isn't what he actually saw. He actually saw the Buddha when he was looking at any of us. So we had this problem, and he saw the Buddha. He saw basic goodness, and that's who he talked to. He didn't talk to this poor, pathetic person that couldn't get it together to really practice well or... get their life together. He was speaking to basic goodness, to the great Eastern sun wisdom mind. And because he listened from those ears and saw with those eyes, we as students, as practitioners, started to recognize our own wisdom and brilliance, because that's what he was seeing, that's what he was talking to.

[24:16]

And any of us could do that with one another, right? Any of us could see in the dining hall or on the street or in any context, we could look and see the Buddha. We could see the basic goodness, the wisdom person. And because we see and talk to that person from that place in our own heart, we love that person as they are. we allow that person to be exactly who they are, that wisdom starts to come forth. So this is seeing the great eastern sun possibility. When you actually work with that person, you have to help him or her overcome the setting sun, making sure that the person is no longer involved with setting sun possibilities. all of the emotional conflict and conceptual frameworks that make us really not who we are, that pull us away from being genuinely who we are.

[25:28]

To do that, you have to have humor, self-existing humor, and you have to hold the moth in your hand, but not let it go into the flame. That's what helping others means. Ladies and gentlemen, we have so much responsibility. A long time ago, people helped one another in this way. Now, people just talk and talk and talk. They read books, they listen to music, but they never actually help anyone. They never use their bare hands to save a person from going crazy. We have that responsibility. Somebody has to do it. It turns out to be us.

[26:31]

We've got to do it. And we can do it with a smile, not with a long face. Someone asks the question, Why do you think we've got to do it? And Rinpoche says, why do we have to do it? Somebody has to do it. Suppose you're very badly hurt in a car crash. Why does anybody have to help you? Somebody's got to do it. In this case, we have that responsibility, that absolute responsibility. So he is describing here a kind of compassion that never shuts off, that doesn't get tired, that doesn't get bored, that doesn't get irritated, that doesn't get freaked out, that doesn't get overwhelmed, but that always is accessible, always is in each gesture, in each word, that kind of compassion.

[27:44]

that kind of compassion that has its own smile, has its own joyfulness, really has its own humor, as he says, so that it's continually sustainable. Compassion that's kind of grind, we grind it out because, oh, we are good Buddhists and we should do this, is just not sustainable. But compassion that has this sense of both sadness for the world, the broken-hearted quality of feeling the pain of being a human being. It's heartbreaking being a human being, right? It's just heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking to walk on the street. It's heartbreaking just to have a conversation with your aging parents, to have a conversation with a neighbor.

[28:45]

It's heartbreaking to read the newspaper, right? It's heartbreaking to look at the television. I mean, it's more heartbreaking to look at a comedy on the television than it is to listen to the news sometimes. The whole thing is just heartbreaking, like, what is going on? This is what's happening in the world that we live in. How do we let our heart feel that? And that is called this fearlessness or bravery that we just lean into what completely freaks us out. We lean in to someone, you know, saying a harsh thing to us. We lean in. to our own feeling of insecurity or loneliness. We just turn and lean that direction.

[29:52]

That's what bravery is here, rather than going towards all the different ways that we avoid leaning in. Maybe you have some favorite ones. Spacing out is a good one. Just being completely irritated is another one like, I, me, why do I have to do this? that kind of thing. Another one is the way we avoid it is just, oh, do you have favorite ways? You're welcome to share them if you'd like. How do we avoid feeling? Feeling how it is right now. Exactly. Overwork is a good one. Overwork or any other kind of addiction to eating or shopping or whatever your favorite addiction is, ways of clinging on to something that makes us feel slightly more secure, slightly less anxious, slightly more under control.

[31:01]

Say? Touch. Say more. That we touch. Oh, that you use touch. Yes, yes, that could be. Of course, any of these could be completely sane as well. But we notice that we use them in a way so we avoid feeling the discomfort of just being a human at the moment. We avoid the anxiety or we avoid the painfulness of life. So it could be that, of course, also. So many ways that just suffering expresses itself. Sickness, how suffering lives in the world. Homelessness, systemic oppression, misunderstandings.

[32:12]

fights with people, politics, all of these expressions and stupidity, ignoring. I work with a man now who talks about attentional violence, that just by not paying attention, that's violence. Not paying attention to large segments of the population, like young people at risk, by just not noticing them, that itself is so violent and aggressive toward people. So many ways that we freeze over or we become dissociative, we disconnect from what's going on, we freeze up, we just pretend it isn't happening, we go into denial. many things that we do habitually to protect ourselves from feeling, from just feeling how it is to be alive right now.

[33:27]

But that feeling, that tenderness of heart, that resonance is what allows us to help others. that we actually feel a resonance of beings. And that is what inspires and energizes and strengthens our own compassion. So the bravery part is how not to turn away, how not to close down, how not to hide behind our religion For some of us that's an issue, right? We sort of go into meditation as though it's some kind of like a salvation from feeling. We can use our meditation to repress and pretend in that way as well.

[34:32]

It's probably not true of any of you, but I've known that to happen. bravery here is just courage, you know, having this heart, lion heart, that really can proclaim the basic goodness, the bodhicitta of being a human being. That just can shout that from the rooftops, basic goodness. There's basic goodness, there's primordial purity, primordial openness in every moment of life. At any moment we wake up and are the Buddha. We are the Buddha. We just forget. We have no confidence sometimes. But at any moment we can remember. We can look up at the sky or these beautiful flowers you have in San Francisco. Boulder happens to be in the middle of a blizzard right now, a snowstorm, and I don't know what it's like in New York where I live.

[35:39]

Here, we smelled roses today. You could smell the roses and the, what was the other one? Jasmine on the street. It's like heaven here in some way. This sense of just appreciating everything and appreciating feeling, even if it makes us cry, even if it makes us weep and wail and roll around on the ground, we appreciate this life. We appreciate every moment of it as an expression of this basic goodness which can never, never be tarnished, diminished, ruined, lessened, nothing. It's primordially pure, always, the bodhicitta of our heart and the basic goodness of this world. So, This sense of being able to feel the strength of heart, the kind of bottomless or endless expanse of loving this world, of caring for this world, of being able to help out in whatever our context.

[36:58]

It can be small context with a few people. A small situation, but it's very, very powerful. And some of us might be in positions where we actually can radiate and can be present and really have an influence in big situations. It doesn't matter. However, we can be basic goodness. We can be compassion. We can practice all the paramitas of patience and generosity and effort and discipline and patience and meditation and prajna. We practice the paramitas, of course. We can contemplate the limitless ones to stretch out our heart and to apply them, which I know you here at Centra do that. But we also just can celebrate and appreciate how fortunate we are that we

[37:59]

are just a human, this life, and can really help out on the planet, which goodness knows we need. The planet needs so much. The bravery of life, being able to experience in a penetrating, direct, the word my teacher used so much was raw, the rawness of life. the ruggedness of just getting into our life and not distancing ourselves through our own kind of spiritual high horse-ness, but actually getting into whatever our life situation is, our family mess, our financial mess, our political messes, our emotional messes, to just jump in there and actually help, actually help. actually make mistakes, actually make a fool of ourselves, if necessary, in order to learn how to help out, in order to build the capacity to really be a bodhisattva, to really be... My current teacher, Sakyam Mipa Rinpoche, says, talk less, be more.

[39:17]

Talk less, be more. Manifest. You guys have been here studying the Dharma for how many years with the greatest of teachers, Trungpa Rinpoche, Suzuki Roshi. So get on with it now. Manifest a little something. Show up in a way that is really helpful and stop talking so much and thinking about it so much and worrying if you're doing the right thing, but be more, radiate more. manifest more. And that's how we're going to create this enlightened society, right? By each of us. You know, somebody's got to do it. So the kind of fruition of Shambhala in Shambhala Dharma is to create enlightened society, which is to help out and to create it now. So Zen Center, I'm sure you are creating enlightened society, society based upon the bodhicitta and kindness and compassion and wisdom.

[40:28]

And in Shambhala, of course, we try to do the same. We practice in the same way. And it's on each of us to do that, right? Each of us to have those conversations and those actions. So maybe we could have... Oh, it's already time already. Boy, speaking of talking too much, sorry. I'd like to hear more from what you have to say, but I'm gabbing on and on. Sorry about that. But I wanted to finish with something that I love in Roshi's book. We do not talk so much, but through our activity we communicate with each other intentionally. or unintentionally. We should always be alert enough to communicate with or without words. If this point is lost, we will lose the most important point of Buddhism.

[41:32]

Wherever we go, we should not lose this way of life. That is called being Buddha or being the boss. I love this. being the boss. Wherever you go, you should be the master of your surroundings. Sometimes we say, we live in the middle of our mandala. And when we see pictures of the Buddha sitting on a lotus, he's not like leaning off on the front of his lotus. He lives right in the middle of his world. This means you should not lose your way. So this is called Buddha, because if you exist in this way always, you are Buddha himself. Without trying to be Buddha, you are Buddha. And in Shambhala's sake, we are basic goodness, the bodhisattva warrior.

[42:35]

So that's more than I thought I would say. but that's how it unrolled here. And I think we need to close, so it leaves very little time for you to share your thoughts, and leaves no time whatsoever, actually. So maybe on some other occasion I'll have the opportunity for you to talk and me to listen, which I would appreciate very much. I really thank you so much for your attention and for coming out and for the invitation to be here. Oh, okay. Okay, well, it's Japanese style, you know, it's not Tibetan. Tibetans are very loose with time compared to Japanese, so...

[43:39]

I would like to be respectful. But if there's something you would like to share, please feel free to do so or ask. They were very close. Oh, was less lonely. Lonely. Because he knew Suzuki Roshi. You know, Trungpa Rinpoche came here and he was surrounded by all of us. We're not really... It's kind of horrifying probably to him. And he... You know, we were kind of barbarians, most of his students, so... He came immediately when he came to North America to visit here, to come and visit Suzuki Roshi, and came, I think, six times they met, I heard.

[44:48]

And we felt that Trungpa Rinpoche was less alone in this world because of Roshi and how much he loved Roshi. And within our own tradition of Shabbala, Trungpa Rinpoche brought a lot of the Zen tradition. We have oreo-ki eating at our week-long, our month-long meditation programs, and we have sometimes some kind of calling, gong and bell, like Tibetans don't do that. And things he adapted from the Zen tradition because he was so impressed with Roshi and how Roshi could teach in America. It's wonderful to have you here.

[45:52]

Thank you so much for coming to speak with us and to hear about your connection with Suzuki Roshi for Trikpa Ricochet. That's really it. kind of a treat. There's something in me that's wanting to ask something about, you know, I myself don't feel so good. I don't feel that the kind of healing that I can participate in is because of my goodness. So it's just more of, I don't know if it's the shadow or ways that I overlap with separate beings because of You may have touched on it, but something in me wanted to express that.

[46:56]

It reminds me of a quote, but it's not coming to my mind completely. to the effect that he said, Trungpa Rinpoche said something like always hold beings and the suffering of beings in your heart but never forget the great eastern sun the purity and goodness and there's another image that he used of having a hook in your heart and the hook is attached to it that is always in openness and in purity and in goodness. So when we use the expression basic goodness, we're talking about an unconditional sense of awake, not necessarily good as opposed to bad, but that there's a fundamental ground of

[48:10]

of purity, awake, openness, bodhicitta, ordinary mind, whatever you want to call that, that out of that open sky comes, of course, good and bad. So it's a kind of combination of feeling. It's very interesting what you say, that one identifies and feels one's own pain, and that we know that everyone that all beings feel that kind of pain, important. And we never lose this sense of the ground, of whether it's painful or pleasurable, the ground is this awake mind, but a mind. Something like that. Oh, okay. Just so.

[49:19]

And I feel pain. And then I get the bravely. And I feel with passion for them. Do I put myself back in that position to feel pain again? I understand. I understand that I think where the inquiry is for you there. I think I hear where your questions are, where that inquiry is for you and for many of us. And one of the things, of course, about the dharma is that there isn't a kind of guidebook that says, I mean, there isn't a kind of rulebook that says, under this circumstance, do this, and under that, do this one.

[50:34]

And so the journey of a bodhisattva warrior is a fairly messy one in terms of what is healthy sense of self, and knowing what it is to take care of oneself, and then stretching out our kind of comfort zone to include others. So it's a journey, and one that is both we investigate through our practice and contemplation, and also through conversations with other Dharma brothers and sisters, so that we try to sort through what is taking... is a healthy taking care of oneself so that one's not in abusive situations and also recognizing that we contribute oftentimes to difficulty and how could we investigate that and bring more sanity into a particular situation.

[51:37]

So I'm sure your own wisdom and goodness will lead you on some kind of a journey around that. Thank you very much. I really appreciate it.

[52:06]

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