This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. I just chanted, I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Is that what I said? Did you say that too, some of you? And some of you are kind of like innocent bystanders. Maybe you listened to people say it because you didn't know the chant or I don't know why else, but anyway.

[01:01]

Some of us did say, I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. The Tathagata is an epithet for Buddha. So there's a vow being expressed. And... Almost every time we chant that I think, wow, are we actually vowing to hear the truth of the Buddha's teaching? If we were to be vowing to hear the truth of Buddha's teaching, then I would feel a big wow in my heart that we would be making such a vow.

[02:15]

In my life, people often come and have conversations with me. And they often say something like, I don't know what I should be doing. Or they sometimes say, what should I be doing? In the context of this temple and this community, which is officially dedicated to the vow to hear the truth of the Buddha's teaching and by hearing the truth of the Buddha's teaching become authentically enlightened about reality and to teach that to other people.

[03:37]

In a sense, this temple is based on a vow to hear the teaching, realize it, and teach it in order to help other people hear it, realize it, and teach it. In the process of hearing it, one is liberated from egocentric imprisonment and thus free of all those stresses that come from egocentric entrapment and have one's energy released then from such entrapment to teach the true Dharma, to teach the true teaching to others so they also can become free. and help others.

[04:42]

This is one description of the process of vowing and practicing and realizing and vowing and practicing and realizing the Buddha way. It's just one description. I could give others and you could give others too, and yours would be just as good as mine. So you're welcome to give your description of the process of the Buddha way. When people ask me, I don't know what I should be doing or what should I be doing, Do you think I tell them what they should be doing? What do you think? Do you think I tell them what they should be doing? No?

[05:46]

No? You're right, I don't tell them. When I hear them ask that question or make that statement, I don't know what I should do, I sometimes ask them, I respond to them. I listen to them, and then when they talk like that, I respond to them by saying, well, I don't know what you should be doing, but what do you want to be doing? What's really what you really wish for in life? And then if we could hear about that, then that would be something which, based on your wish, your life wish, your life yearning, your life wish, your life aspiration, based on that, we could consider committing to that wish, to that aspiration.

[06:56]

And then, based on that wish and that commitment, that vow, we then could consider what practices would be appropriate to what's most important to you. What activities would be in alignment with your highest or deepest wish in life? which you might even be ready to commit to. And then we can practice accordingly. Well, like playing the piano, some people wish to be a pianist. But without practicing, most people do not realize that skill, that wonderful skill to play that instrument.

[08:02]

But with one can become skillful at the piano. If you wish, for example, to taste the truth of the Buddha's teaching and from that taste be released in the work of helping all beings, if you have that wish, then there would be certain practices which would be appropriate. And if one could engage in those practices which are appropriate to the wish, to hear the truth of the Buddha's teaching and to realize it and transmit it, if that's what one wished to do and committed to do, then again, there are practices which realize that wish.

[09:13]

which make that wish come true. So the great company called Disney produced lots of wonderful songs, and one of the songs is something like When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are. When you wish upon a star, your dreams come true. If projected practice your wishes... Practice them. You can wish and your dreams will come true if you practice them. It may be hard for you to believe, but Tinkerbell just went by my ear.

[10:16]

Did you see that? Hello, that was good. See you later. Our director of the meditation hall grew up in Sweden, but he knows who Tinkerbell is, right? Yeah. Tinkerbell is everywhere. So first is wish, then vow, commitment to that wish, then practice.

[11:24]

And one simple version of the practice is listen. Listen. Listen. the cries of the world. That practice of listening to the cries of the world is the practice of the vow to hear that truth of the Buddha's teaching and save all beings by that hearing and transmitting the practice of listening to the cries of the world is appropriate to that wish there's a school

[12:40]

I mean, I don't know if there's a school. People say there's a school called Zen that arose in China. And that school called Zen, which people say there was, was very successful in China. It became... Almost all the monasteries in China at a certain time in history were Zen monasteries. There are many kinds of Buddhism, but Zen somehow... became the monastic Buddhism of China. And so they had to name it something, so they called it Zen. And the founder of this tradition, which had millions of practitioners in monasteries and outside monasteries, the founder of that tradition we call Zen. We call it Bodhidharma. And we have a story that Bodhidharma came from India to China and transmitted the Buddha's teaching.

[13:49]

And we may consider this person from India, who is the first ancestor of the Zen tradition in China, we may consider this person as the great Bodhisattva, Avalokiteshvara. We may consider this person the Zen founder as the Bodhisattva of infinite compassion. That's how I think of Bodhidharma. I think of Bodhidharma as the Bodhisattva whose name is listening to the cries of the world. whose name is regarding all living beings. That's the name of that bodhisattva in English. In Sanskrit, Avalokiteshvara. In Chinese, guanyin or guanjizai.

[14:57]

In Japanese, kanan or kanzeyan. In Tibetan, chenrezi. All the schools of the great vehicle the great vehicle, the vehicle that everybody's included in and that's carrying everybody to peace. All the schools have this great bodhisattva and the founder of the Zen school is that great bodhisattva. So the founder of the Zen school sits a lot in meditation and listens in meditation, listens to the cries of the world. all day long listening to the cries of the world well trained so that there can be sustained and uninterrupted listening to the cries of the world uninterrupted regarding all living beings that's the practice now that practice also includes infinite aspects

[16:09]

But one of the main things that the practice of listening includes or the context for successfully practicing listening is stillness. So the practice is to remember, is to be mindful of stillness. So the great ancestor of compassion is also constantly mindful of stillness. Constantly remembering stillness as a practice to realize the vow to save all beings from suffering that's the context which needs to be remembered and I'll soon get into why it needs to be remembered but we're starting with the people who have been trained who are the great teachers who do remember stillness

[17:38]

And in the stillness, they remember to listen. Thank you. Would you sit in the next seat there? That's for you. Make yourself remember stillness. So the bodhisattvas are remembering stillness and in the stillness they listen to all beings. Another way to talk about remembering stillness is to remember that we have a responsibility to be where we are. We have been assigned a seat in the world and we have a responsibility to accept the assignment.

[18:46]

I've been assigned to be me in this moment and each moment is like that. I've been assigned to be here with this person, as this person, and not be distracted from being here. I'm responsible for that. And I can live that. And living that way just turns out to be appropriate to hearing the truth. Because you hear the truth here. You hear the truth in accepting responsibility to be where you are and feel how you are and think how you are. And be how you're thinking. You accept the responsibility to be the total person you are. And you don't have to move at all to be the person you are. Because you have been given it.

[19:52]

But part of realizing the total person you are is to remember stillness. And who you are also is that you're a listener. You are a listener. I am a listener. So accepting the unlimited responsibility of being this particular person. It's a particular responsibility and there's no limit to it. And remembering it is simultaneous with remembering stillness. And in this, accepting the responsibility of being here as me... in that context I'm listening I want to listen I want to regard the cries of the world and it's not exactly one more step but kind of seems that way in this listening there is an embracing of what is listened

[21:06]

Listening to the cries of the world, there is an embracing and sustaining of the cries of the world. So there's a listening and an embracing. Listening and sustaining. It's not exactly first there's listening and then there's embracing. They're simultaneous. But it sounds almost like listen and embrace. Somebody says help, and then you help them. But when you're listening, when you actually hear them say help, you have just embraced them. When you see somebody in trouble, you have just embraced them. But just to make that clear, I say so. Listen, embrace, and sustain. In stillness, listen and embrace and sustain.

[22:13]

And listen and be embraced and sustained. Listen to the cries of the world and be embraced by the cries of the world. be sustained by the cries of the world. I just think of some mothers who are listening to the cries of their children, those intense cries of their children, and they probably do remember the work of embracing and sustaining the crying child. But they may have trouble actually understanding that that cry is embracing them. It may seem more like the cry is penetrating them. Is stabbing them.

[23:17]

Painfully. And repeatedly. And they may want to go someplace where they're not embraced by these cries. And that's beginning to open up the challenge. The challenge to the practice which realizes the vow the challenge is that the cries are sometimes very difficult to listen to and remember stillness this is where the story gets the plot gets thickened Vow. Practice. Which is remembering to be here and listen. And then that practice gets challenged.

[24:24]

Because sometimes the cries sound like this. You are a worthless person. unhelpful rat. You're a liar. You're trying to hurt me. You did hurt me. You're mean. You should do this. You should do that. You should stop that. You should stop that. This is what the cries sometimes sound like. And the sentient beings even sometimes make stressful postures make frowning faces. The sentient beings which we're observing sometimes they appear and disappear in a way that we forget the practice. We forget that this cry is calling for listening, that this cry is not a cry, but we think it's an attack, not a request for listening, not a request for compassion, but something to defend against, something to...

[26:05]

defend against or something to silence something to control so we got the vow we got the practice of listening to the cries of the world and then when the cries actually come we have trouble remembering the practice of listening with ears of compassion and observing with eyes of compassion. It's challenging. And it's challenging us. Yeah, like, where's it like? Embrace this. Can you embrace this? Can you sustain this? This what looks like unskillful, unwholesome behavior, can you embrace and sustain it? was not that we're trying to sustain unwholesome behavior, we're trying to sustain the peace and happiness of the person who's crying out in a way that's very painful to hear.

[27:25]

We're trying to embrace and sustain the person, but we also have to embrace and sustain ourself. It gets complicated and challenging. And one of the cries that one might hear frequently is this is hard. It's hard to practice under the circumstances. Again, when I'm in the process of embracing and sustaining people and being embraced and sustained by them and they tell me what their vow is and then they tell me what practice is appropriate for them then right after they tell me the practice they say something of which something like but I feel like I have to do something other than the practice for example

[28:44]

I'm practicing listening to beings. I want to practice that, but then I think, I've got to do something. I've got to accomplish something. I've got to fix something. Or, I'm not able to listen. I'm not able to do this practice. Or, I'll do this practice later after I fix this person over there. which they need to be fixed before I listen to them. These kinds of things happen to people who are trying to do the practice of observing, embracing, and sustaining beings. Then this other thought comes up like, maybe later, right now, I have to do something. I have to do something. Otherwise, I'll get fired. Or... People will hate me because my children aren't under control. Or my students aren't under control.

[29:49]

Or my teachers aren't under control. I've got to get the things under control. And then I'll start listening. And observing sentient beings and embracing and sustaining them and being embraced and sustained by them. Maybe. That would be nice. But maybe you won't. It's possible that you just keep trying to do stuff. rather than... and skip over being still. I'll be still later. I'll be where I am later after I fix where I'm not. Or after I fix not being here, I'll be here. And when people say that to me, I usually see that the very thing that they're doing... in their mind, in their egocentric mind, in response to the practice which in their egocentric mind they said they wanted to practice.

[30:54]

So in an egocentric mind, you can think the thought, I want to listen to the cries of the world. Such a thought can occur in your mind. And then a thought can arise about how that's not possible right now. But the thought of how it's not possible is actually tricky because it looks like it's telling you it's not possible, but actually it's saying, here's the opportunity. The opportunity to practice listening sometimes sounds like, don't listen. Or sometimes it sounds like somebody telling you you're not listening. Sometimes if somebody tells me I'm not listening, I listen to them when they tell me I'm not.

[32:00]

But sometimes if people tell me I'm not listening, I prove them right by telling them that they're wrong. Rather than listen to them, I have an intelligent, smart comment to give them. But when somebody actually tells me that I'm not listening to them, that's an opportunity for listening. When somebody tells me, you're not listening to me, they're requesting me to listen to them. When people say to me, you are listening, they're requesting me to listen to them. Everybody all day long is calling for us to listen to them. Not only is there a practice of listening that's appropriate to understanding the Buddhist teaching and liberating beings, not only is there a practice that's appropriate to it, but everybody's calling to us to do that practice.

[33:12]

Everybody's saying, would you please listen to the cries of the world? That's what they're really saying. like that, what is it, that song by, what's his name? You know his name? Louis. Armstrong? Yeah. Like Louis Armstrong, so he says, I see friends shaking hands, saying, how do you do? They're really saying, I love you. Huh? Louis Armstrong. Yeah, Louis Armstrong, right. That's what Fou said. Oh. I shouldn't look towards her when I'm talking to you. I see friends shaking hands, saying, how do you do? They're really saying, listen to me. Listen to my cries.

[34:18]

Listen to me. Everybody's saying. Everybody's calling. Everybody's crying. Listen to me. Listen to me. That's what everything's saying to us. Including, you're not listening to me. You're interrupting me. And rather than saying, no, I'm not interrupting you. Listen. That's what the... Bodhisattva's job is listen. Now when you listen, at that same moment, you're calling to the person you're listening to. And you're saying, listen to me. When you listen, you're also calling. When you're calling, you're listening. But again, it's tricky.

[35:25]

From inside, you have all these comments to make about yourself, and you think you're talking about something. Like, I've got to do something other than this practice of listening. You think you're talking about doing something other than the listening, but the thing you're thinking of is actually calling for listening. And it's easier if I hear other people saying, you know, I'm calling now for listening in the form of saying that I can't listen. I can hear that than them say. It's harder for me to hear it when I say that, to realize that when I say that, I'm really asking for help and offering help. in this mind that we have it's challenging to remember stillness it's challenging to remember to listen to everybody again one of the voices that I can listen to is when I say it's challenging to listen to the cries of the world

[36:51]

One of the voices is, you have to do something more than listen to the cries of the world. That's one of the responses to the thought of listening, is you need to do something more than listen. Now when I hear the voice, you need to do something more than listen, I don't understand maybe that you need to do something more than listening is asking me to listen. You need to do something more than listen. I'm listening to you. I don't want you to listen to me. I want you to do something more than listen to me. I want you to agree with me. And again, it sounds like you're not being asked to listen to that. It sounds like you're being asked to maybe be different. And you can hear that. And you're listening to that. And you can say, okay, I'll be different. Tell me what I should do. And maybe not even being sarcastic. And then you listen, and then I tell you what to do. And you maybe say, okay, I'll try to be that.

[37:54]

And they say, well, you're not being it. And you're listening to them. And then a voice comes, if you keep that up much longer, you're going to totally forget yourself. You're going to disappear if you don't defend your ground. This person is going to tell you one thing after another to be, and pretty soon you forget about who you are. That little story I just told is calling for listening. Even though it's saying, if you keep up this practice, who knows what will happen to you? This is the kind of talk that occurs in our egocentric consciousness. And all that talk, all those threats, all those apparent dangers of what will happen to you if you practice compassion, all that stuff is calling for compassion. And in a way, it's not necessarily linear, but in a way, the more you listen to the cries with compassion, the more cries you'll hear.

[39:00]

And the more the cries will sound like, don't listen to me. I don't want you just to listen. I want you to be a frog. I want you to be this. I want you to be that. That's the way the cries sound a lot. I want you to not be you. I want you to be better than you. I want you to be worse than you. I want you to be better than me. I don't want you to be as good as me. You're not as good enough in that you're not good enough. Apparently, it's going on in people's consciousness when nobody else is around. People are saying that to themselves. You're not good enough. That's a perfectly good cry. Even if it's about me. Reb, you're not good enough. I hear you. I'm listening. If you want to keep it up, I'll just be here to listen to you tell me over and over that I'm not good enough. And I don't believe that I'm not good enough or that I am good enough. I don't really believe either. If some of you would tell me, hey, I just have a little secret to tell you, you are good enough.

[40:05]

You are. Or you aren't. People do sometimes tell me that because I have a lot of helpers. A lot of people are helping me by telling me that I'm good enough and not good enough. A lot of people are telling me, that was a good talk. That was helpful. That wasn't a good talk. That was helpful. People are helping me by calling to me and saying, can you remember that I'm calling you to listen to me even while I'm talking about you? Could people be asking us to listen to them when they're telling us about ourselves? Well, yes, they could. could you be calling to yourself for listening when you tell yourself how you are? I say, yes. Everything I think about myself, everything I say about myself, like, maybe you're a little bit above average, I might think.

[41:10]

You know? That's not true. that maybe I'm a little above average. That's not true. Well, maybe you're a little bit below average. Well, that's not true. Maybe you're average. That's not true. Those are just ideas, and none of them reach me or you. However, as you may know, half the people in the United States are below average intelligence. Right? However, There's no person who is below average intelligence. That's not true of anybody. It's not. There's not a person who's above average intelligence. There's no such thing. Those are cries. Those are cries. You're above average intelligence. You're below average intelligence. Those are cries. When I talk about you that way or me that way, those are cries. Those are invitations to compassion.

[42:17]

Everything is an invitation to compassion, but your below-average intelligence doesn't sound like it's an invitation to compassion. If anybody's mean to me, that's an invitation to me to embrace and sustain the person who is being mean to me. And if I think they're being mean to me, and if I ask them, they say, yes, I am being mean to you, and I want to be mean to you. But what they're really saying is, please listen to me. I'm being mean to you because I want you to listen to me. I want you to talk to me. I want you to embrace and sustain me. I want you to receive me embracing and sustaining you. That's what I want. And I say it by saying,

[43:21]

I hate you and I really am trying to be mean to you and I'm glad you finally got it, that I am trying to be mean to you. But when you get it and you show me that you got it, you show me that you listened to me. You listened to me. So it's I'm bringing back now, once again, covering the territory. I say to somebody, what is your wish? What do you want, really, in this life? What's most important? What do you most wish for? And whatever that wish is, You do not make that wish by yourself.

[44:28]

Now, if the wish is to hear the Buddha's teaching and hear the meaning of it and understand it and transmit it for the welfare of the world, when that thought arises, that thought doesn't arise from your egocentric consciousness. However, it can appear in your egocentric consciousness. And it does appear in some people's egocentric consciousness. They actually think, in egocentric consciousness, they think, I wish to hear the true Dharma in order to benefit all beings. Such a thought occurs in this egocentric sphere, where there's also a bunch of other voices going on, like... what should I do next? And I'm not good enough. Like, I wish to donate my life to embracing and sustaining all beings and being embraced and sustained by all beings.

[45:40]

I wish that. That can arise in consciousness. And at the same time, or just a little bit after, and certainly many times before, the thought can arise... You're not good enough to do that. You're not good enough to embrace and sustain all beings. You're not good enough to live for the welfare of all beings. You're not good enough. You're way below average in that area. But again, simultaneous, simultaneous with the wish of the great, compassionate, enlightened beings. What's their wish? To hear the truth of the Buddha's teaching. To save all beings. That's their wish. That wish is simultaneous with you're not good enough to practice that way. And everybody's making it hard on you to practice that way.

[46:46]

You're too mean to practice that way. Everybody hates me. Such thoughts are simultaneous with these thoughts, these aspirations of great compassion. They're at the same time. Which challenges the thought of great compassion is challenged by such thoughts as most of the people in this room are not worthy of my compassion. Here's the thought. I wish to embrace and sustain all beings, all of them, wholeheartedly and be embraced and sustained by all beings. That thought is simultaneous with there's a lot of beings I don't want to embrace and sustain and I don't want them to get anywhere near me because they're like below average.

[47:47]

And I, by the way, am way above average. And that's true, actually. That's actually true. And there's nothing I can do about it because that's the way I am. I just happen to be way above average. Matter of fact, I'm like above that. Such thoughts like that, have you ever heard a thought like that? Can some people talk like that? Those thoughts are simultaneous with the bodhisattva mind of like No matter what you say about yourself or anybody else, I'm here with you totally, wholeheartedly, listening to you, embracing and sustaining you, and liberating you without changing your nasty little thoughts. I'm not going to wait until your thoughts stop and then embrace and sustain you. Right while you're thinking this, the nastiest, pettyest, or cruelest thought

[48:54]

Those nasty, monstrous, horrible thoughts, they're calling for compassion. And compassion knows it and is there with them all the time. It's not like I'm going away, see you later. It's there all the time. However, the compassion also understands that when we're totally caught up in nasty, horrible thoughts, that we can't actually dare to open to what's right there with us. So that's part of the deal. The thought to embrace and sustain all beings and to be embraced and sustained by all beings in order to bring peace to this world, that thought does not arise by my power.

[49:59]

I didn't think that up by myself. The whole universe thought it up and gave it to me. And I received it. And now I'm giving it to you. You didn't make this thought up by yourself. You didn't make up this thought of embracing and sustaining all beings without exception and giving your life to all beings in order to realize peace in this world and to receive all beings into your heart. You didn't make that up by yourself. It arose in your mind because of a conversation that you're in the middle of. And you will stay in the middle of this conversation with me. I'm in this conversation which is happening in the ocean where all enlightening beings are swimming together with all deluded beings. We're all in this together and embracing and sustaining all beings and being embraced and sustained by them is swimming together with those who do not want to embrace and sustain some people.

[51:11]

Some people don't want to embrace any Some people don't want to be embraced by any. This is, of course, the most terrible. But those beings are in the ocean with the Buddhas and the Bodhisattvas, too. We're all in this together. We can't get out of this. This is where we are. I say. But I didn't dream that up by myself. That arose in conversation with you today. And not just with you, but with the history of the human race and with the history of the Buddhist teaching. Such a conversation has given rise to this situation. The vow arose in a communion between deluded people and enlightened people. The vows which we're talking about have arisen in a communion.

[52:14]

And they will be taken care of in a communion. They arose in a conversation and they will be cared for in conversation without end. And nobody's in charge and everybody's responsible and everybody's participating right now. I have to work somehow. I have to work at remembering, embracing and sustaining, and being embraced and sustained. I have to work at remembering, listen to the cries. I have to work at remembering. Everybody's calling for me to listen to them. Everybody's calling for me to give my attention to them. Even if they say, don't look at me. And when they say, don't look at me, they want me to listen to that.

[53:20]

Don't listen to me, and they want me to listen to that. Now I have a grandson who is now a man. And he used to be a tiny little guy, and now he's a bigger guy than me, and he puts his arms around me and Kind of goes, oh, frail little granddaddy. Anyway, he knows I really love him and adore him. And one time when he was about seven, he was having breakfast in L.A. And I was there watching him. adoring him eat his breakfast.

[54:23]

I was listening to him. I was observing him very joyfully. I was embracing and sustaining him. In this case, I had no problem embracing and sustaining him. And then his face starts to... A frown appears on his face and actually starts kind of... His whole face starts twisting quite a bit and he says... would you please stop looking at me? He was calling to me to stop looking at him. He was calling to me to stop regarding him adoringly. And I said, okay. He embraced and sustained me and told me what he wanted. And I was okay with that. And so I started looking at the ceiling. and he didn't think that was sarcastic yeah yeah he actually that was good for him got a little break from the from me embracing and sustaining sometimes we're embracing and sustaining people they call to us they cry to us and they say lighten up the embracing stop you know

[55:42]

Reduce the adoration. It's too much. So reduce it. Why not? It's not really reduced. It's just I'm doing this instead of this. And then after I looked at the ceiling for a while, he started talking to me about his cousin. And I was allowed to look at him again. I felt him. He actually asked me a question, so I... The embracing and sustaining mutual, it can look any way. It can look any way. And when it looks certain ways, it's really hard for us to believe that we're being embraced and sustained. It takes a lot of training to realize that that's what's going on. And so we can come back with embracing and sustaining rather than something That seems like not embracing and sustaining.

[56:47]

So oftentimes when I feel like I'm not being embraced and sustained, then I get afraid. And when I'm afraid, then I don't think of embracing and sustaining. I think of defending or addressing. So I lost it. Sorry. But then I say, okay. I lost it. I wasn't listening. I wasn't observing. I didn't feel... I was being embraced and sustained. I got defensive. I lost the thread of the vow. And I'm sorry. And now I'm back. I'm back to realizing that what didn't look like embracing and sustaining was. And also me losing it and getting disoriented because of my karmic consciousness, my egoistic consciousness, it's very disorienting there.

[57:54]

It's very hard to stay oriented to compassion when all these horrible things appear. But all these horrible things are saying, please don't get disoriented. But they don't literally sound like, please don't get disoriented. They don't literally sound like, please listen to me. Please listen to me. They don't sound like that some of the times. They sound like, you're not listening to me. You're a self-centered rat. That's what they sometimes sound like. But they're saying the same thing all the time. And if I remember if someone, I don't know what, is yelling at me, is being rough with me, and I remember that they're embracing and sustaining me, then I can feel embraced and sustained to say to them, would you please do something for me?

[59:25]

And feel like, no. They embraced and sustained me by this very harsh, aggressive presentation. I understand that. And so now I'm going to embrace and sustain them. Now I'm going to give my life to them. I've listened to them. And now I'm going to have a conversation, which is, may I say something to you? And I really feel naturally to be tender with them. Because the person who's being so aggressive towards me is also a very fragile person. And they're afraid of how fragile they are. And out of their fear of their fragility, oh, by the way, everybody's fragile. Now, lately, people have been asking me, well, people have been asking me for quite a few years, how's your health? Lately, I've been saying, it's fragile. And then they often say, is there anything I can do to help?

[60:29]

And I say, yes, please. Like yesterday, I said to somebody, and he said, is there anything I can do to help? And I said, yes, please practice the bodhisattva way. So everybody that's yelling at me is fragile. And some of them, may be really not... I could say some of them may be really into denial about being fragile. Everybody's fragile, but a lot of people are afraid of being fragile. Most of us are sometimes afraid of being fragile. And in our fear of being fragile, we are at risk of being aggressive and not tender. So if I'm feeling fragile and denying it, if I am fragile, which is the case, I am fragile, and if I'm denying it, then I'm at risk of being mean to me.

[61:44]

Denying my fragility is mean. I say that. Now, is that too aggressive? I said it kind of loud. I hope that wasn't too much. I'll say it again, may I? For me to deny my fragility is kind of, it's a meanness. It's a miserliness. But acknowledging and welcoming my fragility and being tender with it, that's in accord with embracing and sustaining. and being embraced and sustained by my fragility. But if someone is trying to push their fragility away, that goes with being afraid and being aggressive and mean. And when a person who's denying his fragility is aggressive towards me, it's possible for me to remember that here's somebody who's calling me

[62:56]

Here's a fragile person calling aggressively to me to treat him tenderly. And also, you know, and I might feel like, okay, like my grandson, would you stop staring at me? This is a frightened little boy who's feeling fragile. And my... my intense adoration is threatening. So he calls to me for tenderness. And I give it to him. I'm up for it. But that's just one way it could look. It could look another way. There's a lot of ways I could have responded. I could have laid down on the floor and rolled around. I could have turned clockwise 180 degrees or even 360.

[64:03]

Or I could have turned counterclockwise 180 or 360. Or I could have spun around and around and around. There's a lot of possibilities that would fall into the category of stop looking at me. Stop staring at me. There's a lot of possibilities. It doesn't look one way. But am I actually oriented properly? Am I actually remembering this person is asking me to listen to them and I'm going to. And here it is. And I'm really sorry that I talked so long. 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.

[65:12]

For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[65:24]

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