A moment ago and again now, I'm feeling deeply moved by the presence of us here today. A great mass of presence. It's wonderful that you're all here supporting each other. Lately I've been. Well, actually, quite recently, I thought I was going to give a talk today and I I had a couple offerings. Actually, I think, first of all, I had one offering and then I had two. And they just keep coming. So I don't know how many I'll be able to give you.

[01:09]

The first one. Is that. we have this tradition we speak of called the path or the way or the life. Sometimes we just say the path or the way. Not so often do we say the life. But that's what we have here is a life. And sometimes we say the path of the bodhisattva, or the way of the bodhisattva, or the life of the bodhisattva. So this practice place is, I would say, I feel this practice place is basically devoted to the life of the bodhisattva, to the being, to the great being,

[02:15]

which is wanting to live to help others. So that's my basic offering, is to mention to you that there is this way, which is... living to help others the the point of the buddha's teaching in this tradition is helping others so that's the basic thing i offer to you that's the point the point of what we're doing in this temple in this tradition the point And I'll mention also, another gift is to mention that this is a turning point.

[03:20]

It's not just a point, it's a turning point. And the point is helping others and helping all others. That's the basic point. And because it's a turning point, It's also being helped by others. I thought that would be a nice offering to you because it's so simple. It's basically the point of it all is helping others. This is happiness. This is peace. This is freedom. And it's quite simple, however not easy. The second offering is to mention that helping others means or includes thinking about others as yourself.

[04:42]

which again is really quite simple, but not easy to practice. It's a very simple practice, which I'm very happy to have this simple practice. I can actually practice it myself sometimes, is whenever I meet someone, a human, a non-human, non-humans like trees and dogs and cats and mountains, Whenever I meet someone, I can just practice thinking about them as me. Considering them, contemplating them as myself. So the path of helping others includes wanting to, but it also includes meditating and contemplating and remembering to think that than myself.

[05:50]

So at first, I remember that I'm mindful of others as myself. I learned to think more and more of others as myself. And then finally, not exactly finally, but eventually, we reached a place where we actually understand, where we realize, that others are ourself. So the point of this tradition is compassion, which is helping others, but we also have to have wisdom, which is understanding that others are ourself. We need those two together. Wanting, living, to help others together with understanding that they're ourself. Those two together.

[06:54]

The wisdom and the compassion together. bodhisattva path is an ongoing crisis, an ongoing turning, living for the welfare of others, living to help others, being helpful to others, and then not staying there, but letting that turn to others helping self. We help others, others help self. We help others by realizing that they're us, that they're me, that they're you, and then let that turn to you are them.

[08:00]

This helps them, they help you. You are me, you are not me. You are not me, you are me. You are self. You are myself. You are other. You are other. You are myself. One can contemplate this. One can remember this. And if we remember this and understand this, this understanding will help, I should say, is helping others. Many people, usually most people, think that we help others by doing something. But it's actually understanding which helps other people.

[09:06]

It's understanding that they're yourself that helps them. When you're with someone and you understand that they're you, that helps them. If you do something, if I do something to help people, without this understanding, the helpfulness is not fully realized. If you realize that someone is yourself, then everything you do will be helpful, is helpful. At first, the bodhisattva looks at life in the eye, looks at life and realizes it's herself. Then she's helpful, and everything she does from that place is helpful.

[10:14]

First, she doesn't do anything but look and see that the person, the being she's looking at is herself. This helps at that moment. If you've got your eye on life, if you see others as yourself, then you have your license to help. If we try to help others before we look and see who we're helping, if we try to help others without looking life in the eye, then our helping distracts us.

[11:23]

from the pivot, from the point, from the real helping. And then another offering I wish to give to you is the basic offering of bodhisattvas do not try to control the beings that they're helping. They do not try to control the beings that they're helping. They give up trying to control beings. This is the way they serve beings. They are just serving beings, they are just loving beings, and the way that they serve involves that they give up trying to control the beings that they're that they're in service to.

[12:38]

Giving up control is another way to say giving up control of others is another way to say realizing that they're yourself. And when you look at yourself, realizing yourself also, realizing that yourself is yourself, also involves giving up, trying to control yourself. When we're, if we wish to serve Buddhas, if we wish to help Buddhas and great bodhisattvas, to me it seems like I would never be thinking I was going to control the Buddha. Maybe some of you think, well, if I was serving Buddha, I would try to control Buddha. I would try to get Buddha to sit on Buddha's seat and get Buddha to wear Buddha's robes and get Buddha to shave Buddha's head or whatever or do Buddha's hairdo or whatever.

[13:51]

Buddha to be clean, control Buddha to be Buddha. Most people wouldn't think of controlling Buddha, right? I want to help Buddha, but I'm not going to control Buddha. No, you wouldn't try to control Buddha, would you? No, I wouldn't either. Just kind of like go, okay, hi. Hi Buddha, what can I do to help you? And Buddha would say, please realize that I am yourself. That will help me. And if anybody you meet that's a Buddha will, I think, tell you that the way to help them is to see them as yourself. People who are not fully enlightened don't know beforehand that what they really want from you is for you to see them as yourself. Although they don't know it beforehand, when you see them as yourself, they realize that that's what they've been waiting for their whole life. someone to be intimate with them.

[14:54]

Someone who is other than them, who is intimate with them, who knows who is who. as we move on from the Buddhas and the Bodhisattvas to people who are not, we would say, completely enlightened, like our parents, our children, our friends, our teachers, our students, our clients, our patients, our doctors, our lawyers, In other words, as we approach all living beings, then this thing about giving up trying to control them, we think, well, maybe with Buddhas we don't have to try to control them, but maybe some of these people need a little control.

[16:03]

So, yeah, so I'm actually suggesting that the way to help beings, obviously the way to help Buddhas is to give up trying to control them. That's obvious, right? Give up trying to control them. You can't control them, of course, so why don't you give up? But when it comes to non-Buddhas, we might think, well, actually, I could control this person. I could control them. We only think that we can control somebody when we do not realize that they are our self. Put it the other way, when you see that someone's yourself, you do not think you can control them anymore. Thinking that you can control a person, or a dog, or a rat, or a landslide, or a puddle of water, to think that you can control it is...

[17:15]

Delusion. To think that you can influence it is not delusion. You influence everybody. And they influence you because they're you. We influence each other. We support each other, but nobody's in control of anybody else. We... We... The point is to help others. The point is to protect them, to nurture them, to feed them, to serve them, to clothe them, to unclothe them, to wash them, to support them, to teach them, to learn from them. trying to control them to put on the clothes to put the clothes on your baby or on your old mother or father to put their clothes on because they can't I shouldn't say they can't because the way that they do it you would like to influence you want to help them you want to serve them getting their clothes on and off you want to serve them getting their bodies washed you want to serve them getting their food

[18:49]

You want to serve them. And you can. And if you do this while simultaneously trying to give up controlling them or give up controlling the clothes, which are also beings, without trying to control the clothes onto or off of the person that you're trying to serve, without trying to control the person, that you're trying to get into and out of the clothes you're trying to serve. You even serve clothes. You protect all beings, living and non-living. Clothes and people, all clothes and people are myself. I don't try to control the clothes, the cars, the tires, the gas consumption. I don't try to control anything as... One who is trying to be helpful.

[19:56]

Because everything is myself. And because everything is myself, I can't grasp anything. But I can serve everybody. People tell us, control your dog. Control your children. And I don't know, in some societies they might say, control your parents. You know? You know, your father is really, you know, misbehaving. Control him. Your mother's drooling. Control her. Your uncle's dripping. Wipe him up. Wiping up is okay. You can wipe up as a service, but not as a control. In the process of wiping up, uncle might say, it's enough wiping up. Please stop.

[20:59]

And you can listen to that and say, but uncle, I want to wipe up. And uncle may say, well, go right ahead. Just don't. Uncle, you're being irrational. But you don't say that to control your uncle. You say it as a gift. Everything you do is a gift. Nothing you do is a control. Everything you do is an offering to what you're remembering to see as yourself. It's possible to hold a baby in your hands and take the diapers off and clean up without trying to control the baby or the diaper or the waste products or the fanny.

[22:09]

But just serving. And maybe the baby doesn't want you to do this. Maybe the baby doesn't want you to take the diaper off. Maybe the baby doesn't want you to clean her. Well, who is this that you're cleaning? Is this somebody other than you? Yes. Is it yourself? Yes. When you really remember that, the baby doesn't control you, and you don't control the baby, and together, you probably will eventually take the diaper off. Together, you'll see the path where you and the baby together work it out to get the diaper off and to clean the baby's skin and to put ointments and lotions on the baby together with the baby.

[23:15]

Nobody controlling working together. Everybody having desires and agendas about what's good. Babies have idea. Senile parents have ideas. Senile children have ideas. Everybody's got ideas. Everybody's got stories about what it's time to do. It's time to change the diaper. It's time to eat lunch. Okay. Somebody else has, it's not time to eat lunch. It's time to take a walk. Okay. Okay. Somebody's got to set the stage for helping others. We need somebody in this conversation to remember that the person they're talking to is themselves and to realize that. And then it's possible that the diaper will not get changed, actually.

[24:24]

That the food, that the body will not be washed. that the diaper rash will not get lotioned, that the old person will not have lunch. This might happen. It might work out that way. But what I'm suggesting to you and to me is that if that's what happens when you really look at someone and see that they're yourself, although they won't get their diapers changed, They will be helped. They will be liberated from suffering, whether they get their diapers changed or not. And some people do get their diapers changed, but they get them changed by someone who's trying to control them in having their diapers changed. The person is not seeing that the person and the diaper are themselves.

[25:28]

They're trying to control the person into having clean diapers on. They're trying to control the person into having no diaper rash, no bed sores. They're trying to control the person into not walking around the neighborhood, you know, not knowing where they're going. And then... we lose touch with what is the point of this life. This point of this life is not to prevent diaper rash and get diapers changed and have clean diapers. That's not the point. If it was, I'd be surprised. The point is, in this school is to help others.

[26:30]

Pretty soon all the diapers will be done and they'll either be dirty or clean or both. People will have diaper rash or not. But the key, the point of helping beings is that is seeing that they are our self. And that entails giving up. trying to control them. And giving up trying to control is entailed when you serve beings in a helpful way. We've all been served by beings. People have served us and tried to control us. We've all experienced beings that have tried to control us. I guess we all have. But beings who try to control us bless their hearts, bless their deluded minds, they don't really respect us.

[27:32]

If anybody respects us, they know they can't control us. Not all of us who cannot be controlled know that we cannot be controlled. So some of us, When someone tries to control us, we do not notice that we're being disrespected. We haven't been taught that we're not controllable by anybody. In other words, we're used to being disrespected. So when someone tries to control us, we even sometimes say, okay, please control me. It's familiar. But when you convey to someone whether you say it literally or not, when you convey to them the understanding that you're not trying to control them, plus you know you cannot.

[28:34]

You know you cannot because you know they're yourself. And yourself, which they are, is unlimited. And they are also unlimited. Everybody is vast. So you are vast too. And again, you do not try to control vastness. I mean, we do try to control vastness, but that's when we say vastness, we say we think vastness is controllable. We can control the weather. We can control planetary rotation. We can think those kinds of things, and maybe we can think those things. But we can't control anything. Ultimately. But even if we can, I would say give it up if you want to help beings. Fortunately, some beings feel insulted when we try to control them and have the courage to give us feedback that we're not being respectful.

[29:54]

This is a help to us. When we try to control someone and someone tells us, are you trying to control me? I feel like you're trying to control me. Is that actually going on here? And we say, yeah. And they say, no, thank you. No, thank you. You're welcome to assist me and support me and protect me and serve me. Please go right ahead. But give up trying to control me. Just be totally devoted to helping me. And also, while you're at it, please remember that I'm you. And not just me, but everybody else is you too. If you meditate like that, you'll stop trying to control me and everybody else. If you want to, you can start that practice right now. Whenever you notice somebody and you think they're trying to control you, you can inquire.

[30:58]

as to whether that's the case, and you can gently, not trying to control them out of their disrespect, but you can gently indicate to them that you're not a controllable being. You, like all other beings, are not controllable, but are serviceable, are helpable. I can help you. by learning that you're me. You can help me by learning that I'm you. All beings can help you by learning that you are them. You can help all beings by learning, by remembering and thinking and considering and finally Understanding that they are you.

[32:02]

And if you notice any controlling coming up in your relationship, that's a signal to you that you've lost sight of what is helpful. Controlling goes with ignoring that somebody is you. Ignoring that somebody is you sets you up to try to control them. Giving up trying to control opens you up to seeing who they are. Seeing who they are leads to giving up trying to control. And then you become totally at the service of yourself, which is others. And then everything you do is just a ritual enactment of your understanding, of your... relationship with other beings. Vipers may get changed, or they may not.

[33:08]

But if we actually see that others are ourself at that moment, they are helped. And if we can't see it yet, we can think it and remember it until we actually see it. Just like when I sat down with you, feeling your presence, the great presence of you. You show me that you You are the fullness of my life. And I do not try to control all of you, of course. I do not try to control this great presence. And I do not try to control the presence of one of you, which is similarly as great as the presence of all of you.

[34:20]

I like my offerings to you because they're simple for me to practice. And I do try to practice them. And when I do, I feel right. When I meet someone, human or non-human, and give up trying to control them, I feel like I'm not the point of the practice. When I meet someone and I remember to think that they're remember and think and realize that to me I feel like I'm close to the point of the Bodhisattva practice when I forget it when I forget it I and I notice it I say oops I'm not at the point time to go back to the point it may take a while to get myself back there I may have gotten kind of tangled up in the not, this is not me story.

[35:45]

I might have got kind of tangled up in the process of, well, this time I'm going to try to control this person, but I try to get myself back. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I tried to control you. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I go back now to my actual position of relationship with you is that I'm here to serve you, not control you. Is that okay? No, it's not yet. You have to do more penance before... Tell me more how sorry you are that you tried to control me. You disrespected me. Yeah, yeah, right. I did. That's true. Sorry. I really am. I didn't feel good about that. It's just an old habit. It's a powerful one. Serving, serving, serving. Yeah, fine. Give up trying to control people we're serving. Serving, serving, serving. Yeah, give up trying to control the environment which we're serving.

[36:51]

We want it to be healthy. We want the air to be clean. We want the earth to be pure. Yes. Remember, yes. It's who you are. Give up time to control it and just give your life to it. Really simple, but hard to remember. Except when you remember, then it's really nice and simple. I'm seeing myself in the face of all beings. I could go on and bring up lots of objections you might have to my offering, but I'll just let you bring up your objections and question and answer.

[37:59]

The objections basically, yeah, that's all good, but under these circumstances we have to control, don't you think? Or, yeah, yeah, sure, but under these circumstances we really shouldn't respect people, right? Or yeah, yeah, yeah. But in this case, the person is not really me, right? So please bring your objections to this proposal. And we can. You know, without trying to control me and without me trying to control you, we can maybe work it out. Not so that I'll get control of you and you really believe that you should give up control. Because I welcome hundreds of people who do not. who do not want to give up trying to control it. I'm not trying to control you out of controlling. So if you come here and say, I'm going to keep controlling, my job is to welcome you and say, oh, that's me who is telling me that they're not going to stop trying to control.

[39:02]

Okay? So we can work out the details later if you want to. But I leave you with the basic, simple... Proposal, right? You got it? I think you do. Right? It's pretty simple, isn't it? Yeah. I thought so. I see trees of green, red roses too, They bloom for me and for you. And I think to myself, what a wonderful world. I see skies of blue and clouds of white. Bright blessed day, dark sacred night.

[40:07]

And I think to myself, What a wonderful world. The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky are also on the faces of the people going by. I see friends shaking hands saying, how do you do? They're really saying, I love you. I hear babies crying. I watch them grow. They'll learn much more than I'll ever know. And I think to myself, what a wonderful world. Yeah, I think to myself, what a wonderful world.

[41:08]

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