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Love Is A Place
5/1/2019, Tenzen David Zimmerman dharma talk at City Center.
The talk focuses on exploring the Brahma Viharas—kindness, compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity—as central qualities for spiritual practice in the context of a six-week study period at the San Francisco Zen Center. It emphasizes their role in fostering an awakened mind, serving as foundations for meditation, and acting as antidotes to negative emotions and societal ills. The speaker highlights cultivating these 'divine abodes' as essential for achieving spiritual liberation and happiness, which are inherently connected.
Referenced Texts and Authors:
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E. E. Cummings: Poem "Love is a Place" is used as a metaphorical guide for the practice period, inviting reflection on personal spaces of love and acceptance ('world of yes').
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Sharon Salzberg: Referenced for insights on loving-kindness, noting its roots in Pali words for friendship and gentleness, suggesting that love serves as the foundation for all Brahma Viharas.
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Nyanaponika Thera: Cited for describing the Brahmaviharas as 'abodes,' encouraging them to be constant dwelling places for the mind, rather than occasional visits.
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Christina Feldman: Her book "The Boundless Heart" is noted as a central text for the practice period, emphasizing the relational qualities of the Brahma Viharas for healing and societal well-being.
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Thich Nhat Hanh: Mentioned in context of 'inter-being' to underline interconnectedness, a perspective vital for overcoming social separations and issues.
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Scott Peck: Quoted from "The Road Less Traveled" to define love as an intentional practice, echoing the bodhisattva vow aiming to nurture one's own and others' spiritual growth.
AI Suggested Title: Awakening Through Divine Abodes
This podcast is offered by San Francisco's Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Love is a place. Love is a place. And through this place of love, move with brightness of peace All places. Yes is a world. And in this world of yes, live. Scarefully curled. All worlds. Love is a place. And through this place of love, move. With brightness of peace. All places. Yes is a world.
[01:02]
And in this world of yes, live skillfully curled all worlds. E.E. Cummings. So what is your place of love? What is your world of yes? Yes. Where do you live? What is your home? What is your abode? What is the brightness of peace inside of you? That is what we're gonna be exploring this practice period. So welcome. Welcome to Beginner's Mind Temple.
[02:04]
Whether you are here from the very first time or have been here many, many, many times, you are welcome. I'm just curious how many people are here for the first time. Wonderful. Welcome. Welcome again. It's great to have you here. My name, for those who might not know me, is Tenzin David Zimmerman, and I am the abiding abbot here. I'm I still feel like a baby abbot. It's been about two months now, and so I'm still learning the ropes, and everyone's been very helpful. So thank you again for all your support. And this is my first practice period as abbot, so it's a journey for me as well as you. those of you who are, again, new to the temple here, we just started a six-week practice period this morning. So we had an opening ceremony this morning where we went to all the altars and offered fragrance. And then we came in here and chanted the Heart Sutra.
[03:06]
And so we're opening an intensive period of study called a practice period. And a practice period is actually a tradition that goes all the way back to Buddhist time, 2,500 years ago, when during the The monks in Buddhist time were mendicants, so they would roam around through the countryside, except during the rainy season when it was too inclement for them to do so. So then they would gather together in a grove, often, and study and practice together. So we have ourselves continued this tradition, and we called it a practice period here. The Japanese word that we use is ongo. and ungo translates as peaceful abode or peaceful dwelling place. So I think this term is particularly apropos given the fact that the title of the practice period is At Home in the Boundless Heart, Embodying the Brahma Viharas. And so we're going to be studying for the next six weeks together identifying, cultivating, and peacefully abiding in the four
[04:18]
loving attitudes or boundless states known as the Brahma Viharas. And these, how many people are familiar with the Brahma Viharas? And how many people are not? Great, so it's a kind of equal mix. So these are limitless qualities or minds. And there's four of them. And they are kindness, compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity. And for those who are interested in the Pali, you often will hear the term metta, karuna, mudita, and upekka. And then there's also a Sanskrit version of those. So these are basically, these Brahma Viharas are considered the Buddha's heart teachings, the teachings of the heart. And they're the ones that most directly connect us to our happiness. So it's a wonderful thing to study. And they are also known as the divine abodes.
[05:22]
So you may have heard these in other translations or other terms. Divine abodes, the sublime abodes, sublime attitudes, and the immeasurable minds. And I'm sure there's a few others out there. So I may be using different terms throughout, and other people in readings that you might partake in might also use kind of variants on those terms. But... The word Brahma Vahara is a Pali word. And the first part of it, Brahma, in Brahma's time, in Buddhist time, a Brahma was a deity who lived in a heavenly realm. And so Brahma means great, holy, supreme, sublime, exalted, and divine. So any of those terms could be used. And Vahara means originally comes from the word for monastery, and also a place where we abide, and a place we make our home.
[06:23]
So it's an abode or a dwelling. And also, vahara can mean an attitude of mine, the location of mine, the atmosphere of mine, the abode of mine. And they can basically be, from a heart, directly translated as abode of the divine or heavenly abodes. You probably also may have heard that term before. And they are, in essence, means for a psychological abiding place of the spiritually developed or those who are noble and exemplary. So where does, you could say, an awakened being, a heavenly being, abide from? What is their place? What is their home? What location? Where do they dwell? The Theravadan monk and scholar Nyanaponika Thera, I hope I said his name correctly, says that the Brahmavaharas are called abodes because they should become the mind's constant dwelling places where we feel at home.
[07:32]
They should not remain merely places of rare and short visits, soon forgotten. In other words, our minds should become thoroughly saturated by them. They should become our inseparable companions. And we should be mindful of them in all our common activities. So this idea that these abodes, these dwelling places, they're not just external places. It's kind of their quality permeates a whole being. And they also serve as companions with us, good friends that are with us always, that we can turn to and rely on whenever we need to. And also, they're the foundation for our actions. They're the place from which we go out into the world, extend ourselves into our activity, our home base, our ground base, in some way. You might be familiar with the metasutta, where it says whether walking, sitting, lying down, basically everything you're doing, whenever you are awake, to make kindness, compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity the home of our hearts.
[08:49]
And then when we cultivate these qualities, they lead to a joyful, calm, easeful mind. And who would want that? Anyone here? A few people, yeah? Okay. Well, then you're welcome to partake in this particular abode. So, traditionally in early Buddhism, the four sublime attitudes are taught as prerequisites for higher levels of meditation, concentration, and spiritual attainment. So they were not so much a means in themselves. The idea where they were springing forward for deeper levels of concentration and meditation. And they also are practiced as hard practices through specific meditation techniques or approaches and also ways to kind of permeate our mindfulness.
[09:55]
and our concentration practice. So one of the things that we'll be doing throughout this practice period is actually partaking of loving-kindness meditations, actually guided meditations, using words and phrases that remind us of our deeper intention in practicing these loving qualities. So to say them aloud in some way helps us to kind of embody them and then also at the same time shape our mind so that our minds have this attitude or this leaning into what is our deeper intention in some way. And a mind pervaded by the four Brahmas Baharas is described by the Buddha as an awakened mind. So these are the qualities of an awakened mind. Any Buddha you meet, and you can feel this, anyone you meet who feels they have this kind of quality of awakenedness, you can actually kind of see, do they also exhibit these qualities of kindness, you know, compassion, joy, equanimity. And these are innate human qualities.
[10:59]
And so cultivating them as qualities of mindfulness allows them to actually serve as antidotes to any of the ways that we limit ourselves or have kind of reactive emotional patterns in some way. So they're born in us. They're innate to our being, right? The seeds are already there. The capacity is already there. It's just a matter for us to decide whether or not we're going to water those seeds and develop that capacity, which is what these practices are about. And, you know, sometimes they might get maybe dismissed as just kind of positive or feel-good emotions, right? And I think that does a great disservice to the Brahma Viharas and actually their transformational quality. So because they... They really represent a way to engage life from a wholesome and positive orientation. Wholesome meaning whole, all-inclusive, complete.
[12:02]
They serve in that capacity. And they also help us to... They serve as an antidote to our own negative mind states. The ways that we have judgments, doubts... any experience of separation that we may have in terms of how we relate to others, they help to dissolve that separation, help to overcome our ego. And when they are practiced together as an ensemble, they actually are the very landscape and embodiment of liberation. So these are the ground, the home, the place of liberation itself. So how to experience liberation by embodying these particular qualities. I was telling the Practice Period Tea folks earlier today that one of the reasons I wanted to study the Brahma Piharas practice period was because I think the world is really in need of these qualities right now.
[13:10]
I find myself kind of listening to this national dialogue that we have going on and kind of feeling this environment which is kind of fraught with negativity, divisiveness, reactivity, a general sense of disrespect. And I find myself yearning for just love, just a sense of common decency and awareness and connectivity in some way. wanting us to be able to find ways to speak to each other and act with each other and relate to each other that rises above kind of this negative atmosphere that we might feel that we're in, that's being fueled by our national politicians, by social media, by all the other different ways that we, kind of the worlds that we inhabit in different ways.
[14:13]
And I also have the belief that the root of our social ills, racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, capitalism, any anti-environmentalism expression, is actually a mistaken perspective of separation and disconnect. And they're diseases that are produced when we are not able to recognize at a very deep level our inherent interconnectedness. And this place of shared being, our interbeing, as Thich Nhat Hanh says. And we fail to act and engage each other from that place. And I also wanted to really do my own work, you know, to continue my own practice of study. How is it that I somehow limit my own capacity to love to be awake, to connect. This process of really unfolding my own karmic conditioning and limitation and allowing it to dissolve by making the best effort to really reach out and connect to others.
[15:24]
So it's a wonderful support when we can do this with others. I find I can't do it alone, so I really depend on sangha for encouragement and support. So thank you for joining me in this particular endeavor. And I thought, before going talking about a little bit more of the essence of the Brahmaviharas, I'd quickly give you a brief introduction to each of them for those of you who are new, so you have a little bit more kind of a sense of what are we talking about when we talk about these four qualities. And the Brahmaviharas actually are pre-Buddhist. They were around before Buddhist time, and the Brahmaviharas the Buddha and other Buddhist traditions, basically took them and kind of developed them and impact them further in some way. And so we find them in the Theravadan tradition, we find them in the Mahayana tradition, we find them in the Ban tradition, and also Hindu traditions have also extended them in multiple ways.
[16:29]
And they're also kind of framed in different texts in slightly different ways. So if you study them, you'll find yourself sometimes kind of curious. how it is that they're presented, what order they're offered in. The first Brahmavihara is traditionally metta, which is, in Pali it's metta, in Sanskrit it's maitri, and traditionally considered the foundation of the four Brahmaviharas, and again translated as goodwill, friendliness, benevolence, kindness, And maybe the one that you'll most be familiar with is loving-kindness. And Sharon Salzberg points out in her book on loving-kindness that metta shares a root with the Pali words for friendship and gentleness. And I'm myself partial to using kindness or goodwill as a translation of metta. And I'll say a little bit more about that because I actually think love, when we say loving-kindness, love is the foundation that actually is...
[17:34]
the foundation of all the Brahma Viharas. So it's not just particular to one. And metta is the opening of the heart to the experience of others. What is it to open our hearts to how another person is experiencing their life? And so how is it that we have an active sense of goodwill, benevolence, friendliness, connection, not only to others, but actually to ourself as well. How often do we leave ourselves out of the equation? And if we reflect deeply, we realize that all of us want to be happy. That's our fundamental wish, to be happy. And all beings share in the same fundamental wish or desire. And if we know other beings want to be happy just like us, then we're going to make the best effort we can to not only fulfill our own happiness, but also support others to do the same for themselves.
[18:44]
So metta is a generosity of spirit. How can I support you in your deepest wish and intention to realize happiness? And metta also serves as an antidote to ill will, to anything that creates a sense of separation in some way. The second Brahmavihara is karuna or compassion. And compassion can be understood as what happens when metta meets suffering. Compassion is what happens when metta meets suffering. So whether it is suffering that we experience or that another person experience, compassion is caring about, And being present for the pain that we all experience in some way. How do we recognize that pain? How are we with it? How can we stay with it? So you can actually, compassion often can feel like almost this quivering of the heart in some way.
[19:46]
This reverberation, this resonance that happens whenever we're present for pain. Present with our own pain and present with another's pain. And I don't know about you, but often my experience, whenever I feel pain, is actually to avert from it, to turn away from it. So how is it that I can stay present whenever pain or suffering arises? And this is what the heart of Karuna is about, setting the attention to stay present and not push away what's difficult. And so... Compassion is an antidote to aversion. And someone in the tea today had mentioned that they're experiencing a lot of aversion with a particular national political figure. And actually used the word hate. And she said, I want to study the Brahma Viharas because I don't want to hate. And right now that's what's happening to me. So how can you love absolutely everybody?
[20:51]
and have a compassionate orientation to them. To leave no one out of your heart. To recognize that everyone suffers in the same way that you do. In fact, in many cases, if they're doing something harmful, their suffering is so deep they don't know how to recognize it and find a way to take care of it in a way that is non-harming to themselves or to others. So how do we support them to do that? The third Brahmavihara is mutita, or appreciative joy. It's often translated as sympathetic joy or empathetic joy. And I actually find that appreciative joy, for me, has more of an accurate representation of what mutita is. It's simply the practice of appreciating joy and happiness in our own, our own joy and happiness, as well as the joy and happiness of others. So metta becomes compassion when it meets suffering, and it becomes mudita when it meets joy.
[21:59]
So the quality of mudita is this quality of sharing in joy, sharing in the joy of others in some way. And as such, it ends up being an antidote to any jealousy and envy that we might be experiencing. this kind of sense of scarcity or holding back. Why don't I have that? I wish I had that. Instead, we open our heart and celebrate the other person having that particular happiness or joyful experience. And one thing that we also can recognize when we study mudita is to realize how often we don't allow ourselves to feel joy. Somehow there's a sense that we don't deserve it. that we're not worthy enough for joy. And that's something we really have to look at and study for ourselves. And then the final of the four Brahmaviharas is upekka, or equanimity. And equanimity can be seen as a kind of balancing factor that keeps us stable as our hearts open.
[23:06]
Sometimes we can get unstable if we overextend our hearts in a way that's not balanced. So equity helps support us to find our stability, our ballast, and then extend outwards. It's kind of like doing yoga. You really need to find your correct stable position, and then you do the warrior pose, or then you do this extension pose. But you really have to find the center of your being. And so as such, it acts as a container. that actually holds the other three Brahma Viharas. Words that are often associated with upekka include acceptance, patience, tolerance, and stability. And when we look at upekka, one of the things we need to study is actually... this realization that everyone is responsible for their own happiness in some way.
[24:08]
And someone else's suffering is actually, in our own suffering, is really dependent on our own orientation, our own relationship to experience. So we need to take responsibility for our own suffering, and other people also need to take responsibility for the way that they relate to suffering. All right? And one of the common phrases used in equanimity meditation is often, all beings are in charge of their own karma. All beings are in charge of their own karma. And so equanimity as having a measure of objectivity, having a higher view to be able to see things all with a sense of equalness in some way. And that includes studying our own emotions. How do we study and meet our own emotions from the same place of balanced ground or equanimity? Sometimes equanimity actually is the first of the four Brahmaviharas.
[25:14]
It's put first because for the very reason it's serving as a foundation for the other three. So you might see them being swapped around in some way. But ultimately they're all... dependent on each other. They all complement each other in some way. So we'll be studying these four divine abodes throughout the next week's weeks through Dharma talks, through classes, through guided meditations, through practices, how we take home our work throughout our day, and trying to find what is the most skillful means to express them. And one of the things we'll be studying, too, is what are the obstacles or hindrances to our realizing and manifesting these particular loving qualities in our own life? What makes it difficult to love ourselves? What keeps us from loving ourselves? And how does that inability to love ourselves affect our capacity to love others wholly and completely in some way?
[26:20]
So the essence of the Brahma Viharas is a loving wish for all beings to be free of suffering. And this wish is repeated in all the texts that you read on the Brahma Viharas, including in the Metta Sutta, which many of you are familiar with. We chant here on a regular basis, which it says, May all beings be happy. May they be joyous and live in safety. All living beings, whether weak or strong, in high or middle, or low realms of existence, may all beings be happy. Each time we express these words, we remind ourselves what it is that we want most deeply. And we also remind ourselves what is the purpose of our life. I think, and I'm just going to guess, for most of it, it is to find happiness. And I'm also going to suggest propose that the search for enlightenment or awakening and the search for happiness are the exact same thing.
[27:34]
They're identical. They're not two separate things. And this search for happiness, this search for awaken, this search for liberation is fundamental to our nature. It's the root of our nature. It's the nature of the human mind to be happy, to be connected. to be awake. And so our Zen practice supports us over and over again, over a lifetime, to discover what is it that makes us happy. What are the conditions for our happiness? And parallel to that is what are the conditions for our liberation? Again, they're the same thing. They meet. So what is happiness? How would you define happiness? Anybody? that's a telling tale in itself. I don't know what happiness is.
[28:36]
It's a good question to ask yourself. If I'm running around trying to get happy and do all these things for happiness, if I don't know what it is, what am I doing? What am I chasing around for? So I find myself, as I kind of study my own definition of happiness, it changes over the years. It continues to develop and and take a different shape and a different expression. So that might be part of the pause that you actually have. It's like, well, it's changed. I don't know what it is today. Maybe it's a different thing today. So the definition for happiness that I'm currently using is the following. I define happiness as the knowing of our own being. Happiness is the knowing of our own being as it is. And Another name for the knowing of our own being is Buddha. And Buddha means awake being, or being awake.
[29:39]
Awake being. Being in that phrase is really emphasizing the verb aspect of it. Awake being. Quality, the activity of being awake in some way, right? And so we could say that awakening, or enlightenment, if you want to use that term, is the direct knowing or recognition of our Buddha nature, being aware of our own inherent true happiness. So it's Buddha knowing Buddha. And in terms of Dogen's Zenji, the founder of our particular school, Zen, his understanding of Zazen, what he's talking about, when we do Zazen, is actually resuming our original nature, resuming our Buddha nature, coming back to this quality of awake being, this activity of being awake in every moment, and with that, returning to our own inherent nature and content of happiness, what it means.
[30:54]
Right? And when we overlook this knowing of our being, when we kind of get that mixed up in some way with our thoughts and feelings, then we obscure our true nature. We obscure our inherent happiness. We lose contact with it. And this is what the separate self, the egoic self, is an expression of separation, of obscuration, of our true happiness. And we begin to look outward for something that will fulfill us, bring us happiness, bring us a sense of aliveness. So we look in the wrong direction. So this idea of turning the light back inwards is look inward for what you already are seeking. What you are longing for is already here. You are already that. You don't have to go anywhere. You don't have to really even do anything.
[31:56]
I might be radical in saying this. You don't even need to meditate. You are already that which you seek. You are that awake, alive, radiant quality. And yet we forget that. We lose contact with that. We need to be reminded again and again. So that's why, what are the reasons we practice? So there's the wish for happiness. And then you may ask, What has love got to do with it? Last Saturday, Mark Lesser was here and he was giving a Dharma talk on his new book about the seven practices of a mindful leader. And he kind of unwittingly gave an appetizer to the study of the Brahma Viharas when he suggested that love is another definition of Zen. Love is another definition of Zen. And he says that because love includes a quality of absorption, being absorbed in something, having the sense of non-separation.
[33:01]
And he also kind of explained that Zen is a transliteration of the word Chan. which is a translation of the word jhana, which means basically absorption or deep concentration, is basically the sense of non-duality in some way. That this absorption, when we are in a deep meditative state, we might experience in some way. And so we have the sense of non-separation, of oneness, of wholeness, of incompleteness, of non-duality. And this is what Zen is supporting us to experience, to return to, to come home to, to abide in in some way, supports us to rest in a mind and heart of non-duality. And to see that present in all phenomenon, all experience. So, again, perhaps you may have varying definitions of happiness.
[34:03]
You may also have varying definitions of love. And I looked it up in the dictionary, and one of the definitions I found of love was deep, unconditional feelings of admiration, affection, attunement, and connection. Okay. Sounds fine. Now, I'm going to propose, if you're willing to go with my definition of happiness as the knowing of our own being, I would like to see if you're willing to try on my definition of love, which is the knowing of our shared being. Happiness is the knowing of our own being, and love is the knowing of our shared being. So the experience of love is simply the felt knowledge of our shared being. And again, the emphasis is on the verb quality of this being, shared being.
[35:06]
It's an activity, it's an event, presencing. It's a direct experience of this quality of non-separation. It's the knowing, the luminous knowing of this quality of shared beingness. You know, what Thich Nhat Hanh calls inter-being again. A direct experience of our interconnectedness, which points to non-self. There's nothing inherently existing that is separate from anything else. You get the whole universe here, folks. You can't take anything out. It's all yours and you are all it simultaneously. So how are you going to live a life that is deeply inclusive? This is what Zen is pointing us to. A deeply inclusive life. And that includes everything. Even those things you don't like. And how is it then that love can dissolve any boundaries or borders that seem to separate us from one another, for example, or from any other phenomenon in our life?
[36:20]
How do we dissolve the dualistic mind? So this longing for love, we often hear about longing for love in popular culture, culture. We go on all these dating apps and all these other ways. We just long for another being. We long to be loved. And that longing, I'm going to suggest, is this, again, wish to return back to our true nature. Return back to that quality of interconnectedness that we inherently know already. Jack Kornfield says that the longing for love and the movement of love is underneath all our activities. The longing for love and the movement of love is underneath everything you do. So it's not only under your relationships, looking for love. It's underneath what you do for work. It's what you do for fun. It's how you engage with the wider world, engage with nature.
[37:25]
It's always compelling us forward in some way, highlighting what it is that we're doing. Sharon Salzberg, says that Buddha describes spiritual practice as the liberation of the heart, which is love. So that's what we're doing. Spiritual practice is the liberation of the heart, and that liberation is itself love. And love overcomes, or spiritual practice overcomes, this feeling of isolation that many of us might feel in some way. Yeah. It uncovers the radiant, joyful heart within each of us and manifests this radiance to the world. So this light in us, which is obscured, gets uncovered. And then it, like the sun, once you kind of pull back the curtain, it can't help but shine out to all over the world. So we're practicing pulling back the curtain that obscures our true nature to share it with others and actually see that the light here is the same light that's in everyone else.
[38:30]
There are not two different lights, or a million different lights. And Del Hooks, in her book All About Love, which I highly recommend if you have a chance to read it, all awakening to love is spiritual awakening. So again, love is a manifestation of awakening. There's another definition of love that I appreciate, and this one's from Scott Peck. or anyone who can reach back way into the days of the self-help books, The Road Less Traveled. And in it, he defines love as the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one's own and another's spiritual growth. And he continues, love is as love does. Love is an act of will, namely an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love.
[39:33]
We choose to love. So this to me is the bodhisattva vow. Right there. This wanting to nurture our own capacity for love to be awake human beings so that we can support others to also love and be awake human beings. but we have to make it a choice. We have to set our intention, make a vow, and live our life from this intention, live our life from this vow. That is the root, the heart of the bodhisattva. So love is a practice. It's a verb. It's an activity. It requires our full engagement. We direct our love to others, And we continue to direct our love to everything that we meet, everything that's in front of us. And like I said before, love is a radical inclusiveness.
[40:40]
How radical are you willing to be? And the other side of that question is, how free are you willing to be? It's the same question. How much you're willing to love determines how much... how free you will be, ultimately. So, in practice, we're being encouraged, the Brahmaviharas encourage us to love life. Do you love life? What keeps you from loving life? Loving, in fact, reality. Loving everything as it is. Can you allow reality to be your beloved? Can you allow the truth of the way things are to be your beloved? Can you serve truth as love?
[41:42]
Serving truth is an act of love. The Bodhisattva path, this Buddhist path, is serving truth at all times. Can you say yes? Can you say yes to everything? Absolutely everything. It doesn't mean you need to like it. It's not about liking. It's about acknowledging this is it. This is what's happening. How do I include it in this path of unfolding so that my whole being is limitless and I can support others to experience this limitlessness? Christina Feldman, in her book, The Boundless Heart, which is kind of the primary text that we're using for the practice period, notes that the Brahma Viharas are relational qualities. So they're relational, they're the basis, the foundation for a respectful, healthy, dignified society.
[42:44]
They serve as the basis for healthy communities, healthy families, and healthy interpersonal relationships. He says, in practicing the Barma Viharas, we widen the circle of our concern and care beyond ourselves and come to understand the ways in which we can be active participants in the healing and the awakening of the world. So how do you want to heal the world? How can we... cultivate the Brahma Viharas as a healing ointment, healing medicine for what ails the world and what ails ourselves. The four loving abodes are kindness, compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity, also known as apamana, which translates as immeasurable, boundless, or unlimited states.
[43:47]
And so these are states that we develop in meditation. And we're doing this because the mind, when we leave it to its own devices, is narrow, is small, is limited. So how do we cultivate a mind that's limitless? And part of that limitlessness is really studying the ways in which we fix phenomenon, fix things, each other fix our own being as a separate self in some way. To see all things as limitlessness, to see all things as boundless, actually is to see their inherent emptiness. No inherent existing separate quality or being. And so these practices are supporting us to open the aperture of our heart and allow the light to shine everywhere.
[44:54]
Our hearts can be as wide as the world and as wide as all that the world contains. So in this way, we practice together. We become acquainted with a natural resting place, a natural home, a natural abode, in which our hearts are free and open. Practicing the Brahma Viharas, we get to discover for ourselves the feeling of being at home in a boundless heart-mind. I'm going to read the opening poem one more time before we close. Love is a place and through this place of love move with brightness of peace all places. Yes is a world, and in this world of yes live skillfully curled all worlds.
[46:04]
Love is a place, and through this place of love move with brightness of peace all places. Yes is a world, and in this world of yes, live skillfully curled all worlds. Thank you for your kind attention. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma Talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.
[46:59]
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