Good evening, everyone, and welcome. It's a Wednesday night Dharma talk during the spring practice period at City Center. We're continuing a study of the Lojang slogans with Mary's stairs. We'll open with the Sutra opening verse, which you can find in your chat window now before proceeding to the Dharma talk. Let's chant together. An unsurpassed, penetrating, and perfect of our love is rarely met with even in a hundred thousand million cowpots. Having it to see and listen to, to remember and accept, I vow to taste the truth about the Takata's words. Good evening, and welcome to the City Centre Beginner's Mind Temple.

[01:21]

My name, as Kodo, the host mentioned, is Mary, and I'm a resident priest at City Centre, and I've been invited to lead the six-week practice period, and we are on talk number eight of that practice period. So those of you who are joining for the first time, It might feel a little confusing. And if this talk interests you, what I would suggest is that you go back to the first talk that we gave for the practice period and listen to those sequentially because they build on each other and they are talking about definite points that all fit together in the end. So it's not that these are impossible to listen to. If you haven't been... on all of the Dharma talks for the last three weeks, but certainly it will make it a lot easier. So as I said, we're in the middle of this practice period, and tonight we're going to be talking about point number four of the mind training slogans or a teacher's slogans, however one wants to refer to them.

[02:41]

Point number four, depending on the translation that you're exploring is maintaining the practice for the duration of our lives. And another translation is make practice your whole life. And before I launch into a discussion of this particular point, I want to talk a little bit about translation or different commentaries. At the beginning, I recommended that the students who are interested in studying this pick a translation and memorize the slogans from that translation. And there are a number of different translations. There are a number of different teachers that have spoken about the Lojong slogans. And they... often have their own interpretation or their own translation of a particular slogan.

[03:43]

And while I find that those are really helpful, what isn't so helpful or can add to confusion is if what you're doing is trying to work with a particular idea or point and then you're memorizing different orders and then you wonder which is better or what translation is better. And instead of putting your effort towards memorization and exploring a concept, we get caught and trapped in, like, is this translation more important? Is that translation more important? What is the one I should be doing? And there's confusion around that. I had this experience with this particular study that I did for point number four, because... The translations of the five strengths presented by Norman Fisher and by Chögyam Trungpa is very different from another commentary that I've been reading.

[04:46]

And the order is a little bit different. This also shows up with Norman's translations of points six, seven and eight, he lists them as 0.7 and eight, whereas in the traditional text, they're listed as 0.7 and 0.10. So if we can get really caught in the order change or the word change, and what I would encourage you to do is try to focus on one thing commentary that you relate to. For example, if you start out by reading Norman Fisher's book, Training in Compassion, I would suggest you memorize those slogans in Training in Compassion and not worry too much about the other commentaries until you're a little bit further along in your study of this.

[05:47]

So I hope that makes sense. This is something that you can bring up in the small groups if you're a part of the small groups or Or again, I'd be happy to talk more about it if people want to send me questions. So back to the text. So if the main goal of Lojang is the generation of relative bodhicitta and the realization of absolute bodhicitta, this takes, it sounds like it's a pretty simple thing. the generation of relative bodhicitta and the realization of absolute bodhicitta. Last Saturday in the class, we talked about absolute bodhicitta. This Saturday in the class, we're going to talk about relative bodhicitta because those are two concepts that are incredibly important to understand and have more familiarity with. So Lojang's slogan is really about these two concepts.

[06:49]

and the development of these two concepts. And it takes a lot of effort and work and direction to develop these. And these points in, or the two slogans in point four are specifically about this development stage. And they are talking about the study of these or the, work around these both in Zazen, formal meditation, and off the cushion. So this work of these two slogans can happen both while you're sitting and while you're going about your daily lives. So this is a cultivation practice. These two points, this point, these two slogans lead to a cultivation practice that... can happen both in formal practice and in our daily lives.

[07:54]

So slogan number 17 is practice the five strengths that condense heart instructions. And my translation is something like five elements to expose your tender heart. So I would say that's seven... Slogan number 17 is about getting practice with exposing our tender hearts, learning how to feel comfortable with that, learning how to be careful with our hearts, not by hiding it away, but by Understanding that to expose that isn't going to cause us negativity or harm. So again, the slogan is practice the five strengths, the condensed heart instructions.

[09:06]

And this has five elements. can be looked at and worked with over and over and over again. So the five elements that they're talking about, or the five strengths they're talking about, are strong determination, familiarization, seeds of virtue, reproach, or aspiration. Strong determination. So I think this comes up... both in our zazen practice and in our lives. If we're thinking that what we'd like is to have the mind of a bodhisattva, if that's the basis for which we're practicing, so we can not always be self-cherishing, but we can have this idea where self and other don't have such separation,

[10:11]

If we're wanting to have this mind of dorisattva, then these five elements need to be worked with over and over and over again. We need to be determined to practice, whether it's sitting zazen, seated meditation, or to have this mind that thinks about other people, that thinks in a positive way, that is open to training, is open to the idea of becoming a person that has an open heart. That is not something that happens when you decide it's going to happen. It happens as a result of going over and over and wanting to change our habitual activity. Strong determination is waking up in the morning and saying, I'm going to sit.

[11:17]

I'm going to do the practice. I'm going to get up, and I'm going to try to be kinder to people. And have this mind that wants this, that is engaged in this, that thinks that this is a really extremely important activity, has this determined idea of practice. In Zen, one of the things that is talked about is practicing like your head's on fire. So this is the strong determination. It's like you don't have a lot of time. You don't have time to waste over and over and over again. Be determined to engage in this practice of awakening your heart. Familiarization is the second strength. We are creatures of habit. We get in a groove. All of us, I think, know this. If you've ever tried to start working out or exercising or changing the way you eat or having pleasant conversations purposefully, you can't just say one day, well, I'm going to start working out.

[12:31]

I mean, you can say that, but the next day you might say to yourself, yeah, I'm tired today. I'm not going to do that. over and over and over again, going back to the reason that you're doing this, going back to this. What are you doing? Being familiar with the feelings that it causes. Again, the analogy of working out. If you haven't worked out for a long time, usually you feel really terrible the first few times you work out. So your body has to get familiar to this thing you're doing. And it's not that... It doesn't happen overnight for most of us. So it's allowing us to settle into something, allowing us to settle into a different way of doing it, habituating our body, habituating our mind to this open, generous wish for ourselves and other people. And again, I think this sounds like it's...

[13:35]

very straightforward and easy for most of us. And yet if we're honest with ourselves, there's always some doubt in there. Like, do I really want this? Do I think this is a good idea? I want that cookie. I don't want another person to have that cookie. So it's going back again and saying, well, wait a sec. Do I, maybe I do want that person to have that cookie. So it's, it takes sort of, gently moving towards this idea that we have strong determination. I want to move towards this thing called being a bodhisattva. I want to move towards the idea of relative bodhicitta. I want to do that strongly determined. And so it's sinking our attitudes and our activity in into this over and over again. That's the familiarization part, over and over again.

[14:39]

The third element of this is seeds of virtue. And another translation of this that I enjoyed was the power of planting white seeds. So white seeds can be thought of as positive imprints. Dark seeds are... negative imprints and so if if we are on this road they there's this wanting over and over again to plant white seeds seeds of virtue wanting to um on this ground that we're standing on over and over have pleasant thoughts, have positive thoughts, have positive intentions, be aware of our positive intentions, being aware of our negative intentions, being cognizant of the fruit that we're bearing, and over and over again, coming back to the idea that what we want is to sow seeds of virtue, to sow white seeds.

[15:48]

And if we think a negative thought, then we... Then we try to be aware of that thought and gently change gears, move away from that to try in the future to have a positive thought about that activity or that person. So this is where this training comes in. It's realizing that we have in every act of body, speech and mind, there is an imprint of that. And through this training, what our intention is, is to plant positive intentions, to leave positive activity, to be kind, to be generous with people, to have thoughts that are kind, not falsely so, that we're developing a mind that thinks about things in a positive way.

[16:51]

And that is a seed of virtue. The fourth translation that I worked with is reproach. And Norman went into quite a bit of detail about this, which I really appreciated because often we think of reproach as kind of a negative quality. Another translation I used talks about this particular point as the power of exposure. So I kind of like that one because I think for my sensibility, I could relate to that a little bit better. And how this is talked about is it's honestly looking at our tendencies, exposing those tendencies to ourselves, and coming clean around that. And it's not... It's not necessarily thinking, oh, I'm a bad person.

[17:55]

I shouldn't have done that. That's not the quality they're talking about. It's looking deeply at our activity, at our thoughts, at our actions, and assessing them, exposing the impact of those things, exposing the root of those things to ourselves so that in the future we can work with that in a different way. if it's something that we're not so happy with. So this is settling into the idea that we do want to change the way we're working with our minds and being honest about how we fool ourselves, how ego clinging has us always preferencing ourselves. or generally preferencing ourselves so we get the thing we want and we're not so concerned about the other. And so this is checking into that, deeply checking into that over and over and over again and adjusting the way that we're moving so that we are going in the direction that we've determined we want to go rather than kidding ourselves about what's actually happening.

[19:12]

And I think that this one's very interesting because it allows us to deeply look at our tendencies and deeply look at how we fool ourselves into thinking that what we're doing isn't as bad as what the other person is doing, or how we think about that. It's okay for us, but if somebody else does it, it's not okay. So it's this exposing these tendencies to ourselves and then correcting them, not with a heavy hand, but with this open, generous heart. The final point in slogan number 17 is aspiration, or the final strength. And this aspiration in the commentaries that I was reading about aspirations, the encouragement is to aim high. So it's thinking about your best self and how you want to be your best self.

[20:21]

I remember there was a story about somebody – David Schneider, actually, he tells this very funny story years ago that he was in one of those shared houses at Tassahara, his first practice period. And he remembers being woken up as the wake-up bell was going, not only by the wake-up bell, but the other person in the house yelling very loudly as the person was running by, oh... and a swear word because it was time to get up and time to go to the Zen though. And so that's one approach. It's like, I hate doing this. I'm not excited. Here it is, the wake up bell. I have to do it again. I'm setting my morning up in a, like, I'm not happy about this. The other thing that I think about is something that Abbott Steve talked about, which I remember the first time he talked about it,

[21:28]

And I remember being kind of shocked by it. So every morning, Abbot Steve would wake up. He'd put his feet on the floor. He'd put his hands together. And he'd say, may I not shortchange the Dharma today? And that's how he got up every morning. That's a wonderful aspiration. It's something that he did every day for years. And it was very intentional. It was very... It was aiming high. It was a big hope, a big intention, a big aspiration. And it set his day in a way... That was really important to him, and he tried to work towards that every day.

[22:33]

And I think the same can happen at the end of the day. Before we go to sleep, we can turn our mind to some quiet. We can evaluate our day. We can wonder if we reached our aspiration. We can think about these five points. dedicate the merit. I've made it a practice over the last many years to dedicate the merit as the last thing I do at the end of a day. So anything that has been positive, it's for others. And anything that is a failing is for me. And that is the way I end my day. And again, this is, it's a way to train the mind to evaluate, to have aspiration, to think more positively about how we're moving through our days in our lives.

[23:36]

And as I said initially, these five points can be practiced both while we're on the cushion. For example, starting a period of zazen, you set an intention, which is the strong determination. You do it over and over and over again. You follow the instruction. Oh, I'm thinking, come back. That's familiarizing yourself with the instruction. Or dropping thought over and over and over again. Familiarization. Be gentle with ourselves. Not being critical while we're sitting, Zaza. Seed of virtue. If we're off somewhere else, to be honest with ourselves and to be interested in the fact that we were thinking something else and to bring ourselves back gently, exposing our interest in entertaining ourselves gently, coming back to Zazen, moving on, and then having this aspiration.

[24:53]

The next time I sit zazen, I would like to have an experience of total focus or total dropping away body and mind or total whatever. Again, aim high. So that's number 17. Number 18. Number 18 is the Mahayana instructions for the ejection of consciousness at the time of death is the five strengths. How you conduct yourself is important. And so they're talking about the five strengths, same strengths as we just went through, but they're talking about them in relation to death. The number 17 is about developing these qualities or these strengths or working with these qualities and strengths as we're alive, as we're living.

[26:05]

Number 18 is talking about these strengths at death. And specifically, this one is talking about the moment of death. But I'd like to back up a little bit and say that there are We think of there's a process of dying, and it can be also we can think of a process of dying, but really what happens is we're alive, we're breathing, we're living, and then we die. And... We think there's this thing that happens, and then there's that thing that happens. It's very separate. And usually we're really afraid of the that thing that happens, death. What this slogan is asking us to do is work with this idea of dying. And it is acknowledging that we're alive,

[27:14]

for the whole time until we take our last breath. And so there's always time. There's always time to work on this because you're still alive. And some people, I think, are able to say, well, it's not time right now. We'll wait. We'll wait a little longer. And I think what this slogan is asking us to do is like, don't wait. You develop these five strengths now, start now, and start working towards this. So when you're actually, if you receive a diagnosis, if you get really sick, if you get exposed to this virus, if you have been training yourself in these five strengths... You're able to kind of settle your mind. You're able to work with the feelings that you have.

[28:15]

You're able to move through the layers and layers and layers of fear and anger towards practice. So the request is that if we're working with these five points, these five strengths, there will not actually be a huge difference between what the request of these practices while you're alive, and then through the time when you're ill. So there's this, again, strong determination. One could say that is... We are alive, and so what am I going to do with this time? What's important to me? What was important to me before? Is that still important to me?

[29:17]

Is it still important for me to wish that I have an awakened heart? Is this still an activity I want? If that's still the activity, then to move forward with that as one's main consideration. Familiarity. The request there is to forget the kind of person you were when you were healthy and move towards being grateful that you're in this body right now, that you have the ability to practice, that you can generate compassion, that you can be appreciative, that you know these things You know this strength and you can rely on it. So you're familiar with this instruction and you can use that at this time. Seed of virtue, I think that comes up with the idea a lot of people are caught in regret.

[30:25]

They are caught in negative thinking. They get caught in anger. They think, I wish I had blank, blank, blank. I wish I hadn't. I wish, I wish, I wish. So the seed of virtue is to forgive others, to forgive ourselves, to turn our minds to the generation of love and compassion, to be interested in other people, to be open again, or being willing to continue to open our hearts, even though this seems to be a painful, experience, or for some people actually is a painful experience. So it's relying on this training to change the experience of death into something that isn't fearful for us, that isn't outside or other.

[31:27]

It's developing confidence around the process to be open to the process. I think that's something that is very difficult in our culture. So the instruction really of these five things is to keep letting go of negative thoughts, keep letting go of constriction, keep letting go of of our fear and developing a warmth and an openness to the situation that exists. The number four reproach, or as I translated earlier, exposure, is look into our held resentments of other people, of ourselves, and let go of those held resentments.

[32:31]

Expose ourselves. to what our thinking is around this process of dying, and be very willing to re-examine that in the light of being generous, being open, being willing. And also to be grateful, to rejoice in the fact that we can do this, to be interested, to be sort of... to turn our minds in a way into something that is more positive. And then again, feeling some joy. And I know that sounds crazy, but this is what's happening. Can we show up for what's happening? Can we be in this moment of what's happening? And then finally, the fifth point, aspiration. So instead of wallowing in our own pain and fear of dying, we actually send out loving kindness, love, compassion, equanimity to others in this experience.

[33:45]

So at their time of death, they won't experience any hindrances. They won't experience fear. They won't experience pain. I wanted to say that I think from most people's perspective, what I just talked about is crazy. It's not our experience of death. And yet I wanted to share two stories with you. One, my mother, I talked about her last talk, the day she died. In the morning, she was in bed and there was a care worker that was with her. And my mom often was really cold. So this woman put a bunch of blankets on her and was curled up beside her on the bed. And the woman, the carer, said to my mom, Eleanor, how are you doing?

[34:51]

And my mom said, oh, don't worry about me. How are you doing? And this woman talked to me afterwards about that. And she said it was one of those moments that just like kind of blew her mind because my mom wasn't just asking that question. She was genuinely curious about how this woman was. And she wasn't, I think she knew that this was happening. I knew, I think she knew she was dying. And she was kind of curious about that, you know, and interested and also interested about the staff where she lived. And her life was pretty interesting. And I think this is how she responded to this thing that was happening for her. She didn't think of it as an emergency. She thought of it as something that was happening. And then the other person I wanted to refer to in this talk was

[35:58]

where I've been deeply affected was knowing Abbott Steve in the months before he died of pancreatic cancer. So Steve was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer on the 28th of September, 2013. And I believe on the 6th of October, he gave his last talk at Green Gulch. And that talk was, he called it the gratitude talk. It's a deeply moving talk. And one of the things that's extraordinary about it is he set an intention for his remaining time of the time he had left, which was very short. He died on December 31st, 2013. So for those months, he set an intention during that gratitude talk, which was to be curious about what was happening, to tie up his life, to have an intention around how he lived these last days, to be interested about other people, and to work through many...

[37:22]

things that he had to do and then let go and to let go of things as his ability diminished to be awake, to be aware of what was happening and the impact he was having on other people. Steve was present. And I've often thought about what the quality of that was. And although Steve was in a lot of pain, tremendous pain, actually, he didn't suffer. And that was extraordinary to watch. It didn't seem like he had a lot of fear. He was sad that he was leaving people he loved. And he expressed that a lot, actually, but he wasn't afraid of leaving those people. He wasn't afraid of the pain he was having.

[38:25]

He acknowledged that pain and he worked with it. And then one of the things that I find most extraordinary was that he worked with his mind in such a way that he was developing a pattern for how he would approach the actual moment of death. And I don't know if Steve ever studied the Lojong slogans. He studied a lot, so I wouldn't be surprised. But I do think that he was preparing for that moment between taking his last breath and not taking his last breath. It was an intentional activity. He worked on this over and over and over again. He had this strong determination of how he would proceed. So it was very influential for me because I realized or I realized with those two examples that although this seems so unlikely, it is possible for us to train and to keep on training until the moment we take our last breath.

[39:47]

So I think, again, I've... I feel like I've kind of galloped through these two slogans. They are, as I said at the beginning, entire worlds, and one could spend years working on these two slogans. So I hope I've pulled back the covers just a little bit on these two to allow for some curiosity for you to explore these. And I think there's time for a couple of questions if people have those. So thank you very much. And I'll ask the host to assist me in a question or two, please. Great. So if you would like to offer a question or a comment, please raise your hand by opening the participants pane. I see May.

[40:57]

Hi, May. Hi, Mary. Thank you so much for your talk tonight. I've been particularly interested in the topic of death recently, given what's happening in the global context and also losing my aunt in the last month. And I've been... Yeah, really curious about my own death and feeling like that's something that's really important to connect with now. And I'm wondering if you have any suggestions for like daily contemplations or I know in some traditions there's very specific death contemplations. And I'm wondering, yeah, if you feel like these general practices and like the first slogan you brought up is, and those five points are sufficient to as the contemplation, or if there's something deliberately about death, around death that you would suggest.

[42:19]

Yeah, I mean, the phrase that comes to my mind is death comes without warning. And I think we can say that to ourselves a million times, and yet it doesn't touch us. It's like, well, death comes without warning for that person. But it won't come without warning for me. I'll know. Or maybe I won't know and I'll die suddenly and then it'll be over, you know. So I think there's this way that we don't take that in. So I think that that phrase, although it seems super simple, death comes without warning. My death will come without warning. I think that is also a way to try to familiarize ourselves with the idea that this is going to happen to us. So even around that one phrase, one can go through these five points, like strongly determined to say this phrase, familiarize ourselves with the phrase.

[43:32]

This is a seed of virtue, you know. It's exposed when we don't believe it and then aspire to believe it, you know. So those five points work with even a simple phrase like that over and over and over again. So I don't think you have to do something poetic or complicated. I think it can be that, you know? It strikes me also that, like for you, a picture of your aunt, it happened to her, you know? And it happened recently. And not sort of tucking that away somewhere else, but acknowledging that that happened, you know? I think that also can be very... helpful for us because we have a tendency to kind of get over it. And, and I don't, I think that getting over it is different, like experiencing grief and working with grief is different than getting over the idea that this is going to happen.

[44:40]

You know, does that help at all? Oh yeah, definitely. Thank you so much, Mary. I think that's a great suggestion. Okay. Thank you. think that's the end of our talk tonight. I'm sorry I spoke long, which didn't allow for questions. So now the closing chant. May our intention equally extend to every being and place. With the true merit of Buddha's way. Yings are numberless. I vow to save them. Delusions are inexhaustible.

[45:43]

I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. Thanks so much, everyone. Good night. Thank you, Mary. Thank you. Thank you, Mary. Thank you, Mary. Thank you, Mary. Thank you, Cotto and Mary. Thanks, Mary. Thank you. Thank you. Good night, everyone. Good night, everyone. Thank you, Mary. Thank you, Mary. Good night. I like the Waltons, except for there's not enough names. Good night, Mary.

[46:47]

Thank you. Good night, everybody. Sleep well.

[46:55]

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