I heard that today there is a full moon. But I couldn't see it until there was you. This morning, I could hear coyotes crying and they cried for a long time.

[01:01]

I thought it was coyotes. Other people also thought it was coyotes, but I wasn't sure. I thought maybe it was a baby. I think it was coyotes. I am struck day after day by how much living beings are crying out in pain, how much suffering there is among living beings. I must admit, occasionally I hear a pause or a quiet time when I don't hear the cries.

[02:13]

But sometimes the cries are, you know, like, I can't stand it. I can't go on. That's, of course, the way human beings talk. I don't know if coyotes are saying, I can't go on. And sometimes people who say, it's too much, how can I go on? They say, what can I do? How can I stand it? I say, if someone says that to me, I might say, did you want me to say something?

[03:22]

And if they say yes, I say, well, be kind to the suffering. How can I be kind to it? that a person might ask. And I often would say, welcome it. That's not to say, like it. And it's not to say, dislike it. It's to say, welcome. You can say it in English, welcome. Be generous towards it.

[04:42]

Be gracious towards the suffering. That's how I usually recommend starting. That doesn't make the suffering go away instantly or even soon. But even though there's suffering, And even though it's really intense, if we say welcome, we can look to see if we mean it. And we might say, I said welcome, but I didn't mean it. And if the person asks me, what should I do? I don't really mean welcome. I say, well, maybe you could say it again. And again, until you mean it. And you can also say thank you very much to the suffering.

[05:47]

Thank you very much doesn't mean I like it. I want more of it. It means thank you very much for this opportunity to develop compassion. The suffering may, again, arise, but now something's growing with it. Something's growing with it, something's growing in it. And suffering arises again, but again, there can be this compassionate, generous response. And the suffering can arise, or another suffering can arise, and then there can be another compassionate, generous response. And maybe the suffering grows, Maybe it seems to be growing, maybe it seems to be shrinking, maybe it seems to be about the same. But the compassion can grow and grow and grow in the soil of pain.

[06:57]

And once we welcome this current suffering, then then we can move on to practice compassion in the form of being careful of it, of being very careful of it, being careful of how we respond to it. Now that we've allowed it to be here, we need to be careful of it. If we're not careful of it, once we have it in our life, we can trip on it. So we don't ignore it. We don't try to kill it. We don't try to get something other than it. We don't slander it and so on. We don't harbor ill will towards it. We don't intoxicate ourself in response to it, to get away from it. We don't intoxicate ourselves to get to it.

[08:05]

We stay sober with it. We practice being sober with it. We don't misuse sexuality in relationship to it and so on. This is the next way to be compassionate to this suffering that we hear from living beings. And then we practice patience with it. And patience isn't to try to get rid of it. It isn't trying to hold on to it. It isn't thinking about how long it's been going on. It isn't thinking about how long it will go on. It's being in the present with it. Again, that doesn't make the suffering go away. but it brings more compassion to it. And even though the suffering is still present, there's great benefit at the same time. These three basic practices of generosity, ethics, and patience in relationship to the cries of the world.

[09:15]

In this room, I don't see a statue of Avalokiteshvar. Is there one in this room? No. There's one in the hall. This bodhisattva of compassion. One of the names is the regarder of the cries of the world. It's the spirit to listen to the cries of the world. She or he listens to the cries of the world. She doesn't say, shut up. She doesn't say, it's not so bad. She says, I hear you. I hear you, I hear you, I hear you, I hear you. I see you, I see you, I see you. I touch you, I'm with you. The being she's hearing is still suffering, but the Compassion is growing with that being.

[10:23]

And this compassionate response to suffering sets the stage for great enthusiasm to continue the practice of compassion. And great enthusiasm for developing deep tranquility and concentration in the presence of this suffering. And with this compassion and this enthusiasm for practice and concentration, we are ready for wisdom. If we can really welcome everything, we can also welcome wisdom. And we can hear the teachings about the nature of this suffering. And we can calmly compassionately meditate on these teachings about the nature of the phenomena of suffering and we can realize freedom from the phenomena of suffering and show others how to realize freedom before we are free we can still develop great good wonderful compassion based on the compassion we can receive and understand the teachings of the Buddhas

[11:52]

The Buddhas teach compassion, but they also teach wisdom. Compassion together with wisdom is freedom from suffering. I got a message from Tanya asking if there would be a title for the talk, And the title for the talk that I offered was Freedom from the Prison of Mind. Freedom from the Prison of Mind. There is a teaching given in the Samadhi Nirmachana Sutra. which teaches that all phenomena are just conscious constructions.

[12:59]

Everything we know, everything we perceive, is mind. Is, as the Dhammapada says, is preceded by mind, depends on mind. comes from mind. We live in a mentally constructed enclosure. And living in that enclosure is where suffering, life in that enclosure is where suffering arises. There is no outside this enclosure because outside is another mental construction. There really is no inside of that enclosure because that's another mental construction.

[14:03]

But it seems like there's an inside and it seems like there's an outside. That's part of the prison. This is not our actual life. This is just our mental construction of our life. Our life is not actually enclosed. The sutra, the Samadhi Nirmam Chana Sutra, the sutra revealing the Buddha's deep intention, the sutra revealing the Buddha's deep intimacy, teaches that all phenomena are only conscious constructions. It also teaches that all phenomena have three characteristics. One characteristic is called the imagined characteristic.

[15:11]

It refers to the way the mind projects the appearance of the way the mind makes life into an appearance. The mind makes life into an appearance. Life is not an appearance. But our mind makes life into an appearance. It makes my life into an appearance and it makes you, to me, an appearance. You're not an appearance, but my mind makes you into an appearance. That's the imagined, that's my imagination. That's the way my mind makes you into an image. And everything I think and feel and want and intend is not an appearance, but the way it appears to me is a mental construction. That's the first characteristic of our experience.

[16:21]

Our first characteristic of our experience is we make our experience into an appearance. Our experience is not an appearance. But because we're addicted to knowing, we make our experience, which is not an appearance, into an appearance, and then we can know our experience. But we don't know our experience. We just know the mental construction of an appearance of our experience. Our experience is our life. Our life is not an appearance, but we imagine, we make an imagined version of our life which appears and which we can know. We cannot know our life, actually, but we can realize it. We are our life, but we don't know it as a perception, so our mind constructs an image of our mind and we can perceive the image. Our life is called the second, our life, our actual life is, well, I should say, our life also has the quality of being other dependent.

[17:34]

My life, your life, our life has no self all by itself. It doesn't produce itself. It depends on other things. My life depends on other things. My life depends on other things. My life does not depend on itself. It depends on everything else. First characteristic of all phenomena is that they're imagined, they're appearances, they're unreal. The second characteristic is that they're other dependent. The third characteristic is called the reality principle or the reality pattern or the thoroughly established character of everything, the reality of things. And that is the way we are free of our ideas of things. Actually, each of us and all of us have a characteristic which is free of our ideas of ourself and others.

[18:42]

We always have this way we are which is free of our ideas. of the way we are. We always have a way of seeing each other which is free of the way we imagine each other. The Buddha taught these three characteristics and the Buddha also taught three aspects. One aspect is the defiled aspect. Next aspect is the pure aspect. And the next aspect is both pure and impure. The impure aspect, the defiled aspect, is the way we imagine our life. The way our life appears is the defiled aspect of our life, the defiled aspect of mind.

[19:48]

pure aspect of our life, the pure aspect of experience, the pure aspect of mind is the freedom of our life from defilement, from our ideas about life. And the third aspect is both pure and impure. Our other dependent life, our basic life, which is depends on things other than itself, has a defiled aspect and a pure aspect. The pure aspect is the way it's free of our ideas. The defiled aspect is the way we imagine it to be and the way we imagine and grasp that it is the way we imagine it. If we abandon the defiled aspect,

[20:55]

if we understand the defiled aspect, we abandon it. And when we abandon it, we realize the pure aspect. So our life actually has pure and impure. The impure is the way we imagine it. When we abandon that, we abandon the afflicted side of our life and realize the pure side, which is freedom. We never know our life because we can't separate from our life to know it. But we can realize that our life has a pure and an impure aspect. Again, the pure is the way our mind makes it into an appearance. That's the pure? No, that's the impure. The impure is the way our mind makes it into an appearance and the way it grasps that appearance as our life.

[21:58]

to grasp our other dependent character as the imagined character is suffering. To abandon grasping the appearance of things, we abandon suffering and we realize the true nature or the reality nature of our life. How do we abandon the defiled aspect? I said it earlier. We practice compassion towards it. What's the defiled aspect again? It's everything that appears. It's all appearances. It's everything we know, including the teachings of the Buddhas that we know. including all the practices we're practicing.

[23:04]

So you hear the teachings, for example, of compassion. You hear the teachings of generosity and ethics and patience. And you know you hear them. And what you're hearing is a mental construction of them. The practice of compassion is not our idea of it, but we must use our idea of it to enter the practice of it. If you practice your idea of giving long enough, you will understand the teaching which you have already now, I've given you, and that is all your, all, everything you think is generosity is just conscious construction. Generosity is not just conscious construction, but everything I know about generosity is just conscious construction.

[24:08]

Because I live in the prison of conscious construction only. But if I'm kind to this prison, wherein I might be trying to practice compassion, if I'm kind to my ideas of compassion, if I'm kind to my ideas of giving, I will understand that I have been working with my mental construction of giving all along. However, the way that giving which I've been practicing according to my defiled understanding has also all along had a pure aspect which is free of my ideas. So the actual practice of giving has two aspects. One is the defiled aspect of our idea of what it is, and the pure aspect, which is free of our ideas of it.

[25:11]

And they're both there all the time. However, you can't see the freedom from appearance of, for example, the practice of giving. You can't see it. And also you can't know the actual other dependent character of the giving, which has a defiled and a pure aspect. You can only know the defiled side. And since you do know the defiled side, that's also where the affliction is. And if you're kind to the defiled side, you will realize the purified side. And when you realize, understand the defiled side by being kind to it and realize the pure side, by having it revealed to you through kindness and wisdom, you understand your life. Your life is not just freedom. It's not just purity.

[26:13]

It is also conscious construction only. The example is given, an analogy is given, and analogies have problems, but the analogy is it's like a lump of earth that contains gold. So the lump of earth that contains gold has gold, which is the pure aspect. It has, I guess you could say, dirt, which is the defiled aspect. And it is also a lump that contains gold.

[27:15]

So it's a lump that contains gold and it's a lump that contains dirt. Our life is like this lump that contains gold and earth. And by... putting this life into the furnace of practice, the dirt is understood as dirt, and by understanding the dirt as dirt, we realize the gold. Actually, the way that the... Example sometimes given is that the glump that's been put in the furnace, that maybe the dirt burns away and the gold's revealed. But the dirt stays.

[28:17]

Our life does not lose its defiled aspect. The purity's right there. So the Buddhas do not, actually the Buddhas sometimes say, We don't see freedom and bondage. We don't see cyclic birth and death, samsara, and nirvana, peace and freedom, freedom and peace. We don't see that. Because they are identical. They're non-dual. Because Samsara cyclic suffering is just our life from the point of view of our imagination. And peace and freedom, nirvana, is our life seen through the absence of our ideas.

[29:22]

And both the absence of our ideas of our life and the presence of our ideas of our life are both... our life. Someone told me just last night. I think it was last night. That's what I think. I think it was last night. I admit, I think it's last night. And actually, probably it wasn't last night.

[30:24]

Maybe it was the night before last. But then I think it's the night before last. In other words, the mind... thinks that life comes in last night and the night before last. That's what the mind does. Our life doesn't actually come in those packages. You know, like flies don't think last night. Banana slugs don't think yesterday. You know, before six o'clock. I don't think they do anyway. I think they don't. So around dinner time last night, I think, or the night before, I thought, she said to me, she says, I'm going, she said. Which, in the context of what she told me before, means she's going to go hundreds and hundreds of miles to visit a friend who's really sick.

[31:32]

She said, you have some advice. I said, well, if you're going to go, that's already wonderful that you care enough to make that trip. I'm not advising you to go, but I would advise you by saying, wow, that's really kind of you to make that effort. My advice is I think you're great to make that effort. She said, what should I do when I get there? I said, well, be with her. You can do other things if you want to, but, you know, she knows you. She kind of knows, oh, there you are. All of a sudden, coming from hundreds of miles away, she knows she sees you there. That's wonderful. A wonderful gift is to go and be with your sick friend. To me, that seems like a great, generous thing to do. That you go down there and you welcome her sickness.

[32:38]

That's wonderful. Now you don't like it. You don't hate it, I hope. You go down and you welcome it. And you bring your body and put your body into her life. You give her life, your body. And she makes up a story about it. But the story probably will be that you're there. Something like that. And she can feel if you're actually welcoming her illness, which she may be having trouble doing. And then this woman says to me, that seems so small, you know, to go hundreds of miles and just go be with her. Seems so small. Seems so little. And I said, it may seem little. Or it may seem great. But it's not little or great. Those are just ways it seems. Those are the defiled ways it seems, great and little.

[33:45]

Those are examples of what you make your life of compassion into, like great and little. We do that. Well, then you be kind to great and little. What we're doing is what we're doing, and then we're also imagining what we're doing. Because we don't know what we're doing, and we don't like that, so we make it into great and little. Some might say, well, how about go down there and cure her of cancer? Why don't you do that? That would be great, wouldn't it? And some of you have to say, no, that's little, because then she has to live longer, which is really painful. So actually, it's not so good. But again, not so good and good, that's, again, it's not what it is. But it doesn't mean we should be mean to that thought, this is great or this is little. It means these are more things to be kind to. Be kind when you think, I'm not very helpful. I'm really helpful. Be kind to that person who thinks she's really helpful.

[34:47]

Welcome this thought, this mental construction of your life. Great, little, not much help, a lot of help. Welcome these mental constructions, and this will set you free of them. Because great and little, if you cling to them, is suffering. the same person then comes to see me again, what I would call today. But this time she's not talking about visiting this one friend. She's thinking of visiting one friend and then she's thinking what she does to help this one friend is little. So now she thinks what she does for individual people around Zen Center is little. when you think of all the suffering in the world. So what I'm doing for each one of you is little. And then also, even doing a little for each one of you is then really tiny compared to doing something for everybody.

[35:56]

Or even if I thought, well, I did a lot for this person, what about all the other people I didn't do anything for? I need to learn to be really kind to my thought that I'm doing a lot for somebody or I'm doing a little for somebody. I need to learn to be kind to my thought I'm doing a lot for the whole world or I'm doing almost nothing for the whole world. These are thoughts in my mind. This is not actually what I'm doing. I'm not actually doing a lot for this world. I'm not actually doing a little for this world. just conscious constructions. I do not know what I'm doing for this world. However, I have a teaching which says I'm living in a prison where I have opinions about what I'm doing for this world.

[37:05]

And if I'm kind to this prison, I will become free and that freedom can be transmitted to others who are living in their version of what they're doing for the world. So everybody thinks they're doing a below average or above average in helping the world, except maybe some people are right on average. Everybody thinks, well, I'm not doing enough, or I'm doing more than enough. I think I'm going to cut back a little bit. People think our minds do calculate how much good we're doing. They do. I'm not saying stop that, and I'm not saying start it. If you're not calculating how much good you're doing, I'm not going to tell you to start. But this person is really concerned, really wants, personally as an example, this person really wants to help her friend, she wants to help everybody at Zen Center, and she wants to help everybody in the universe.

[38:11]

She does. And she thinks, but I'm not doing much. And I say, I hear you. I hear the cry. I'm not doing much. I hear the coyote saying, I'm not doing much, or you're not doing much for me. I hear the cries. I hear the cries. If you hear the cries and hear the cries, then you can understand the teaching that what you're hearing is not the cries. you're hearing your mental construction of the cries. And it's not that there's no cries, there are cries. It's just that these cries have an aspect that's pure. Every lump of misery, every cry of pain has gold in it. Every cry of pain is free of my idea of it. Every cry of joy

[39:15]

is a lump of experience that has a defiled aspect, which is my idea of it, and a pure aspect, which is free of my idea of it. It has both. And one is misery, and the other is peace and freedom. The way to realize the liberating pure aspect of every experience is to be kind to the impure. And what's the impure? It's what I'm thinking. It's what I'm seeing. It's what I know. This is my dear friend. This is my not-so-dear friend. That I know. This is delusion. This is mental construction only, only, only, only. This person is not my idea of them. Well, but they haven't... but they offer an opportunity for my idea of them and they offer an opportunity of the absence of my idea of them.

[40:18]

And that way of seeing them is called freedom. But I don't try to get rid of the way I see of other people or myself or what I'm doing or what they're doing. I try to get rid of it. In other words, I don't try to get rid of suffering. of birth and death. I practice compassion towards it. I vow to practice compassion towards it until I understand that this is the defiled, the painful side of life, the afflicted side of my life. And right there, always, is the gold, is the nirvanic, peaceful aspect. It's right there. So I'm suggesting not just to be kind to what appears to us, really kind, but also to be calm with it, very calm, tranquil, and stable with it in your meditation.

[41:26]

And listen to these teachings which remind you of what you're looking at, remind you that everything you know, everything you intend to do, is just your mental construction of it. To say that everything is just idea, everything is just imagination, means in the enclosure of samsara, everything is just imagination. And that enclosure, that imaginary version of our life, is about a life that has another aspect, which is not... in which there's no enclosure. And that way of freedom is not outside or inside the enclosure. It is identical to the enclosure.

[42:31]

So again, The Buddha teaches in the Samadhi Nirmachana three characteristics of all phenomena. The imagined, the fantasy of what things are, which is what we know. The other dependent character of all things, which is that things depend on things other than themselves. They don't have a self. They just are supported by conditions and causes. And the reality. the thoroughly accomplished, the thoroughly established character of our life is that our life is free of affliction. Our life is free, free of its defilement. Even though it has defilement, it's also free of it. Those are the three characteristics. One's impure, one's both pure and impure, The center of gravity of our life, our other dependent character, is both pure and impure, and then the reality of our life is freedom from purity and impurity.

[44:01]

The teaching is in some ways quite complicated, but the basic practice of compassion is Very, take away very, I'll just say simple. It's simple, but it's not easy. It's not easy to welcome basically everything. It's not easy to welcome everything. But it's simple. Wasn't that a simple instruction, welcome everything? Simple. Not easy, though. Even if you can remember it, it's not easy to remember. And then even if you can remember it, it's not easy to practice. It's not easy to practice welcoming the fog for some people. Some people like the fog, so for them maybe it's hard to welcome the sunshine. It's not easy to welcome pain in yourself and others. But it's simple. Welcome it. It's not easy to say thank you very much to every moment of existence, or rather every moment

[45:14]

of the appearance of existence. It's not easy to welcome samsara, but welcoming samsara completely is the path to nirvana. That's my understanding of the teachings, that they're given, the teachings of the Buddhists are given to living beings who are suffering. They're giving to living beings to encourage living beings to practice compassion towards their own suffering and towards the painful way that they imagine other people's suffering. In the painful way, they imagine other people's happiness. In the painful way, they imagine their own happiness. So this teaching is, if I imagine my own happiness, which I do, and I think that that is my happiness, I suffer.

[46:30]

If I imagine my own suffering, and I think that my imagination of my suffering is my suffering, I suffer. If I don't believe my imagination, if I'm free of my imagination of my suffering and my happiness and your suffering and your happiness, this is happiness. But in order to be free of my ideas and my own happiness and my own unhappiness, I have to be kind to my ideas. And I think I need the teaching, which is, I'm dealing with my idea of my happiness. So there's probably a Zen story that goes like this. The student says, I'm unhappy. And the teacher says... Is that your idea? Suzuki Roshi, people would say various things to him and he often would say, oh, that's your idea.

[47:31]

Well, that's what you think. I'm a good student, Suzuki Roshi. Oh, that's what you think. I'm a bad student, Suzuki Roshi. Oh, that's what you think. Do you believe that? No. No. So, sometimes we might think we're not very good disciples of Buddha. And sometimes we might think we are good disciples of Buddha. We might think that. So, when people who think they're good disciples of Buddha, well, People who think they're good disciples of Buddha probably don't come and ask me what to do about that. But people who think they're bad disciples of Buddha, they come and say, how can I deal with this? And what do I say to them?

[48:34]

What? Welcome it, right. If you think you're a below-average disciple of Buddha, welcome that thought. If you think you're above-average disciple of Buddha, welcome that thought. And then you can become free of that thought. You can become free of that thought and realize a disciple of Buddha who's free of that thought. Disciples of Buddha, I would say, I'll just say this, are striving to become free of their thoughts about their life. Because... deep down they know that they need to be free of their ideas of their life and that that's what the Buddha is teaching is to help us to do. And if we learn that, we can share it with others.

[49:38]

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 sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[50:06]

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