Good evening. I can read with these, but I can't see you. So things come up on my computer. And there I saw on Brother David's gratefulness.org word for the day. A quotation from Albert Schweitzer. If there is anything I have learned about men and women, it is that there is a deeper spirit of altruism than is ever evidence. Just as the rivers we see are minor compared to the underground streams, so too the idealism that is visible is minor and compared to what people carry in their hearts, unreleased or scarcely released.

[01:06]

I want to talk about that underground river of compassion that I think... is flowing in each of us. And at some moment in our life, we experience it. We experience our deep connection with all it is, with all living beings. And I think that that deeply flowing river of compassion is at the heart of all human religious traditions. Another thing came up on my computer which is an initiative proposed by the noted author Karen Armstrong and colleagues who

[02:24]

affirmed by leaders and members of the world's religious traditions, and now growing in momentum, called the Charter for Compassion. It opens with the following statement. The principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical, and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves. Compassion impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures, to dethrone ourselves from the center of our world and put another there, and to honor the inviolable sanctity of every single human being, treating everybody without exception with absolute justice, equity, and respect. If you want to see more about this, you can go on the Internet and look at the site, charterforcompassion.org.

[03:43]

We know, of course, that compassion is high on the list of qualities that we have. to in our Buddhist practice. And I think one of the things that impels this compassion in us is the recognition of our common suffering, of the suffering that we share. with all other human beings, for sure, and other beings as well. In the book on the life of the Buddha by Karen Armstrong, which I highly recommend, there is this quotation.

[04:50]

In the Buddha's view, the spiritual life cannot begin until people allow themselves to be invaded by the reality of suffering, realize how fully it permeates our whole experience, and feel the pain of all other beings, even those whom we do not find congenial. So this compassion, as I say, flows from the experience of connection. As Suzuki Roshi used to say, self and other are not two. Self, he used to say, not one and not two. The not one is easy to understand, but the not two has to be experienced directly, viscerally, as

[05:58]

not an idea, but as a fact of life, the way it is. And there was a fateful day for me in September 1968 when I was face to face with a riot squad policeman on the campus of San Francisco State College. at a rally in support of the student strike. And at the moment, I made eye contact with the police officer right in front of me with his full riot gear and billy club, shoulder to shoulder with the whole phalanx, and had the experience of identity absolute, incontrovertible experience of identity with this being who until that moment in my mind had been the opposite of me.

[07:12]

That was the beginning of my practice, although I didn't actually meet Zazen until a year later. Almost. But it was the beginning of everything in my life changing. It was the experience of not to. I'd never heard of such a thing before. I didn't know what had happened, but I knew it was real. And I'd like to share with you the description by Thich Nhat Hanh. This was shortly after he had left Vietnam, when people were still leaving, boat people were still fleeing out of Vietnam.

[08:24]

In Plum Village, where I live in France... We receive many letters from the refugee camps in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines. Hundreds each week. It is very painful to read them. But we have to do it. We have to be in contact. We try our best to help, but the suffering is enormous and sometimes we are discouraged. It is said that half the boat people die in the ocean. Only half arrive on the shores of Southeast Asia. and even then they may not be safe. There are many young girls, boat people, who are raped by sea pirates. Even though the United Nations and many countries try to help the government of Thailand prevent that kind of piracy, sea pirates continue to inflict much suffering on the refugees. One day we received a letter telling us about a young girl on a small boat who was raped by a Thai pirate.

[09:24]

She was only 12. And she jumped into the ocean and drowned herself. When you first learn of something like that, you get angry at the pirate. You naturally take the side of the girl. As you look more deeply, you will see it differently. If you take the side of the little girl, then it is easy. You only have to take a gun and shoot the pirate. But we cannot do that. We cannot do that. In my meditation, I saw that if I had been born in the village of the pirate and raised in the same conditions as he was, there is a great likelihood that I would become a pirate. I saw that many babies are born along the Gulf of Siam, hundreds every day. And if we educators, social workers, politicians, and others do not do something about the situation, in 25 years, a number of them will become sea pirates. That is certain. If you or I were born today in those fishing villages, we may become sea pirates in 25 years.

[10:31]

If you take a gun and shoot the pirate, all of us are to some extent responsible for this state of affairs. After a long meditation, I wrote this poem. In it, there are three people, the 12-year-old girl, the pirate, and me. Can we look at each other and recognize ourselves in each other? The title of the poem is Please Call Me by My True Names because I have so many names. When I hear one of these names, I have to say yes. Call me by my true names. Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow because even today I still arrive. Look deeply. I arrive in every second to be a bud on a spring branch, to be a tiny bird with wings still fragile, learning to sing in my new nest, to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower, to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

[11:45]

I still arrive in order to laugh and to cry, in order to fear and to hope. The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that are alive. I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river, and I'm the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time to eat the mayfly. I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond, and I'm also the grass snake who approaches in silence and feeds itself on the frog. I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones, my legs as thin as bamboo sticks. And I am the arms merchant selling deadly weapons to Uganda. I am the 12-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat, who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate. And I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.

[12:48]

I am a member of the Politburo with plenty of power in my hands, and I am the man who has to pay his debt of blood to my people dying slowly in a forced labor camp. My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all walks of life. My pain is like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans. Please call me by my true names so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once, so I can see that my joy and pain are one. Please call me by my true names so I can wake up and so the door of my heart can be left open, the door of compassion. where Suzuki Roshi said, self and other are not too.

[14:04]

Thich Nhat Hanh coined the phrase or the word interbeing. He says, we enter are with each other. So then, how many of you were here a month or so ago when Martine Batchelor was here visiting? She gave me a copy of her book, The Path of Compassion, which starts with an introduction by Thich Nhat Hanh, excuse me, by his holiness, the Dalai Lama, again, on compassion. And the reason, of course, that I'm speaking so much of compassion is that it is at the heart of this Mahayana, this Bodhisattva practice that each of us has chosen.

[15:15]

The Bodhicitta, the very source of Bodhisattva practice, the source of the Mahayana tradition, is this altruistic desire to wake up in order to benefit all beings. Seeing that until we wake up to the truth, until we can see things as it is directly, we won't know how to benefit beings. So that our impulse... to wake up, to benefit beings, is the very heart of Mahayana practice. Dalai Lama says in his introduction to Martine's book on the Brahmanet Sutra, the translation of the Brahmanet Sutra, which is the Bodhisattva Precepts, the 10 major and 48 minor Bodhisattva Precepts,

[16:28]

It's called The Path of Compassion, and His Holiness wrote this foreword. A bodhisattva is one who, out of love and compassion, has attained a realization of bodhicitta, which is a mental state characterized by a spontaneous and genuine aspiration to attain full enlightenment in order to be of benefit to all beings. Indeed, the foundation of all Mahayana Buddhist doctrine is this very altruistic thought of bodhicitta, which in turn depends on the practice of kindness and compassion. This is my glass. When a bodhisattva actually engages in training, he or she not only meditates on qualities like compassion and altruism, but actually engages in conduct such as giving and ethical discipline that are related to the direct benefit of sentient beings.

[17:40]

So meditation and practical application mutually complement each other, which is why a bodhisattva can be recognized by his or her conduct as described in the following verse. Just as the presence of the ocean is understood by the gulls above it, and the presence of fire by smoke, similarly, one who holds the lineage of a wise bodhisattva can be recognized by observing his external behavior. The Buddha gave clear instructions about how a Bodhisattva should preserve and nurture the altruistic aspiration to enlightenment that are contained in the scriptures of the various Mahayana traditions. The Bodhisattva precepts as found in the Brahmas Net Sutra of the Chinese and Korean traditions have laid the foundation of an ethical way of life and the essential ground to a life of compassion for many Buddhists in East Asia

[18:44]

since ancient times. So these... I want to mention this too today because on January 9th there will be a precept ceremony where some students will receive the Buddhist precepts, the... bodhisattva precepts. And His Holiness here is talking of two aspects of the bodhisattva path of sila which is conduct or precepts and compassion or altruism. And in discussing... In the Brahmanet Sutra, in her introduction, Karen Armstrong speaks of the Buddha, the first bodhisattva.

[20:12]

Bodhisattva precepts are the ethical path that a disciple of the Buddha endeavors to follow so as to fulfill his or her potential as a human being who shares this world with others and is both aware of and responsive to their pains. The practice of a bodhisattva is often mentioned in the Brahmanet Sutra as that of being compassionate and leading others to liberation and awakening. So now we come to Karen Armstrong's Life of the Buddha and First, as a preliminary to meditation.

[21:24]

This is describing now the Buddha's enlightenment. And this is the part of Karen's book that really moved me deeply. First came the practice meditation. first as a preliminary to meditation came the practice that he called mindfulness sati in which he scrutinized his behavior at every moment of the day he noted the ebb and flow of his feelings and sensations together with the fluctuations of his consciousness essential desire arose instead of simply pushing it away he took note of it took note of what had given rise to it and how soon it faded away. He observed the way his senses and thoughts interacted with the external world and made himself conscious of his every bodily action. This mindfulness was not cultivated in a spirit of neurotic introspection.

[22:32]

Gotama was not observing his human nature in order to pounce on its failings, but was becoming acquainted with the way it worked in order to exploit its capacities. he had become convinced that the solution to the problem of suffering lay within himself in what he called this fathom-long carcass, this body and mind. But the practice of mindfulness also made him more acutely aware than ever of the pervasiveness of both suffering and the desire that gave rise to it. All these thoughts and longings that crowded into his consciousness were of such short duration. Everything was impermanent. However intense a craving might be, it soon petered out and was replaced by something quite different. Nothing lasted long, not even the bliss of meditation. The transitory nature of life was one of the chief causes of suffering. And as he recorded his feelings moment by moment...

[23:37]

Gautama also became aware that the dukkha of life was not confined to the major traumas of sickness, old age, and death. It happened on a daily, even hourly basis, and all the little disappointments, rejections, frustrations, and failures that befall us in the course of a single day. Pain, grief, and despair are dukkha, he would explain later. Being forced into proximity with what we hate is suffering. being separated from what we love is suffering, not getting what we want is suffering, and so on. Mindfulness also made Gautama highly sensitive to the prevalence of the desire or craving that is the cause of this suffering. So he goes on to study suffering and how it's pervasive it is and how much we share and develops concentration.

[24:47]

And he speaks of studying with many excellent teachers and learning yogic practice and learning the concentration practices of the jhanas. But what he did that was different, and this is what I particularly want to look at tonight, instead of just concentrating on the trance states of the jhanas, he developed the four Brahmavaharas, or the four abodes of the gods, or the four unlimiteds. There are several names for them. and put them together with the jhanas. Now Gautama transformed these four jhanas by fusing them with what he called the immeasurables. Every day in meditation, he would deliberately evoke the emotion of love, quote, that huge, expansive, and immeasurable feeling that knows no hatred.

[25:58]

and directed to each of the four corners of the world. He did not omit a single living thing, plant, animal, demon, friend, or foe, from this radius of benevolence in the first immeasurable, which corresponded to the first jhana. He cultivated a feeling of friendship for everybody and everything. When he had mastered this, he progressed to the cultivation of compassion with the second jhana, learning to suffer with other people and things and to empathize with their pain as he had felt the suffering of the grass and insects under the rose apple tree. When he was a young child, he was watching the ceremony of the first plowing of spring. which his father, as the king or chief of the Sakya clan, was ceremonially participating in.

[27:07]

And his nurses put him under a rose apple tree, and he was watching, and he noticed that the plow turned over the earth, but sometimes it turned up insects in the earth, and then the birds came down and ate them. And he just, he began, he just watching them felt a great sense of compassion for the suffering of, while everybody was celebrating the first plowing of spring, he was noticing the suffering of the creatures that were being, whose homes were being destroyed by the plowing. And he remembered that later in life. He also had entered a very peaceful state lying there under the tree just watching what was going on. When he reached the third jhana, he fostered a sympathetic joy which rejoices in

[28:22]

at the happiness of others without reflecting upon how this might redound upon himself. Finally, when he attained the fourth jhana in which the yogin was so immersed in the object of his contemplation that he was beyond pain or pleasure, Gautama aspired to an attitude of total equanimity toward others, feeling neither attraction nor antipathy. This was a very difficult state since it required the yogin to divest himself completely of that egotism which always looks to see how other things and people can be of benefit or detriment to oneself. It demanded that he abandon all personal preference and adopt a wholly disinterested benevolence. Gautama was learning to transcend himself in an act of total compassion toward all other beings, infusing the old disciplines with loving kindness. The purpose of both mindfulness and immeasurables was to neutralize the power of that egotism that limits human potential.

[29:34]

Instead of saying, I want, the yogin would learn to seek the good of others. Instead of succumbing to the hatred that is the result of our self-centered greed, Gautama was mounting a compassionate offensive of benevolence and goodwill. When these positive, skillful states were cultivated with yogic intensity, they could root themselves more easily in the unconscious impulses of our minds and become habitual. The immeasurables were designed to pull down the barricades we erect between ourselves and others, in order to protect the fragile ego, they sought a larger reach of being and enhanced horizons. If taken to a very high level, this yoga of compassion yielded a release of the mind, a phrase which in the Pali text is used of enlightenment itself.

[30:35]

Through the discipline of mindfulness, too, Gautama began to experience a deepening calm. He was beginning to discover what it was like to live without the selfish cravings that poison our lives and our relations with others, imprisoning us within the petty confines of our own needs and desires. He was also becoming less affected by these unruly yearnings. So that is the first time I've seen anyone talk about what was really different about the Buddha's meditation practice than the yogic teachers that he studied with. Combining the concentration practices of the jhanas

[31:39]

and the four immeasurables. Loving kindness, compassion, empathetic joy, joy at the good fortune of others, and equanimity, or even mindedness, or impartiality. And we use these meditation practices today. as bodhisattvas following the path of altruistic practice for the benefit of all beings. I am also moved by these compassionate impulses that I discover in everyone I know.

[33:04]

In everyone I meet, the impulse to alleviate suffering of others is very strong. the impulse to identify with others who are suffering is very strong. And we had the good fortune of being introduced to this practice to cultivate these qualities of altruism and compassion, of loving kindness, empathetic joy. and equanimity. And we have, as did the Buddha, come together as a Sangha to encourage each other and to help each other in our practice.

[34:12]

We encourage each other in many ways. We encourage each other by our example, of being kind and compassionate. And we give each other the opportunity of practicing kindness and compassion by bumping into each other and irritating each other and making us see the ways in which our self-concern arises and what a mess it makes when it arises. You know, in... traditional monastic practice in Japan, the monks practice very close together. Each one has one tatami, you know, three by six feet in the monks training hall with a little meal board in front, you know, like we do down in the Zendo. And then there's a little cabinet in the back for storing

[35:17]

but robes. And that's where you live. You sleep there, and you eat there, and you sit there. And you have a little space and a changing room to store maybe your study books and maybe your teapot and teacup. And... Suzuki Roshi's son, Hoetsu, calls it potato practice. He says, you know, you dig up potatoes and each one of them has some dirt on it, but you don't pick up each potato and scrub it. You put them in a bucket with some water and you stir them around and they bump into each other and they clean each other up. Or it's like polishing pebbles. My vocabulary is going down the tubes as I get older.

[36:26]

Anyhow, you put them in a round container and you put some water and some abrasive in there and you put them on a roller and then they roll and they roll and they bump into each other and they clean each other up. Of course, there's got to be some abrasive in there for them to polish each other up. That abrasive, I think, is the wake-up bell and the schedule. And the, you know, the giver of joy to the assembly. But the pebbles get polished. How many of you have ever tumbled pebbles to polish them? I mean, they shine each other up. So we need to be very... appreciative of our fellow Sangha members for helping us practice. And particularly, you know, there's a story of Gurjeet. His students lived together in a community, and he went off somewhere on a trip.

[37:37]

And there was a member of the community that was really kind of an irritant to everybody. He was just apparently pretty difficult to get along with. And while he was away, the rest of the members of the community kicked this guy out. And when he came back, he says, you know, where's so-and-so? We kicked him out. Well, he went all over Paris looking for him, and he found him, and he paid him to come back. Because there's no way to work with your unskillful states of mind if... There's never any way, if they don't get brought up, you know. It's useful to have some difficult personalities around to help you deal with your self-centeredness and begin to see that this person's difficulty, they're not being difficult just to be difficult. They're in pain.

[38:40]

And this is the way they acted out. And we're here to help each other. That's what we're doing here. And so when, in particular, when you have a difficult interaction with someone, that's where there's some really useful work that you can do for yourself in working with what are your attachments there that are, you know, what buttons are they pushing? And how can we sort of defuse these buttons that we have? How can we, you know, it's easy enough to cultivate compassion for somebody that you feel a lot of affection for. But what about the person for whom, as he speaks of, that you don't feel that much affection for?

[39:45]

how will you cultivate compassion there? So we have a great example of the compassion and the altruistic qualities that we see around us, the altruistic feelings that arise in us when we see suffering. And the Dalai Lama, as I've mentioned during Sashin, says that every morning the first thing he does when he wakes up is to... examine his motivation. He says, every day, think as you wake up.

[40:51]

Today, I am fortunate to have woken up. I'm alive. I have a precious human life. I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others. for the benefit of all beings. So this is where the practice of the Four Unlimiteds comes in. To expand our heart to include all living beings in the circle of our compassion and care. Recognizing that self and other are not two. Recognizing this interbeing that Thich Nhat Hanh describes. He says, we enter our with each other. So please use your opportunity, this precious opportunity, in a human body.

[42:06]

As another teacher whom I dearly love, Kopanchino Roshi said, when you realize how rare and how precious your life is and how it's completely your responsibility, how you live it, how you manifest it. That's such a big responsibility. Naturally, such a person sits down for a while. It's not an intended action, it's a natural action. So this practice of zazen gives us the opportunity to explore where is this, if there's a boundary between this and not this, if there's a boundary between self and other, where is it?

[43:11]

Can you allow that boundary to expand, to include more and more until there is no boundary between self and other, until this beingness that we share with all living beings can be experienced as one, not as separate? Every day, think as you wake up, today I am fortunate to have woken up. I'm alive. I have a precious human life. I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others for the benefit of all living beings.

[44:19]

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