Two Paths to the Dharma

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it can do this

we we can like start by economists and little bit about how you came to
kabir a don't practice hundred and dharma teacher
can you can you hear okay is it is the the amplification working

august is real story is particularly interesting
in involves reading trouble js bach meditation in action and puzzling over what was meant there what he was saying and then eventually seen in boston cambridge and poster that he was getting summer seminars in vermont consigned again going up to those seminars on so
you know there are parts of my personal history that a specific but
when i was actually more interesting was that move has really stuns and latest games first went today's seminars with him that were called intensive training sessions and they would have been on topics like
the tibetan book of dad the four foundations of mindfulness and many of the ireland large figures people in our tradition who are regarded as completely awakened so styles of naropa monterey park and martha so that are some of the i as teaching sessions and my him again a talk a day during the day
special for that talk and they will be sitting and lot of it my five six seven days one of those days would be entirely silent and settings like a day session again
so that was the earliest
spring practice than many of us did with him
and then
then i'm a former was going back and forth between a city centre and country a trade center for these
foreigners and in the city centres people usually what began to said a one day or know i can play all day sunday session or downtown as we call it which means one day meditation session began taking classes at some of those classes would have been called things like battle of eager were working
promotions and then eventually i would be based on a books by cutting through spiritual materialism or myth of freedom
and then probably the next step would be that a person would do a one month or group meditation retreat
hmm
the culture as the years go by or yogi meals
many things barred from the tradition in those walking meditation
not got much study as part of that would mainly a meditation session
deluxe
laura stop what bay in the early days a thrill on training session with tangram j in which they would be two weeks devoted mainly to practice and then talks of studying the early buddhist tradition ib dharma for an old truth think like that
than to our weeks i'm sitting and to make studying modern but a nature awakened heart compassion the primate does
go to our weeks of sitting and then to two links are studying the contract or virginiana teaching so twelve weeks or three months
so that would have also been a part of
yeah
and then
the what what's the process of becoming and a carrier how to how does that come in there need you know i don't marble
that's a very thin
how one of the a chinese before me and a senior elder called me and said rim chain would like to invite you to join the a chinese group
and i said and what what does that mean
and he said well you could meet with him and talk with him about what their responsibilities with the event which are primarily teach them
but there isn't a if you've done this than but firmly on the wetland lana who act as senior teachers and our tradition have done with three month training program and then gone on to do the other sequence of practice and study

right

that of it
so one of the things we thought we might talk about when they soil is and differences so one similarity that stood out in that setting practice zazen or can our tradition sharma target passionate is regarded as the heart of the tradition it's it's where the line of lineage is so and like
continued it's not a beginning packers and then later whatever but in the beginning middle and end that's the main thing
but as on
think a hartman is is grab reminding me after the tone of had one could request to began on may may halen practices which are hundred thousand prostrations or bow is that what you call it a full bar and one hundred thousand recitation is out the long term has connected
with purity hundred thousand and offerings of a mandolin and then one hundred thousand are actually a moron and i think it is because the
it's been a lot else to complain
recitations over international formula so the sense of love devotion or devotion to the girl and so the power back is item last devotion and make that connection with the mind on the lineage

well maybe i'll see a little bit and then we can go a little deeper into exactly what we think we were trained how will we trained and
well i ended up in japan and that's where i got introduced to buddhism i was i ended up living beside the soto's than a university in tokyo i went there to teach english and i was befriended by a soto and training brief
and my japanese was terrible and his english was neat
a good because a lot better than my japanese but things like i would ask him what is karma this isn't one incident that remained it sticks in my mind
i asked him what is karma and he kept the table and can day i don't know where he simply didn't understand what i asked him or there was a profile then and
gotta agree
a great a dorm educational it always it always was coached a certain amount of uncertainty and mystery if i never help keep tight to anything and then i decided someone told me that it's very difficult to go to a japanese monastery but if i went to thailand it was very simple so i left japan and
i went to thailand and i became a time monk and like refreshed all i wine i stayed in the monasteries which was
a very amenable to that three easy process it just woke up and say can i stay here for a while they kind of look at it to see if you're seen and they say up go over there
and then it became a monk and i trained in the forest condition up in the north west yeah
and most i trained in chinatown
a rigorous schedule will sleep eat once a day and meditate allied
and little bit with a group and live by yourself
sometimes they teach would come round at night to see if you were sleeping or meditating
so and i did that
all that took a couple years and i came to san francisco zen center
and just turned up on the doorstep and
in good then fashion i was turned away
in concerned i can i came back
i practiced
then i went to tassajara for the summer
and then i practiced to green gulch in at that time green god's will be doing what we like you might call sodo practice which is sleep and agenda
and
so much sub personal detail of my own life so much had been
day
the thai tradition sort of imprinted on me that i kept many of the monk rooms from my tradition actually for three years and for three years i was its density like not eating after noon and things like that
and so that was a period of intensive training and i
i i shifted from
the show me to practice and i trained in in thailand concentration practice to a more zen style just sitting practice
and then after three years i went to tassajara and good several more years
see what did i do and in two more years and i left for six months went back to green gulch i had been previously been an engineer so i was recruited to do an engineering project
and gringotts for six months and then i went back and get another year touchdown
and then after i when i think it goes as training i would say
that period of time was
the exploration of chicken cancer
and like what is that and what is it to bring
the grinded attention of mind from this
into everyday activity
i
and then i moved to the city after that and i've been here ever since
when just before i moved to the city
what about a year or so before i moved to the city i got married
have had two children the night twenty four and twenty two
and
so had that in parallel to family life in parallel to being involved in the center he knows years
in the eighties i worked i managed to grocery store presents into across the street
for a couple of years in at that point we had several business as we had five and in in fact for a couple of years i would like go to work at two thirty in the morning or some mornings to thirty some mornings for and i would not good as i said my practice
and him then
and then after that i knew i stop working there and i worked back i became the know the person in charge of the meditation how the zendo i became a no one that i became countdown and then i became head of by grinch and then i became abbot
and here i am

and
would you like to say anymore about while we were talking about the relationship between meditation practice and formal dharma study or informal dermis study but you feel you have
i participated in or that you feel is now as you were saying earlier is now part of how your group
chains people
i actually wrote a list of sort of this training sequence because i had to go back over well there was that and this was or was fairly typical of what people did and then once i'd written out does cause for sessions of the month long or this class and software i'm all right that there was a
parallel training going on and what you mentioned reminded me of it there was also some training and buying and community i think that was part of
i'm very valuable and encourage that sense of samba as a training prices are we don't solitary retreat in my tradition so to week ten days one month voluntary but but raleigh practicing and chameleon living and working in community
providing a lot of on
how much material let's just put it back
how to work
and i likewise program cause more people to marry i myself have never been married and mom so i know but are
many took to partner long term partner commitment to and to and that panting and so forth would be part of a person's change has been invaluable part
so that's there
it's not the same thing as doing a week longer a month long but
a lifelong or of us know and the also encourage many people to start businesses isn't the tap the the rebel would be training ground or monastery in that threaten their think
learning to be generous and decent and have integrity all settings would be tremendously valuable
i get that that part also instance if came part
so we're gonna study which has one of the topics that i was asking about what people study here do you studying the shoguns on an early buddhist teachings or well as that happened and so forth in know
in aren't traditionally early topics that i mentioned like the tibetan book of the dead or these are life stories they're sort of biographies of songs so and this is how they began as a confused person how they were trained and how they woke up the kind of general topics but the specific
vic
dawn doctrine on three month in existence for all truths five condos six rounds a types of consciousness and in our tradition nine yannis nine vehicles from that trying that installing the yeah
one the classical bodhidharma as it was transmitted from india to to bed for crowd in these three month trial sessions that i mentioned and now those of us who didn't go to the earliest ones are those had the tapes from those and on the years read the transcripts from neptune so not because
i was really it from more people the first time of studying in a systematic way and so on rigorous way the classical bodhidharma
yeah
follow the sequence of that them would be that a person would first probably be grounded in practice before doing them more in the study aspect fine and in a tradition it said that you could with our practice discover the hill
or discover the understanding
but then also have a tradition it said the other way around that you could study and with have the one he discovered practice on meditation
so my sense has been in the yard as it was more discovering the view when law practice with our meditation and that these days it seems to me and my song there's a lot more emphasis on study and study early on the annual thing that mrs may be a more orthodox
strategy with within your tradition or if you're looking like that tradition yes that people go to monastic colleges so this would have been while salons who would have received that kind of many
and that would precede in many traditions going long meditation retreats on not a handle are people who more practice and came to realization that way without going through the three this isn't before that some of the and maybe
oil some cases
well as just part of training and teaching know that vocabulary am and support after already having some realization yet
and what i can fit with regard study and be interesting to hear your response to her i'd characterize the or i said
we do offer classes in a non systematic way and that as a student who you choose which class will take and the and a notion is the expectation is that over a period of years the these basic buddhist teachings read through the classes you've taken in through your own personal study that you
will blind them
and bed
and that it will be
informed on made relevant in your life through his as in practice
and certainly that's that's how i would characterize my own at studies and then at tassajara in our former monastery there is a study period each day
and want to paypal study well
which within the formal practice period it will be a theme of the practice period the practice period leader will present and often people study materials relevant to that are complimentary to that but they can also study as they wish
and some people become quite learned and steady quite a bed and some people will that he lectures from contemporary teachers
and which which might not have someone to depth in to form old dharma teachings but more relevant with in the context our everyday life

so many that enough
and you together some to your questions give us some indication as to why you would find it relevant and interesting to turn her

ah
now
right
okay
well it's fair it's regarded as a rare complete liberation from conceptual fixation and conflicting emotions but
certainly going back in the in the lineage as these are regarded as completely awakened women and men
and so studying their life stories start into that are called nom tarps which means complete liberation so the end of the inspiration is that they often start as fairly confused people just wandering and searching him is a desert and they often have done cowboy thing in the case of miller a
but who murder is included among the terrible things he'd done but in the whole tibetan tradition everyone accepts that milarepa was completely awakened right if anybody was a or a box after that maybe this or that or whatever but definitely milarepa so there's a sense of that wherever one starts or
one could make the journey of awakening you
the
so in your tradition as well yes certainly
and
but will become the sort of transition and i would also save for the brand a tradition that but quite i have the authority to do that in there is a notion that
integration the people have a realization and practice to know to what extent that is you know whether whether that is as refined and extensive as your money would be an interesting question yeah but with there is certainly that notion that
about dharma transmission and i and my own case i would say you know rarely i trained with everything in john practice and that offers its own kind down illumination to the nature of mind and reality
and with tied any notions that he mean you know in a way john and practice is a science know
it's like to keep your lays eggs
a a map of consciousness
interesting well see that cross section or that's where you are you know when i do this practice and then come back and we'll talk about it exactly what happened so he invited nothing mysterious it's fairly straightforward and simple
where's my experience at the southern tradition
is that
any conceptualisation any gradation any sense of accomplishment
it is looked at askance and that
as as is tradition is often characterized it's like walking in a fine mist add he just keep walking in the mist and eventually you're soaked through the this is a practice of everyday letting go of ego centered self clinging
and then gradually that loosens up and something's
cast off
however i'm very find her and tokens mg she does speak directly in in need of himself as having breakthrough experiences
and
and i would say personally the can make the whole thing confusing
in addition to brag the thing sort of then over the years about to included in my own life
wednesday is in training which has emphasized a more
assertive relationship to the practice in particular medication
which does engender more of a notion of breaking through
karmic constructs are breaking through fixed conceptualizations
and what guides
formal study of the dharma i would say for myself that when i started
i think through a mixture of stupidity and aversion i wasn't inclined so much to study i'm not the be stupidity in a verdant have diminished the much
i don't seem to be more inclined to study buddhism
and
and i've just watched my own interest and enthusiasm for that my i find myself more interested in studying the early tax and more formal things as well as
then gone for some reason at those texts of fascinated me from the very day i started to practice
as i think maybe that's been the case for many of us who came to then something of that intrigue and then dialogue in kind
so we were mentioning this book when we were talking by so-called my naga rashi called novice to master than you a people notice the subtitle is an ongoing lesson in the extent of my own stupidity
and say like william liquid
there's a chapter called getting to know my own idiocy
there was a hand
relative

why
could you start
but will i grew up in a society that had become violent
for religious reasons and catholic vs protestant and i had to
well i simply couldn't identify with either catholic or protestant and made the have i experienced that society was the one of the other and
since i didn't feel like i can identify with either i left and i traveled and as i traveled i realized the world with a whole lot bigger than
the mindset that i had grown up in
and initially it stirred me in an existential way in a what is the world a bike and of what is life for by channeling this sense of possibility in in fact as i was traveling i was reading an existential philosophers and then i went to japan to teach english
and
and that's why i get introduced to buddhism and
i think i was just right for it the first buddhist book i open i just thought this is it this is what i've been searching for
it's enormous sense of relief
confirmation and appreciation
so when they ah it was telling me about growing up in ireland in that conflict of protestant and catholic i mentioned that my own or life within the segregated south on the united states in the early civil rights era which a fairly tense and conflictual and in some cases vi
violent time so that's
certainly part of my early life
i don't know when do we find specific sufferings in our life that led us to the dharma you know some of them in my own life would have been in a personal family tragedies in our laws death on that suddenly made
i remember when i first heard trump which i speak about suffering i felt like this was this great secret that somebody had finally just said publicly
a life yes suffering
that was a tremendous sense of relief and almost liberation of just just hearing it said and he would have gone at length sometimes or business kind of suffering and that kind of suffering a new from pan and even when things are going well and you're holding on and so all that had a sensor bar
maybe maybe some my taste or thirst for liberation or freedom having been in a very confined in a socially confined are the settings now you can go here and you can't go here you can drink from this waterfowl and but not that one
and the absurdity of that but nonetheless it that's that's when you are that's why you're confined within that
i don't know i don't know that you know there's a moment of saying well yes a bodhidharma is the way for me and i was not particularly interested in the bodhidharma from tibet that i had never before i went to my first sonar with mk i had never read any
thing actually from the tibetan buddhist tradition i remember because the seminar was on milarepa i went to the library and got out the biography of milarepa but before that i had read the t suzuki on zen and i had read as and mind beginner's mind and send seemed like a great tradition to me
so paternal there was this person that i felt the connection with so
yeah

yes yes
yes
please insanely have docusign not
teachers to meeting and
an intimate conversation about practice you a
mean
have that with chalk represent anything in and
you can describe what that was what i was like feelings
oh that i can talk about that
well i i don't miss him in those days he gave personal meditation instruction of the initial instructional tradition would be from him and i remember that i came into a room that was like living on size and he was sitting in a chair like this one and i sat sort of all her against the finest wall said
you know
ah grab bold and courageous approach that so
and i i think he asked a little bit about background or you know if i'd done other and i don't remember him getting any specific instructions about now go and do this you know that you will sit and they follow the breathing or anything fact i'm almost certain there was no mention of
anything like that and yet when i left the room i did a nice for a few days no one
it would be has to be present as a practice and take so i could go and sit so that was a kind of communication somehow
through in it says the person's presence in that they were be president so it's kind of contagious in that way of all yeah

a relative meditation practices where we personally do or what we think our traditions prescribed
think
okay yeah so as was mentioned in my traditionally the be sitting practice has called charlotte a passionate which is common to many buddhist traditions as traditional of stabilizing aligned and insight and eventually the yeah of those too so that's my main page
cactus sharma to and it
that's the practice that i regard trump much as having shown that day you know when i sat there without him saying this is called sharma to have a partner or whatever but along that than there are various ah mahayana practices in particular of opening a hard
i of doing sending and taking which i think paemen children has taught quite widely and people are familiar with that of contemplating the suffering of others of motto or my tree practice than the people and we do that as well and then the laundry out of practices that involve visualizing and saying the launch of a particular
let's say enlightened or awakened principal principal of wisdom let's say and body by manjushri there could be a sauna a particular liturgy or text that involves connecting with the the manjushri with then once say so on wakes up that prajna so i have practices like
dad as well yeah but all of those come down to in the end shown into the passion and that fed within the tradition that
it comes back to the mind of the very moment to pass the essence of things
i need to start right there i would say it soto said it's to go directly to that mind of the very moment through the practice or just sitting and is it sitting to experience what's happening with site and agenda to change it
and that
in in actualizing that activity
the the meditator discovers for themselves the efficacy of chalmette have a personal or to put it another way that that that that requires two major attributes one of then to be able to pay attention and
one of them to be able to allow the coming and going of arising x and falling away experience
and and that those two attributes become a yogic exploration and dead
the attentive side is based on
the capacity to sit upright
can be in the body to embody concentration or to embody awareness and similarly to relate to the breath to enable both concentration and this capacity to allow for the coming and going
rising and falling away experience
and and that the that practice
directly expresses or to be even more exotic directly transmits the dharma
and that as one does that one right things within oneself and inherent capacity to
to realize the true nature of all been
don't say that the core of our meditation practice
in the photos and tradition

the question was because the soto zen tradition have elements of mahayana and vajrayana well i would take it so to same as the mahayana tradition
and if acharya described me what he considers to be the essence of battery on i could comment on whether i thought there was any of that there too
it's the same essence as what you described think that's the essence of it
okay
the way to colorado to for different essences contact
matter how things actually are what's really true

i

ethical
i'm
the question was it does in in zen practice other things such as visualizations
i'm
i think there's an obvious know
and then i think more subtly i think
as as we take on this practice or hope actualizing the nature of being
it brings into relief the climbing structures of our being
and and also it makes us
so as well as will come into relationship to the comic strip tease out about being
and i agree and not elicits with is he an attraction to practices that will alleviate that
and then similarly
we will also find an affinity to
the stories of done with teachers who have taken on this heroic path and then find within ourselves a deep appreciation
and gratitude for
the practice for what they've done and i'm right the heretics they've given us to anybody want to call that a visualization or not i'm not sure i think correct me if i'm wrong in one answer one and two would be no and then in another way maybe it gets too
some some aspect a lot of visualization is about
you won't come internet know
another
moon

well aside from that i do stupid things like i don't know the forms it feels very familiar very familiar
stan
austere
ah
it's a little cool
what that's cool

gotta play
the teacher

a series of children's see as a teacher because it seems that present condition and
really interesting relationship is very important how long way
imagine that
how much you practice then came from teachers that
family i do and as study with many other and chase including member j the dharma heir to from them j and down other people within the lineage program j telegram j can put to the answer him here
there are many of them who i have committed themselves to continuing one term chase started in terms of cleaning awesome making that tradition available
and what was your question tomato
would they be
let's see
i stayed briefly with good gossip
and then i can thin another everything the meditation teacher i studied with extensively in thailand
and then i came to
san francisco zen center
and
would you baker was my teacher
and then
category roshi
i studied for a while
read
and then mail and i would consider males don't be my teacher and then in the meantime i also studied with suzuki roshi a roshi and errata show the russia and i would also consider her out of showed a machine can be a current to
teacher for me

three
i would have to you earlier
what are we help you keep

new delhi of them
the again
evening
us

training

jimmy say
the early buddhist trainees
well contemplating then train
more functional

teachings editor
he was very meditative
no optional
and functionality
a government rather than the mediterranean

exactly journey i would say my life is a lot more active
then
then it was
when i was a caravan and monk living in the forest
and
and i spent a great deal less time meditating
so that doesn't acid necessitate to the how to help and a mindfulness practice and awareness practice with read functions through that active life and
and i'm not quite sure when of kill to say it i would think you know the hit his my own opinion i feel like
on the major buddhist traditions have been practiced by wonderful wise creative human beings and pushed i think they're all wonderful i think we all have a rich array of practical ways to helpless in
engage the human condition and come to liberation
an end
i typed that's how i think of about the traditions and i think they're wrong they all have a fullness i don't think of early buddhism met some narrow practice i think it has a rich array of practices

i experienced that practicing a particular context in the context of living in thailand and living in seclusion mostly
and i've expand than practice living in community and hang then living in san francisco
and
i can't imagine
what would be like to try to be a forest month are living in san francisco
any
maybe i should
imagine that and many even practices a
why not and what's the difference
so practice can be very different contexts and
in many the most
truthful thing i can say is i appreciate and bug
hey will
i appreciate
hmm
with the quality of zen practice and i find
it's formlessness with flows into the different forms of my life now i find myself egg
when i ran a grocery store and i went to the private markets early in the morning i could experience it as my practice
that was i was doing then practice when i was buying on feel fruits and vegetables
yeah that was how i experienced it
and when i was a monk in thailand
going begging for food i experienced that as buddhist practice
fits my response thank you

for

right

been here and you can exhibit can be turned out and speak a little lighter were a hard time hearing

the i didn't notice that will without a credit for a chariot advice
our
for the question has a giant red chairman mao as a bed bright picture

wow

someone is the question
not recently no
a
but was going to go out what did how did we get from mild

levels
how's
response
better than many people inspired about making a better society and a better world and that is something to honor
down at the same time the gap between an inspiration and a vision and then how that carried out
it has produced a lot of violence in the world so that's what i'm about

the violent overthrow violence

i can't say what you stand up
arrest
ask me

is julius
the man

hmm
well i guess we all
me i'm just not a student reddit
hi
okay well you're certainly entitled behavior peace
and the welcome and your the question

really
yeah not sterling
a
yeah

am
but let me preface by answer by saying this

maybe i think it's important for us to remember that
the majority of the buddhists practicing in the world now did not consider meditation to be the fundamental practice
maybe be very interesting first day to reflect on what what what is or what do we are considered to be fundamental and i would suggest bad it is that the practice of liberation through letting go of self centered clean
and that we in in the game tradition and in this style of the tibetan tradition
value the efficacy of meditation to enable like
but i think it's important for us to remember that will probably i don't know what present we are given a united states
we're a minority in united states attorney in the buddhist world for a significant minority
i think most people will have a devotional champion practice
pure land buddhism
and come and connect it on outside of questions there's a kind of invitation that we would start to rank sort of know and there's of course the temptation to think that the way we do things his
but it seems to me that if you can't tell based on the particular tradition that a person practices and what their realization is not find up it it's not lined up that way of sort of
tainan taiwan practice wooden lead to a person having compassion and understanding of emptiness that when the just because someone's practicing in a mahayana tradition therefore they're kind
well
i mean i an it

you know

are you

for me

i don't personally know you know what and the or confidence about multiple lifetimes i don't have any memory or anything like that are people that are selectable town tonight as a true that they are starting now
a
trauma which i would always emphasize that bath and dying happened for moment to moment that we really want this situation most situation dies and will be born into the situation you're getting into our car
she can often says
why of the but a total truth about so many things waiting on that day lie sort what you want to get into so okay what west to school register a chocolate they're coming
carnivale me cause a boy and you know so it's true my power something to direct experience one can know cycling through earphones and a functional knowledge atlantis in our certain as direct experience and then one in relies in part on teaching that people have given that one trusted
okay well most part has made on and verified that and then it was tell them open the possibility were not necessarily making a leap of faith as you say but leave open the possibility that we don't know all that there is to know
that cold chess charlestown al-qaida
humility

that

yeah
go that's part of what you're saying you said the topic of relevance of how is this relevant in a moral or how does it engage with where we actually are we're not in heavens
nine
good
paid
but as it were anybody would ask you to defend a dialogue between long and shambala founded from in the so once shambala you know
the as
for the emergence of tibet the almost one long are packed with dissolved challenge what the called the rt teachings and and then products one in cagayan associated with male rape i am and down
right and then the next post when it's called sakya headed by fuck it treason and in the youngest one is called gallon park and his holiness the dalai lama's that hand of that particular language so not shambala in that
the
well it is
that's what what is can't get it back on our wedding or deal pepper you're learning how up please tell us yeah
i first came out appeal pigment and answer that long and shambala what shambo
me
yes

no
well
where's it's true that yeah
of
marquez from those first ten and i mentioned the oldest to have and egypt know that the falcon right on point and so on had in our so called shambala tradition and that would that is that right name for
i'm from the traditional traditional and he had from those first two to that money inches and as well as
a touch of the trunk of j k that all about providing of what would be a glimpse society what would be a sane society army
for that's part of what we regard ourselves as building you know
so the head of shambala come astronomy at this point
metro rail it was just an interview with him in
bicycle i think an issue or so back worked prayers for amnesty international and i feel like he's coming into our kalani coincides with on law efforts to have an engaged buddhism you know does too
new are happening at the same time
twenty five years ago that wouldn't have been the focus of people in our community and but a sense of turning outward and
in the last seconds of practices that nipper aj has developed how does a period of after dying certain foreign practices of something like on
service he would spend a year loud herring and helping in some way in a soup kitchen or something like that our husbands work as part of your training so that kind of our turning engagement with on
the ills of our society in a way and format
there are different kinds of people in terms of politics with our saga so that that's an issue of storage mammy here in northern california you all the grain on in fact i work
yeah
so about the definition in terms of what kind of political mobilization you based on people's own inspiration of what they identify as that's the problem or or that's the problem i want to work on break that's what i'd like to see in my lifetime some more justice about or whatever
so i would say in my community that that enlarging and not as fully developed the person out of our sangha was turned in that waves flint mall watch with present i'm a network and so
i have a variety of comments a little bit scattershot and threat when i would say is that
i think it's significant for us and relevant for us to remember the interconnectedness of all being you know and that it as as as we work individually
that through interconnectedness were working collectively you work out the door and hopefully
your good practice reflects in how you talk to an expression you talk to
or how you relate to society in whatever way you relate to it
where you decide to go shopping or like you decide to buy or how you drive or whatever actually said tibet
and i think it's important for us to remember that because it as a kind of empowerment and you need to i think it's important for us to remember as individuals i
in in a tangible real and practical way i influence the world and because i think when we look at society it's very easy to feel disempowered
it's very easy to feel that are these enormous forces out there that in no way reflect the values that i treasure and it's not my can do about it
i think that kind of into individual and parliament is intrinsic in the practice of the buddha dharma practice in the buddha way
then i would say that because we do well in the to some degree we go live in a fractured society you know we will we live in a society and as a lot of pain a lot of violence
i am
i think it dries on us as sanders in mean i think
within
the the notion of as as convert buddhists be our son goods are basically thirty forty years old something in that range
when we settled into our heritage and having done so read the sucker
arriving the finish and can me is the process of or practice
now
open up be of surface
look look at how how will we engage samsara
but we're near me but what will they look like and it doesn't look like a collective psyche is to do that in a more active like you know certainly he represents him to we have developed a grinch programs present ministry homeless ministry hospice chaplain c programming of these things
i could have come out of us
hey
to me
it's
the phrase he just came to mind his way as as we practice more his ego centered agenda diminishes and some other agenda comes forth
and i
it's still in its american stage mean
how do we take how do we relate to things such as politics
no
how do we write to issues of n human injustice and happens on have local and national and international level
yea i think
it's it's my notion as we continue to practice these questions
will become bigger for and they become more potent and and
and i trust our dorm i trust our practice we will respond to them
and i as reposting i think we are somewhat in an emergent stage
and hopefully your help us figure i'll do it

money

first of all i have a comment about the kid i'm thinking to kid who teach the kids anything i think they've got it

please
discussion of the meanings of shambala pitches and israel and said this some legendary may be mythical kingdom the sense there are in the legend is that there was some understanding and the society or what we call basic kindness as a shrine goodness
counties that and heartedness and software and it's true that that might be what we call mother nature but if it's a human nature and a shine wisdom and so forth than why don't really have i like a patent on or a copyright
it's time to so in that sense
isn't that the children are in communicating in any setting that it would be a matter of people want hating necessarily but
if aren't children could open as and to connecting with a kind of basic sanity and also in the other part of what you mentioned than drawing on the wisdom that exists in traditions in the world rather than that everything must come from right our spiritual tradition in terms of how it
skillfully work with the world and accountability and all those things he mentioned right the world has its own wisdom right know why wouldn't we be open to that and make use of bad as it helps us you know

the one last question job

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what makes something in this country that'll be them
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you need
sir paul is mentioning that not only the cultural influences button
the come from are various traditions japanese tibetan whatever but then the evolution in here which isn't going to open question as to what what will it be as people practice here train here
i think it's inevitable he mean i think the dharma teachers who that and this is a codependent arriving that the causes and conditions that are prevalent and pervasive will bring forth
no the fruits of those conditions so i do think mean i noticed myself
when i cut the someone who's practiced in the rest
i feel strong similarity in our practice it seems that seems to be some influences better
better stronger ban a tradition from which we came and mean i'd find that with both tibet and teachers and for pass new teachers
where there's a commonality and in how we come to see the world of how we can do
phone the the trainings that the that we've been given
in an ip i think are already there's this an expression pray i don't think it's also important for us to
to maintain the guidance of our heritage you know and i think we we should remember that the is crafted with crafted over hundreds of years
by wonderful skilled and wise teachers and then we should acknowledge their attend maybe a little has an introduced sort of figure i figure that we got that the new way to do it
it examined some combination and i think you get yourself to the tradition
and in some wonderful way something new arises
and now that's my notion that we don't actually have to worry too much about what's going to emerge it as american buddhism we need to just
keep giving over and letting the dharma passed through us and it will take the shape and form it does
so how was that who said let a thousand flowers bloom
thank you very much for coming