So, are you all the happy people who've done your Christmas shopping or did you come today thinking that I would inspire you with what to get? I'll give you my I'll give you my suggestions later after the talk. I find, I find the holiday season I think about like everyone. I mean, I do get rather anxious about getting presents for people. Am I talking to the right people? I mean, do you have that kind of feeling? You know, and I get concerned about, you know, whether it's going to be good enough or reflect well enough upon

[01:04]

me, you know, that sort of thing. And, and then it's just, I went to a store yesterday and it's so crowded and everybody's running around trying to get things and, and it's very tiring, but actually I, on the other hand, I, I like the holidays and I like, I like them because I think there is something about the spirit of the holidays, which is rather wholesome or heartwarming and the kind of wishes that we make for one

[02:04]

another at the holiday season is rather touching. And that we actually do have this time of year to think of others and to think of peace in the world and the well-being of others, both people that we know closely and people that we don't know at all. So I thought today I would talk some about, well, what variously goes by various names, but about kindness and, in Buddhism, kindness and compassion, sympathetic joy, equanimity. It seems that a lot of the time when we think about Buddhism or talk about

[03:07]

Buddhism, we think more about having realization or enlightenment or some understanding or insight, and we don't, we don't always see the aspect in Buddhism of kindness or compassion. And in some, and it's sometimes even given kind of a bad name. I mean, in places it says that loving-kindness is, it's not really one of the, part of the Eightfold Path. It's not one of the Five Cardinal Virtues and it's not one of the Seven Limbs of Enlightenment, so maybe we should just dispense with it. Let's get on to the things that are more relevant to our real salvation or liberation. But anyway, I think that's rather short-sighted and

[04:14]

not at all really conducive to the kind of mind that's receptive or the mind that's actually able to observe things as they are. So to start with, I'd like to invite you to take a rest and refuge in your own body and mind, in your own heart. See if you can come into and abide in your experience in your body, in your breath, inhaling and exhaling. And you'll notice

[05:26]

sights, visible objects, colors, sounds. You'll notice bodily sensations of your weight on the floor, on the cushion, on a chair. And you'll notice thinking, thoughts, judgments, evaluations. What kind of talk is it today? Not very interesting. Heard it all before. Or whatever, you know, you think. Or you'll think of, or we think about, you might notice thoughts

[06:35]

about your plans to go Christmas shopping or what you should have gotten, what you might have gotten, what you still might get, what you'll be doing for the holidays, what you might do next year. And you'll notice feelings, things you like, things you dislike, pleasant. Some things are pleasant, other things are unpleasant. And then there's a whole range of emotions of boredom and frustration and joy, equanimity, anger, craving. If you make this kind of, when we make this kind of, in a sense, effort to come

[07:55]

into our experience, to dwell and abide in our, intimately in our experience, this already is a kind of kindness. It's a kind of receptivity to our own experience, my own, my body, my mind, my thoughts and feelings. This already is the basis for kindness and how, in a very immediate sense, we can practice kindness. One of the things that we notice when we do this too is, we notice that there's some experiences that we have, some sights and sounds that we like are pleasant and we want them to continue. And we notice other experiences that are unpleasant. We

[08:59]

rather they stopped. And when we get very much involved at all in stopping the unpleasant ones, getting the pleasant ones to continue, we can very quickly become quite frustrated and upset because it's not possible. Everything doesn't come out the way we want it to. I think this comes up also in relationship. We want to make someone

[10:17]

else happy and somehow it's not quite possible. They still, no matter how much we do for someone, we can never do enough. Unless somehow that the person we're doing it for happens to be someone who is already happy and content. But this, this, you know, of course came up around, there was that whole series of books about women who love too much and so on. But you don't have to be a woman to do that. I know about that. I spent a good deal of my life trying to do that. Make other people perfectly happy and never make any mistakes, never have anybody at all angry with me. I think I'm still doing it. Maybe I just call it Buddhism

[11:19]

now. Anyway, I think it's useful to make this kind of observation or inventory to come into your experience very carefully, intimately. Observe your own body and mind, how things happen, how things work, what's really possible, what's not possible. When you do this carefully then, when we do this carefully we're no longer caught and entangled in quite the same way. Trying to produce pleasant visual experiences or good sounds or the right kind of thought and we can be more

[12:20]

accepting of that there'll be pleasant things that pass away and unpleasant things that persist. You must have noticed this. So what is your attitude then? What attitude do you find yourself taking given this fact? Do you have an attitude of resentment? No matter what I do it's not enough. What's wrong with you? What's wrong with the universe? You know that's one possibility or a kind of bitterness or do you have some warmth, compassion?

[13:24]

You know, Dogen Zenji said, out of all those who practice diligently for many years, some will get enlightened and some won't. So who are the good students? What's the important point then? That you got enlightened or that you practice diligently? Okay, so he says the important point is to practice with sincerity and wholeheartedness and then whether you get enlightened or not takes care of itself. That's sort of extra. Given the fact that we can't, we don't have that

[14:32]

much capacity to control the phenomena of our life, then it seems to behoove us to rather than having bitterness or cynicism or resentment, it behooves us to have some warmth or compassion, kindness towards ourself first of all. There's a classic formulation that's used in Buddhism, may I be happy, may I be peaceful, may I be free from suffering and we can make this kind of wish for ourself. This kind of wish you see is not based on, you know, may I have the

[15:33]

capacity to control phenomena, may I have the capacity to produce colors and sounds and thoughts and emotions that please me and make me happy. This is, may I have a happiness that is not dependent on my ability to control phenomena, produce pleasant and stop unpleasant phenomena. May I have a happiness that is beyond that. May I be happy, may I be peaceful. Is the peaceful based on, you know, I never get upset, I never get angry, I'm a perfect person. May I be peaceful even

[16:34]

though I have at times disturbing emotions. May I be free from suffering. It's free from the suffering that comes mostly, this is a the suffering of, you know, tormenting myself that I'm not better. May I enjoy well-being, may I enjoy ease of well-being, may I enjoy long life, may I have composure. So we can make this kind of wish and I think we all wish this way, but it's very confusing sometimes.

[17:37]

Sometimes when we want something very much and we think if we have it it'll make us happy, we might do something that is actually not making us happy. Do you know? Some people want, sometimes we want something so we steal to get it or we lie or we're deceitful and then we can get what we wanted but actually we're not happy then. So I think it's important and useful to remind ourself this way, may I be happy, may I enjoy well-being, may I be peaceful. In a way it's to remind us of what is our, what's really important to us and what we're finally capable of

[18:44]

practicing, which is quite different than just having pleasant experiences and avoiding unpleasant ones. When, as soon as we make this kind of wish too, we notice, you know, we can wish this then for others. Just as I wish to be happy, may others be happy, may others be peaceful, may others be free from suffering. Just as I wish to live a long life, I wish others a long life. My teacher, Suzuki, she used to talk often about soft mind, soft mind as

[20:07]

opposed to hard mind. Hard, hard mind is to, you know, you can tell sometimes when your mind is hard, in a manner of speaking. You know, there's not much space there to actually see anything or observe anything or be with anyone or even to be with yourself hardly. Hard mind has attitudes like, well no one else cares, why should I? And if you're mad at me then I'm gonna be angry back. I won't let you get away with that. And hard mind gets, you know, objectives and then wants to get them, any cost, okay. And we understand our world usually to be, you

[21:14]

know, in our society is tends to be sort of hard-minded. But it's not just our society. I heard a wonderful story recently. Someone I know said he was with his one-and-a-half-year-old son. He was attempting to teach his son something about enjoying what you have. And his son loves strawberries and so there's a big bowl of strawberries. And his son was, would have a strawberry in each hand and one in his mouth and be trying to get, you know, another one in and grabbing more. This is at age one-and-a-half. Now do you think society has had much effect on this person? So his father was trying to teach him one at a time and why don't you enjoy and appreciate one strawberry and then you can have another one. And he

[22:18]

said his son began screaming for more strawberries. You know, he's screaming for strawberries and you can see the strawberries in his mouth while he's screaming. So this is, you know, this is us. This is not just one-and-a-half-year-olds. This is perhaps, you know, this isn't exactly a hard mind at work, you know, this particular example, but it's certainly, you know, has some notion of a mind that we, you know, may encounter. Isn't there some way to have more of something that's good, even while we already have it? And isn't there some

[23:19]

possibility of just prolonging this pleasant and then, you know, stopping the unpleasant and having a, and then producing a mind or an awareness or insight or something that then just takes care of it from now on. And then good things happen to us. And the bad things don't. I was reading recently about Milarepa. He's a great Tibetan saint, you know, many years ago, almost a thousand years ago now. But one day he'd been meditating in his cave and he kind of came to in a certain way and he realized, he said, gee, I've been a little neglectful. I don't see any food around. And there's no fuel either. My goodness, I think I'll go up to get some wood anyway. So he went out of his cave to get some wood and there was this, the wind came up in this tremendous storm. And every time he picked up the wood, his robe blew open. And then when he held his

[24:20]

robe shut, he dropped the wood. And then he said, gee, what have I been doing wrong? How come the world still inflicts me like this? You see? And then as he was thinking this, he was so weak from lack of food that he fell down in the faint in the snow. Anyway, that, you know, and then he, a while later, he woke up, that, gee, I need my teacher. Where is he? So he calls out for his teacher and his teacher appears in the clouds, you know, and says, what's your problem? So if Nila Rupa can do all that, you know, well, heck, we can do it too. Anyway, I mentioned this soft mind because it's rather similar. I think of it in a

[25:26]

certain, it's in the same vein of what is the kind of mind that can be aware of things, is capable of being aware and knowing and seeing, understanding the way things are, the way our life works, and what attitude to cultivate. Soft mind is also, Suzuki Roshi talked about, as you go along, you see, hard mind just wants to go from here to the object, from here to the destination, let's just get there. Soft mind, it's like being in the dark and you have to feel your way along. You don't know what to do. You don't know where to go. You're feeling angry or depressed or, and is there some ready solution, you know, you can adopt? No, it's more like,

[26:26]

it's just feeling your way along. So to, in that sense, then it's like, and this is, this is a kind of kindness then too, to feel out what's actually happening. How do things happen? How does anger arise? How does fear come? What is it? Does it have any real basis? So hard mind is more exemplified, I know when I started practicing meditation after a couple of years, I started getting really angry, and then my first impulse was, I'm not going to have anything to do with this. Do you suppose that's an effective strategy? I'm not going to have anything to do with

[27:28]

this. And then it still comes around, you know. And then you can take that, that's a hard-minded attitude, you say, I'm not going to have anything to do with this. That's my own anger, but then I could say that to somebody else too. I won't have anything to do with you. At that time, you can hold that attitude, it takes a lot of energy is in that attitude, and then after a while you get tired sometime, and then the anger gets to you. And the person is going to get to you long before you get tired. They'll call you on the phone, they'll wait outside your house, they'll show up in your dreams. Anyway, soft mind, so soft mind is the willingness to meet things and to be

[28:28]

with things. And I think this is a kind of kindness too. But this kindness then is also wishing ourselves happiness, wishing others happiness, and kindness or friendliness is to bestow benefits, to give gifts, to give even a little, you know, to give a smile. I find it so hard sometimes, you know, just to give a smile, but it's very powerful. And we touch each other in this way with smiles and gestures and kind words. And sometimes gifts can have great power. When I was at Tessahara,

[29:55]

in Suzuki where she was alive, I had a little room, one of the cabins there and the doorstep of my cabin was about two feet from the ground. You know, the earth is wearing away, it's eroding, even at Tessahara. It's gone down about six inches just since we've been in there, you know, the last 20 years. And there's certain places we have to keep bringing in dirt and filling it, you know. But so my cabin was, the doorsteps are a couple of feet down, and then so I got some stones and kind of piled them up by the door, making some steps. One day I was standing near my cabin with Suzuki and he looked over at my cabin and he said, do you know in Japan when we pile up stones like that over people's graves? So when I see that by their house, it reminds me of graveyards

[31:01]

and it doesn't feel very good to me. And I thought, gee, well I'm sorry. But I didn't know much about moving big rocks or anything and so I let it go. And then one day I saw him and he said, do you know that big stone outside the office? And there was this big stone outside the office where everybody used to get their mail and then go out and sit on the stone. It was kind of like the most important stone in all of Tessahara. It's a big rock, about this long and about this high. He said, I'm having Paul move it this afternoon in front of your cabin to replace those stones. I couldn't believe it, you know, that somebody would do something like that for me because I didn't think much of myself. I thought very little of myself.

[32:10]

But here was somebody who seemed to think a great deal of me, or at least, you know, was willing to have this stone brought to my cabin. And sure enough, that afternoon I was in my cabin and there's this sound of this, they were dragging this stone along in this big sort of metal, whatever, metal tray cart behind a big truck on a chain. It's dragging along, crunch, crunch, crunch. And then they got outside my cabin and started rolling it over and then, you know, moved all the other stones away and put it up there. It was really nice. And then every time I stepped into my cabin, here's this nice solid stone to step on. And it all, you know, and each time I step on the stone is this reminder that somebody, somebody thinks well of me, somebody thinks kindly of me, somebody appreciates me,

[33:16]

even if I don't. So this is just one example of a gift, but, you know, kind words and a smile sometimes have as big an effect as this kind of stone or some other kind of gift. So

[34:35]

so it's said that there are many virtues to the practice of kindness or friendliness. Like if when you practice it, you'll be happy, you'll have good dreams when you go to sleep. You'll also be beautiful, you know, whereas ugliness, I mean, anger, you know, makes us ugly. When we practice kindness, we become beautiful. And of course then others benefit, and then others will make us happy. Recently I was reading a talk that the Dalai Lama gave some years ago, and he said, that was a few years ago, he said, the older I get, and I'm 44 now, the more I devote

[36:11]

my practice to kindness, and to practicing kindness and producing kindness. And when you practice kindness, it extends out through the world. If you practice when we're angry, then that spreads out through the world, our friends and neighbors and so on. So in some way, it's the simplest and most basic kind of practice to cultivate. And interestingly, of course, this kind of kindness and patience and generosity, goodwill, are something that are, are emotions that we can cultivate. And even in just the simple, simplest ways, I find it, you know, for myself,

[37:19]

I find it discouraging that I haven't saved the whole world yet. I don't know how you know, whether you worry about that sort of thing. I'd kind of wish that I would, you know, put an end to the arms race by now, and a few other things, you know, I'd like to, you know, have gotten rid of AIDS by now, and you know, all kinds of things. And I don't seem to have done any of those things. So I seem to have to content myself with a whole different level of practice of kindness and generosity. Do you know what I mean? And I think we're all in that situation. Much as I'd like to give you the answer to whatever the problem is. I can't. So I can offer you this kind of encouragement to practice kindness and generosity, even in small ways. And we have to remind ourselves that it's, you know, what in our own heart,

[38:25]

what comes from our heart. And, you know, make, make, we make our best offering from the heart, our best action. And when we offer it from our heart, then that's the best we can do. Whether others appreciate it enough or not, you know, it's a whole different matter. The fact that we, that we make this effort is all we can do. And we leave it up to others for how they receive or accept or appreciate or don't appreciate the offerings we make. I guess I want to talk just about a couple more things.

[39:27]

One is, if you're interested in one way of cultivating or is to examine as emotions arise, as desire arises, as craving arises, as neediness arises, as anger and hate. If you want, look at it and ask yourself, is there some real basis for it? If it's a person you like, that person can, you know, mostly that we like somebody who's nice to us. If they stop being nice, would you still like them? No, then we say they're, now they're our enemy. And the person who doesn't treat us well, we say, well, they're not my friend. And even in the person that we like, we can find some faults.

[40:30]

And even in the person we don't like, we can find some virtue. So, I encourage you to look carefully. What is the basis for liking, for disliking? Who is it that likes and dislikes? Is there any real basis to the liking, to the disliking? If you look at it this way and also, you know, what is the basis of happiness? Will you ever find happiness based on putting an end to all unpleasant things and only having pleasant things come? Will you ever find that kind of happiness?

[41:32]

I don't think so. This is coming to some, by this kind of examination, we come to some solid place where we actually can have happiness that is not dependent on phenomena. We have joy and kindness, which we extend to everyone and not just to someone we like or don't like and we extend it to myself. We even extend kindness to my own anger. After Milarepa, a teacher came and said, I think you're doing fine, basically. I don't know why you called to me. Aren't you practicing virtuous things?

[42:34]

Like, you know, aren't you already realized? Milarepa went back to his cave and there were five demons there. I don't know, some other stories say there were seven. And so he told them to go away and they didn't. They had eyes as big as saucers. Big eyes, I guess. And he told them to go away and then he thought, well, as long as they're here and they're not going anyplace, I'll teach them the Dharma. So he started lecturing them about the Dharma and they hung around. They still didn't go away. So then finally he said, oh, it's so nice of you to come today. I'm so happy to see you. You really ought to sit down and stay a while. I mean, let's hang out together for a bit and we can talk about things. And you really ought to visit more often. And then pretty soon they all went away.

[43:40]

This is an example of a kind of kindness, you see, in terms of just my own demons. Well, to end today, I want to offer you a kind of, I'll give you a kind of guided meditation. And you can take a little trip and you can see what happens. And then if you want, we can talk about it later. If, I'll tell you ahead of time, you know, if when you go on this little trip, the guided meditation, you know, it may or may not work well for you. You know, some of us visualize things a little easier than others and so on. So just see what happens and don't worry about how well you do the guided meditation. This is a meditation that, I was at a retreat recently and we did this at one point.

[44:51]

And I think it was kind of useful and interesting for me, so I wanted to offer it to you. So to start with, we're going to go from here, we're going to, you know, go right on your chair or your cushion and zabaton. We're going to go from here up into the air like a magic carpet ride. And we're going to arise out of Green Gulch and look down on the Bay Area. And maybe even a little bit higher where we can see across the country and the ocean.

[45:57]

And in fact, we can see now the whole earth there round and floating in space. So our problems have when we look more closely. Now, after we've been here for a bit, we're going to go, each of us in our own direction,

[46:58]

back into, back to our home or with a friend, or back to our job. Someplace where you, there might be some tensions or difficulties. So you come down out of the air on your carpet and arrive at this place. And you walk into the place, or you may be walking outdoors, sitting outdoors. And you can have any kind of weather you want, any kind of lighting. And you can see clearly this place, how it looks. You can hear the sounds.

[48:10]

And you start to feel the feelings that you feel when you're in that place with those people or that person in the space. And you begin to interact with people there or your work. And you begin to experience the feelings and thoughts and responses. You respond to things. So after a while you've been doing this, there's a, you hear a knock on the door.

[49:15]

If you're outside, the knocking can just be on a tree or it can be a woodpecker. If you're indoors, you can hear the knock on the door or the doorbell. You get up and you go to the door. And when you open the door, the Buddha is standing there. The Buddha or else, Kuan Yin, Bodhisattva of Compassion. The Buddha has on his robes, or Kuan Yin has on her, long flowing garments that are very beautiful. Perhaps you're quite surprised to see the Buddha or Kuan Yin standing there.

[50:23]

Oh, they've never knocked on your door before, but they've come to see you and you say hello and exchange a few words with them. You exchange greetings. And then the Buddha or Kuan Yin suggests that you change clothes and bodies. And that you can observe the Buddha or Kuan Yin in your body with your clothes going into your life. So you exchange, and you're now in the Buddha's body or Avalokiteshvara's body and you're watching yourself go back into the situation you were in, the people there, or your work.

[51:35]

And you watch how the Buddha or Kuan Yin in your body, what they do in the situation. And perhaps they speak, perhaps they're silent and they just do things, but you can listen to the conversation. So after a bit the Buddha or Kuan Yin comes back to you, you come back to yourself.

[52:52]

And you've had a chance to observe them in the situation. And you exchange how back again. So that you're back in your own body with your own clothes and the Buddha or Kuan Yin returns to her body. And then you go back to the door and they're about to leave, but before they leave the Buddha or Kuan Yin offers you a few words of advice or encouragement. And you'll hear, if you haven't heard already, you'll hear some words or you can just see the expression.

[54:14]

On the face of the Buddha or Avalokiteshvara, Kuan Yin. And then the Buddha or Kuan Yin reaches into their robes and takes out a little present for you, a little gift. Maybe you see it or perhaps it's wrapped up. Perhaps it's in a little package wrapped up and you have to unwrap it and open up the box or container and see what's inside. And it has some meaning for you. And then you thank the Buddha or Kuan Yin and say goodbye.

[55:35]

And then you can come back to Green Garden for the end of the talk. Thank you. Maybe at the question and answer, some of you would like to share your little trip, your meditation with us. This obviously, you know, it's not just the Buddha and Kuan Yin or someone inside us.

[57:01]

So we can, it's possible to, you know, be in touch with them, the Buddha or Kuan Yin, and to come to their kind of, this kind of kindness or compassion. Which is beyond what we normally experience or how we normally and habitually act. I felt today, and I feel now happy to be here with you, because even though I get nervous or anxious about my talk, and about wondering if, you know, I'm giving you enough of a present in my talk.

[58:11]

I also, when I come here, I feel a wonderful immense spirit of kindness and goodwill from all of you. So thank you very much, and I wish you happiness and peace and growth and wisdom and compassion in the coming year.

[58:38]

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