Yogin Senzaki used to start all his talks by greeting all his students by saying, you know, good morning bodhisattvas. I'm not Yogin Senzaki, but it seemed really kind of appropriate because this morning I'd like to talk a little bit about the bodhisattva way. Last Sunday we had Jukai ceremony, that's a lay ordination ceremony here. It was last Sunday, wasn't it? Yeah, that time flies. And that got me thinking about the Bodhisattva way and what it is that our practice is, how we do our practice. What kind of guides do we have in our practice? What is this Bodhisattva way? What is it that people were doing down here? And the Bodhisattva way is of course practiced by Bodhisattvas.

[01:03]

I think I'd better define that term for people who might be new here. Bodhisattva is just a compound Sanskrit word and bodhi means wisdom. and, you know, real understanding. And sattva is just being, person. So bodhisattva is a being who is wisdom. And this wisdom is understood by direct perception of the truth or reality or Buddha nature, original face, whatever you call it. So wisdom includes knowledge, but it's much wider than knowledge. So bodhisattvas are not very special people, actually. They're everybody. We start out, apparently, we start out with a real understanding, and we lose it pretty quick somehow.

[02:06]

There's a place here. There's a Japanese saying that says, if we testify by the Bodhisattva training, we are Buddhas. And what that means is, testifying by the Bodhisattva training, is that if we sit Zazen, if we really practice, then we're Buddhas. We may not know that, but we really are. We may not realize it, but we really are. So, we're all originally bodhisattvas, but what we must do is practice so that sooner or later we drop that adverb, originally, and we can just say, we all are bodhisattvas, and really understand that. Very difficult. Very difficult. The bodhisattva in Mahayana Buddhism is the ideal.

[03:13]

And so when I talked today, maybe you could keep that in the back of your mind. This is an ideal. This isn't me. Probably isn't you. It's pretty difficult. We all have limitations. We all have lapses. But this is the ideal, the Bodhisattva path. So when we testify by the Bodhisattva training, this means our everyday life. It doesn't mean anything special. It means just the way we live our lives. And how we do this becomes the question of our lives. And Dogen Zenji wrote a fascicle on this called the Genjo Koan, and that's the koan of our everyday life. So the Bodhisattva way is accomplished or is processed through the six paramitas, the six perfections. These are the dana paramita, which is the paramita of giving.

[04:14]

It's bigger than charity, maybe like karitas, more like karitas, but giving, giving in a very wide sense. Sila, which is morality or keeping the precepts. When people had the ordination ceremony here on Sunday, they took 16 precepts. And these were the three refuges. I take refuge in Buddha, take refuge in Dharma, take refuge in Sangha. the three pure precepts, which are basically to avoid evil, to strive for good, to strive for the benefit of all beings, and then the ten specific or prohibitory precepts, such precepts as don't kill, don't lie, don't slander, those kinds of things. So, sila, sila paramita, is the practice of those precepts, is living those precepts. Kshanti paramita is the paramita of patience, but it's a very big patience.

[05:22]

Virya, the virya paramita is vigor. And jhana is meditation. That should be familiar to everybody. Zen is a transliteration of the Chinese word Chan, which is a transliteration of the Indian word Jhana, and it means meditation. So the Zen school is the meditation school. And so, as Zen students, I think we're all familiar with the Jhana Paramita. And finally is the Prajna Paramita, which is the Paramita of Wisdom. And some people feel that that Paramita, the Paramita of Wisdom, includes the other five. That the Paramita of Wisdom is kind of all-inclusive, and the one doesn't need anything more than that. That's fine, but I think my own feeling about these Paramitas right now is that each Paramita includes the other five, not just the Prajnaparamita.

[06:30]

But if you're practicing the Dhanaparamita, the Paramita of giving, you're doing that. from the Prajnaparamita as well. You're doing that with wisdom, and you're practicing that with some kind of vigor, and patience, and morality. So, I think they all include the others. Sometimes they talk about there being ten Paramitas, but I think the other four are just subsets of the Prajnaparamita. I wrote them down. I don't plan to do much with them, but I'll tell you about them. One is skillful means of teaching. One is power over obstacles, spiritual aspiration, and knowledge. Once again, that's what I said earlier, you know, knowledge is included within wisdom, but it's only a little tiny part of it, or maybe it's bigger than tiny, but it's not all of it. So in our Zen practice, we talk a lot about keeping the precepts about the Sila Paramita.

[07:32]

We talk a lot about the Jhana Paramita, meditation, and we talk a lot about the Prajnaparamita, wisdom. Zen practice tends to focus on the wisdom part of the Paramitas, and we have to be careful there because, you know, we sometimes tend to forget the others. And so today what I'd like to do is I'd like to talk about vigor, and patience and giving. Those three, the ones we don't talk about quite so much. The other thing, too, that I neglected to say earlier is, with wisdom comes, simultaneously, compassion. They just arise together. They're not separate. We know the different definitions of the two, but they're not separate. They arise together. And so, our practice always includes compassion. Prajnapractice always includes that, even if people aren't talking about it. It's always there.

[08:33]

And I think I've said before, too, if you have a practice that's primarily a wisdom practice, it tends to be a little bit cold. If you have a practice that's a compassionate practice, and you don't bring wisdom in very much, it tends to be a little naive. Maybe warm and fuzzy, but still a little naive. So I'd like to start by talking about the virya paramita, that's vigor. And this paramita covers not only the physical and volitional aspects of vigor, you know, the kind of thing we know about, you know, pedaling bicycles fast, that sort of vigor, but also things like vigilance, heedfulness, steadfastness, and fortitude. One shorthand definition or one little phrase that's good about this is, it's energy in pursuit of the good. And so, it's even so important that Shanti Davis says, in vigor lies enlightenment.

[09:38]

So, vigor is very important. In fact, along with, and I'll read you a, well, in fact, I can just read that now. This is a little quotation from this book, which I don't feel like looking up. I've got some others in there. But anyway, this is by Sangha Rakshita. And he says, by practicing the perfection of vigor in conjunction with the perfection of wisdom, the bodhisattva becomes a kind of cosmic force. Reduced to everyday terms, this means that however great, from the relative point of view, the bodhisattva's exertions may be, he never thinks of himself as making any exertions. Hence, in all his undertakings he acts without haste and without delay, neither exhilarated by success nor depressed by failure. Under all circumstances he is serene, cheerful, and optimistic. His energy is unflagging. Next to wisdom and compassion, vigor is the most prominent of all the characteristics of the Bodhisattva. Anyway, it's a pretty tall order, you know, to be serene, cheerful, and optimistic in all situations.

[10:56]

That's difficult. I don't manage it. I don't know about you. This week I've had good examples of not managing that. This paramita is also associated with the three pure precepts pretty closely. You know, to avoid evil, to strive for good, to strive for the benefits of benefit of all beings. There's activity, action in those words, you know? Those are verbs. And that's what it's about. It's not a passive practice. It can look passive when we're all facing the wall and sitting quietly. It can even look passive looking out at you. You know, I'm the only person that's moving a lot. And then it's only my hands. Very active practice. Very active. So, always needs vigor to avoid evil, to strive for good, to strive for the benefit of all beings. There's a little story about Well, the way I read the story, it says a philosopher, but I don't think it needs to be anybody as fancy as that.

[12:01]

It could just be a person that's a little curious. Came across three stonecutters one day in Japan, and they were working, and they were all carving tombstones. And so this person walked up to the first stonecutter, and he said, what are you doing? The stonecutter looked up and he said, I'm carving a stone." Have you ever met that person? You ever been that person? You know, oh, for God's sake, dummy. You know, I'm cutting a stone. You know, pretty matter-of-fact answer. He went to the next person and he said, what are you doing? And the man looked at him and he gave him an answer a little bit more removed. He said, I'm making money. Carving my stone, making my wages. The man said, oh, yeah, quite so. And so he walked to the third person and he said, what are you doing? The person looked up at him and he said, I'm building a temple. That answer is a little bit more the kind of vigor we're talking about.

[13:04]

That's energy in pursuit of the good. I'm building a temple. Our work, we work to make money. Sometimes we work to get famous. But we also need to work to create nirvana, right here, to make it bigger. Our work should be bigger than just that. Our energy should be for a bigger reason. It should be moving in a different direction, in a direction like that. And what would talk would be any good without one of those really heavy-duty Japanese stories. So we have one about Zenji Jorin who was sitting and he kept falling asleep. Nobody here has ever done that, right? He just kept falling asleep up there. He can't stay awake. And so Jorin got real determination, real perseverance. And being a strong man, he went out and he found a cliff, big high cliff, and it had a tree growing out of it.

[14:10]

And he put some grass on the tree, and then he sat in a lotus posture on the grass on the tree, out over the void. And of course the story says this cliff's a thousand feet tall, so that's fine, we can make it five, six thousand feet if we want to, but big cliff, big cliff, he's going to get hurt if he falls. And he was sitting up there and he was so afraid of falling that, of course, disconcentrated his mind and body very much and he didn't fall asleep and he sat for a day and a night. And, as is usual with all of these stories, he had great enlightenment. Not too much of a surprise in the story, but The story is not meant to be taken literally, I don't think, but this is the kind of vigor that they're talking about. Illustration of vigor. Show some determination. Go out and work hard. Really work hard. This is an easy practice to talk about. It's not an easy practice to do. So we need to make effort, but that big, big effort is effortless because it's quite natural.

[15:16]

quite fundamental to our very natures. So it's not something to be worried about or be scared of, it's just something to do. Now the Dhanaparamita, which is the Paramita of giving, is a very important paramita, and it's kind of a complicated paramita. Every once in a while, somebody here asks a question about, what do I do? How do I give money to beggars? Do I give money to beggars on the street? What do I do about that? They make me uncomfortable, or whatever emotion is that comes up. So the dana paramita is kind of important. And various people break it down in various ways. They have different kinds of giving or different situations, however you want to look at it. But I broke it down into five kinds of giving. And this, I don't think, is very far off the traditional way of doing it. There's either fewer or more of these. But there's the giving of material, which is kind of the lowest sort of kind of giving.

[16:21]

That's the kind of giving we do when we give alms. There is the giving of fearlessness, the giving of education, the giving of merit, and then the highest is the giving of dharma. So we'll talk about the giving of material first, and that's the easiest, obviously, because we're all familiar with that. And a story I really like is in a book I read not too long ago about a very, very good and very famous French sailor named Bernard Montessier. And if you speak French, please ignore my pronunciation. But this man has sailed around the world alone a number of times, was in a race, didn't bother to finish it, he just kept going. He's quite a man. And when he was raised in Southeast Asia, he's French, and I think it was either Vietnam or Cambodia, I can't remember now, but he was raised there.

[17:23]

And he sailed a junk, he had his own junk and he sailed commercially as a sailor and everything. And finally he decided to leave and I'm not sure where he was going but I suppose it was Europe. And he had a wooden boat and he sailed his wooden boat off from Southeast Asia and he wound up in Singapore Harbor, sitting in Singapore Harbor with a very leaky boat. wooden boat. I don't know, you probably all know that, you know, some boats, wooden boats, are made with planks on edge like this, and where that planks come together, you have to put in something called caulking, which is like yarn, and they have things that look like chisels and hammers, and they drive this yarn in with goop, you know, and it's called caulking, okay? I have to tell you this, I'm not trying to give you a lecture on boat building, but I have to tell you this to make the story make sense. At any rate, The caulking in his boat was not too good. Apparently, you know, it had all the seaworthy properties of a sieve. And he was sitting in Singapore Harbor bailing his boat, you know, pumping his boat out every day and wondering what he was going to do because he had no money. He knew no one there. He didn't have any caulking tools or any caulking material.

[18:26]

So he was sitting there with a boat that was, you know, sinking and rising and sinking and rising because he was pumping it out and wondering what he was going to do. And he was really quite despondent. And one day, out of nowhere, this man came walking down a dock with a professional caulking crew. These are people who professionally put in that yarn with the goop, you know, in the holes. And they came down, and they just walked on board, and this man said to Montessier, he said, we're here to caulk your boat. Montessier looked at this, and he said, but I didn't order this, and I can't pay for it. I have no money. The man said, oh, I know that. That's all right. This has nothing to do with you, he said. Years ago, I was in trouble, and somebody did me a favor. Same kind of thing that you're in right now. And he said, all that person told me was, don't pay me, just pass it on. And so that's what I'm telling you. Don't pay me, this is free, but pass it on. Just pass it on. I always find that very nice story, because I think we're all doing that all the time anyhow.

[19:28]

But that's the Dhanaparamita. Just passing it on, you know, just giving it. There's another story too that I probably don't need to tell, but I like the story anyhow because it's a pretty good story. It's about a Japanese monk named Hasegawa who had finished his training in Japan. and who was not satisfied, even though everybody else was quite pleased with him, and he had gone as far as he could go at the time with his training, he wasn't really content that he knew how to keep the precepts, that he really knew what that meant. So he went to Thailand. And he asked to practice with the Thai monks. And they said, no, you can't practice with us because you don't keep the precepts in the same way that we do. Japanese monks don't keep the precepts the way the Thai monks do. And it's the difference between Mahayana and Theravadan Buddhism. And there's some differences there.

[20:30]

So he said, that's what I came to find out. So he was ordained as a Theravadan monk. He started all over again, in a way. And every morning he would go out in town with the other monks and they would bake their food. And as Kim told us many times, this is quite normal. in Southeast Asia, in Thailand. This is the way things are done. The monks go out and the people feed them. They donate their food. They give them their food. Now the priests don't just take it and go away and leave the folks standing empty-handed. They also make a donation, but that donation we'll come to later. That's the donation of the Dharma. That's giving the Dharma. Let's talk about that a little later. So Hasegawa went out, and in the mornings he would go out, early in the morning, and people would give him bananas and mangoes, very nice things. And he would say sometimes he would get enough so that he had enough for both meals that day. He could only eat two meals a day. He'd get enough, and it was very nice. It was all nice, and the people really enjoyed giving it to him. People would wait for him.

[21:31]

Everybody was really, really quite nice about this. He was very impressed. And so he did this for quite some time. And then one day he began to talk to a Thai monk. And this Thai monk said, well, you know, he said, most people in Thailand give. It's not just a few, it's most people that give donations like this, that give food to the monks. But many of those people give their very best food to the monks, and they don't eat food that's as good, and they don't eat as much. So they give away most of what they have. Hasegawa was thunderstruck by this, absolutely thunderstruck by this kind of a giving nature. And he just He just had a feeling, you know, that these people were giving like this. And this was the way it was explained to him later. They were giving like this because they felt that they were getting a bigger gift than they were giving.

[22:36]

You know? And the fact, in their giving, they were getting a gift. And of course later the monks would preach the Dharma to them. But the whole idea was that in the giving is the gift. It's a very nice way to look at Dhanaparamita. It's a very nice way to look at your life. It takes some of the heat out of things. So always just passing things on. And these passages show you both sides of this. And also, Sangha Rakshita is an Englishman who's studied for many, many, many years, and quite an impressive person. And I'm going to read you his little, because I enjoy him very much, I'm going to read you his little comments in between these two sutras. And when he says buns, he means bread, because he's English.

[23:41]

Because I think they're just rather nice. Anyway, he says here, talking about Donna Parameda. It means transcending the boundaries of heaven and earth with a charity as wide as a river and as large as the sea, performing acts of generosity to all living beings, feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing those who are cold, refreshing those overcome by the heat, being ready to help the sick, whether it be carriages, horses, boats, equipment, or any kind of precious material or famous jewel, or beloved, or son, or kingdom. Whatever it may be that you are asked to give, it means giving at once." Now then he comments on that sutra a little bit. He says, "...that the giving of material things is not to be interpreted in the terms of superficial humanitarianism, according to which religion is summed up in the distribution of free buns and blankets, is evinced by an important passage from another sutra.

[24:44]

What is a bad means? When, by the practice of the perfections, the bodhisattvas help others, but are content to supply them with merely material aid, without raising them from their misery or introducing them into beatitude, then they are using a bad means. Why? Because material help is not sufficient. Whether a dunghill be large or small, it cannot possibly be made to smell sweet by any means whatsoever. In the same way, living beings are unhappy because of their acts, because of their nature. It is impossible to make them happy by supplying them with merely material aids. The best way of helping them is to establish them in goodness. And Sangha Rakshita goes on and says, the Bodhisattva is far from thinking that the prospect of riches in heaven is an adequate substitute for poverty and degradation on earth. But he would be the last person to suggest that motor cars and refrigerators can take the place of enlightenment. Following the middle path, he strives for both the spiritual and the material amelioration of human life and practiced Dhana in all its forms.

[25:54]

There's nothing wrong with material giving. In fact, it's quite good, but there's a lot more than that to it. Now, the next kind of giving that I talked about is one I think is, as far as I know anyway, is pretty much unique to Buddhism, and that's the giving of fearlessness. This is the willingness to risk one's life to save another person from disaster or catastrophe. The Jataka tales are full of stories of this kind of bodhisattvas who risk their lives. In fact, the one I always remember is the one about the tiger. There was a tiger who had a couple of cubs, and she hadn't made a kill for quite some time, and so her milk was drying up and the cubs were starting to die because they couldn't get any nourishment. And a bodhisattva happened by, noticed what was going on and just allowed the tiger to eat him so that the tiger then could make milk.

[27:04]

Well, you know, nobody expects you to do that, but it's an illustration of fearlessness, you know, just a willing to give, no fear, just take care of things the best you can. And the Bodhisattva has developed compassion to such a point that that's possible. No thought. No thought for themselves. So whether the life is sacrificed for an animal, a human, or for some other being, is really up to prajna, the wisdom part. So bodhisattvas just don't go around willy-nilly committing suicides, you know. They do it for a reason. And this brought up for me, when I thought about this and read it, I remembered When I gave a talk up here some time ago, somebody mentioned about the Vietnamese monks who had burned themselves alive during the Vietnam War.

[28:05]

That was, I think, a contemporary, shining example of the giving of fearlessness and the giving of dharma. Because those people killed themselves in order, they hoped, that their death would contribute to the lives of many people. They hoped that that war could come to an end. They hoped that they could bring peace that way, that they could force something to happen, if you want to look at it that way. That was a very great deed on their part. It wasn't an act of hopelessness or anything else, but a very affirmative action. And I think this was part of the springs of that, was the giving of fearlessness, the sacrifice of oneself for others. It's a very, very noble thing. It's a very rare thing, too, of course. Now there's a second kind of fearlessness, which is certainly less spectacular and more ordinary, and this is just the bodhisattva's wish to relieve people of anxiety, worry, and fear, you know, the normal kinds of things that we all have every day that just, you know, play havoc with our lives.

[29:21]

And so a bodhisattva also will try to give fearlessness, and they will do that by, you know, material aid of some sort, or maybe psychotherapy if they can do that, or just by their own self-confidence, just by the example of their own self-confidence that people will feel better. So this kind of rather unspectacular, plain vanilla kind of giving of fearlessness has to do mostly with, you know, people's fears for their person, their property, or their livelihood. Another kind of giving is education. And this is almost any kind of education, because the understanding here is that an education, an education of any sort, enables a person mostly to become a good member of society. Now, I'm sure that there are a lot of inside traders, and people like that have had very large, heavy-duty college educations, and people that build death rays the same way.

[30:31]

But, by and large, education should help us to become a better member of society, and certainly enables us to then understand Buddhist doctrine, which leads to perception of truth, perhaps, of really understanding Dharma. So, education is a big help. And the only kinds of education that probably wouldn't help there would be something that would go against keeping the precepts. You know, for example, I think, you know, the death ray in person and maybe some people feel that vivisection, anything that has to do with vivisection is not not something that a bodhisattva would give. I'd rather not get into a discussion of vivisection, but those are the kinds of things that would come up. So it's education that is in accord with taking the path, with taking the refuges, with taking the precepts, that kind of education.

[31:36]

The next thing is the gift or the donation of merit. And this one's kind of interesting because we don't talk about merit very much in Zen. In fact, every once in a while somebody might make a joke about hoarding merit or passing out merit or something like that. But there's a real understanding in Buddhism that merit Bodhisattva's merit is transferred. And there's even a Sanskrit term for that, parinamana. And parinamana is this transference. That's what it means. So when we first start to practice, if we think about this kind of giving our merit to other beings so that they may come closer to nirvana, that's quite good, you know. That's quite a good feeling, quite a good idea. But when we first start, we think that there's someone who has the merit, we think that there's merit, and we think there's someone who's going to receive it.

[32:46]

With prajna, a bodhisattva does not see a self here, does not see merit, and does not see a self there. So the merit is just transferred because it simply happens. There's just merit. And a bodhisattva does things because a bodhisattva does things. And the merit is spread all over the world. So that's the donation of merit. So if you want to donate your merit, you can do that. That's okay. And finally we come to the giving of dharma. And all schools of Buddhism agree that this is the highest form of giving. And one of the sutras, the Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra, is a very good sutra on this. Manjushri is... Oh, I'm sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself.

[33:48]

I have Manjushri in here a couple of times. You've got to excuse me. I wear glasses and I have my notes way down there. I get lost occasionally. We're talking about the dawn of Paramita, giving of Dharma. Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, which is represented by that little statue on the other side of the incense bowl for me, is often depicted as holding a lotus flower in the left hand, and on the leaves of the lotus flower there's a book, and that's the perfection of wisdom, the Prajnaparamita literature. And in the right hand is a sword. The book is for the promulgation of the truth, and the sword is for the refutation of error, if you will. We have to both tell what's true and stop what's not true. So this is the two sides of giving the Dharma. Give the Dharma in both ways. In Asia, Southeast Asia, you know, that story I told you about Hasegawa, it's the monks, the priests, who give the Dharma, who donate that.

[35:09]

Here in the U.S., here in the West, it's not so easy, because we don't have a culture that's grounded in Buddhist ethics. This is a Judaic Christian culture, primarily, so it's different. So here, everybody can give the Dharma to everybody else. That's kind of nice. It's a big opportunity. This is one of the things that also came up in the Jukai ceremony, the ordination ceremony, is that it's quite okay, you know, and it's really a good idea that There's this blurred line between priests and lay, because we teach each other now. The roles are a little blurred, but that's okay. I don't think we need to be so sure of things, quite frankly. I think it's good for us not to be too sure of what's going on. Besides that, I hardly ever am. So the question comes up, you know, is how do we give?

[36:18]

And one of the sutras talks about that, and it says, the bodhisattva should always be very courteous to the supplicants and receive them with every mark of respect and deference. He should also be happy and joyful when he gives away anything. This condition is important and essential. The donor should be even happier than the recipient of the gift. A bodhisattva should not repent of his generosity after bestowing gifts on others. He should not talk of his charitable deeds. He should give quickly and with a humble heart. He should make no distinction between friends and enemies, but should give to all alike. He should give to the deserving and the undeserving, the wicked and the righteous, everywhere and at all times. And there's a little caveat at the end. But he should not lose the sense of proportion in his charity. So you don't give it all away at one place. But this is interesting.

[37:23]

It takes in just about everything we do with giving that gets in our way. So we have to be pretty free when we give. So that's how we give. And why or with what motive we give is set forth in this little dialogue between Sariputta and Subhuti. Sariputta says, what is the worldly and what is the supramundane perfection of giving? So the worldly perfection of giving consists in this. The bodhisattva gives liberally to all those who ask, all the while thinking in terms of real things. It occurs to him, I give, that one receives. This is the gift. I renounce all my possessions without stint. I act as one who knows the Buddha. I practice the perfection of giving. I, having made this gift into the common property of all beings, dedicate it to supreme enlightenment

[38:26]

and that without apprehending anything. By means of this gift and its fruit may all beings in this very life be at their ease, and may they one day enter nirvana. Tied by three ties he gives the gift. Which three? A perception of self, a perception of others, and a perception of the gift. The supermundane perfection of giving, on the other hand, consists in the threefold purity. What is the threefold purity? Here a bodhisattva gives a gift and he does not apprehend the self, nor a recipient, nor a gift. Also, no reward of his giving. He surrenders that gift to all beings, but he apprehends neither beings nor self. He dedicates that gift to supreme enlightenment, but he does not apprehend any enlightenment. This is called the supermundane perfection of giving. So, that's what we talk about. We give both ways. We just give the thing and we give it to somebody, but we also do more than that.

[39:33]

And we can live our lives that way, I think. We can certainly try. Simply and solely for the sake of bringing enlightenment to all beings. Now, Kshanti is the third one, patience, which you've used great hordes of listening to me so far. So this has been very good practice for all of us. But this perfection blends not only patience and forbearance, but also love, humility, endurance, the absence of anger, and the absence of a desire for revenge or retaliation. So you can see this kind of patience is pretty big. Not a small thing. It's much more than a stoical endurance of suffering. It's not stoicism. It's something much more than that. A lot of times we're patient. We just go, ah, well, I'll just wait this out, you know. I'll just sit here and be patient. If it kills me, you know, that kind of patience. It's not that. It's not that. And let's see.

[40:37]

Well, let's read a little bit more here. This one will, I think, make this a little more clear. This is from Tripataka, an old, old ancient Buddhist sutra, part one anyway. Brethren, there are five ways of speech which other men may use to you, speech seasonable or unseasonable, speech true or false, speech gentle or bitter, speech conducive to profit or to loss, speech kindly or resentful. When men speak evil of you, thus must you train yourselves. Our hearts shall be unwavering, no evil word will we send forth, but compassionate of others' welfare will we abide, of kindly heart, without resentment. And that man who thus speaks will we suffuse with thoughts accompanied by love, and so abide. And making that our standpoint, we will suffuse the whole world with loving thoughts, far-reaching, wide-spreading, boundless, free from hate, free from ill-will, and so abide.

[41:43]

Thus, brethren, must you train yourselves. Moreover, brethren, though robbers, who are highwaymen, should with a two-handed saw carve you in pieces, limb by limb, Yet if the mind of any one of you should be offended thereat, such a one is no follower of my gospel." Now there's a metaphor to deal with. You ever seen a two-handed saw that's got teeth about that long? So that's the kind of patience we're talking about. It's big patience. Big patience. And one of the things that allows this to happen is that early Buddhists believed that some of them anyway, that dharmas, with a small d, you know, the things, all the myriad things, pieces of wood, eyeglass case, me, just things, had a real nature. Ultimately, they had some kind of real nature. The Mahayanas didn't agree with that. They said, no, nothing has any abiding nature. Everything changes. Things come, things go.

[42:44]

And so, if that's the case, Why not have patients like this? Because there's nothing to be worried about. There's nothing real to be concerned about. duck soup, right? Well, I will tell you this much, that this perfection can only be practiced from the 8th stage of the 10 stages of a bodhisattva's career. And as I understand it, even the greatest teachers have only gotten to the 2nd or 3rd stage. So if you don't have that kind of patience, I wouldn't be too concerned. But you ought to work on some patience. You ought to work on some. Now this is another story which I really like. This is again a hasa gala. And this is A story a little bit more like one we can relate to, I think, rather than being chopped up with a big two-handed saw. Haskal was on a train in Japan, somewhere, a night train. He was going somewhere. And this man in the compartment saw that he was a priest. He was sitting there, I guess, probably wearing his robes and reading a book. And so he came out to him and he said,

[43:46]

I would like some teaching. I have a very bad temper. I'm a very impatient man. I have a really short fuse and I have done more harm with my short temper because of impatience. I would really like you to be able to teach me something about perseverance and patience. Can you do this?" And so Hasegawa kind of looked at the guy and he said, are you really sure you want me to teach you about patience? Are you really sure you want to learn about that? I'm not so sure you really want The man said, look, it's making my life miserable. I've had an awful time. My whole life has been a wreck because of my impatience. Please, tell me about patience. Hasegawa said, I don't know. I don't really know. The guy said, oh please, come on, I'm serious. Don't do this to me. Hasegawa said, all right, I'll tell you what. You just, I'm reading a book right now, and this is important that I get this read, so go over there and sit down and wait for about three stations, will you, while I finish this? And when your three stations go by, come back and ask me about this question, and we'll talk about it. So, they passed three stations, and a man got up and he came over to Hosokawa and he said, we've passed three stations, can you tell me?

[44:56]

Hosokawa says, tell you what? He said, tell me what? Tell me about patients. Hosokawa says, Look, I'm reading. Why don't you wait until I'm finished?" And with that, the guy gets really angry. And he says, look, you know, look, fella, I asked you to teach me about patience, and all you have to do is sit over in the corner. Now, come on, what about it? You know, I think you're nuts. You're not going to teach me anything. And with that, he turned around and started to walk out of the train. And as he turns around, he says, you know, he says, the next station is my station anyway. I've got to get off. And he turns around and starts to walk away and Hasegawa jumped up and grabbed the guy by the collar and put him down the seat and shoved him down the seat. He says, sit there! The man looks at him and he says, just sit there. The guy looks at him and he thinks Hasegawa is nuts. He thinks he's really got hold of a crazy priest. And so he's sitting there. Hasegawa just looks at him and he says, don't move! And with that he starts to read his book again. They pull into the man's station. The man says, sit down! The man sits there. The train pulls out of the station. Hasegawa leans up across and looks at the man, he says, do you understand my teaching?

[45:59]

And the man looks at him, very confused for a moment, and all of a sudden he goes like this, you know, and he says, I'll read you verbatim what Hasegawa wrote, because it's a very good statement, he says, how wonderful, I experienced patience. This will become my lifelong treasure. Well, maybe that's a little bit of hyperbole, but that's a good story, you know, I really like that story, because obviously Hasegawa showed the man patience. He didn't tell him about it. He showed him. Just like I showed you about patience here. I made you sit here all this time. He showed the man patience. He also practiced the Dhanaparamita. He gave this man, he gave a lot. He gave this man his time, his energy. He gave him the Dharma. And he used great vigor. I mean, he had to grab the guy by the collar, you know, and shove him into the seat, and he had to intimidate the poor man. So, you know, there's all three of the things I've been telling you about, all in one little story. You know, one tiny little story, which is a pretty good story.

[47:00]

I like it. So, I kind of want to sum up now, is that I think we're passing it on all the time. you know, every one of us, even when we don't know what we're doing, which is probably most of the time for most of us. And I think, I think we can practice the Bodhisattva way of giving with patience and with vigor, even if we, if we remember, especially if we remember that nothing really belongs to us. It's just passing through. My old teacher, Kobunchino Udagawa, said that one time. He used to give things away. People would give him gifts, all kinds of stuff. And then, you know, a month later, they'd see what they just is the spirit with which we do it. Remember I quoted at the beginning as saying that if we testify by the Bodhisattva training, we are Buddhas. This is what's most important. Our lives should reflect this Bodhisattva way.

[48:00]

Our lives should really reflect these Paramitas in our everyday actions, not just in what we say, but in what we do. Because if we just talk about it, that's just empty words. And if we just think about it, those are just empty thoughts. And we know about those from Zazen, don't we? The thoughts just come up and they go away. There's no reality there. But in our actions and in the way we live, what we do, when we put our bodies on the line, you know, sort of put our money where our mouth is, that's when we show the Bodhisattva way. We live it. That's what's important. Any time? A couple minutes. I'm getting better at this, you know. I make them stretch out. Are there any comments or questions? It's just like mixing milk and water.

[49:13]

You're there all the time. You don't have to do something special. You don't have to stand out. That's like being a crow in a snowfield, isn't it? Yeah, right. Right. Maybe there's a better way to do it. Just be it, maybe, huh? Yeah. Oh, yes. Recently, our cat passed away, okay? Which brought me to a realization of how bleeding things are. How does one deal with death? I mean, if there's reincarnation and eternal life, I mean, if the soul can die, why should one be sad?

[50:19]

And on the other hand, if it's gone, why should one be sad? How did you feel when your cat died? Well, at first I felt sad. What'd you do? I was crying. That seems pretty good, huh? And then it goes away, and I'm sad. That's what you should do, yes. As far as I'm concerned, how do you feel?

[51:00]

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