Joy, Virtue, and Overcoming Conflict

what I'd like to speak of very directly uh are a number of levels of uh fruits of uh benefits that can come from undertaking spiritual practice and it's not the benefits themselves but really a sense of our relationship to the circumstances of our life and the things that are happening to us uh that make those things alive for us the first kind of Happiness which can come through meditation practice spoken of by the Buddha is simply the happiness of living more in the present now admittedly there's also a certain amount more suffering from living in the present because to live in the present one opens to uh the vi udes of Life all of its things but there's a kind of happiness that we can discover as we allow ourselves a certain Simplicity of Mind what's called beginner's mind or mindfulness to just be with things as they are in the present and you get a very good sense of it being around children um my daughter who's not quite two years old and just had her first piece of asparagus and was you know first she ate a little from the end and then she tried the other end and then she squished it and a little juice ran out and that was interesting and there was a whole 15minute exploration of one stalk of asparagus um you see it a lot with children but it's not just children that it's possible for when we start to cultivate spiritual practice our sitting or walking meditation whatever it is it's a kind of renewing of the senses and there can come uh a freshness in food and tasting I don't know how many of you have practiced the eating meditation probably most through Retreats or classes and some people do the eating meditation and say wow it's the first time I've really tasted something in a long time and there's a there's a tremendous sense of joy that comes just in coming into our body body and into the senses in connection with nature because to be here in the present allows us to see the weather changes and the trees and the to feel the breeze a little bit not so busy just driving to get from one place to another to get our our work done there's a whole range of pleasant experiences that become available through the senses pleasure when we're here when we come to be more in in the present um what keeps us from that for the most part is our desires and our expectations our likes and our dislikes we've talked about that in many other evenings and it's not just us who have them a friend who this weekend told me she went to a uh a wild animal training Sanctuary uh up north of here run by a man who loves animals but also is his way of living trains animals for a films and commercials and things like that and he has cougars and leopards and and tigers all kinds of big cats and monkeys and things like that and they're all relatively friendly um so anyway they were going around and really just amazed because you don't get to get really close to a tiger or a panther or something very much maybe a little bit in the zoo which is not always the most Pleasant circumstances because they're in such little cages and so forth and they went by and um he had gotten them drinks he was drinking uh uh fruit juice and they were drinking Coke or some kind of some B bottled soda and he introduced him to the tiger I forget her name they tigress and he went over and he petted her her head was sort of sticking out of this little enclosure where she lived and then she looked up and licked him and he said oh I think she's thirsty so he gave her some of his juice and she drank out of his juice can it was really kind of nice so the person with him said well does she want some of my seven up or whatever it was and he said oh no she doesn't like carbonated beverages it goes up her nose you know she only likes fresh fruit juices that's her favorite and I remember going up two years ago to the gorilla Foundation which is a place above uh paloalto in in the Hills above paloalto and some of you may have read about it um the two main gorillas that live there are Michael and Coco and they're relatively well known because they've trained them in Sign Language they and Caroline actually speak around the same amount I think they they speak more they're certainly more intelligent at this point but anyway um and we went to see first Coco with a woman that had been uh an intimate of hers had helped to train her for a year or two and and signed fluently and we went up and coko saw her and got really excited and nice to see you back and then coko signed what did you bring me which is you know do you have any gifts or cookies or anything it was no different than Caroline it was just the same you know not what's here or something but what do you have is there something that you brought me um and you realize from the Tigers and the gorillas and we're all in the same boat whether it's people or animals or whatever those are the things that keep us out of the present and in some way um perhaps animals actually live a lot more in the present than we do we can refine we can reawaken that that that capacity to actually appreciate life through a training of awareness and through being somewhat disciplined in a sitting practice I'm not trying to sell it particularly but just talking tonight about the fruits of it if one if one does it that in doing sitting or whatever kind of meditation you do you can use it as a way to let go of the past and future a bit and come more into the present and then as Don Janeiro said the the great lesson of life is that the the Earth loves Don Janeiro because it knows that he loves the Earth and so wherever he goes on it his spirit will be happy he's so little he can't embrace it so he just kind of lies down on it it said in those books but the Earth knows that it's loved and so it brings to him each moment in each circumstance something new and something beautiful to be experienced and this is the the greatest lesson of life to to begin to open our senses to this gift that's around us I had a friend who did his doctoral dissertation on Peak experiences on what really was the high point in people's lives and what were the conditions for for those and one of the greatest events for Peak experiences was uh travel to a foreign country especially to a very different one other things were meditation practice and for some people it was having a child and for some it was uh certain special sexual experiences but a very common one was going to an entirely different culture and Country why should that be cell and most of you have probably done it it's because it allows you at that time to start to look fresh to see in a new way and there's a tremendous capacity that we have for our hearts to open and our senses and our our ears and our eyes to open to become more intimate with the world when we're not so busy when we live in the present and we can learn it from babies and from trees and probably from gorillas and tigers and things as well well that's the first kind of happiness that comes from beginning to slow down and pay more attention then the second level of Joy or happiness spoken of by the Buddha comes out of our attention to life and and where we are and it's called the happiness or the joy of virtue or uprightness of heart and there's a very deep and abiding kind of happiness that comes when we act in moral or virtuous or honest or you could just call it basically caring ways to the plants and animals and people and circumstances around us and it's a really a universal law uh one of the most amazing EXP experiences of my life was to be in the Cambodian refugee camp for a short time and I went initially to try and help as a translator on Medical Teams but I got sick myself and so I missed my boat missed my team and I ended up instead going there and connecting with an old Cambodian monk that I'd known one of the few old Cambodian monks to survive because most of them were killed in a kind of Holocaust there and this Camp was the camp it was in Sak of the camar Rouge of the Communists uh and it was 50,000 of them in these little Huts someday I I made a film of it I'll bring it in some night where people would like to see it um mostly the least educated of all the cambodians became the the the followers of the Communists a lot of them became that at gunpoint or didn't know much any different anyway and in this Camp were people mostly dressed in black who'd seen the kinds of Horrors black which was the Garb of the cham Rouge um kinds of Horrors that are really unimaginable to most of us in our lives and there was you could see a lot of sorrow and a lot of sadness and at the same time people trying to piece their lives together growing a little Garden in a twft plot outside their their 6-ft bamboo Hut which was all the space they were given really amazing power of life to grow one squash plant in their two feet it was really amazing but anyway this monk came in and he asked permission from the camp authorities to build a bamboo Temple which he did which was kind of a platform and a little little Temple over and the Thai people and the authorities liked it because they felt it would' be redeeming for the people that had been under communist uh domination he built it and announced that he was going to give some uh Buddhist chants and teachings and uh uh a kind of service for people and these were people who over five or or 7 years had not had any access to that where all the monks had been killed the temples destroyed and out of the 50,000 people the first time he did it 10 or 15,000 people came and he got up there he's a very wonderful and eloquent teacher really simple as great teachers are and he said I haven't come to speak to you about things from the past and I haven't come to speak to you about things from the future he said the past may have had difficulties in the future may contain difficulties but really to teach you from my own heart the the laws and the teachings of the Dharma about how to live in the present and to understand the meaning of happiness and he went in this talk and people were just wrapped it was quite extraordinary and at the end of his talk he spoke wasn't such a long talk he said there's one very important thing that I must say to you tonight and that is the Buddhist teaching on forgiveness he said and then he quoted a verse from the dapada which is the most famous of the Buddhist sutris and the verse is very simple he quoted it in Sanskrit or poly it says that hatred never ceases by hatred hatred only ceases by love this is an ancient law it was ancient far before the time of the Buddha and he gave that verse to people and people just started to weep it was wonderful because it was a kind of balb to their being and to their hearts after so much difficulty in those circumstances no matter what circumstance what culture what time the laws of morality or virtue whether it's the 10 commandments or the the Buddhist precepts are Universal and they bring a kind of Happiness called uprightness of heart because one acts in in harmony with the people and the beings around in the DAP it says the fragrances of Jasmine and Sandalwood and tagara are carried only as far as the wind will reach but the fragrance of the heart of a virtuous person rises even to the Realms of the Gods and if you know even a single person in your life who is really honest and very straightforward there's a kind of coolness and an an ease and an aura about them because they're person that you know speaks truthfully to not kill and not harm other beings to not steal or take that which isn't ours and to have a reverence for life and a sensitivity for all that we share of our resources to take care with our sexuality with intoxicants basically to not harm other people other beings through our action and to speak truthfully from the heart um Can Transform one's life and brings tremend is happiness in fact if only one precept were kept in this world if say if people only spoke the truth or if people stopped killing it would transform the Earth even if they killed animals if they just didn't kill other people it would transform half a precept not asking a lot you know it's such an amazing thing read you something babbling on tonight again this is from Ram's book and and I remember it because I thinking of it cuz I was at a conference for sa Foundation this this week which does a lot of wonderful work ramas is the chairman of that he said I went as a representative of the hippie community of San Francisco to meet the hopy Indian Elders to arrange a hopy hippie Bean in Grand Canyon we wanted to honor their tradition and affirm our common respect for the land as you can guess this was during the 60s four Elders sat at a kitchen table in an adobe building on four chairs there were no more chairs when I got there so I sat on the floor kneeling opposite them so I could see over the table but under it as well the youngest was 65 the eldest 110 I could see their hands on their knees under the table they look like roots in the earth there was something so absolutely connected about the whole quality of their presence we discussed what it might mean to bring together these different groups and generations of Americans they told me about the difficulties they've been having with white people one of their Braves had recently become involved in an auto accident with a truck from the Bureau of Indian Affairs the bureau truck had been at fault but the next day the bureau found a liquor bottle nearby and claimed the brave had been drinking we called the young man in and we asked him if he had been drinking one of them told me he said no and then this elder looked at me very directly very simply and said and he speaks truth a whole chill went through me at that moment it wasn't just that I believed him or that any doubt or suspicion I had was immediately released I experienced a kind of primordial memory of a time when you just spoke what was true a time when relationships were built on trust that's the way it was done that's just how we were so there's a tremendous sense of power and a kind of happiness that comes over one's life in respecting virtue in living with these in harmony with these laws it was pretty amazing at the sa conference lots of things reforestation project and the uh Pine Bluffs Indian reservation and the blind this project in Nepal and the uh working with Guatemalan refugees a lot of good things and a very good feeling one of the most touching moments was when uh a British uh man who was attending the meeting Sir John somebody I don't remember his last name stood up and he's he's the head of a world Organization for the Blind and he's blind himself and he has a great and wonderful sense of humor and a kind of old aristocratic British Heir about him and people were saying why they came and he stood up and he said he came because he enjoyed the the humor of the group and the good spirit of things that they were doing and he wanted to meet all these Americans with weird Indian names that he'd heard about for some time but he said mostly I came because somehow in the last three years your group has has relieved 35,000 Nepali people from blindness has cured 35,000 people and he said as a blind person uh I can't say anything more than thank you and it was just an amazing moment it was really wonderful so that kind of leads into the next level of Happiness spoken about by the Buddha the happiness of living in the present and appreciating life a little bit more more the happiness of paying attention to our actions so that they come out of respect for Life kindness not killing or stealing or harming because it hurts us as well as others then the third is that happiness or the joy that comes from generosity giving of one's love of one's energy of one's money of one's time because as is clear from the Bible as well we are just account in The Firm we don't get to keep it you rent the body for a while you know and like any other vehicle um it runs down and you have to get it repaired and its battery needs recharging and so forth and not if you don't own this what else can you own it's very very clear the beautiful thing about generosity is that it can be cultivated or developed like all these things virtue can be trained you can learn to pay attention to your speech or to pay attention to your actions or your sexuality you can pay attention and I've made a rule to myself in my own practice that if it's if at all possible whenever the impulse to give something arises I just do it and it's it's amazing because sometimes the little regrets will come in are you sure you want to do that all these things there are three levels of giving that are talked about traditional the first is called tentative giving that's where well you know I I'm not sure I'm going to use the sweater anyway and I've had it a long time and it's just sitting around in the Attic maybe I'll give it away to Goodwill or something I don't know maybe next year I'll be working in the garden and I need an old sweater maybe I should keep it and you go back and forth and finally say well all right better to give it it's good it's a start it it's a beginning of of practicing that releasing of things then the second level and you can hear as you listen how they actually get happier as you go along is called uh brotherly or sisterly giving friendly giving and that's the generosity where you really enjoy sharing what you have with other people just for the for the joy of it why don't you share what I have really delightful and then the highest level of giving is spoken about traditionally is called kingly or queenly giving and that's when you take such Delight in sharing and giving that you give of the best that you have you say why don't you take this is the best thing or the best whatever I have because your Delight is in the the receiving in the Delight of other people and it's an extraordinary capacity that we all have that can be cultivated and developed the Buddhist said if you knew what I do about generosity whatever he was able to see with his vision of lives and Karma and all this if you knew what I do you would not let a single Meal Pass without in some way sharing with someone why does it bring happiness brings happiness because it makes other people happy it brings happiness cuz it releases us from possessiveness and because it brings us into harmony with the truth which is that we don't possess things we just use them for a while and it's so powerful because it's an expression of Liberation the minute you start to learn to give of your love your energy your money your time whatever it is it's like you begin to express in action this nonattachment this non-grasping and that's what brings happiness to the heart the more attached you are the more you suffer you've probably heard that law before don't take it at face value okay look at it and see so this generosity is not just the joy of giving it itself but it's a really deep spiritual practice of learning to share to not hold from changu the old DST he says if a man is boating down a river and he sees an empty boat about to collide with his own skiff he will not be too angry or upset but if he sees a man in that boat he will begin shouting and cursing and shouting yet again and all because there is somebody in the boat yet if the boat were empty he would not be cursing and he would not be shouting if you can empty your own boat crossing the river of the world no one will oppose you and no one will seek to harm you and so maybe the deepest thing one gives up is the giving up even of one's views about things you'll have them I'm not saying you're not going to have views everybody has views but generosity is an ability to get to to somehow loosen up this sense of what's me and mine and I and it brings happiness now some people may have a question how am I giving if I'm just meditating I mean where's that where's the service in that where's the giving in that and as I've spoken in other nights there are the near enemies to uh the Divine states of meditation the near enemies of of uh love which masquerades as at it as it is attacked M the near enemy to compassion is pity they all separate I'm attached to somebody out there or that poor person is suffering and they're different from me and the near enemy to equinity or balance is indifference or not caring true spiritual practice is in entering and engaging in life with a full heart and a full being all of our coming into life but doing so wisely seeing that one moment changes into the next and you cannot stop it the way that spiritual practice seems to work for most people is that it is cyclical or it has Spirals and if you listen deeply inside there will be times when the best thing you can do for the whole earth is to go and be silent the deepest thing that you can do and in that silence to come into a restored relationship with your body to let go of its tensions and its holding and its fears to breathe a little bit to let your heart open a bit to feel the things that have built up in you the fears and anxieties and resentments and all those things and to release those and to come to listen more to the wind to the birds so that when you return out of that silence your actions are in tune they have a certain Grace they're connected more with the depth of your heart heart and your being then there are other times when it's very clear there is Injustice there is disaster there is sorrow that calls for your response and you go to the refugee camp or you join the the disarmament group or you work to feed someone who's hungry or you work with your neighbor one of the most amazing things Mother Teresa said um um in one of the visits we made to her she said you know I don't need we don't need all these white people coming from the West to help the poor Indians she didn't say it quite in this tone mind you but but it was it was sort of that she said they don't come to help here cuz we need their help she said they really come for themselves which was true I mean that's why I went I didn't go to help some poor Indian I went to go and cuz I was so moved by what I'd heard and I wanted to see and she said and what I hope they learn more than anything else here is that it's not here in Kolkata that they're needed but that they can learn some Spirit of caring for another person and bring it back to their neighborhood to their house and the two or three houses around them and to the things that are very closest to them and when we asked her about nuclear war war and would she make a statement for national public radio or whatever about spirituality and social responsibility and nuclear disarm all these and she says I don't get involved in those big things she said certainly they're terrible and they take all this money away from people who are hungry to build those things she said but for me I want to find and show people how to find Jesus in the person nearest to them to to uh put oil on his feet that have walked so far in the desert or to take care of the children of the neighbor next to them and then she went into this long wrap against abortion and um it's it was a very traditional kind of Catholic thing and she's also talked about before so it didn't surprise me she went on and on about that and at first I kind of said oh you know I could almost turn the tape recorder off here cuz I've heard it so much and I it's not to say that I'm for abortion but I am for people being able to choose even though abortion is a very deep and and difficult thing um I don't say anything simple about it but as I listened an amazing thing happened cuz I realized that what she was saying wasn't so much that people shouldn't be able to have abortions but she was again saying you got to have reverence for Life everywhere and the problem is not so much that we should stop the ability of to have people to have legal abortions but maybe if the culture changed and there have been such cultures where it was not only possible but considered even a beautiful thing to give birth to a child even if you couldn't take care of it and to find or place it with someone else who could love it but if our culture said that's a really great thing for a person to do and there was the support and means in our culture so that people who got pregnant could do that this is really what she was saying then uh then also the need for abortion just wouldn't be there so much um and it was a pretty amazing thing for me to start to listen to it in a new way there's a lot more on all sides one could say about abortion and I don't mean to make that the main topic tonight but her point was very compelling it was pay attention and care for Life close to you and let that be your expression of of your spiritual Life That's Not the Only Rule too sometimes it has to be far away you have to listen in your cycle is it time to go in is it time to come out is it time to to care for things close to you is it time to act in a global way they're all really a part of it our lives are Spirals and Cycles our moods change from hour to hour and day to day meditation sometimes it's very silent sometimes it's filled with noise and busyness and worry and anticipation if you say I only want it to be really silent what happens very discouraging isn't it so the heart has to be big enough to Encompass these extremes and this brings us to the next level of happiness or joy that the Buddha talked about which is the joy and the happiness that can come from a collected or peaceful or concentrated mind and heart which is again like generosity like caring like virtue it's something that is innate in all of us all of these are our human Birthright our our riches our capacity and it can be nourished or developed or trained and this kind of Joy comes as we learn through meditation or whatever spiritual practice we have to let the Mind settle and to open the mind and heart [Music] heart and steady it usually it's it's kind of wobbles and vibrates and and wanders and meanders and worries and flops around right you understand that through these prior things through living more in the moment through some practice of mindfulness through uprightness of heart through putting our life in order with people around so there is isn't a lot of regret and struggle and strife and and conflict through generosity through learning to give and share all of these things bring a kind of Happiness to the heart and they provide a basis for a still mind then one can use the breath or Vis visualization or a loving kindness meditation one of 100 ways and using that in simple and regular way learn to make oneself more peaceful more collected Stiller like a candle flame in a windless place and a universal thing happens when the Mind becomes quiet and that is that you become happy and on deeper levels of concentration the Mind actually becomes filled with light first a sense of certain lightness that's because you're not worrying and planning all that stuff when you're concentrated stops for a little while you're just there but then there's some other strange things that happen don't ask me why but it's Universal whether it's Sufi or Christian or Buddhist or whatever if you talk to a good Yogi somebody who knows how who's trained themselves to concentrate when you get concentrated the body and the mind get filled with light first it becomes clear and the breeze passes through and it's empty like a crystal goblet and then it fills with light not all the time and you can't force it but through the capacity that we have of letting go and then of training a stability of mind we can touch those places it's not just yogis in caves in India lots of people who go on 10day Retreats have those experiences sometimes or in in Daily practice when one learns how to concentrate and there's a kind of happiness and peace that comes because we are finely settled we are finally really where we are that is very wonderful and very profound and from it can come a real deep sense of Love uh this Deepu I've talked about this old woman Yogi from Kolkata who a a great great master of all the kinds of somar practices as well as uh Insight Meditation and so forth the main thing one experiences in her presence is just this tremendous sense of Love whoever comes into her presence she just loves you it's really nice needless to say people like to go and hang out around her uh it's it's very wonderful and we asked her one time in an interview um you know what do you meditate on what what's your inner practice and she said well I do loveing kindness meditation and then the the mind fills with light and then I I see that um uh there's just that um and uh so then it turns into peace and from that peace Comes This profound sense of non-attachment and everything is at rest she said that's all said oh how sweet you know does that happen all the time well pretty much there's a sense when the Mind stops moving so much that we can come to of nonseparation cuz most of the separation comes from our thinking and our thoughts and when the thoughts quiet that sense of separation and divisiveness and struggle stops and it's it's blessed it's really in any tradition it's blessed and is a it's in Buddhism it's called the happiness of angels a good translation for it it's the the Brahma or the Divine abodes the the happiness of angels and that again can be practiced you can practice concentration you can also practice filling the mind and the Heart with Loving Thoughts you can make that your concentration if you want I've told often the story of Kal ruche old wizen Tibetan llama going to the uh to the aquarium in Boston and going from tank to tank oh money PM kind of tapping on the glass as he goes and somebody asked why do you do that ruch he said it's to get the attention of the fishes inside and then I bless them so that they too might be liberated and just the spirit of bringing us may this person and that and this being and that one may you be happy and you and you and you what a kind of joy to have then the last and the highest happiness spoken of by the Buddha was the joy of wisdom of pra so we've had Donna cavana the traditional Joys the joy of understanding in a deep way the laws of life and coming into harmony with them all things all created things are impermanent they have the nature to arise and to pass away one who sees this or who lives according to this who's who comes in harmony with this truth comes to the greatest happiness it's what Alan Watts called the wisdom of insecurity and this is the happiness or the lightness of not struggling with the truth and the truth is that everything that comes into being passes away every person every thought every feeling every relationship you can love it you can honor it and if you really accept that it's not yours to hold you can actually love it better cuz you don't manipulate it so much you don't need to CU it's doing its own thing to bring the mind in the heart to see clearly the law of impermanence to see clearly the ungraspable of a single moment what happened to this morning where is yesterday where is your childhood precious though it was or difficult though it was what happened to your college education you can't grasp a thing impermanent ungraspable and yes suffering suffering in the sense suffering is not quite the right word unsatisfactory as long as you try to make it last or be the thing that you can rest on cuz you can't rest on it and when you look at it closely it has light and dark and up and down and sweet and sour and Pleasure and Pain and when you say right thank you that's the way it is on this Earth anyway for now that looks like the way it is I'll accept it I'll take the ticket and go for the ride instead of saying stop stop the train I want to get off I got on the wrong train I don't like it this way when you accept these basic truths of impermanence of ungraspable of The Duality of things of the 10,000 Joys and the 10,000 Sorrows then there comes the deepest kind of happiness possible which is the happiness of no longer fighting the the war is over over being with things and stopping the war it takes a lot of Courage as Don Juan says only as a man or woman of knowledge can you withstand the can you withstand The Path of Knowledge it's not so easy CU as one opens the the the as it said the the temples get brighter but the lines at the gates get fiercer and if you really really open you see not only the joys but you see the shadow you see your fears and insecurity you face truthfully the mortality of your body of of death um you look to see pain being there is equal to pleasure that they're both there and that's not an easy thing but it's possible and it that's the the center through which the heart opens and the mind opens there's a description in the um Suzuki Roshi's book Zen mind beginner's mind of Suzuki roshi and it's a little bit Troublesome because there are so few people around like Suzuki roshi you tend to get idealistic when you meet somebody like that but it's someone describing him after he died is one of the editors here um uh and in a way it really speaks to what's possible for all of us she said a master is a person who has actualized that perfect Freedom which is the potential for all humans in this case they use he for Suzuki roshi he exists or she exists freely in the fullness of their being the flow of their Consciousness is not the fixed repetitive patterns of the past that's our usual self-center entered Consciousness but arises spontaneously naturally from the circumstances of the present the results of living in the present in this way the quality of their life are extraordinary buoyancy Vigor straightforwardness Simplicity humility joyousness Serenity uncanny perspicacity and unfathomable compassion their whole being testifies to to the reality of what it means to live in the present without anything said or done just the impact of being around someone who lives so much in the present can be enough to change one's entire life and then they go on to say what's so amazing about it is not the extraordinariness but the utter ordinariness of it which was really the quality around acha which this very direct simple obvious a spade is a spade and what's here is just what's here and then there comes a possibility with accepting what's present of playing with it of dancing with it of doing whatever is called for of responding to it zen master Sasaki roshi went asked why did you come to this country to teach this big picture on his brochure with this question underneath and he said I didn't come to America to teach sasak is a different one than this one he's in in Mount Baldi and Center an old one Southern California he said I let others do the teaching I came to America to have a good time I want Americans to learn how to really laugh and he sits there in kind of his son's end posture with this great smile on his face really this is the last of the happinesses of the Buddha and when I went to see old hinana Loca went in and he greeted me fondly and was it was very very pleasant and then he said I've told this story before too he said well you teach Buddhism I hear I said yeah and he said so what is it that you teach anyway and U kind of on the spot there and I said well trying to think of what the heart of it is I said the heart of what I try to teach is nonattachment because there's nothing that is I or me or mine no self nothing that we can hold anywhere and he looked at me and he smiled even more and he said no self no problem and he just started to Roar with laughter it was just a great moment no self no problem little self little problem lot of self big problem so I read something to you again this is from Thomas Merton when he visited Sri Lanka went to palona Rua uh the Ancient Temple where these huge Buddhists are carved in stone out of the cliff and there's a Buddha seated and a Buddha in his resting and Par Nana posture mertin says he approached them Barefoot on this grass it's an ancient and very silent place that few people go and has been there for 2,000 years or so and he said that to him they were the most beautiful and compelling pieces of Art in all of Asia and they are they're just amazing there they were the Silence of these extraordinary faces carved out of rock yet somehow alive the Great Smiles huge and subtle filled with every possibility questioning nothing knowing everything rejecting nothing the piece not of emotional resignation but of shunyata emptiness that is seen through every question without trying to discredit anyone or anything without reputation without establishing some other argument all problems are resolved and everything is clear all matter all life is clear everything is emptiness and everything is compassion I don't know when in my life I've ever had such a sense of beauty and spiritual illumination the thing about it all is that there is no puzzle there is no problem there is no mystery he said just this to see things without resistance without putting up some other argument without trying to make the things other than what they are and again this doesn't mean that one doesn't live in the world and respond at all but that response comes from a place of inner acceptance and understanding and peace peace rather than reaction or fear or sense of territory and it's all the difference in the world all of these kinds of Happiness are as relevant today as they were in bodia India or binaris 2540 years ago the joy of living in the present and appreciating life fully the joy of virtue and uprightness of heart honesty the joys of giving and generosity and sharing the joys of learning to train instill and steady the mind and heart and finally the joys of wisdom of living life seeing the flow of impermanence and living in that truth they're all here for us and they are possible through our our own personal practice questions comments thoughts I did cheer myself up there's something there's something very um well as it says in the sutras the Dharma is good in the beginning beginning good in the middle and good in the end something just really good about it I remember um there another aside thinking about ramas because he was around just yesterday the day before I remember talking with ramdas at one point about teaching with he and a few other people and he was in one of the periods that he gets in as most teacher do anyway of some doubt about well what do I know more than her or him or in this position maybe we don't but it's we it's a job you know it's something to do it's doubt or or uh um also sometimes in dealing with our own kinds of personal fears and difficulties and so forth our own impurities saying well what right do I have to tell somebody else to be generous when I see times that I'm not and so forth [Applause] and so uh someone who was standing there asked well how do you teach when you're in a space like that you know and you've booked yourself to do a whole three Monon tour and halfway through you feel that way what do you do and his response was really very uh beautiful one he said um he said that what he discovered was the purity of the question question the purity of the asking from people that he was with touched and evoked that place of Purity or beauty in himself and even if he was having a very difficult day or in a rotten mood or having his own struggles and doubts the sincerity of the asking evokes the sincerity of our response and I think that's really true for all of us that it's really a gift to even meet someone who wants to look at truth it's part of the power of sa that we share in coming together anyway questions comments please um how would you reconcile learning to live in the present with um taking an active role in changing your life okay uh there really couple of levels to it that need to be understood when speak about living in the present or also not being so caught in thoughts of past and future and so forth doesn't mean to abandon them because they are a useful part of our life we need our memory we need our our plans and even if you're fully enlightened it all still operates in there are so they all say I don't know from experience so it's written memory is still there and so forth but for for the most part we are driven by those things we are in some ways caught by our memories and past circumstances and worries and plans and so we live a lot in the past and future and a little bit in the present and in a way spiritual practices to reverse that to be rather than the uh the servant of thought and worry to be the master of it to use it when it's appropriate planning itself is important but it can be done in the present moment and the best kinds of planning the best kinds of direction of our life come with two things first that we accurately look at what's here rather than living in our fantasy so the first step whether it's our personal life or the nuclear arms race or something that you want to change the first step is to say all right what's actually here and really see it how is my life working or what's happening in the world around and then the second step which also comes a great deal living in the moment is to listen to your heart and your intuition and the deepest voices that say now what do I really value what do I most care about and out of those often will come a sense of direction from those then you can think or make plans so there's a real power in coming into the present moment that can be used to affect the direction in one's life does that make sense um I guess the part that I don't quite understand is um I know was picture that living in the present partly includes acceptance of what's Happening MH and so if you're accepting what's happening then you're going to learn to be so happy with that that you'll never make any change so I don't think that's there's another there's another source for change beside being unhappy which is a very important thing to know I we respond out of unhappiness and you don't have to worry about getting to that advanced stage too quickly by the way you know if you close it's fantastic um most people I know find that there are Cycles like that but it doesn't seem to last so long may it last long for you but um there's a whole different reason for making change in the world beside that you're unhappy or miserable or things aren't going well and that is compassion and so there are people that I know or periods in one's own life where you can be genuinely contented and happy in yourself so you're not struggling with things and yet you see Injustice or ignorance or suffering around you and there's a kind of movement of the heart not so self-centered particularly but just a natural innate response because we're not separate because actually we're all connected that comes in that presentness and comes in that moment of feeling that so that there's a motivation for Action that's very different than just response to one's own discomfort look you don't have to believe this particularly I mean any of these things um they're really things one can study in oneself so look and see see if there's times when you feel happy and content and yet you notice that there's some injustice or some ignorance or some suffering that calls for a response for you and see if you can sense when it comes from from Compassion or caring as opposed to discomfort CU I think you'll see that both of those operate