(upbeat music) This podcast is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for real life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, come and join us at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. Thank you and happy listening. - It's a strong title, isn't it? This is in the Dharma. And I came across it in a text by Nagarjana, the Bodhisambhara kara, served first line of a verse in that text. Great compassion penetrates into the marrow of the bones. It is the support of all living beings. So I'm making the assumption that great compassion in that line in this context is Maha Karana. Ordinary compassion that's been transformed through the fires of Shumutah. And that great compassion from the absolute Bodhicitta needs to descend, penetrate and even possess us, as Bante says. The Bodhicitta manifests, erupts, emerges as profound spiritual experience. But here in this line you get the very strong sense that it needs to descend right into the very marrow of our bones. So that's an interesting metaphor, isn't it? Our skeleton is a very important part of our body without it, we just be a blob on the carpet. The deeper than that, some bones have bone marrow. I'm not a medic, but I understand that in some bones there's undifferentiated cells or stem cells, bone marrow, that then become red cells, white cells and platelets which enter into our bloodstream or circulation. And they're very, very important for the health and wellbeing of our bodies. So it gives a sense of great depth, something penetrates into the marrow of your bones, it's really got into you. And if you look up marrow in the saurus, it says things like essence, gist, heart, kernel, pith, quick quintessence, an even soul, spirit and substance. But you get the sense that you're right into the quintessence, the depth of you, your bones, your experience. So this is how we want great compassion, Maha Karana, to express itself right into our very depths as a rather transformative experience. So often we think of body tetras or any positive skill promotions being in our heart center, that mean I'm not denying that, the heart center is very, very important. That's the locus of meta-compassion, generosity, faith, that's the locus for our visualization practice. And when I was thinking about this, I remembered that old lady in "Strictly Boring". "Strictly Boring" in the movie. (laughs) An old Spanish lady in Australia, that sort of shape. And she's trying to teach her young buck, my young man, how to dance. I think it was the rumba. And she's got a wonderful carriage, she's saying. Yeah, just from here, this from here, kind of down. So yes, like the heart and the marrow somewhere, and some plexus depth. So then having come across that quote, which I'm excited by, I came across another quote similar from the dual ornament of liberation in the chapter on benevolence and compassion. Which says from the marrow of their bones, Bodhisattva's view, every sentient being is their own child. In this way, they constantly have the desire to benefit others. So again, that's the perspective of the Bodhisattva. That great compassion is penetrating to the marrow of their bones, and from that perspective, they look out over sentient beings out into Sanghsara and see all beings as like their only child. So I went to us to hold that metaphor as an image of depth. Now, when I was thinking of doing this talk, I said, actually, it was to suit your money. I said, what was I talking about in the convention about Bodhisattva? She said, why bother? What is it and how to do it? I thought it was a very pithy framework. So I'm going to say, what is it? Why bother and how to do it? I'm going to try anyway. So I just want to remind us what Bodhisattva is. I'm sure we all know as it were. And of course, what we refer to is absolutely our ultimate, Bodhisitta, one can't describe or define. It can't be described or defined in words or concepts at all. It's beyond words and concepts. It's beyond time and space, so it's completely ineffable. However, it's often described as the union of the essence of voidness and the essence of compassion. So the essence of Shindita and the essence of Maha, Kari, and also those things perfectly conjoined or balanced. But the essence of voidness, the wisdom aspect of Bodhisitta is the realisation that all phenomena are by nature empty of any inherent existence. Substance for essence, all phenomena are like a dream. And then from this perspective, the Bodhisattva sees that all beings now perceived as without essence or inherent existence without a sense of self as it were, are ignorant of this truth themselves. They're ignorant of that perspective and consequently suffer. So this is similar, isn't to our refrain in the Bodhisitta practice. All beings desire happiness and wish to avoid suffering. All beings are of ignorance. In seeking happiness and seeking to avoid suffering, cause suffering to themselves and others. What a pity, what a tragedy. So the Bodhisattva sees that caravan of humanity staggering along the road of being caught in the net of Sanghsara, caught by the bounds of Sanghsara, the fetters of Sanghsara. So from the Bodhisattva's realisation of voidness springs great compassion. And Bantai says that that great compassion arises like an unseen flower. So in his poem, The Unseen Flower, he says, "Compassion is more than emotion. "It's something that springs up in the emptiness, "which is you when you yourself are not there. "So that you do not know anything about it. "If they knew, it would not be compassion, "but they can only smell the scent of the unseen flower "that blossoms in the heart of the void." So Mirarepa says more succinctly, "The supreme goal of the teaching "is the emptiness whose essence is compassion." And I like a quote by somebody called Lex Hicks and who has translated some of the perfection of wisdom, which was a little bit more complicated, but I've always been very inspired by this paragraph in his introduction. He says, "Paradoxically, the more radically "the teaching of perfect wisdom removes from our view "the slightest physical or metaphysical basis, "the slightest substantial self or world. "The more intensely we fall in love with living beings, "regarded in without exception as most precious, "most beloved, most intimately connected to our existence." So Bodhichitta, absolute Bodhichitta, that union of the essence of voidness and the essence of compassion. But then absolute Bodhichitta, ultimate Bodhichitta, is expressed in the web of conditional existence in the stream of time as relative Bodhichitta, as compassion or skillful means. But in the teachings, we're advised, if not warned, to hold relative and absolute in some kind of balance in a practical sense. So I think this is quite interesting. The text of the tradition says, "If we focus only on the voidness "or impermanent aspect in our practice "before we have the essence of voidness, "as it were in compassion and rise as spontaneous, "if we focus in practice just on the voidness "or the impermanent aspect, "there's a tendency that we could become detached "or even a little cynical. "If we only focus on the relative, "on ordinary compassion as it were, "well, the tendency is that we could become attached." So I think we often fall in the one way or the other, and I'm gonna come back to creative tension in the talk later. But I was thinking of sometimes the Bodhisattva ideal can seem so rarefied, so hard to relate to, that we can just think, can't we? Oh, I'm just going to be kind. And I'm not locking kindness, I'm not locking compassion, generosity, sympathy, and that's where we need to start in all those positive emotions, are the seed of Bodhis Chitta. But I think if we say it in that kind of way, because we are overwhelmed by the perspective of the Bodhisattva ideal, and without the perspective of voidness or impermanence, then this kindness will be limited, and that's not our intention. So it's important to hold the absolute and the relative in some kind of balance. So why bother? Well, I think you all know why you bother, but I guess we have a sense or an intuition, or even an experience of what life would be like, can be like, sometimes is like, when we do, we get out of our own way. We can drop those selfish, self-regarding concerns, even for a second, and respond completely to others with love and compassion. We have those experiences individually, in meditation, collectively. And that's very, very positive. We feel that expansion, it's a very happy, joyous experience. But we also, don't we? We know the pain when that experience fades, and we fall back into selfish concerns, and even jealousy, envy, resentment, blame, et cetera. So we experience that painful restriction. So at least we can imagine an experience, an ongoing experience where that open heartedness actually is unlimited and continues forever, as it were. And that's how we would like to be, I'm sure. And then there's so much suffering in the world. We just look out into the world. We just look at our friends or in our own experience, physical experience, emotion experience, our friends, bereavement, loss, illness, and then we look out into the world. There is so much suffering, it's overwhelming. And we long for a way to be able to face that experience, be able to be of help in that world of suffering. So those are a couple of reasons I think why we've gone. So some years ago, I got up really early, and I was going away from where I was living. So I turned on the news before I meditated, not something I do very often. And I want to know what the weather is like, what to wear, you know, how you do. And there was some terrible news on the news about some trouble part of the world, a part of the world that I had been to several times. So it kind of, yeah, it went in as it were. And then I began to meditate and engage in the green tower practice. And I was reasonably concentrated. So as I continued with the practice, I had this question that became more and more conscious, I suppose. And it wasn't a new question, but it was a question arising in the context of that practice, which was what's the point of sitting here, visualizing these wonderful beings, wouldn't it be better if I was out wherever it was, and trying to help. And it's not that I take my hat off to anyone who goes and helps in troubled spots, but it was in the context of a meditation practice. And it's a question I'd had over the years. And sometimes I suppose, expressed this doubt, but here it was more just, it just kept coming and letting it be and letting it arise and reflecting on it. And then I had the experience in the meditation practice of Avila Cathesh for a sudden becoming incredibly vivid, particularly the Tintamini in his heart. And he said really, this is the most important thing you can be doing. This is where you need to be, you need to really develop bodhicitta as your primary practice as it were. So that had quite a strong effect on me. It's not that I know that I don't have to practice day by day and practice all those little acts of kindness and so on, but I suppose all that needs to be underpinned as it were at least a partial glimpse of the essence of voidness and compassion. So that's been a, you know, I've remembered that experience and it stayed with me. And it reminds me a bit of a quote by Shanti Deva, the quote from the Garden of Awareness, where he says, "Where would I find enough leather "to cover the entire surface of the earth? "But with leather soles beneath my feet, "it's as if the whole world had been covered." So his whole text is about practice towards bodhicitta, but he's also saying, isn't he, that in a way it's a mind-training. The primary training is training the mind, the mind of generosity, the mind of compassion, any circumstances that you meet. So that was, I think, why bother? So I'm going to move on to how, and if I've got time, I'm going to look at three ways of developing bodhicitta. But before I do that, I just want to say that this is, we are looking at this in the context of making our effective going for refuge, real going for refuge. So perhaps it's worth just returning to the meaning of going for refuge, 'cause we just say those words, and going for refuge, and going for refuge, "My going for refuge, your going for refuge." And Banti said it, we should say really going for refuge to the three jewels, we shouldn't shorthand it. But he says, doesn't he, when he's describing the centrality of going for refuge, that it's a single, central, crucial, unique, existential, spiritual experience, which unfolds in different aspects, dimensions or facets, then you can deepen through different levels. 'Cause it's kind of profound experience, and it has these different facets. Unfortunately, the facet that a bodhicitta is called the altruistic dimension of going for refuge is terribly unpoetic when you think about the glories of the Mayan. But anyway, it's the other regarding aspect of that. Crucial, central, existential experience. And it awareness expresses that spiritual life and the spiritual path is by nature, is by its very nature altruistic. It has another regarding aspect and growth in harmony, friendship, love and compassion. So we're trying to make our effective level of bodhicitta, the altruistic dimension of our going for refuge, if real. It's on an effective level, it means that we have a whole-hearted commitment to act in accordance with the bodhicitta variety and all that that implies, and a genuine sincere effort to practise the parameters. And they were trying to, through all our practices, bring about that glimpse of the essence of voidness and the essence of compassion. Now, Vanti, it's quite important that he says, in the levels of going for refuge, you have ethnic provision, I'm not going to go into all this ethnic provision, but it's not effective in real that the altruistic dimension of going for refuge only applies to those first three. When you get to real bodhicitta, you've transcended altruistic dimensions and self-dementions, you've transcended self and other. So you're in a completely other experience as it were. He says something else has begun to take over. So he describes that in, I think it's looking ahead in a little way, describes that experience of the arising of real bodhicitta as a non-egoistic stream of spiritual energy, even consciousness, that manifests in the number of people simultaneously. And if that did happen, there would be no conflict. We would function in perfect harmony. We would be a true sangha and ariya sangha. We would literally be the hands and arms of our volatisha. And I remember being at that talk and talking. - Can you say that? - You can say mythic, symbolic. He said literally, I think we probably, many of us went to check that out. So it's interesting to reflect that, if we are practicing intensity together and that experience arises, we are literally, we are an ariya sangha, we are literally the hands and arms of our volatisha. And as Sushimani said in a previous seminar, he said, the bodhicitta was more likely to arise in a number of people working intensively together in a collective. And then he says, or in the practice of sevenfold pooja engaged in wholeheartedly. I'm gonna come back to intensive collective practice later on. So different ways of developing bodhicitta or making our effective going for refuge into real going for refuge are effective bodhicitta and to real bodhicitta. In a way, there's many, many, many, many practices and methods which can do that. In a way, any practice, practice with intensity and whole heartedness. And I think with the motivation to transcend the self of a dichotomy as it were, can give rise to bodhicitta. So the first one I'm going to, I've chosen a few and the first one I'm going to focus on is the practice of gratitude. So Bantis spoken about gratitude many, many times and actually he included it in his most recent talk on the combined convention. And he said it's one of the greatest and most important to Buddhist virtues. And he said he had much to be grateful for. So I remember that many years ago I studied in seminar with Bantis the dual moment of liberation and the chapter on malevolence and compassion. And this again is a line from a text that I've never forgotten. The line says the development of meta, or I think in the text it says benevolence, but the development of meta, loving kindness, depends on the memory of benefits received. So the development of meta, and I think by implication, compassion, because that follows in the same chapter, depends on the memory of benefits received. So in the text, the way that's unfolded is there's a graphic description of all the things your mum did for you, the sacrifices she made, the hardships she underwent, all the things she did when you were a tiny baby, all the kindness she showed you. So there's a long reflection on that, a great graphic detail of Tibetan mum, doing that with her Tibetan baby in that period of time, 14th century Tibet. The implications being that if you're really reflective on that, you know, how you did nothing for yourself. Someone did everything for you, like your bottom and what you nose and burp you. You know, when we had babies here on the convention, you can see, can't you, that kind of full time 24/7 care. So reflecting on that, because the relationship with one's mother is so strong, and I'm assuming here we have a positive relationship with our mother, first of all, you know, such a strong visceral, primary relationship, that reflecting on the great kindness and hardship, and sacrifice she underwent for you, strong gratitude rises. And that gratitude is so strong, you really want to repay the kindness. So then you reflect, and this may be a little bit more difficult for us, but you reflect, at least in imagination, in the great cycle of rebirth, every being at some point or other has been your mother. So they have shown you that same kindness that you reflect on, and the idea of the practice is to generate the same feeling of gratitude, the same intensities are to repay that kindness, and you think, well, what's the best way to repay the kindness of all sentient beings, who've been my mother in a previous life, and of course, the best way to develop Bodhi Chitta, because then you're a resource for them, and you're going to help them understand the nature of existence, and be free from suffering. There's only a couple of pages, but it goes from bottom wiping to Bodhi Chitta, and then a couple of paragraphs. I always sound like, you know, there's quite good, isn't it? And it just goes back to that quote, doesn't it, from the marrow of their bones? The Bodhi Sattva views all sentient beings as their only child. And then the Bodhi Sattva is the mother, as it were all sentient beings of the children. Now, it's not necessarily an easy practice for us, because in the West, you know, we can have quite complicated psychological relationships with our parents and with our mother, and Bodhi said this when we were studying it. However, a friend of mine took up this practice who had a very difficult relationship with her mother, and she did it just for a little bit every day before she meditated. And she did, you know, turn around a difficult relationship. She did heal that relationship. So you could use it in that way as a healing practice. I know with my own mother, it's not that I did that in that sort of conscious way, but I had a very difficult relationship with my mother back in the day. And I'd been on this seminar, and I'd been to visit my mother, not that close together, but I'd been to see her. And a very close family friend had died and had a very strong effect on her. And then I went on solitary. And somewhere all that came together and me becoming an adult, really. Really seeing my mother as an individual in her own right. You know, that turning around from thinking what she didn't do, what she didn't give me, how she got it all wrong, into thinking, oh, you know, she's a person with her own set of circumstances, her own set of conditions, her own troubles that I know nothing about, her own sorrows. And, you know, that kind of giving rise to a kind of great reliefs of love for her and letting go of resentment. So in a way, it wasn't such a focus practice, but I think it came out of that study. And it not only had an effect on my relationship with her, which it did, but on my ability to feel better and on my relationships with a lot of people. 'Cause I think if there's something not right in such a basic relationship, it has a big effect on us. So you can use it as a healing reflection. But Bante's point was, well, if it's difficult, it's supposed to be straightforward as a practice. I think it's difficult in any way, maybe don't do it. But he said, yes, but we can still reflect on benefits received. Now we've been given so much, we come into the world with nothing. And although the world's not perfect, the world most of us have come into. There's language, there's culture, there's all kinds of things. You can just sit and kind of think about all the things that when you first arrived, you had not contributed towards. Then there's the purpose is to naturally develop gratitude and then naturally want to give something back and then think, what can I give back that's most precious? And I suppose for us, it can be teaching the Dharma, can't it? Maybe it doesn't have to be, you know, the ultimate body chitter at that point, but, you know, I can give the Dharma to people. I can help people in any way I can, but I can also help support and give the Dharma. So very important quality. In a way, it sounds quite simple, doesn't it, gratitude? But it can have huge implications for our practice. So these days I tend to practice that in terms of the four mind-turnings. I tend to reflect on the four mind-turnings most days before I engage in another practice. So particularly those four mind-turnings of the precious human birth, death and impermanence, actions and consequences and the nature of conditioned existence. And I tend to focus, perhaps more on the first two. I think it's good to reflect on death every day. But the precious human birth, there are reflections there about your endowments and your freedom. And I think we could all find five minutes in a day and in our own organic way, reflect on benefits received and see what effect that has. I find it very heart opening and whatever kind of state I'm in and I'm never that good first thing in the morning. It kind of helps, it loosens me up and opens me up towards the following practice. So that's one way we can develop or make our effective 30 to two meal, 30 to two. Easy to do in daily life a little bit every day. So the second practice I've highlighted is Vazubandus IV factors. Now, Bante in the Bodhisattva ideal when he talks about practices to develop bodhicitta, he talks about practices of sevenfold pooja and practice of reflection on Vazubandus IV factors. So I'm not going to say anything about a sevenfold pooja, I think we do pooja, we know about pooja. But I think the interesting thing about the pooja is it's a gradual accumulative practice. Each verse kind of opens up out more and more, doesn't it? Whereas Vazubandus IV factors, particularly the second two factors in a way they focus on creating creative tension to such a pitch where there is a breakthrough. So this is what I'm going to talk about, creative tension. So just to remind you what those four factors are, the first one is recollection of the Buddha. So that thing's about energy and faith. The second one is seeing the faults of conditioned existence. The third one is observing the sufferings of living beings. And the fourth one is contemplating the virtues of the tatagata. So I'm just going to look at two and three. So seeing the faults of conditioned existence, I think Puneemala did this one yesterday, looking at conditioned existence and seeing that conditioned existence is impermanent, insubstantial, and if we don't understand that, that leads to Dukkha. So this is the kind of wisdom aspect, isn't it, we see through conditioned existence, we see through the mundane. And if we do see that things are insubstantial and impermanent, then the following from that is will be less enmeshed in those activities or those things, whatever they may be. So there's a sense of positive withdrawal and a positive side of things. That's a sense of freedom, of energy freeing up. So it's the wisdom aspect. It's a going force, as it were, from being completely enmeshed in the mundane. Sometimes it's referred to as withdrawal. So we're kind of feeling free and we're moving away from things, and it's a bit more of an individual experience, how I'm freed up, I'm freer. And then we're asked, and moving away from conditioned existence, and then we're asked, as it were, to turn back to saying sara, as it were, and contemplate the sufferings of living beings. So in the texts, this can be described in very extensive ways. It's every suffering of every realm, going into a great detail, so that you're trying to engender a new empathy, solidarity, love, compassion. So you turn back with that sense of involvement. I think that's expressed in that quote by Lexix. And the freer you are, paradoxically, the more you fall in love with sentient beings. Although sometimes it isn't that easy. So in a way they're opposites. You're moving away, you're moving towards. And I'm moving back towards. And I think it can be expressed in that myth of other the catastrophe in his form as the hero of the cries of the world. There's a story, isn't there, where other the catastrophe is liberated. He's free, and he's going to Nirvana, as it were. So he's off, isn't he? He's nearly at the pearly gates of Nirvana. He's nearly there. But there's something sort of slightly distracting him behind him. Kind of a very, very faint sound. But he eventually kind of turns back and to know what it is. And it is the sound of the cries of beings still enmeshed in Sanxara. They're pain, they're suffering. So in the story, in the myth, in the metaphor, he turns back. He's not any less liberated. But he turns back to help all sentient beings in Sanxara. Now, Banti's written quite a lot about creative tension. And I think these four factors and maybe creative tension, not something you necessarily consciously reflect on that much. So I just wanted to sort of highlight it, because I think it's interesting, because I don't know about you, but I like comfort personally. And we often think that tension is bad for us. And certain kinds of tension, of course, are bad for us. But there is such a thing as creative tension, its spiritual experience. So he says, in the surveys, a little bit more intellectual, he says it here, but he says, "It's like a spark that leaps up when two electrically charged terminals are brought into contact." So the bodhicitta arises not from theoretical considerations, but from the conjunction in the spiritual life of the devotee of two quite different, seemingly divergent trends of thought and feeling. So the art of producing the thought of enlightenment consists in stimulating these two trends, so that there's mounting tension between them that ultimately causes them to coalesce at higher level. But elsewhere, he's talking a little bit more practically. He says, and this is interesting, whenever there is a breakthrough from one level of spiritual experience to another, it's generally the result of a painful dilemma. So that is interesting to think about. Some problem that can't be solved intellectually on its own level. But it's a bit like the Zen Cohen. He says, "You don't need to go looking for a Zen Cohen. You don't need to think about the one hand clapping." Well, you can if you want. It's a paradoxical self-contradictory situation which just arises in your own experience. These co-ands spring up naturally in our own life and practice from our own effort to develop. And I suspect if we're practicing intensively, the more we'll find ourselves in those situations. So we find ourselves in an existential dilemma where we have two choices, two things. They're both valid. How do we choose? What do we do? It's an uncomfortable spot to be in. We're in a real dilemma. We can't escape. We have to act. We have to choose. He also says, "Our unconscious strategy is usually to try and suppress one side in order to feel comfortable." I mean, it's uncomfortable, isn't it? So we don't want that. But he says, "Eventually, you probably need to take both sides into consideration and there will be some kind of breakthrough." But he says, "We need to recognise them and learn how to work with them, not moving to one pole or the other for the sake of comfort." There's all kinds of dilemmas like that, like the life and death, self and other absolute relative wisdom and compassion, the big ones. But in our own life and practice, they're manifesting whatever way they manifest. So the trick, isn't it, is to spot them and stay in that uncomfortable existential dilemma. Stay with it as it were. So I was thinking about those kind of things in my own life. I mean, the one that came to mind immediately, some years ago now, was when, like 10 years ago, I was asked to become a public preceptor, which was a big responsibility spiritually and practically. At the same time, my mum got very sick. So two situations, two important situations, two situations I really wanted to give as much as I could to, and how to do that. And sometimes it did mean I needed to be in two places at the same time, which was, of course, impossible. But on other levels, it just was, you know, and I had fantastic support. I mean, I didn't do it alone and embrace those two situations alone. I didn't think of it in so much in terms of, you know, mounting attention to really need to do that. The attention was very strong. I thought of it really as trying to go deeper. I just felt I had to kind of go deeper and deeper to find some place in my experience and practice that could somehow, at least some of the time, hold those two, you know, very strong desires and commitments in the same me somewhere. So, yeah, not easy. You know, there were times when I would be in despair, I'd just be, you know, wrecked or whatever. But I think having to do that over, I think it was about three years, wasn't it? With all that support, which was, yeah, I think the Sanger at its very best, in friendships at their very best. I think I agree with you trying to do that, at least I hope so. Yeah, so sometimes they're not as big as that. Sometimes they're kind of small in a situation. And the way they happen kind of every day in somewhere, I don't know. Certainly. Do I want to be on my own? Or do I want to go and connect with people? That's one of my kind of off dialogue. Well, I'm lonely. Oh, I'll go and see people. Oh, I'm overwhelmed. I've got back to my room. I've lonely. So, parody. Experience. Being an introvert who manifests in extrovert, which is also one of those. So, sometimes they're just there, aren't they kind of, you know, into things anyway. Those kind of experiences. So, they can range in all kinds of different ways. I think the art is, isn't it, to realize when there's tension in that kind of way, that could be spiritually beneficial. Can you stay with attention? Can you use it as a koan in that way? And you can rat it up the tension. See what happens. I think there's such a comfort living society that might be a good practice for us. Now, Bante, he's not only written about it. I think it's part of the way he teaches us. I think Sengarachita is an agile, proper putter for the baby chitter. I think, I mean, I've been in lots of situations, teaching situations with Bante. Sometimes people who don't know Bante, sometimes people say this. They'd like to have more contact with him when they'd like to be in seminars and things with him, but it wasn't always easy. So, I think he's a great stirrer. He likes to stir. He likes to provoke. He likes to create the tension. He likes to up the ante. I think that's a way in which he teaches. So, I just got a couple of examples. You know, he's got this thing asking about more and more of less and less. Now, we can interpret that, and I think this is true as depth. But my experts sometimes are going to Bante and saying, "Oh, I'm doing this project and X, Y and Z about it." You know, finding it difficult. And he'll say, "Yes, well, you need to, you know, be more whole-hearted in the project." And you need to go on solitary. And you need to meditate more. And you need to spend time alone. And you need to see more of your friends. So, that's one way. And I think he sort of ups the ante. Nods of agreement. Another experience I have is being on seminars with him years ago. And some of those seminars were mixed, but many of them were single sex. And my experience on some of them was that Bante would go on and on and on about how great the men were. They asked a bit of questions. I can't remember. They did this. They did that. They did the next. Until you wanted to scream. I wanted to scream. And then I discovered from a domicherry friend of mine it just wasn't a one-way traffic. He did the same thing to the men. And this domicherry said to me, "If Bante says one more time, how well looked archery is by the women when he's on the women's center. How well they do this. How well they do that." You know, he was going to scream. He's a stirrer. Latest letter. It's provoking us to think. And sometimes, you know, things are one-way, don't they? He'll be over here. And then you'll go over there. He'll be over there. I've seen him do that in a discussion, actually. Kind of get a discussion going. When it was a topic we needed to talk about. And I can't remember the content, but I suppose everybody was getting inspired and going with it. And as we were going with it, I think we were getting a bit more rigid and a bit more literal, a bit more something, you know, but we were all going to go in. And then he just sort of went very feminine. And he just relaxed and said, "Oh, well." But blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like you've been taken, you know, you know, ugh, it's the microphone. You've taken to the edge of a press of it. So again, it's a very small example, but I think, yeah, he's a stirrer. He provokes. It's a way of teaching. And, you know, we need to notice our responses and reactions when we're in that sort of situation. It's not comfortable. Not comfortable. He's a great tease. And that's not almost comfortable. I have been teased. I'm saying mercilessly, but maybe that's the wrong word. But I have been on the seminar with him where there was something about me and my behaviour. That he just kept teasing and, you know, codding and poking him. He can also be incredibly kind, of course. I don't want to just think I only have those experiences, but I'm trying to highlight creative tension. I think the other way that he, in a way, encourages us to be in these kind of existential situations is to intense practice, both individually and collectively. So he, you know, he said the body jitter is all likely to arise in a situation where people are working intensively together in some way or other. So I think out of intense engagement in whatever way you come up against yourself, you come up against other people, you find yourself in those kind of situations of tension, don't you? You have to, if you're going to carry on living with those people, working with those people, being on a team with those people, whatever it is, something has to give at some point. So it isn't all about, you know, harmony, is it? Harmony is a hard one, hard one. It's an intensive effort, practice, engagement. I think that's why he encourages that, I think. It's a locus, you're writing the body jitter, but it sometimes, it just brings us up against ourselves and each other. And I suppose, you know, the movement was very focused around community centers and team-based right livelihoods many, many years now, it's not that they're not there, but demographically there's a shift and there's proportionately less people engage in those activities. So I suppose we just need to find ways, don't we, to intensively engage with each other? I think we can come together and retreat, some conventions, all the weekends, and so on. We can be in teams, you can find ways of working together, work at centers. We can live together and still work together, but I think we just need to find maybe different forms to bring about that intensive engagement as a means to develop body jitter. So don't shy away from creative tension, sit in the uncomfortable spot and see if you can up the ante. Okay, but one more means of developing body jitter. Remembering that there are many. So I've been inspired by the Bodhisattva ideal. It seems like since I first came along, partly because Bante's always taught and exemplified that. So yeah, I'm very into collective practice, very inspired by my practice of my Yiddan practice. I loved my own sutures at Bante and folded our love all the sort of magic and the mystery and the colour. I love all that. When I first came along though, it's interesting. I would want to save all sentient beings. I was very young. I want to save all sentient beings. And then I think, I don't know how to do it. So I get depressed and go back to bed. So we can be overwhelmed, can't we, by our useful idealism. So I think I needed to learn ways of working with those tendencies, but more realistic ways of working. So I took up the Green Tara practice. You know, I was joined Green Tara, but I think it was specifically because I was overwhelmed by suffering really. And I didn't understand for a while that actually what I was experiencing was horrified by anxiety or pity. And it wasn't really anything to do with compassion. So the Green Tara practice, I think that feellessness and that ability to just respond from that meditative aspect, from shouldn't let our two or sentient beings, you know, just trying to embody that over the years has been a practice. But more recently, I've been inspired by the mind-training teachings in the last several years. So these are the teachings particularly expressed in the eight verses and the seven-point mind-training. You may or may not be familiar with these teachings. In a way they come out of the mainstream Mahayana. They're often... You can see the connection back with the Bodhi Charivatara of Shanti Deva. I think what they do is take the central teaching in the mind-training, is taking hardship onto the path of how it's described, taking difficulties onto the path. So a teacher with one of the mind-training, great mind-training teachers says of this third section of the mind-training. By the gracious alarmist blessings, may I see whatever adverse conditions, events and sufferings before me as tricks of the evil spirit of ego-cleaning and use them as the path of very chipping. So it's a way of overcoming pride, giving up blame, seeing one's enemies, one's friend, or as a precious resource, seeing any difficulty whatsoever, a person or a difficulty, emotional, psychological, physical, not as an obstacle to practice, but a way of deepening one's practice. It's also a way of seeing, I think, what our priorities really are. So if our main priority is to have a comfortable life, so it has to be 99% of our priorities to have a comfortable life, some comfort is fine. So our main priority in life and any kind of adversity or difficulty will be seen as bad when it's seen as an obstacle. But if our main priority is for spiritual awakening, then we will learn to see adversity as an important element on the path, helping us to develop and particularly develop Christianity or patience, which is such an important spiritual quality for the Bodhisattva. So I particularly like the verses in the eight verses, particularly the middle three, because it's giving us very practical guidelines as to how to deal with difficult people and often our difficulties with others. So I will learn to cherish beings of bad nature, and those oppressed by strong sins and suffering, as if I had found a precious treasure, very difficult to find. So this is just someone we bump into, someone who's having a bad day, someone who's exuding, you know, unschoolful mental state, it's not particularly personal. They're oppressed by strong sins and suffering, so rather than react, you think, "Oh, I found a precious treasure, very difficult to find." It's very hard practice, it's very difficult, very challenging. And then it goes on, "When others out of jealousy treat me badly, with abuse, slander, and so on, I will learn to take on all loss and offer victory to them." So then it's a bit more personal, it's personal. And the last verse in this section is, "When one whom I have benefited with great hope, unreasonably hurts me very badly, I will learn to view that person as an excellent spiritual guide." So that's just to give you an idea of what we've been asked to do. So I think it's very interesting because it's asking us, another phrase from the mind training, which says, "Drive all blames into one." So you drive all blames into one, which is that ego clinging. So it's basic dharma, really, but it's kind of very potently put, I think. It's saying that whatever happens to us, and it's not denying that you feel hurt, or there may be harm done or injustice experienced, how you react within yourself, how you react to others, is your responsibility. And you wouldn't, you would only react as opposed to as patients in compassion if you didn't have that sense of ego, that thick sense of ego. If you were in touch with that open hearted love compassion and in touch with the essence of voidness, you would respond with compassion. So you're trying to turn something around, aren't you? It's very, very deeply ingrained. As a way of getting rid of that ego, cleaning that self-centredness, and also, you know, our kind of habitual ways of responding when we're hurt in some way or other, when our pride is hurt. However subtle, there's often a kind of desire to, as it were, redress the balance to kind of how ego wants to feel good again. You know, it can be a very subtle thought about, well, blame, but even sometimes some kind of retaliation, and even just within your mind, you may not be like this, I recognize those tendencies in myself. So it seems to me a very nitty-gritty teaching. To me it is a way of trying to get compassion, shanty, great compassion, down into the marrow of the bones. So, you know, the bodhisattva, the bodhisattva vows, the bodhisattva precepts, not to give into hatred, not to give into retaliation in any way whatsoever. So this is what you're trying to practice, and you're trying to bring that into being in your relationship with other people who you would normally react to. The practical way of doing it in the eight verses is you practice tongue-length, you practice the meditation way, you practice the taking and the sending. So one of the commentators on the mind training says you must learn to lean into difficulties. I really like that. I mean, there's a lean-in to difficulties. And mostly when there's something difficult, we lean out, don't we? So it's just slightly changing one's posture, I suppose, isn't it? Small steps. And another commentator says to do the mind training, you don't need great learning, but you do need great courage. So ideally in this approach to practice nothing is an obstacle, no difficulty is an obstacle, it's all kind of grist for the mill. Material will help you work on changing your mind's heart, training it around, developing, particularly chanting and compassion. So it's very difficult, but even to just remember it, I think, in a difficult situation, there's something even to just remember all the eight verses, something about, you know, precious friend. Just a memory of it. There are these verses to memorize actually, you can kind of give you that gap before you mentally react or physically react. So I've used this over the past few years, and I can't remember when I first got really interested in it, but again at the time that my mother was ill, my brother returned back from, I hadn't seen him for years, and I found myself living under the same roof with him for periods of time in the house, we grew up in when we were tingling. And he's an older brother, so I have no experience of life without that dynamic and without my samskaras in relationship to him. And it's always been for me a difficult relationship. So suddenly I'm in this very sort of difficult, for me, very difficult painful experience of things that went on as it were. And I just felt, I suppose I felt the pain of that difficult communication. I felt humiliated by the years of practice, you know, as part of the Bodhi Chitter, and I don't mind my brother. I fall back into patterns that I had when I was three. So I tried really hard, you know, I tried all kinds of things, and I put you down in the metabark, I wasn't even going to do anything about this. He'd be in the metabarvaner, in the Bodhi Chitter practice, in the refugee practice. He's in a lot of spiritual practice. But also, you know, these kind of reflections. You know, I just, sometimes I just would think I'm not getting anywhere. It's a bit despair that I could sort of turn around that kind of such deep condition in samskaras. But, you know, I think time passed and I think, you know, you wake up one day and you think, oh, you know, I feel, you know, I feel something's changed, you know, I feel freer of that constriction. So, very difficult work, but good work to do. And more recently, had some very, very difficult neighbours. Very close, flats, very, very close. Very, very noisy all out of the day. Very messy, probably criminal. And also, they did perpetrate, not severe, but a criminal act on entire country life. So, we realised, after a bit of undergoing this, I think it was nearly a year, actually, at some point, we realised in conversation to this type of country life, that we'd kind of gone, you know, and I think before that, we'd try to communicate with them and negotiate and things. And just, after the criminal acts, it wouldn't be gone. And, sort of, really start to live constricted and they just go about doing whatever they're doing quite happily and merrily. And you're obsessed with them and what they do and what they might do. Are they going to play music really loud at three o'clock this morning? Am I going to get any sleep? So, that kind of, you know, withdrawal and constriction. And we just decided to change, you know, well, we need to, yes, we've got into that state and we need to stop talking about them. We need to put them in our meta and we just need to kind of, yeah, open up towards them. So, it's a bit similar, I think, as trying to see them as people again and see them as an opportunity to practice. And, you know, I was in the process of thinking, how can I get back into communication with them, which might have been at some risk, I wasn't sure. So, I was kind of writing a letter just to kind of get, you know, my negotiated communication, medical thoughts kind of in some sort of shape. And then they got evicted. [laughter] Just very strange, like to do with me. [laughter] That's something changed in the situation on the left. But, yeah, in that process of trying to turn an incredibly difficult situation around, that's what the mind-training points to, I think. Whatever it is, however difficult, you know, you have courage. You have the possibility to turn it around. In the way we must turn it around in order to transform hatred, resentment, retaliation, and maybe particularly blame. It's so easy for them to blame, don't we? Particularly in our modern culture, we live in a blaming culture. And it's the ego clinging, which is the blame, which is hard to take on, isn't it? So, it needs quite a lot of reflection. But I personally have found it very helpful. It's a kind of, it's a down here kind of practice back by all the other wonderful, magical things about the bodhicitta. So, just some ways that I am reflecting on for developing bodhicitta, are many, many other practices and ways. But gratitude, creative tension, and taking difficulties onto the past. So, I wanted to conclude, just by asking the question, how do we know whether we changed our effective bodhicitta into real bodhicitta? And I want to support him back what Queen Marla said yesterday about a gradual process. So then it's a quote by Bante, some somewhere. So he says, "You might have read a Mahayana sutra and have strong feeling of compassion and devotion, which is genuine and sincere, but it is limited and can eventually fade." So, how can one be sure that one's made one's effective bodhicitta real? Even if you feel sure, it's only demonstrated by persistence in it. You may be suspicious after a long time that it is not fading, it is not becoming less. In fact, it is increasing, growing, and developing. But you need a long time to see whether or not it is just the effect of world effort that will probably lead to a reaction rather than truly spontaneous. We hope you enjoyed the talk. Please come and help us keep this free at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. And thank you. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]
