Good morning. Those of us who lecture have been asked to introduce ourselves at the beginning of the lectures. Sometimes you can sit here and hear somebody talk to you and not know who they are. So anyhow, my name is Jeffrey Schneider. I practice here. I'm a priest here. And for my sins, I am currently serving as the director of this facility. You can all hear? Yeah? Okay. Yeah? Good. Okay. So what I'd like to do is I'd like to see a show of hands, please, of people who either are here for their first time or who are here maybe for the first few times. Can I see a show of hands? Ooh, great. This is particularly good because this lecture is for you. The rest of you old timers can fall quietly asleep or slink out as you will. Well, that's always an option, I suppose. Okay.

[01:10]

Okay. So I'm going to depart a little bit from our usual format, so I offer apologies to anybody who needs them. This afternoon from 1.30 on, we're going to be doing a meditation workshop for people in recovery, and I'm going to be one of the people who is going to be leading that. And as I was thinking about it, I was thinking that, actually I asked if I could lecture today for that reason, and I was thinking about how much, for me at least, and for many people I know, the Twelve Steps of Recovery programs can illuminate our Zen practice and how much similarity, mutual clarification, mutual illumination

[02:14]

there might be. So I'm not really going to talk about recovery programs so much, but what I would like to do is to use those Twelve Steps as a way to talk about sort of basic Buddhism, Buddhism 101. So I'm going to use them as sort of, I hope to use them as sort of a trellis upon which to hang the succulent fruit of the Dharma. You may laugh now. So let's start, shall we? Step one, we admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable. Buddhism, as you may know, is pretty simple. The first sermon that the Buddha preached

[03:21]

was about what he called the Four Noble Truths, or maybe what they called the Four Noble Truths after the Buddha preached. Let's hear what he says about the first one. This is the first Noble Truth, okay? What is the Noble Truth of suffering? Birth is suffering, aging is suffering, sickness is suffering, death is suffering, sorrow and lamentation, pain, grief and despair are suffering. Association with the loathed is suffering. Disassociation from the loved is suffering. Not to get what one wants is suffering. In short, the five aggregates affected by clinging are suffering. In other words, the whole complex of this body and mind is deeply involved with suffering. Now the word that the Buddha used actually was dukkha, which is translated as suffering, but can also be understood as incompleteness, unsatisfactoriness, what have you. Okay? So admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable.

[04:25]

Is that suffering or what? And you know, it doesn't have to be alcohol. Substitute your own favorite addiction. You know, is it a drug? Is it a substance? Is it a person? Is it an idea? Is it an emotion? Are you addicted to pleasure? Are you addicted to suffering? Are you addicted to being a victim? Are you addicted to excitement? Are you addicted to depression? Are you addicted to the idea of who you are? You know, we are addicted. I am addicted. I am deeply bound up in creating and defending the boundaries of the self. And if this isn't suffering, I don't know what is. And if this does not make my life unmanageable, I don't need anything else to help. That does it quite well, thank you. So what we're talking about here, what the Buddha Dharma is discussing, what the Buddha's talking about in the First Noble Truth is some radical flaw that we feel at the basis of our life. Some

[05:32]

lack somehow, some missed beat in the rhythm of our lives over and over and over again. You know, our Christian friends would call this perhaps original sin. You know, something that is not there, something that we are acutely aware of, some deep longing that is perhaps never filled or that feels as though it will never be filled. This is suffering, you know? And the Buddha did not say that there was no pleasure in the world or no joy or no happiness, but he did point out that whatever we love will change. You know, the person we love will change or go away or die. You know, that great job, you know, or that really neat car or the perfect lover or, you know, it's all going to go away. It's all going to go away. And people will always and inevitably disappoint us. And we will always and inevitably disappoint those we love.

[06:36]

Maybe not always, but inevitably. So our lives in general, you know, are unmanageable, and we compound the unmanageability and the suffering by trying to manage them. Can you hear me when I talk facing this way? Okay, because I want to see you guys too. And we also compound the suffering of our lives when we try to manage other people's lives, which some of us also like to do, to greater or lesser, with greater or lesser skill and success. As I said, I'm director here, so I know all about the suffering that comes about trying to manage things. Step two, we came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Okay? So there are two things going on that we can talk about in terms of Buddhism in this step. One is the belief that there is a basic sanity underlying all of this insanity,

[07:41]

and that we can be returned to it somehow. Okay? So that's what I want to address. And that I also think is what the second and third noble truth address, if we can find them. Here they are. Okay. Second noble truth. What is the noble truth of the origin of suffering? It is craving which renews being and is accompanied by relish and lust, relishing this and that. In other words, craving for sensual desires, craving for being, craving for non-being. But where on does this craving arise and flourish? Wherever there is that which seems lovable and gratifying, there on it arises and flourishes. And the third noble truth. What is the noble truth of the cessation of suffering? Now, this is the one you want to pay attention to, right? It is the remainderless fading and cessation of that same craving, the rejecting, relinquishing, leaving, and renouncing of it. But where on is

[08:45]

this craving abandoned and made to cease? Wherever there is that which seems lovable and gratifying, there on it is abandoned and made to cease. Now, that sounds pretty harsh, but I think it's just the Buddha's way of telling us without any frills what's really going on. And the whole thing, we would never come here and want to practice or practice anything if all Buddha told us about, if all Buddhism told us about, if all any spiritual practice told us about was suffering. You know, the Buddha said, my teaching is that I show you suffering and I show you the end of suffering. So that's what draws us. So what he's saying here, of course, is that our suffering is caused by our clinging. You know, I talked just a moment ago about how we, or at least I, and I presume everybody else, constructs the self, makes the boundaries very definite and continues to defend that at the risk of everything. And we defend it in various

[09:52]

ways. We defend it with money. We defend it with prestige. We defend it with love. We defend it with control. We defend it with substances, whatever. The boundary of the self cannot be breached. And we are clinging desperately to some notion of who we are and what would happen if we let go. That's the third noble truth. So let's talk about the basic sanity that we hope is underlying all of the unmanageability of our lives. So what we say in this step and in our practice is that there is a wholeness possible and we cannot do it by ourselves. And there's a paradox, of course, here, because we must do it by ourselves, but only by not doing it ourselves. So we like paradoxes in Zen particularly, not because they're cute, but because they actually express the experience of our lives. So what I'm talking about here is what Suzuki Roshi calls,

[10:56]

pardon me, when I say we can't do it by ourselves, I got a little ahead of myself there, when I say we can't do it by ourselves, what I mean is the small self, the small mind, the mind of like and dislike, aversion and desire, not the troubled water of our thinking and emotions, not the neurotic self that we have constructed out of fear and we try to preserve at all events. So the healing and the sanity that we're speaking of cannot be grasped by the self which is the construct of memories and fantasies. And memory and fantasy, if you examine them, of course, are functionally the same thing. By grasping and manipulating by the self that is sorrow and frustration, that is the product of causes and conditions which arise and cease. So let's see what, if we can find it. I have a couple of things that I want to read here.

[12:02]

Yeah, I want to talk about what Suzuki Roshi talks about is big mind, the mind that is not the mind that I just described. Now for those of you who are new and may not know, Suzuki Roshi was, pardon me, the founder of Zen Center. He was a Japanese Zen teacher who came to America and founded these temples. And what I'm going to quote to you from is from his book, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. The big mind in which we must have confidence is not something which you can experience direct objectively. It is something which is always with you, always on your side. Your eyes are on your side, for you cannot see your eyes and your eyes cannot see themselves. Eyes only see things outside, objective things. If you reflect on yourself, that self is not your true self anymore. You cannot project yourself as some objective thing to think about. The mind which is always on your side is not just your mind. It is universal mind, always the same, not different from another's mind. It is Zen mind. It is big, big mind. The mind is whatever you see.

[13:13]

Your true mind is always with whatever you see. Although you do not know your own mind, it is there. At the very moment you see something, it is there. This is very interesting. Your mind is always with the things you observe. So you see, this mind is at the same time everything. This is what Suzuki Roshi talks about as big mind. The mind that liberates us from small mind and that is always available to us. In other words, the power greater than ourselves that can restore us to sanity. Okay. I've got all this stuff here and I'm kind of losing track. Excuse me. Okay. Oh, there it is. Okay, so let's go on to step three, which is

[14:15]

made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him. As a friend or as a friend of mine says, as we didn't understand him. So let's read the fourth noble truth. What is the noble truth of the way leading to the cessation of suffering? It is the eightfold noble path. That is to say, right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration. So right here at the very beginning, you know, right view and right intention. That's where we make our decision. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over, right? But the decision that we make in terms of our Buddhist practice is just that, the decision to practice, the decision to follow the eightfold path to the cessation of suffering. You know, and we have,

[15:17]

we make a decision to turn ourselves over to big mind, as it were, to practice or to whatever we want to call it. We decide, and this decision to practice is oddly enough beyond the realm of choice and preference. So we make this, we make this step of faith. You know, it doesn't have to be a leap of faith, okay? Five percent sincerity is enough. That's quoting Yasutani Roshi? Is that who it is? Michael? No. Michael's like, anyhow, somebody, some famous Zen guy. Five percent sincerity is enough. Okay. And, you know, this decision to turn our will and our lives over, this decision to make the decision to practice is the dropping away of the body and mind. Dogen Zenji, the founder of this school in Japan who lived in the 13th century, talks about dropping away body and mind. We turn ourselves over. This is the Bodhisattva way, the Bodhisattva

[16:21]

vow. And we turn ourselves over to this Bodhisattva vow to save all beings. At the end of the lecture when we chant, we'll say the Bodhisattva vows and you'll hear what they are exactly. But we turn ourselves over to this basic sanity and to our own innate legacy of enlightenment. And for those of you who don't know about Bodhisattvas, I will read to you about them, about us. This particular quote is from the book The Mind of Clover by Robert Aiken Roshi, who is a wonderful, wonderful Zen teacher who has been teaching for many years and now lives in Hawaii. Okay. Bodhisattva. That's us. Okay. Bodhisattva is a compound Sanskrit word that means enlightenment being. There are three implications of this term. A being who is enlightened. That's our basic sanity, by the way. A being who is on the path of enlightenment. That's turning it over. And a being who is on, and one who enlightens other

[17:22]

beings. We'll talk about that later. The whole of Mahayana metaphysics is encapsulated in this triple archetype. Oh dear. Avalokiteshvara is the Buddha from the beginning and is also on the path to realizing that fact. Avalokiteshvara, by the way, is the Bodhisattva who symbolizes compassion. Her name means the one who hears the cries of the world. Avalokiteshvara. Avalokiteshvara is the Buddha from the beginning is also on the path to realizing that fact. Moreover, this self-realization is not separate from the way of saving others. For you and me, this means that saving others is saving ourselves. And saving ourselves is realizing what has always been true. As disciples of Buddha, we exemplify these three meanings. Learning to practice, to accept the role of the Bodhisattva is the nature of Buddha's practice. Avalokiteshvara is not just a figure on the altar. He or she is sitting on your chair as you read this. When you accept your merciful and compassionate

[18:24]

tasks in a modest spirit, you walk the path of the Buddha. So that's a little bit about the Bodhisattva. And I'd also just like to quote briefly Suzuki Roshi on the way of the Bodhisattva, also from Zen Mind Beginner's Mind. The Bodhisattva's way is called the single-minded way, or one railroad track thousands of miles long. The railroad track is always the same. If it were to become wider or narrower, it would be disastrous. Wherever you go, the railroad track is always the same. This is the Bodhisattva's way. Even if the sun were to rise from the west, the Bodhisattva has only one way. Her way is in each moment to express his true nature and sincerity. So what they're both saying is that when we practice, when we take this Bodhisattva vow, we turn ourselves over to something that is greater than ourselves, something that is actually beyond our personalities. And isn't that a relief?

[19:30]

Step four, made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. At the beginning of every, at the full moon on every month, we have a ceremony here called the Bodhisattva ceremony. And what we do there, and this is our version of the oldest ceremony in Buddhism, when the monks and nuns were all living out in the Indian wilderness, they would come together once a month. Actually, I think it was more than once a month, but at least once a month to recite their vows and to do repentance for any vows that they had transgressed. So we do this, we do this too, every month. And we begin by saying, All my ancient twisted karma from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion, born through body, speech, and mind, I now fully avow.

[20:39]

So we tell on ourselves. We admit that we have been less perfect than we would ideally like to be. So Buddhism, or the practice of Buddhism, is often talked about as comprising three basic elements. The element of precepts, or morality, shila, the morality of meditation, and of wisdom. And the precepts are what we talk about when we do the Bodhisattva ceremony. Okay, and the precepts, let me see what Akin Roshi has to say about them, because he's pretty good. Well, maybe we don't know what Akin Roshi has to say about them. Yes, the 16 Bodhisattva precepts, two are archetypes, skillful means for use in guiding or engagement with the world. They are not commandments engraved in stone, but expressions of inspiration written in something more fluid than water. Relative and absolute are together

[21:48]

blended. Comments on the precepts by Bodhidharma and Dogen Zenji are studied as koans, but our everyday life is a great multifaceted koan that we resolve at every moment, and yet never completely resolve. So the basis for our morality, our ethics, our basis for moving gracefully through the world are the precepts, and I'll just read them to you. I take refuge in Buddha. I take refuge in Dharma. Dharma is the teaching. I take refuge in Sangha. Sangha is the community of those who practice together. I vow to refrain from all evil. I vow to make every effort to live in enlightenment. I vow to live and be lived for the benefit of all beings. I vow not to kill. I vow not to take what is not given. I vow not to misuse sexuality. I vow to refrain from false speech. I vow to refrain

[22:48]

from intoxicants. I vow not to slander. I vow not to praise self at the expense of others. I vow not to be avaricious. I vow not to harbor ill will. I vow not to abuse the three treasures. So every now and again, you know, we have to look at this stuff and see how our vows are coming along, and this is what we do in the Bodhisattva Ceremony every month, and this is what we do in the Four Step Inventory. So I want to issue a caveat here, because without the basis of morality, without the basis of the precepts, meditation practice is actually quite dangerous. Enormous power comes out of this practice, and if it's not fully grounded in morality and compassion, monsters are created. So it's very necessary to see ourselves through and through.

[23:58]

Step five, admit it to God, to ourselves, and to another human being, the exact natures of our wrongs. So in our practice in Buddhism, what is very, very important to us is to have a good spiritual friend, you know, somebody that we can talk to, somebody who can see us thoroughly through and through, somebody with whom we can be completely honest and to whom we can be completely transparent. We cannot do alone, because we cannot know ourselves by ourselves. In Twelve Step Programs, this person is often called the sponsor. In our practice here, it's the Zen teacher or practice leader or good spiritual friends, and there's a very famous Zen saying, which is, if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him. So it's also important that our good spiritual friend or our teacher, we must understand that this is only a man or woman like ourself, who is simply willing to

[25:03]

be a mirror for us, and will always eventually disappoint us in some way or another. And it's very hard work to learn how to use a teacher. Training a teacher is very hard work. It really is. Teachers only get trained by the people who are willing to take the time and train them how to do it. And they're going to make a lot of mistakes, for which they must be forgiven. Just try it yourself. So this whole thing about the precepts and looking at our faults and taking in stories, these are not the confessions of a miserable wretch, okay? But it's about exploring together the truth of our life, and it's about clearing the pathway so that we are better able to serve and be of service, and to be a bodhisattva. And this process of working with a good spiritual friend is painful, scary, joyous, and ultimately liberating. A monk asked the great Zen teacher

[26:06]

Yunmen, how is it when the tree withers and the leaves fall? Yunmen replied, body exposed in the golden wind. When we have seen through and through all the games and masks and lies and secrets, and they've all fallen away, we stand exposed, body exposed, body and mind exposed in the golden wind. Step six, we were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. Step seven, humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings. So this is a very interesting step, viewed from a Buddhist perspective. It's one that people often, these two steps rather, are ones that people often have a lot of problem with. But the way I like to approach it is to think of it as an invitation to examine the nature of the self, okay? Now the Buddha said, there are three marks of conditioned existence, okay? One of them is, we talked about this

[27:07]

earlier, right? Dukkha, our unsatisfactoriness, that all of our experience is involved with suffering. The second one is transitoriness, everything changes constantly. And the third one is a little bit harder to grasp, it's called no-self. So what he meant by that, I think, is that there is no nugget of unchanging us-ness, okay? It all changes. The body changes constantly, the mind changes constantly. We may think that we are defined by various things, and frequently we find ourselves defined by our problems, our character defects, our fears and our cravings, and our memories, which, let's face it, are mostly made up anyway, right? So what this not-self is telling us, what these steps are telling us, is that change is possible. Change is possible,

[28:09]

and we don't need to be caught by some idea of ourselves, some fixed idea of ourselves. And we can do this because we live in the vow, because we live the life beyond our character defects when we live in the bodhisattva vow. We live beyond greed, hate, and delusion. And we are not instantly freed from greed, hate, and delusion, but we're not caught by it. Now, in Buddhism we talk about the three poisons, which are greed, hate, and delusion. And sometimes we say that each person as he or she comes into the world has a predominant character defect, if you will, or predominant defining position vis-a-vis the world. So a greed type is somebody who always wants more of. I need more, I need more, I need more, I need more. I want some of that. Oh, doesn't that look good? I bet that's tasty. And this is one way of shoring up the illusory self. You put a lot of things around it, ice cream cones and new cars and girlfriends and

[29:13]

boyfriends and houses and jobs. And then there's the hate type, of which I'm a fabulous exemplar. And this type is the person who doesn't want anything to get close enough to puncture that barrier of the self. Go away, not having any, no thank you very much, I can do it alone, goodbye. Okay? And the poor delusion type. He or she does not know what the hell they want, but they're really confused and they don't know. Sometimes a little of this looks good and sometimes I don't want that, but maybe I want that, or do you think I should have that? I'll just tell you a little anecdote. I was working once at Tassajara in the summer as a guest, as a cook, and there were three of us who were responsible for cooking for the guests. We were so perfect. I was wandering around cursing and banging things most of the summer. My friend Jonathan was shoving just about everything he could find in his mouth. And poor Brian was looking at us, both of us, and sort of wandering around with his eyes on the ceiling, totally befuddled. It really taught me that these things,

[30:15]

I mean, they really happen. But the good news, okay? The good news is that through practice, through a bodhisattva vow, through practicing these principles in all of our affairs, the three poisons are transformed. What a concept. And the greed, the greedy type, who wants more and more and more, becomes attached to goodness and to virtue and to the dharma. Give me more practice. Give me more opportunities to be of use. Give me more of this. Give me more of your wonderful presence. Let me be with you. And the hate type is also transformed. And what hate transforms into is penetrating wisdom, the ability to see through all the crap, especially our own, you know? And that's very useful too. And the illusion type, the delusion type, you know, this person, when transformed by

[31:20]

practice, is no longer caught, not caught by intellectual or emotional constructions, but moves through the world and through her life with great freedom, because the realization has come that it's all a story. Okay. So step eight, made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. Step nine, made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. And step ten, continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it. So these three steps for me are about sangha. Now sangha, as I said earlier, is one of the three treasures, okay? You've got your Buddha, you know, dharma, which is the teaching, and sangha, which is the community of those who practice together. And what's really interesting to me is that in Buddhism, you know, we put sangha right up there with Buddha. It's not like this, you know, it's like Buddha, dharma,

[32:22]

sangha, all three of them together. So the sangha is just as important as Buddha and dharma. You can't, I mean, you can't separate them out, but just as important. So that's really, really a good thing to hear. You know, you are just as important as Buddha. So these three steps for me talk about the harmony of the sangha and also about letting go of everything which prevents us from seeing each other as Buddha. Let go, getting rid of the obstructions that stand in the way of the sunlight of the spirit. So it allows us to see when we are in harmony with each other, we not only get to see each other as Buddha, we get to see ourselves as Buddha. You know, the teacher mirrors you back and your friend mirrors you back. And when you can see Buddha in your friend, your friend will mirror back Buddha to you. So once again, this is not, you know, correcting these, what,

[33:22]

our shortcomings, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It's not the work of a desperate wretch, but it's the work of a bodhisattva who clears the channel so that she may truly be a bodhisattva. Okay. Step 11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him, praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out. So I bet you think I'm going to talk about meditation. Wrong. Zen means meditation, I think most of you know, or now you all know. And many of you I think came for Zazen instruction, meditation instruction today. And so Zen is that school of Buddhism which has Zazen meditation as its primary activity. We chant and we do rituals and stuff like that, but Zazen meditation is the main thing. So having said that, you all know about that, I won't talk about Zazen anymore.

[34:26]

But prayer. Now prayer is something you don't hear a lot about in Buddhism, or at least in Zen. So I'd like to talk a little bit about that. And what I think of as prayer in our practice here is actually an outgrowth of our vow. And the word devotion comes from the word vow or vice versa. Anyhow, they're the same root. Okay. And so the devotional practices that we use here, I used to think we're just kind of like frosting on the cake or something that we had to do because it came from Japan and we hadn't gotten rid of them yet, but when we really got it together, all we do is Zazen. But it's not true. Bowing, chanting, working mindfully, the chants we say before meals, bowing before we use the toilet, going through our day mindfully, whether we're here or out there, using one of the practices that I do as a mantra practice,

[35:31]

offering incense. These are all prayers. Okay. And this is not the kind of prayer that presumes one person here and some super person up there getting it and granting or not. You know, this is about, this is an empty prayer. Okay. A prayer which just totally expresses that which is with no need for anything but itself. It's a very hard practice actually. And you know what comes out of prayer? Compassion. Gratitude and compassion come forth from prayer and generosity. And sometimes we practice specific generosity and gratitude practices. But you know, a long time ago, I was really lucky. I was able to hear the Dalai Lama speak and he said something which like really blew me away. He said, wisdom comes forth from compassion. See, I always thought it was the other way around, right? You know, I do all this intense

[36:34]

practice and then I get enlightened and then I'd be compassionate because then I'd be able to put up with you. You know, bless you. But so what he was saying was that it's not that way at all. You know, compassion comes first. And if you think about it, it makes sense, right? Because unless we have compassion for something, unless we're willing to drop our barriers towards someone or something, you know, we can never know it thoroughly. We can never know it thoroughly. We can never know ourselves thoroughly unless we have compassion, unless we are willing to be with and suffer with, you know. So in the Heart Sutra, which is one of the chants that we do here every day, you know, Avalokiteshvara. Remember Avalokiteshvara? One who hears the cries of the world, the compassionate one. The compassionate one there is the one who gets wisdom. We say that every day, but you know, we don't often think about it, you know. So

[37:35]

the primacy of compassion is something that is very important in this school. And we develop that, as I said, one of the ways we develop that is through this kind of prayer, this devotional practice, okay? I think. Step 12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we try to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, actually these steps are in themselves a spiritual awakening. In the Zen school, as Dogen Zenji teaches, who founded the school in Japan, you remember, 13th century Japanese guy, he talks a lot, and we talk in this school about practice enlightenment, like one thing, okay? It doesn't mean that we practice in order to get enlightened. It means we practice out of our innate enlightenment. Each one of you who is here

[38:38]

today is here because you have had some vision, however fleeting, of enlightenment, okay? Each one of you, that's why you're here. And it may be just like that. It may be something that you have again and again, and it makes you keep coming back for more. You may never come back here. You may need to find the working out of your vision of enlightenment in some other venue. But it's your innate enlightenment which brings you here. And this is a very good thing to remember. And you know, it says, having had a spiritual awakening, you know, the word Buddha is a word that means the awakened one, you know, the guy who woke up, you know, wake up and smell the coffee. That's what he did. And you know, so, carry this message. You know, the other day, I was sitting in the zendo, doing my zazen, and it occurred to me, oh, step 12 is just the bodhisattva vow to save all beings. It's the bodhisattva vow to save all beings. And I like that a lot.

[39:39]

I'm almost finished. I want to read you two things, if I can find them. And, yeah, which sort of, in many ways, sum up to me the things that I like best about both of the spiritual practices I've been talking about today. The first one is from the book Alcoholics Anonymous, and it's one of my favorite passages in the literature of recovery. This is what we call the promises. If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are halfway through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past, nor wish to shut the door on it. We will

[40:42]

comprehend the word serenity, and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them. Hmm. And the second thing that I would like to read in closing is something that we do here many times a week. It's called the Scripture on Loving Kindness, the Metta Sutta.

[41:47]

This is what should be accomplished by the one who is wise, who seeks the good and has obtained peace. Let one be strenuous, upright and sincere, without pride, easily contented and joyous. Let one not be submerged by the things of the world. Let one not take upon oneself the burden of riches. Let one's senses be controlled. Let one be wise but not puffed up. And let one not desire great possessions even for one's family. Let one do nothing that is mean or that the wise would reprove. May all beings be happy. May they be joyous and live in safety. All living beings, whether weak or strong, in high or middle or low realms of existence, small or great, visible or invisible, near or far, born or to be born. May all beings be happy. Let no one deceive another nor despise any being in any state. Let none by anger or hatred wish harm to another. Even as a mother, at the risk of her life, watches over and protects her only child, so with a boundless mind should one cherish all living things, suffusing love over the entire

[42:52]

world, above, below and all around without limit. So let one cultivate an infinite goodwill toward the whole world, standing or walking, sitting or lying down. During all one's waking hours, let one practice the way with gratitude, not holding to fixed views, endowed with insight, freed from sense appetites. One who achieves the way will be freed from the duality of birth and death. So I feel as though I've talked a very long time and I apologize for that. If I have said anything which has offended or confused you, please excuse me. If, on the other hand, I have said anything that has been at all interesting or helpful, please keep it as your own. Take what you need, leave the rest behind. So, thank you. May our intention...

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