It Will Be Good - a dharma talk by Kaspalita

So welcome everybody, lovely to see so many people here. It's a nice mix, some people's first times, hello, and some medium people, you know what I mean. Yeah, in terms of being around the Sangha, Satya Robyn has been around for a long time. "We have the most lovely thing." "Candy." Yeah, so I called this talk "It Will Be Good," which is a bit of a joke really, so I apologize because I've already told this story in service on Wednesday and Satya Robyn said it about 4 or 5 times, but some people haven't heard it, so I will enjoy telling it again at least. So, last time we had a talk, a month ago, Satya said to me, "Oh, you're doing the next one, what's it going to be called?" And I sort of went, "Well, I don't know," and made a face, and then I said, "Oh, it'll be good." Then Shenyen piped— who isn't here tonight— piped up and said, "Oh, that's a good title for a talk." So, I took it as a bit of a challenge. And what it reminded me of was that phrase that Julian of Norwich, the anchorite, is famous for. "All is well, all should be well, all manner of things will be well." Yeah, so it's, "Sin is behoven, but all is well, all should be well, and all manner of things should be well." So that sense of, despite things falling apart, something that allows us to feel okay or at ease, or something that we can lean into that's reliable in the midst of this world, which is famously unreliable. And I thought I'd start by talking about a 5-day nenbutsu retreat that I did in the winter of 2007. Really, because we've got someone here, Emma, who's just done 2 days of continuous Nembutsu chanting on retreat with us. So Nembutsu is, I suppose, it's a mantra or a prayer, you could say, that we use in this tradition, connecting this foolish being that we recognize is full of greed and hate and delusion and all sorts of other things that get us into trouble, connecting us to something that isn't those things, that's characterized by love, by loving kindness, by wisdom, that we call Amitabha, which means limitless light and limitless life. And when I went into that retreat, I had a very clear idea of what Amitabha was, and I came out with a less clear idea, but a more open heart and a more open mind. So the retreat I did was in effectively what was a garden shed, although it was insulated and it did have electricity, so it was comfortable enough even though it was November, at the bottom of the garden in the last community that I lived in. And when I arrived in that community and I met Pure Land Buddhism for the first time, I wasn't at all devotional. I didn't, I wasn't really connecting with mystical practices. I'd got quite a pragmatic view of Buddhism, and suddenly encountering all these things that were a bit otherworldly, I sort of, I couldn't quite make sense of them. What I did make, what I did appreciate was the community, which was full of laughter. And I saw Dharma Vijja giving a teaching about the Lotus Sutra, which I'll mention later, and he was just all lit up and he was sort of at ease, and I thought, "Oh yeah, he knows something that I don't know, so I need to be close to him to find out what it is." And I sort of knew on some level that just going to see him once in a while wasn't going to be transformative, because I was plunged back into my old life. And all the old habits and thought patterns would come back. So a couple of weeks after I visited for the first time and saw him giving that teaching, I moved in, and then a year later was this 5-day nenbutsu retreat. So for me, Amida, whose name means infinite light and life, as I said, I took that to be the sort of vast universe, which is one way of taking it. But I understood that at that time in quite a materialistic sense, quite a sort of physics sense of the world. So it inspired awe in me, but it was something that seemed understandable and that I could fit inside my head, and it wasn't very personal, and its power came from a sort of natural process that could be comprehended by my own mind, or maybe if not by my mind, but By Brian Cox or Stephen Hawking or someone. Anyway, I went in and did the chanting, repeating 'Nam-myoho-renge-kyo' connecting with this thing that I was characterizing as the universe. And there was a poster of a golden Buddha on one side of the shed, and I was mostly turned towards that. And sometimes when I was turned away from it, the image of the Buddha would just appear in my mind. And at some point, about two-thirds of the way through the retreat, I had an experience that I could— that it was like somebody tapping on the outside of me, and my outside was a bit like a hard shell, or the place the tap was. Which was my intellect, I think, to some degree. And this crack appeared in it, and what came through that crack was this sense of, oh, maybe there's more going on here than I was giving the universe credit for. Maybe there's something that I'm getting in touch with that I— that is bigger than the words that I put around it, that I can't quite characterize just purely in terms of the material universe. And I didn't know if there was or there wasn't, but that possibility became alive during those 5 days. And I continued to practice, and my practice deepened in connecting with that, and it's still— you can't quite put it into words what we're connecting with. But something about the words of Julian of Norwich, "All things shall be well," and so on, have something of the same feel to them as what I was connecting with when I was doing that practice. That it's present all the time, that it's much bigger than me, maybe bigger than the universe. Again, this is a sort of poetry rather than a physical description, because you can't quite get down to it. But that it's reliable in a way that circumstances aren't reliable, and that occasionally when I come into contact with it and my mind isn't full of selfish thoughts, I have an experience of being loved, I suppose. Of feeling like, oh yeah, I can lean back into this, I can trust it, things are going to be okay. And not necessarily that things will turn out in the way that I want, although I think there is something about tuning into this that makes that more likely to happen, just because when you're more relaxed and at ease, things are more likely to go the way that you want them to go. But they don't always, but that that you can still have an experience of freedom, being at ease, whatever it— none of these words quite get it, but of being settled in the midst of this world. And I think when I saw Dharma Vijja teaching about the Lotus Sutra, He was in touch with that. And at the beginning of the Lotus Sutra, as in the beginning of the larger Pure Land Sutra, which some of you know, it describes how the Buddha appears lit up, and it talks about various characteristics, but a lot of them is, "Oh, isn't he looking radiant today?" I think of the words in the Pure Land Sutra, and it's similar in the Lotus Sutra. Somebody notices that there's something about him that is sort of— it's shiny, he's giving off a sort of radiance. And one of the disciples says, "So what's going on? What's that all about?" And someone says, "Well, this is how he looks when he's in touch with the Dharma." Dharma is the word that means the Buddhist teachings, but it also means the sort of fundamental reality of the universe. 'When he's in touch with this fundamental reality, he usually looks lit up like this, so we're going to get a good teaching today.' And that was a bit of my experience seeing Dhammavijja like that when he taught about the Lotus Sutra. So the Lotus Sutra opens with this image of the Buddha being lit up, and the beginning of it is, 'How wonderful the Lotus Sutra—' Most of the Lotus Sutra is a description of how wonderful the Lotus Sutra is, which for me, when I first read it, was quite a frustrating experience because, like, okay, yeah, but when's the actual teaching gonna start? You're just telling me how good it is. Where's the content? And there is some content in there, but it spends a lot of time telling you how wonderful it is. And how there's also a bit of sectarianism in it because it says 'Well, the enlightenment, you know, the liberation that this teaches is better than the liberation that those other Buddhist schools teach.' So there's a bit of that in the mix, which is a bit of a shame. But it's really, it's giving itself a glowing reference. And for a long time, although I enjoyed some of the stories in the Lotus Sutra, which sort of hint at the teachings it's giving, they don't spell it out, I still couldn't, I still was sort of had this befuddlement about, well, what is, what's the point of it? You talk about how wonderful the fundamental reality of the universe is, and that that's what Buddhas are in touch with, and that everybody can become a Buddha and become in touch with this, but it seems like there's some steps missing out of that process. And it's very poetic, in the way that some of these Mahayana sutras are. So it's filled with lots of images that are sort of miracles happening and lights glowing and Buddhas manifesting and disappearing, all the spiritual beings and all the devas and dragons coming to hear the teachings. It's very mythical, but it doesn't say much about what the fundamental realities. And then this time last month, Ajahn Brahm gave a talk about faith during the family service, which is, you know, something I've heard different people talk about a lot, but somehow during listening to that, it clicked that what this Lotus Sutra is getting at in not revealing it is that actually the act of entrusting to something greater than ourselves is enough. That is the teaching. It's just saying, well, just lean into this description, just lean into this poetry, just trust that this fundamental reality is there. That act of faith is enough. Just experiment with the idea that all things are well, all should be well, all manner of things shall be well, whatever the exact wording is, and try that out. Try leaning into that. Just try casting around and seeing if you can notice it at the corner of your vision, or get in touch with it. And I suppose that's the, that's the nub of what I wanted to say tonight. But there are some hints in the stories of the Lotus Sutra that describe or point to a bit more clearly, perhaps, what this fundamental reality is, or even how we can get in touch with it, or how we can work with it, or how we can practice with it. So that teaching that I heard Dharma Vijja giving, the first time I heard him teaching Buddhism as opposed to psychology, was a chapter in the Lotus Sutra about the bodhisattva Gādhasvara, which is sometimes translated— excuse me— ironically, sometimes translated into English as "wonderful voice." I say that as my voice is going. But it— I'm not a Sanskrit scholar, so I don't know exactly how this works, but you can translate exactly the same name as the Stuttering Bodhisattva, which is quite a different meaning. But of course, some of these qualities that we have that we might think of as flaws, actually when we take them into our spiritual practice and work through them, they become things that we exemplify. So the person who's stuttering takes that into their spiritual practice and becomes someone who can use their voice to spread the Dharma. Or the person who's hypervigilant becomes somebody who's very empathic, or, you know, whatever it is. But there's usually a way of those qualities that perhaps we don't feel are good about ourselves get transformed into something really useful that the Buddha can use, that we can use in the service of the Buddha. So anyway, Gadgadasvara, the stuttering bodhisattva, which is nice, isn't it, because it even sounds like it's stuttering a bit. Gadgadasvara. His vow is, like all bodhisattvas, to liberate all sentient beings. But his specific way of doing that, or his specific superpower, if you like, that's described in the sutra, is that he can change form and appear as a man, or a woman, or an animal, or an inanimate object, or whatever is needed to awaken you to fundamental reality, to the Dharma. And I always remember that Dharmavijja picked up the mug that he was holding and said, "Even this chipped that mug could be the bodhisattva Gadgadasvara. So for me, this points to two things. One is that fundamental reality is something that's outside of us, that's manifesting around us all the time. And two, then, that it's, it's relational. It's, um, one of the ways into it is by tuning into the world around us without seeing it through the filter of our greed, hate, and delusion. Or even catching glimpses of it, or even if we can't catch a glimpse of it, trusting that there is something there. It isn't just something that we make up in our minds, and there's some You know, in the Zen tradition, in Chinese Buddhism, and in the Zen tradition, there's lots of stories of people getting awakened by things like a stone hitting the floor, or somebody says something that sounds nonsensical when you read it back. And really, all that's happening is suddenly they're just contacting something that isn't themselves. Because of course, most of the time, what we see when we look at the world is ourselves. Oh, I like that bit of the world, I don't like that bit, this bit of the world reflects that part of myself, that bit of the world reflects this part of myself. I'm not seeing the things that don't reflect me at all. All of that process goes on unconsciously most of the time, and every now and again we go, "Oh my goodness, look, there's the world," or, "Oh, that's who that person really is, I thought that was somebody else." And of course, sometimes here you get it when you're looking at the beautiful view, or up on the hills watching the sunset on the other side of the hills. Those moments, sublime moments, or when you hear the birds singing in the morning, it's often easier in those beautiful moments to make contact with that sense of, oh, actually, yeah, there is something unfolding in the world, or there is something about the world that isn't just my ego at work, there's some bigger process happening. And there's something about that bigger process that's beautiful. Even if we can't get there, maybe we trust someone else who's telling us that, or who's had that experience. And that's what, or you know, we settle in our meditation practice just trusting that the world around us is real, even if all we're seeing is reflections of ourself. So that's something about what the Lotus Sutra is teaching us, that it's something relational. That, that seems important. It's about making contact with something that isn't ourselves, whether it's the Buddha in a sort of classical Buddha image speaking to us or moving us, or whether it's something in the world that just opens us up and we go, "Oh, okay, there's really something out there that isn't just what I usually see, that's beyond my selfishness." The chapter of the Lotus Sutra that is probably the most famous is the chapter about Guan Yin, and we occasionally recite that in the services, not very often because we can't remember the tune always, and we definitely couldn't remember the tune the last time we tried to do it. And that's quite a dramatic chapter. So Guan Yin is the is the bodhisattva who hears the cries of the world. Avalokiteshvara in Sanskrit, you might have seen images with a thousand hands, each with an eye in the middle. That's Avalokiteshvara. The Dalai Lama is thought to be an emanation of this bodhisattva that's come into the world to help people. In the Chinese and Japanese traditions, it's usually a female figure, often holding a vase, pouring out loving kindness into the world, sometimes riding the back of a sea serpent. And in the chapter, what she does is rescue people. It says if you fall into a fiery pit, call on Kuan Yin and she will appear and soothe the flames. If you're surrounded with— by bandits, call on Kuan Yin and she will— I can't remember exactly What I want to say is make the swords drop out of her hands. That isn't what it says quite exactly. Something like, yeah, break the sword, something like that. There's all these difficult situations that you might have got into, and calling on her, there's something about that situation that's transformed. So this tells us something else about that fundamental reality. I think it tells us two things. One is that by making contact with it, it can transform a situation that we're in. So we could say stepping outside of our selfish view, if we're able to do that, will transform the situation. Or even trusting that it's possible to do that will transform the situation. And I suppose practically, what does that mean? Well, it might mean that if you're in an argument with somebody, even if you know that you can't find a way of being fond of them, or you can't understand where they're coming from, you can trust that they are coming from somewhere, even if you can't see it in that moment. And that act of trusting that maybe just starts to undermine the tightness of which you're holding your own position and allows you to relax slightly, and something about the situation begins to shift. And transform. But it also tells us Kwan Shin is the Bodhisattva of compassion, loving kindness in action. And it doesn't say practice and become the Bodhisattva of compassion. It says practice by calling out to the Bodhisattva of compassion, by receiving some of her kindness. Into your life. And that's very nice, I think, for us ordinary people. Actually, we don't have to do all the hard work ourselves. This fundamental reality, this dharma that's much bigger than us, is characterized by a sense of benevolence, by kindness. And if we invite it into our lives, um, maybe something softens, maybe we're able to receive something. Maybe that power will be what changes the situation, not something that we calculate or work out or pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps and sort of figure things out. So it's relational, it's out there in the world, it's beyond our selfishness. We can tune into it, sometimes it can transform us, transform situations. It's about trusting something beyond our own small minds. There's another story about someone who falls down on his luck, and he meets an old friend., and they spend all night drinking, I think, just relying on my memory, um, and they share stories, and one of them has become successful and the other one has failed financially, things haven't worked out for him. Anyway, unbeknownst to the guy who's down on his luck, in the night the guy who's successful sews a jewel into the lining of his friend's coat. This is where reading the story would have been helpful before coming into the talk. Anyway, he goes through his life not realizing that this jewel is right next to him. And, um, I can't remember what happens at the end of the story, whether he finds it or not, but the point of the story is that it's sort of it's that close to us. It's sewn into the lining of all of our coats. He isn't that when he's not in touch with it. He feels— Oh, he bumps into his friend, yeah. Yes, it was there all along, yeah, he tells him. I know, which is maybe not the best way to give your friend support. If you think— don't think about it too closely because there's a 'You know, just put it in a brown envelope and slip it under the door.' Yeah, but the point is his friend couldn't receive it, or he didn't know that it was there, but it was there all along. And the same is true for us. We don't necessarily trust that it's there, sewn into the lining of our coat or slipped under the door, but there it is, and we just have to reach for it. And when we don't know that it's there, we feel our lives are impossible. We, you know, we repeat the same patterns over and over again. We go over, we tell ourselves the same stories, we get stuck in the same place, we fail in the same way over and over again. Whereas when we've got the jewel in our hands, maybe we fail in different ways each time because we're learning, we're free, we're more open, we can trust that there's something that supports us, that we feel like, "Oh yeah, I'm a bit more resourced actually, which means I've got more options. I can try things differently. I don't have to fall back onto my selfish instincts, my habitual ways of being in the world." And the other story that I wanted to mention, people will have heard me talk about before, some people, is called the Herbs and Flowers chapter. And it's quite a short chapter, but it's really lovely. It talks about the Dharma, this fundamental truth, or the Buddhist teachings, or both of them, I suppose, together, being a rain that falls on all of the herbs and the flowers, that nourishes all of the herbs and the flowers. Doesn't matter whether it's whether it's a weed or whether it's something that you want to cultivate, the rain nourishes everything. It's not discriminating in that way. In the same way that that light of the Dharma is accessible to all of us, regardless of what we've done in our lives or how we feel about ourselves, we can still be nourished by the Buddha's teachings and by this fundamental reality in the universe, by the jewel in the coat. And the nice thing about the Herbs and Flowers Sutra is that when the garden grows, nourished by this rain, it's not a field of sunflowers that appears, or it's not a field of crocuses, or whatever, nettles. Every flower grows into its own beautiful shape. It has its own colors, its own characteristics, its own fruits that are sweet. And it's the same for us. When we learn to relax, when we lean into this sense of things maybe going to be okay, when we're able to trust the Dharma, to trust the Buddha, we start to uncurl our leaves. We start to look towards the sun, but we do that in our own way. We become, you know, we're all different seeds, we all become different flowers, all beautiful, Flowers, you know, in an ecosystem, a complete ecosystem isn't a monoculture. It's made up of lots— it needs lots of different things in order to be sustainable. And of course, a beautiful garden isn't the same. It needs lots of different flowers. And this, I find this a really sort of comforting and liberating, because it says, yes, you go and flower in your own way. Don't become copies of each other. Don't, don't do what I'm doing. Find out what it is that this fundamental reality wants you to do. If you're speaking in personal terms, find out what the Buddha wants you to do. I guess maybe this goes back to what I said about right at the beginning about those qualities becoming transformed. If you're the person who's stuttering, then suddenly you learn to speak 'or speak eloquently,' or whatever it is in your case. Sometimes I think of jigsaw pieces, like we're a little jigsaw piece, and the Buddha can provide, or the fundamental reality, whatever words you use, provides the other part of the jigsaw piece, and then we go, 'Oh yeah, this is how it is to feel whole, this is my bit of the picture.' Or there's the other image that comes to mind, of course, those famous words by Leroy Cohen, the crack is where the light gets in, um, and we're all cracked differently, so we all illuminate differently. And I suppose if you think of it the other way around, like the cracked pot being a lantern, then we all throw out different shapes of light, which is quite beautiful, um, and I like that, the sense of that very much. And there is a few bits in the Lotus Sutra that embody you to just practice the virtues and be good, be kind. But for me, this experience of leaning in, of learning to trust, of being open to the possibility of things being different, or of being able to find something that we can dwell in that isn't the world falling apart and isn't our selfish— and I don't, when I say selfish, I don't necessarily mean mean, I just mean a sort of habitual small-minded egoic sense of things that isn't that. Actually, the virtues start to appear naturally. That's what we're taught in this school, and it's nice to experiment with the virtues and to think, oh yeah, maybe I'll practice 'practice being patient today.' But even that thought is a gift that's come from somewhere. It's a blessing that you've received to be able to think, 'Oh yeah, I'm going to try and be a bit more patient today.' So this is, this is something about the nature of what we're being invited to lean into, that it is there, it's outside of us, that it sustains us, that it feeds us. That we partake of it. You know, there's a— I think it was Kiyosada Manji who sort of had this sense of the Buddha being infinite. He said, well, if the Buddha's infinite, then it must encompass us, and we're like a little dot in the midst of that. So in a sense, we're partaking of it. We're— we've got some of that going on in us because we're part of the universe. We're part of this unfolding, whether we know it or not. But at the same time, we're just a tiny fragment of that. And when we look around, like, oh yeah, here's this whole big pattern of benevolence potentially unfolding that we can join in, that we can start to step in time with and dance with and move with, just by beginning to trust that that possibility is there. And what it— in fact, what it does say in the Lotus Sutra, how to practice the Lotus Sutra, essentially what it says is keep it in mind, um, recite it, and talk about it to other people. So they're not sort of They're not practices about cultivating this or that, they're just practices about keeping that possibility awake, reminding yourself that there is some— something, that there is something that you can flower into, and that flowering is dependent on the rain, but that that rain is there all the time. But sometimes, like the man with a jewel in his pocket, We don't notice that it's raining. We don't always like the rain in this country, so maybe it's not the best image. We talk of, you know, use the image of sunshine if you prefer. But yeah, it's always sunny in the Pure Land. That would have been a good title. Next talk, yeah. So I think I'll pause there. Thank you very much for your attention this evening. Namaste. Um, and I'm happy to take any questions or comments if there are any. Maybe everyone's because it's a big group.

It's something I've had in mind for many years, flower, that flower being planted. Yeah. And this thing that, you know, a tulip doesn't think to itself, oh, I wish I was a daffodil.

No, I don't think so. Yeah, yeah, it just is. Yeah. And it does that very well, and it's beautiful, and Yes, yeah, I love that image. Yeah, go to a white—

oh yeah, I, I guess there's something There's something about what we're talking about that's difficult to talk about.

Yeah.

So it's also difficult to make any questions.

Yeah, I mean, it's fine not to have any questions. It's sort of, you know, the Lotus Sutra is like a piece of poetry that you have to sink into, and it's in that way, you know, you can ask questions about poetry in the way that GCSE exams do, but that— but you also maybe lose something in that process, and sometimes you can get back to it, but it is a bit like that. And that's why reciting, which I haven't done for ages— we used to recite the Pure Land Sutra, and you did it more recently than me, didn't you, Adam? And it's really nice to recite it. We do it quite quickly because the imagery just sinks into you and your analytical mind doesn't get involved, and you just sort of It is a bit like the rain in that sense, that the images start to work on you, and you just sort of think, "Oh yeah, I can feel this," or, "I can get a sense of it that isn't just to do with working things out," which is often— we do like to work things out in the West, particularly.

It also feels like the talk that you've given is a bit like the Lotus Sutra.

Oh yeah, that was what I was going to say.

You said it's going to be good, and I'm kind of thinking, okay, so where's the content? I can say that because I'm a manager. But there's a similarity.

Yeah, absolutely. It's actually an encouragement to sort of just lean in and embody, but it's not It's not specific, it's not like you might get in the Lam Rim 24 steps of meditation, then you get enlightened at the end. Or go and do your 100,000 prostrations, then your 100,000 recitations, and then your 3-year, 3-day retreat, and then you're done then. It's much more about just that experience of slowly starting to lean in and get a feel. For something and allowing something to wake, making space for something to wake up without knowing exactly what it is that's waking up, because we don't know what the seed is actually that we are. And it reminds me of that line in the Summary of Faith and Practice about trusting, being reborn in the Pure Land without even knowing what the Pure Land really is. Yeah, and that's the point that I wanted to make about the Lotus Sutra, really. We're entrusting to that sense of it will all be good without really knowing what that means. It is an adventurous act, it's a spirited act, and we can't know what it is because we only know the things that come out of our sort of small mind, in a sense, trusting it will all be good necessarily involves stepping out of that, in the way that I had that experience in the retreat of going, "Oh, maybe it isn't just what I think it is." I don't know how you touched on this, I'm not going to express this very well, I think, but what I'm trying to talk about is the non-existence of the 'I.' which I think is a fascinating concept.

Yeah. And that the 'I', the ego, whatever you call it, gets in the way so much. And the more you explore about the non-existence of the 'I', you almost don't want it to come.

Yeah, I mean, I'm not— I'm sort of not fond of— I know a lot of Buddhist writers use this term 'non-existence', but most people's experiences that it does exist and is in control, our personality, our ego, our small mind. That is what runs our lives on a daily basis. But I know what they mean when they say it doesn't exist. What they mean is, really, that actually when you start to investigate it, it's ephemeral. It's made up of belief structures that don't quite make sense and stories that aren't completely true, and it's this sort of bundle of narratives and ideas. And there's big holes in it when you really start to study it closely. And this, this act of trusting really is about trusting that what you can see through the holes. Yeah, but knowing that probably in this lifetime, well, we're always going to have that bundle of stories to a greater or lesser degree, and maybe a couple of threads get unraveled as we go through the course of life, or a couple of those qualities get transformed, but we always have— we're always going to come back to landing in the ego at some point. And yet at the same time, that's not the only thing in the world. And that just coming back to that experience of, oh yeah, here's me, here I go again, what am I doing, what am I thinking? And knowing that that is happening in the context of and there is something else, and there's something bigger, and there's the light around the edges of that, that changes the quality of that encounter. And for me, that's the sort of the spiritual insight, or the religious sort of fundamental of Pure Land Buddhism, is that that moment of, oh yeah, I'm still in the ego and the rain is still falling, both of those things being true time.

I haven't read the Lotus Sutra. I think possibly the reason for that is that I quite often find a lot of Buddhist texts impenetrable. And you mentioned there about Lotus Sutra Susa hints at. Yeah, so that suggests to me that—

well, I didn't read any tonight for that reason. Okay, sorry, you haven't finished your question.

Yeah, what does it suggest?

Yeah, I think what I was going to say, when you suggest to me, if it's safe, you were saying that it hints at that people are going to interpret it in different ways.

Yeah. Well, I'm sure that's true because that's just the nature of being human and reading texts, and particularly ones that are more poetical. It allows for more interpretations. Yeah, yeah. It's not a clear set of steps in the way that, you know, sometimes in the Pāli Canon, as well as the sort of more mythical side, then you get, "And now follow these things," or "Do it in this way." There's a bit of that in there. At one point it says, It says, "Don't hang out with actors or dancers or go to performances." And it says, "A male bodhisattva should not hang out with women or teach women, or if they do teach women, they definitely shouldn't smile. They shouldn't reveal their shoulder." You know, the robe that Buddhist monks wear is quite loose, so they should cover up properly.

So there's—

I don't know whether that's an original bit or— but yes, it's quite a conservative strand that suddenly appears in the middle of it. Yeah, but most of it is, in this, is stories and illusions that you can take in different ways. So some people think that Kuan Yin will really appear and save you in that situation. Some people think that it that when you call out to her, it's the quality of you that changes, that allows the situation to transform. People think different things.

And something that I learned about the Lotus Sutra was that it was written towards the end of the Buddha's life, and it was very much in line with the Pure Land Sutra in that the Buddha wanted to leave something of a vision, so that if people lost faith faith or didn't have time to practice or couldn't for whatever reason, circumstances they're living in, at least they could have a vision of what was beautiful, wholesome, loving that could sustain people in their lives. And another thing that I learned was that when it was translated into Chinese, it completely transformed. Form of the Chinese language, because before then Chinese literature was written in a certain way, and once Buddhism entered into China, the language and literature suddenly became very flowery, very poetic, and so it had a cultural transformation. So this is to be taken as a vision that we can have faith in. Yeah. It's not necessarily something that we experience in our everyday life, but it's As Casper has been trying to point out to us, it hints at the beauty that's there that we can't see, but that it's really important to remember that— remember the Dharma, don't remember the self, just remember the Dharma. So it's, you know, we can either remember me or we can remember, oh, there's other people. And that's the challenge for us. And that's, you know, I think the time the timing of the Lotus Sutra when it came out and how it's been sort of translated into different languages and then into the West, you know, it can be, like you said, impenetrable, difficult to understand. Well, what is it that, you know, that we're supposed to take from this? And it's something, you know, that is quite visionary.

Yeah, and what you've said reminds me actually about that sense of it being the Buddha transmitting his— he's trying to find a way of talking about his spiritual experience, like with the Pure Land Sutra. This is how he sees. He, he is penetrating through that and seeing, seeing the rain, seeing the light, you know, seeing the world, not seeing himself, and just trying to express that in a way that inspires people and gives them some sense. Yeah, and that's enough. Yeah, yeah. And it's— I guess that's another way in which it's relational. 'cause actually, just by bringing yourself into contact with his experience, if you were there at the time, you would have learnt from how he carried himself, and the things he said, and the way that he folded his robe, all those things sort of sink into you. And this has been left behind as a way of almost allowing us still to tune into that spirit, and in a way that isn't about working it out, or trying to get every sense the meaning, but actually just hanging out in the space of those qualities or something like that, that it rubs off on us or it sinks in. And even whether it sinks in or it doesn't sink in, there's still something special about, you know, if you spent your whole life with the Buddha and didn't become enlightened, it would still be special to spend your whole life with the Buddha. And I think the same is true of this as well, actually, that actually that's what's important, is trusting it and not worrying about what the consequences of that are beyond that it's a good thing to hang out with, it's a good thing to trust. Good. Well, maybe that's enough formally, so we can have some informal chitchat and another cup of tea.

So the title actually fitted very well.

Yeah. Oh, it's all intentional.