The Path That Becomes Us by Rev Enrique Galvan-Alvarez

Should I just start?

Yeah.

All right, so welcome everybody.

Thank you so much for coming out tonight and for being here.

So we are going to do things a little different today. I wanted to give you a short introduction to another Pure Land tradition, the Jōdo Shinshū Hongan Jiha tradition that comes from Japan. But before we get to that, I'd like to start with a little game, if that's okay with you. So if you're up for it— if you don't, just say so, that's absolutely fine— we could go around and each of you would say the first word that comes to mind when I say Buddhism. So for example, Angela?

Simplicity. Compassion.

That's fine, whichever way it flows, that's fine. Peace.

Okay.

Causation.

Buddha.

Life. Eternal journey.

Freedom.

Love. This is peace as well.

Mindfulness.

And Buddha.

You didn't say the word I wanted you to say. Wonderful. So the talk will go in a completely different direction.

Option 2.

That's fine.

But thank you so much. They're all great answers. I'm not assessing you. There's no right or wrong answer. I just wanted to see what came up first. And that's a very interesting collection of words. So I want to unpack a little bit the meaning of the term Buddhism before we get to talk about any specific tradition. And I also want to talk about mindfulness or meditation, which I was hoping one of you would say, but this is how it goes.

Well, said you.

Oh, okay.

Yes.

Anyway, it doesn't really matter. So I would like to offer you—

is that okay? No, that's fine.

I would like to show you a bit how do we practice in our tradition. And this is also a Pure Land tradition, and you might recognize some aspects of it. So I'm gonna perform sutra chanting. So I'm gonna chant the sutra in Sino-Japanese. You have the text in front of you. If you feel like chanting along, you're welcome. If you don't, just listen, it's absolutely fine. You also have the translation afterwards. It is my translation. There's a number of other translations, and, um, you can access them through those links. Now, for performing this, uh, sutra chanting, I'm gonna wear my robes. I am— I didn't introduce myself, that's very rude. My name is Enrique Galván Álvarez. I am ordained through the Hongan Jiha tradition of Jodo Shinshu, and in Jodo Shinshu we do not— we are monks without precepts.

We are monks in name only.

So I am becoming a monk right now, and I will cease being a monk when I take my robe off later. So. So these sleeves are very handy because they act like pockets. And so one of the things I'm going to talk about is how we always put texts away from the floor, right? So that's one way of keeping it. It's always a thin fabric between the floor and the text.

Okay, so Namanda.

Namanda! Namanda! Namanda! Namanda! Namanda! Namanda! Namanda!

No, no—

Sai futo shoga, ioku dim shonen, yoe shu boku yo, shigu ne yodo, eisho tenshi, gemi kina daiko.

Namah Dam Dam. Namah Dam Dam. Namah Dam Dam. Namah Ama.

Dhakho.

Namanda! Right.

So, how do you feel? How was that? I wanted to talk about 3 things today, uh, starting from mindfulness. So you have heard of the Nembutsu, I imagine? Yes, mindfulness of Buddha. That's what it means, right? The nen means mindfulness. Now Buddhism has been presented in the West in a certain way and has its own history.

That's the way it is.

That's fine. Now, normally, obviously, not you, because you have more experience, you know more. But often when you, when I ask people, what does Buddhism look like to you? What comes to mind? And they imagine somebody sat quietly meditating, right? And that's a very interesting image for various reasons. The main reason I think is because it's not accurate and not historically accurate. Most Buddhists throughout history have not done that sort of thing. And even today, most Buddhists do not sit quietly. The vast majority of Buddhists don't do that sort of practice, right? Those practices exist, no doubt, in some traditions, but even in those traditions where they exist, like the Zen tradition, like the Theravada tradition, the number of monks who do that sort of practice is relatively small compared to the rest who do things a bit like what I've just done. So if we were to find a practice that is common to all Buddhists, we'd probably be on much safer grounds looking at practices like chanting, different things, but using the voice, using the body, bowing, offering incense. Those are very, very universal Buddhist practices. However, quiet sitting it happens, but it doesn't happen everywhere. Now, mindfulness, I think, is a very important concept in Buddhism. We're going to go with that translation. I don't have any particular ideas about other possibilities, though they exist, like remembrance and so on anyway. But this nen, or smṛti in Sanskrit, right? Because One doesn't need to be quiet to be mindful. And all of the forms that you've seen, you know, the way you've seen me put on my robes, right, raising the text, they are all practices of mindfulness. Most people think, well, that's my sense anyway from talking to people, that mindfulness is a quiet practice that is secular, that doesn't have anything to do with Buddhism, that it can be therapeutic, and whereas All of those things can be true up to a point. We need to understand the context from which this so-called secular, devoid of religious aspects practice comes from. And it comes from the Anapanasati Sutta, from the Pali Canon. If we read the Anapanasati Sutta, we see that yes, mindfulness of the body, mindfulness of the breath, mindfulness of your thoughts are part of it. There's way more that didn't make it to that version of mindfulness, right? And among the other forms of mindfulness that appear in that, in that old sutra from the Theravada tradition is very importantly mindfulness of Buddha, mindfulness of Dharma, mindfulness of Sangha. And this is what the ritual you've just witnessed is all about, right? Before I even approach, I bow to my kesa. This represents— this is nothing to do with me. I'm just carrying the tradition of the Buddha, and nothing, you know, it's not my merit or anything like that. I just got lucky. But I have this very precious object that represents the Sangha, the whole history of Buddhism. So I bow to it. And that's not just paying homage, paying respect. It's not worship. It is a form of mindfulness to remind me of the connection with sangha, with everybody. And you have a very beautiful ritual here that I witnessed the last time I was here. You, at the end of your practice session, you bow to each other. That's another form of mindfulness of sangha, right? Then I bow to the Buddha, right, as I approach. That's mindfulness of the Buddha. Mindfulness of the Buddha is not just saying the Buddha, saying Buddha, saying the Buddha's name. It's also bowing. It's embodied mindfulness, right? And then I take my sutra book and I raise it. Again, yes, offering homage if you want, but it's also pausing and thinking, oh, I'm about to do this. It's a preparation. It's a form of mindfulness. So mindfulness of Buddha, mindfulness of Dharma, mindfulness of Sangha, very important in Buddhism in general. From the Theravada tradition to the Pure Land traditions through all of them. And again, it could be one of the things we could say we have in common, that practice of mindfulness of Buddha, mindfulness of Dharma, mindfulness of Sangha. And it's a way of integrating that in daily life by the way we address, we treat texts, the way we engage with them, the whole material aspect of Buddhism. There's also an idea that Buddhism is very mind-centric. I think, I feel the way that Buddhism has been presented in the West is very centered on the mind, but it's a religion of the body, really, and the voice. The voice is very important. So in our tradition, we do a lot of bodily mindfulness, if you want, through ritual. And we also do a lot of voice mindfulness or speech mindfulness through the chanting. We don't talk so much about the mind. We talk about shinjin. We might get to that later, which is a very difficult word to translate, but you can translate it as entrusting or faith or letting go. But this is not something we aim to achieve. We don't do anything about shinjin. We just perform our practices bodily and verbal, and shinjin comes, or not. But that's not our problem anyway. So we don't focus on the mind so much, a bit like the Soto tradition of Zen. In Soto-shū, in the Soto tradition, they don't sit to become Buddha. They don't focus on the mind as such. They say, keep the posture, sit like a Buddha, and let it all happen. So we say the same thing. I mean, the Soto Shu and Jodo Shinshu are very similar. Just say the Nembutsu, just bow, and see what happens. Okay, so anyway, I wanted to start from there. And also, um, the whole idea of the whole concept of Buddhism Can you think of other words to refer to Buddhism? Because is it really an ism? Any thoughts?

Religion.

Okay, like the Buddhist religion, you would say?

Or—

yeah, okay, yeah. Yeah, well, you know which kind of person I am now, so this is not gonna work. I'll just—

what's that?

You can go that way? Yeah, sure. No, I mean, this, this time I'm just curious.

No, if only you knew.

That's very interesting as well, right? That whole Rhetoric.

Buddhism is a philosophy, it's not religion, right? Yeah, very interesting.

Well, I'll tell you what it's called in other languages. I think all of the answers are valid. I think Buddhism is a philosophy, but it's also a religion, and it's— we can talk about spirituality. Now, the problem is with the -ism, I think, in English. I mean, there's no other way of doing it. In a way, but it doesn't sound like, doesn't sound right. Now, in modern Japanese, they say "Bukkyō," and this, I put the emphasis on modern, modern Japanese. So from the 19th century onwards, the word that has been used in Japan to refer to Buddhism is "Bukkyō," which means the Buddhist teaching, the Buddha's teaching, right? The Dharma, in other words. Now, but "Bukkyō" has a very again, a very mind-centric, intellectual, doctrinal connotation. These are the teachings of the Buddha, right? These are the concepts, the ideas, right? We have it all here, tidy. And I think that fits very much the zeitgeist of Japan in the 19th century. Now, a more traditional term in both Chinese and Japanese, and is a term that appears in the text that I chanted today, is "butsudo.", and this is a term I really like, and you'll see why. Uh, Budo literally means Buddha's path or Buddha's way, right? So it's not a set of teachings as much as it is a walking, a path, a doing. Again, something embodied. It's not a set of ideas. Of course it is. If we're gonna study it academically, we can say it's a philosophy, it's a set of ideas. Sure. But for our purposes, for Buddhists, right, it is a walking, it is a path. And there's something very interesting about the term Butsudō, because the term Butsudō is— refers to three things, which in a way I would argue they saw as interchangeable. One is the whole religion. The whole system, right? So from a social point of view, what do we call these people, right? People who follow the Butsudō, people who follow the Buddhist path. Okay, so that's the whole thing, the religion. But the Buddhist path refers to the path, obviously, of practice, but it's another way of referring to awakening. So again, another thing that I don't like about how Buddhism is presented in English sometimes, we talk a lot about the state of awakening. Awakening being a state, something static that we can reach. Now, when we look at terms like this, you realize it's far from a state. It's something much more dynamic. It is a path, it is a way, it is a walking. So in this text, um, um, butsudō is used a number of times, in fact, and it's always referring to awakening. So when I become a Buddha, when I reach awakening, what he's saying is when I reach the Buddha path, when I start walking like a Buddha, if you want, or as a Buddha, or with the Buddha, right? But awakening in a way. So what he's saying is saying various things. I mean, he's saying the path is the goal and the goal is the path because there's one word for both, right? And the goal is not, end point, you could see it as the beginning, or as more movement, as more walking anyway. Um, so I think that's very significant, and that's leading me towards the main point I want to make, which explains the title, The Path That Becomes Us. But I'll get to that, uh, in due time. So this text, um, is one of our favorite sutras. Why? Well, I'll give you the unofficial answer. Oh, this is being recorded.

Well, I don't know about that. Because it's fine once you've spoken whether you want to share it or not.

Yes, yeah, yeah, sure. No, we've already been through that.

So, what are you?

Okay, thank you. Well, why I express my own views anyway. So having said that, one of the reasons why we like this so much is because it's short, and we are very lazy people in Jodo Shinshu. So we do chant and we do this, but, you know, we choose short text. It's meant to be an easy practice. There's no ethos of great effort, heroic, strenuous effort. No, it's making a connection, having a moment of mindfulness if you want, acknowledging that connection.. And this text is all about connection. It's a very interesting one. This is part of the larger sutra. Do you know the larger sutra? Some? Okay. Okay, well, explain a little bit about the larger sutra, which I think is, yeah. So this is a poem that appears in this sutra. It's called the Muryōju Kyo in Sino-Japanese, which means the Sutra of Immeasurable Life.. And in Sanskrit it's called the Sukhavati-vyuha-sutra. So the sutra of the sukhavati, how do you translate that? Like the realm of bliss. Yeah. Peace and bliss. Peace and bliss. Yeah. So yeah. So it's interesting. I mean, one, in one language is about immeasurable life. In the other one is about the realm of peace and bliss. But they are the same text, right? And it's a text that explains there kind of is kind of origination story of the Pure Land, if you want. Right? So how does the Pure Land come about? What is the Pure Land? And how does it come about? And so it's the story of Dharmakara Bodhisattva. He's a bodhisattva who takes a number of vows. And he, and I'm going to keep on referring to him as he, and I will make some comments about Amida later, and the relationship of Dharmakara and Amida. But I think Dharma Kara is correct to call him he. He's a king like Shakyamuni, right? So in many ways, the story is very similar to Shakyamuni's. So he's a king who renounces the throne, who wants to find a solution to the problem of disease or suffering or stress or anxiety, whichever translation you like for dukkha. I think they're all very good. So he decides to create a place, establish a place or a space or a realm, or however you want to call it. Let's create a little corner, let's create a safe space where everybody can come and become very easily awakened, right? So he wants to create a place that is accessible to everybody and also the place where awakening can happen, where the conditions for awakening are right, so people don't have to make this huge effort. Right? So he establishes 48 vows that detail, first of all, the, the character of that space, the nature of that space, but also how do you get there. And part of Dharmakara's agenda, if we can call it that, is not only to create that wonderful place where awakening is easy when once you're there, but also to create an easy means for people to reach that place., right? So it should be as accessible as possible. Now, Dharma Kara Bodhisattva is the person that then is set to become Amida Buddha, right? And you would have heard of Amida Buddha, I'm sure. If you haven't heard of Dharma Kara, but you've heard of Amida. Now I feel that it's appropriate to call Dharma Kara he/him because in the text he's the king, right? Now, when we go into Amida, then things become much more nebulous, right? And I resist calling Amida systematically him. I think Amida, I mean, I don't particularly personify Amida in the way I look at Amida. So I think it could definitely go with it sometimes. But if we are to personify Amida, we would have to use a gender-neutral pronouns like they/them, or just use indistinctively he/her. So I, I feel— so this, I'll tell you a bit of the background for this. So in Sanskrit, Amida is clearly male, and there's historical reasons for that, and we can go into that. Now, in Chinese, it becomes ambiguous. There's no gender marker. And in Japan, there is a long tradition of calling Amida Oyasama. Oya-sama means honorable parent, but oya is neutral. You have chichi oya, father, haha oya, mother, but Amida is not called either. It's called oya. It's both and none at the same time, right? So this is very interesting. So I think, I mean, some people feel more inclined to use he for Amida. I think that's fine as long as we don't fixate on that. I feel more inspired to use her because we all project onto Amida something. I had a very close connection with my grandmother, so I see Amida as a grandmotherly figure. That's just to do with me, of course. Amida is not a grandmother. Amida is not female, right, or male. But I sometimes refer to the Buddha, the Buddha herself, the Buddha as she, specifically with the Buddha Amida. But I think there you're— it are probably the most accurate. They in a personified form, it in a depersonified form. Amida as flow, Amida as energy, Amida as sound. And one way I talk about this is when Dharmakara fulfills the vows, he explodes into light. Because in the Shoshinge, one of the other texts we chant, we talk about how Dharmakara fulfills the vows, and then what comes after that. It's a description of the 12 lights, right? So it's like he explodes into light, but we can also see him exploding into sound or becoming the helpful force that enables beings to become liberated. And it is that force, that dynamic, that flow that we call Amida. That's why I don't think of Amida as a being or as an creature of some kind. It's something much more fluid than that. But anyway, so they— it— that's, that's fine. Um, so anyway, so Dharmakara formulates the vows, and at the end of that proclamation, uh, he reiterates 3 vows, right, that he deems particularly important. He sums them up. So when we chant in here, we also chant the 40 vows. That takes about half an hour. But this is the condensed form. This is the essence, if you want. And so I think there's something very interesting here. So if I can direct you to my translation, I'm not going to read through the whole thing, but I would like to read the first 3, the first 3 verses, which are the ones that are actually reiterating the vows. So I have formulated the vows that encompass the whole world, that embrace everybody, and I shall unfailingly become the unsurpassable path. If these vows are not fulfilled, I promise not to reach awakening. I, if for incalculable millions of millennia I fail to become a great benefactor who alleviates poverty and suffering everywhere, I promise not to reach awakening. And here comes the, the key one for me. I, I have underlined that because that's the one that for me is really important. And I, um, when I translated this for the first time, when I looked at the Chinese and I look at that, it's like, ah, Okay, here's one of those moments. So for me, this is the key one, but again, that's just me. Well, historically has been a very key passage because it talks about the practice, it talks about the name, right? Talks about the Nembutsu. So I, as I become the Buddha path, will permeate the 10 directions with the voice that utters the name. If there is any place where this voice cannot be heard, I promise not to reach awakening. So why do I find this so interesting? Because what I see happening here is Dharmakara exploding into sound, if you want, or Dharmakara emptying himself into our voices, into the voice that says, says the name, right? So there's no more Dharmakara, there's no more Amida. In a way, all there is is Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. It's the sound of the Nembutsu, right? So it is as if, yeah, well, Dharma Kara pours himself into us, right? And through us, but he doesn't stay there, right? So it just flows through us. And as we recite the Nembutsu, And at the same time, right, so you could say that dharmakāra is becoming a path. It's becoming the Buddha path, right? By becoming the nembutsu, becomes the practice that we do, becomes the path that we walk, right? But at the same time, we, our bodies and voices, not that they are separate, become the path for the Buddha to express herself into the world. So there is this reciprocity, this mutuality. So Dharmakara becomes a path for us to walk, and we become the path for the Dharma, if you want, for the Buddha to express itself in the world. And this mutuality is key, I think. Some people look at it this way, and I mean, I don't mean to make it a caricature, but they think, oh, Dharmakara was such a wonderful person, he was so compassionate, He was so kind, he was so considerate that he, in his great compassion, decided to postpone his awakening until we all can join. Well, there might be some truth to that, but what I think Dharmakara really realizes, whether Dharmakara was a historical character or not, it doesn't matter. It's about the point of the story. But I think what he realizes when he formulates this is that he cannot become a Buddha if we do not all become Buddha. This is the key. This is interdependence. So if Angela is suffering, I cannot be free from suffering and vice versa. And this is the very nature of being alive. This is the very nature of interdependence, right? So what these vows, I mean, they sounds like They sound very cosmic and they sound very sci-fi at times. It's like, what is this really about? I think this is the basic insight. If you don't become Buddha, I cannot. It's not like I promise not to become Buddha or I decide not to become Buddha. No, I cannot. We have to come. We either go all together or we don't go at all. And this is the image of the Pure Land. The Pure Land is a way of talking about the enlightenment of all beings together, at the same time, in the same place. And we can spend hours talking about the nature of time and how they imagine time and why those things are said in that way, but I'm not going to get into that today. So this is a very, very important point, and what is revealing again is another misconception, I feel, about Buddhism and the way it is presented. Over here. It's awakening is not an individual matter. You cannot awaken by yourself, right? In fact, if you awaken, you will feel more the suffering of others. So you can say nirvana is the pathway to samsara. That sounds probably counterintuitive, but If you study Mahayana Buddhism, you see, you say, samsara is nirvana, nirvana is samsara, right? So we are in samsara. By understanding the nature of samsara, we realize nirvana. So you can say samsara is the pathway to nirvana because we can only realize nirvana in samsara, right? While we are here. So from samsara, we go to nirvana, sure. That bit we're all happy about, but then what happens then? Can we just chill there? Can we chill in the Pure Land? There's no such thing as a permanent holiday, and that's a reminder to me who's— I'm on holidays as of now. Sorry, our awakenings are entangled. We are all stuck with each other. That's the sad or happy reality, but you can never fully relax and abandon people. So insofar as there's somebody who's still in distress, you will be moved to come forward and do something. And therefore you will suffer a little bit too, but you have the space, you have the insight to deal with that anyway. So not only that, that doesn't mean that's like when Angela becomes a Buddha, right? And I'm not a Buddha yet. And yes, and I'm in pain, and then you cannot relax. Sorry. So, but what that is saying as well is right now the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas cannot fully relax either. So they are constantly coming towards us. And I'll let you interpret that in whichever way you want to interpret it. I mean, I don't believe there's necessarily an Amida, and this is a being who lives in a certain place and is talking to me. I don't see it that way. But I believe there's something happening, something happening, and something that happens through interconnection when we meet each other, when we engage with each other. There's something that happens, there's something that shifts, and maybe that's what we call Amida, that flow. Something happens when you say the Nembutsu, whichever way you say it, right? Well, maybe that something happening is Amida. That's what we call Amida. But it's something very difficult to pinpoint. So Shinran Shonin, who was— I don't like to call him the founder of our tradition because he didn't found any institution or anything like that, but I say the rebel monk on whose writings our tradition was founded. And, um, well, he says two things that I think are relevant here. Well, on the matter of Amida, says The true Buddha is formless. The real Buddha, the thing we call Buddha, is not a being, doesn't have a form, is formless. And that's why we use the name Amida. So Amida is a name to remind us that we talking, we are thinking, we are connecting with something formless at the end of the day. Another thing he says, I don't have a single disciple. That's not entirely true, but anyway, he refuses to play the game of being masters and disciples. Says we are all ondobo ondogyu. Now ondobo ondogyu means fellow travelers, fellow practitioners, if you want. Now the character for practice, gyō, it also means going. So practice is something dynamic, is a going, is a walking., if you want, is a path. So we are walking together and we become awakened together. There's no other way at the end of the day, right? So anyway, this is, this is the basic idea. So why does the path become us, right? As we walk the path, the path becomes us because that, that Nembutsu, right? And what is the Nembutsu anyway? I mean, whether you pronounce it Nam-myoho-renge-kyo like you do, which is Fine, we tend to pronounce it Nam-myoho-renge-kyo because, you know, we all want to— oh, I do— we don't want to do something slightly different, you know, there's traditions of, oh, we say this way. It doesn't really matter at all. What the Nembutsu is doing, the Nembutsu is expressing this interdependence. The Nembutsu, as I see it, is not a call to Amida Buddha, it's not a prayer, it's not even a mantra. Right? The Nembutsu is expressing the fundamental interconnection, fundamental interdependence of Buddha and me and all of us. Me represents all of you as well, right? Because we also interdependent. So Namo represents me. Amida Buddha represents Buddha, right? So we say it in one phrase. We don't just say Amida Buddha, Amida Buddha. Yeah, that could be like, oh, Amida Buddha is so wonderful out there, right? Or Amida Buddha, this is me, this is my Buddha nature, something. No, no, Namu Amida Buddha. There's a tension. There's a relationship. There's a dynamic. And so that you need to have both sides. And the both sides are deeply, deeply interconnected, but there's still two. They're not the same. But they're not separate. Okay? So that's the essence of Nembutsu, and that's what we are expressing if you want, as we say it. And yeah, I think that could end on that note. Like any end is arbitrary like any beginning. Thank you so much. Namandaṁ suṇḍhaṁ namandāts. No— So we could have a bit of discussion, a bit of questions, or whatever you fancy. We can do some chanting as well, up to you. Maybe questions?

Yeah, absolutely.

I love that bit at the end when you're talking about like Yeah, Namo Amida Buddha, like kind of bringing in the, you know, the me and then the Buddha and then the two, repeating the two. But the idea of like that, it's kind of, you're bringing, yeah, bringing instead of it just being like Amida Buddha out there, you're bringing yourself into the.

Yeah, sure. No, but I think that's very important. Right, and that's difference, well, definitely between Jōdo Shinshū, Jōdo Shū, and other Pure Land traditions. You are very important in the equation and you being there, yeah, in the thing you recite. It's deceptive with name because the Chinese character, myō, it does mean name, but it also can mean something broader than the word name. It's almost like a word or title, right? So we say, we say the name, but it's not like, yeah, the name of the Buddha. But truly what it said— what, okay, if I had to render it somehow, is the name that encapsulates me and Buddha, something like that. Because it's not just the name of the Buddha. Right, it's the name that expresses the relationship between— yeah, yeah.

In Aboriginal, Australian Aboriginal culture, they have more pronouns than we do, and one of them is weetoo. One of them can be translated as like we too. Maybe there's something in that. Let's look into that. Yeah, it makes me think of something like that. Me too, like, like two as one, you, like you and me, but that's one. Oh, okay.

We too. Yeah, so you can say we too.

Yeah, so we too, speaking to you too, we might say, but it's kind of, they're sort of understood more like, oh yeah, that's the way that you speak about this relationship and that really, you know, it's in this entangled have people.

That's— yeah, let's look into that.

That sounds really interesting.

Yeah, I was really touched by the idea of the Buddha's mood being moved by the suffering and and wanting to come in for their own benefit, aren't they? There's something really interesting about that. That's, to me, that's new, which is quite rare, something new.

The way I put it sometimes is like, well, we need the Buddha, but the Buddha needs us too. Because without us the vows cannot be fulfilled. So there's that mutuality there, and that's the kind of mindfulness of the entanglement, if you want, is what the Nembutsu is.

It doesn't feel like selfish needing somehow. No. It's like almost like the pleasure of helping or something, I don't know, but without an agenda. For me, there's something about Hujenage which is without agenda, or the agenda is compassion rather than anything. It's, you know, it's not like— it's not codependent. I see.

Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, I see what you mean.

Yeah, yeah.

Something like that. You can't get anything. There's nothing to be got from. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Although there is at the same time. Yeah, but there's nothing.

Maybe this is a bad example, but I would say like, it's, um, imagine your, your, your foot is itchy and you feel the need to scratch it.

Yeah. Yeah.

There's no agenda, there's no selfish anything, it's just a natural reaction. So if you feel other people, and you are a bodhisattva or a Buddha, not that I know, you feel the suffering, you just do it.

You don't think about it, you know.

So the needing in that sense, yeah, yeah.

You know the koan, how do we embody kanyin like we achieve enlightenment?

Yeah, I was in a queue in an airport once, really long queue, and I was reading my Kindle, and I was there for about half an hour. I looked down at one point and this arm was supporting that arm.

My hand was half asleep.

Yes, it just was there. I didn't tell it to do it, you know. But yeah, the Buddha receives from that. So we're doing the Buddha a favor.

You can see it that way if you get cocky, yeah.

When we do Noppen, Satya Robyn, when we do Noppen, we're inviting the Buddhas into the fishbowl. So there's a mutual exchange. Yeah, yeah, literally invited them into the knowledge of any permission, so to speak, but it's a beautiful friendship sort of thing.

Yeah, I think that the quality of exchange or relationship is very important in relating.

Yeah, I'm just wondering, Enrique, that one.

Yeah, yeah, please. Yeah, of course. I think that they all—

if there is anyone that wants to ask anything, do unmute and speak. We should be able to hear you. Quite a few people here.

Or help me to type. Or type.

Just check the chat box. They're all just satisfied. Okay, that's good.

What I was gonna say, another of my usual, uh, the things I usually say. So because you have, um, a lot of people talking about, well, is Amida internal or external? Is Amida outside of me or within me or without me? Um, and I prefer to use the preposition through, which I think relates to what Jahmei was saying. I think Amita exists or is, I don't know, through me, through us, rather than outside or inside. Because, well, it's not entirely within, because otherwise I wouldn't be the way I am. It's not, it cannot be entirely without, cannot be completely external because then how would it affect me, right? And also, I mean, I think it cannot exist without me in the two senses of the word or the proposition without. So it cannot exist outside entirely, but it cannot exist without me because the very reason of existence for Amida is to respond to suffering. So if I wasn't here getting, if I wasn't here getting into trouble, Amida would have no reason to exist. Amida wouldn't exist. Amida is not eternal. I mean, in fact, Shingon Jonin has recorded a lecture of Honen Jonin, talks about the death of Amida. It's a fascinating text. I recommend it to all of you. Amida, like everything, like every form, like everything we can point at, will pass. That's impermanence. That's how things are. Now that responsiveness that we call Amida, that's a different matter. But the moment we name it and we give it a form, that's bound to vanish, right? Fade away at some point. It's a very interesting text. But anyway, so Amida only exists because of me. And so it exists through me, even though it's not me, but it can exist only through me. Yeah.

Like a parent is only a parent in relation to their children. Exactly. And then they put that role down and you do something else. Maybe, maybe that's not completely true, but it's— there's always—

it's relational. And this situation, this talk wouldn't be happening if you weren't here. Obviously I'm not going to be talking into So yeah, and if one of you hadn't come here, or somebody else would have come, I probably would have said something entirely different. So yeah, every moment is entirely, completely unique and completely precious, and it comes through a very complex network of connections. But yeah, it only— we only exist in relation to each other at the end of the day, and I think that's what the Pure Land story, if you want, is really about— and it uses a number of images, number of, um, lots of words and lots of very beautiful sensual images— but what is the significance is this relatedness, I think, and how we cannot exist, um, by ourselves. We cannot exist as independent self.

So yeah, thank you. Maybe we'll bring things to a close with a few minutes of the frustrations chat. Well, how does that sound? Yeah, no, please. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we just say thank you first of all for really enlightening us all in this sort of colloquial sense.

Thank you for enlightening me.

Thank you for offering your time and the things that you shared with us. Thank you.

Can I suggest, if you are willing to offer any kipon dharma, if you want to fit in the goal, I'll make sure that we get to it.

We'll finish with a couple of minutes of the frustrations chat.

Ama Amida-e. Ama Amida-e. Ama Amida-e. Ama Amida. Ama Amida. Ama Amida. Namah Amida Butsu.