This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. Is there anybody new here today for the first time? Oh, quite a few. Welcome. How's the sound? Everybody can hear? Oh, great. So today is a very special day here in the temple. We're going to have a lay bodhisattva initiation ceremony at three o'clock. So I'm quite buoyed by... the chance for all of us to renew our commitment to living a life of awakeness and commitment to help other people, which is what happens in a bodhisattva ceremony.

[01:10]

On the other hand, I'm not as well organized for this talk this morning because I've been busy getting ready for that ceremony. So we'll see how it goes. I'm going to talk a little bit about what a bodhisattva is and what a bodhisattva ceremony is about. This is from our manual on a lay bodhisattva ceremony. The lay bodhisattva initiation is a ceremony of sudden awakening. It is like going through a door. Just as a fish swimming in water may take the water for granted, we moving through life may take life for granted. But if we put a door down into our life and walk through it, we may suddenly realize Oh, I'm alive. In this way we awaken to our life, to the simple truth that we are alive and that we are life. So of course we don't need to have a ceremony to remind ourselves that we're alive and that we are life, but maybe we do.

[02:20]

Maybe sometimes we forget that we're alive. Maybe we don't really remember how... big a deal is to be alive and that we're actually a manifestation of life itself. So a ceremony is one of those places which is dramatic enough that we're sort of like, oh, wow, I'm really doing this. I'm actually here and going through this ceremony. So I think that's one of the most important parts of a ceremony is it really brings us back to the fundamental issue of being alive. Of course, that's one of those sort of wonderful, poetic descriptions of a ceremony. Actually, maybe the ceremony is so complicated. There's so many details in the ceremony that most students go, oh, am I making a mistake? Should I be bowing here? Should I be bowing there? We have to remember that even though you might be tense about whether you're doing the ceremony right, I'm speaking to the six people that are doing the ceremony today, that are in this room, that you shouldn't worry about that because my experience of ceremonies is, first of all, everybody makes mistakes in ceremonies.

[03:34]

They're so complicated. They're designed to be so complicated that everybody makes mistakes. That's the first thing that should be accepted. The second thing is I'll be making more mistakes than anybody else, so I'm kind of leading the pack in that area. The other thing is that my experience in ceremonies is most of the most real things that happen in the ceremony is after you've made a mistake, and you have to improvise, and you have to sort of like, now what do we do? And you're right there, and so I'm very hopeful that we'll have a lot of mistakes in this ceremony this afternoon, and we'll get a chance to be spontaneous and have a good time. So that's the most important factor. There's another factor of ceremonies that's quite common, which is that you go, I remember when, this is especially true of shuso ceremonies, we're in a practice period now, which is a 10-week period, and there's a shuso, which is a head monk, Nancy's a shuso in this ceremony, this practice period over here, and the shuso shares my seat.

[04:46]

shares the abbot seat for 10 weeks, and it's a big responsibility, and thank goodness Nancy's doing it. But at the end of this 10-week period, there's a shoo-so ceremony where all the students get to ask Nancy a wonderful question, and she gets to answer them. And it's a very powerful ceremony, and it's quite dramatic. And one of the things about it, it's one of the ceremonies we don't record at all. If you're there, you're there for it. If you're not there. But at the end of the ceremony, of course, you can't remember anything that happened in the Chusot ceremony, if you're the Chusot. Typically, people come up and say, that answer you gave to that question night was so great. And you go, you have no memory of it at all. So that's also the way it is sometimes. I don't know. Any of you have been in a marriage ceremony where something really big and dramatic happened, but you just have a real clear recollection about it all.

[05:47]

So anyway, ceremonies are a marvelous thing, and I look forward to it. This ceremony is called Zeke Tokudo, which literally means staying home and accomplishing the way. That's because we're not ordaining priests today, we're ordaining lay people. So this is just ordinary people living their lives. So we say staying home, doing householder zen, working in the world, taking care of children, living a life, and accomplishing the way, accomplishing the path of practice. A priest ordination, they'd be leaving home, and accomplishing the path. So it's got a different name. It's a little complicated in our tradition because priests don't actually leave home. That was left over from when priests were actually monks, and they didn't get married, and they mostly, in India, wandered around with a begging bowl.

[06:51]

And then in China, they got more organized, but they still lived as monks, not getting married. But in, I guess it was 18th century Japan, For a variety of reasons, a priest could get married, so now in America, wonderful thing, you can be a priest and you can be married and have children and do everything. Now, don't everybody jump up and be a priest right away. You need to take your time. So in this ceremony, I'm going to give each person a robe. It's a rock, so it's a small robe, like that one right there, see? that they've sewn with their own hands, stitch by stitch, takes a long time. With each stitch, they say, I take refuge in Buddha. I take refuge in Buddha. I don't know how many stitches are in this thing. It seems like it took me about 100 hours to sew mine when I did my first one. It takes a long time. So by the time you've finished, and it's done in a very sort of ancient, prescripted way, so that when you're finished, you've basically got Buddha.

[07:59]

hanging around your neck, Buddha's robe. So you take good care of it after you have done this. And then on the back of the Raksu, I give them a new Buddhist name, which is something about the quality of who they are, hopefully that they haven't seen completely, and write a poem and do various other things. So you get a new Buddhist name and a new Buddhist robe to wear. And we also give a lineage paper, which is a document that is a direct line from Buddha all the way through the Indian ancestors, through all the Chinese ancestors, through the Japanese ancestors, to Shinra Suzuki, down to us here. It's called the lineage paper, the lineage of our tradition, all the teachers that connect you back to Buddha. Now, this is not actually historically true.

[09:02]

We don't know if each one of these teachers actually had that teacher. In fact, it can't possibly be true because a student of one teacher actually existed a century before that other teacher in India. But this is the trouble with modern scholarship. They keep confusing us with the facts. But we ignore that because... Because in some sense, it's sort of this whole lineage idea came up in China because they like ancestry things. They like to be organized and have ancestors. But in some fact, it's actually true because in our Zen tradition, we really say this is a teaching outside the scriptures. This is a teaching that is passed person to person, or we say warm hand to warm hand or face to face. So in some sense, there certainly was some student of Buddha who learned Buddha's way, and he passed it on to some student, and that student passed it on, and it's been passed on person to person, and that is certainly the case with us.

[10:12]

Having Suzuki Rishi come to America and live with us and bring the teaching to us as a person was the way it came here. So in that sense, the lineage is really true. So then, in addition to getting the nice presents, their raksu and their lineage paper, they have to take some vows. And they are called the 16 bodhisattva vows or the precepts. And I'm not going to go through the 16 bodhisattva precepts here. If you want to, you can come to the ceremony. Everybody's invited, and you'll hear them take these vows, which is wonderful. But I'll go through a little bit. There's 16 of which three are taking refuge in Buddha, taking refuge in Dharma, taking refuge in Sangha. Three are the pure precepts, which is basically saying, I will do no harm, I will do good, and I will save all beings.

[11:17]

And then there's 10 grave precepts or clear mind precepts, things like I vow not to kill or steal or lie. But since they've taken refuge in Buddha and sewed 80 hours of that stitching into their cloth, I have to say a few things. Taking refuge in Buddha is taking refuge in this very mind. We say in Zen, this very mind is Buddha. That is, this mind. Your mind. Our mind is Buddha. So that usually strikes people as kind of odd because they mostly think maybe they're this very not-so-good person sometimes. They're certainly not a Buddha. So part of this ceremony is to remind people that they are Buddha in addition to being a very complex personality. And the second thing we do is we take refuge in Dharma, and in that sense we take refuge in this very moment.

[12:23]

is teaching. This moment we're living in is a teaching, is the teaching. Or we take refuge in Sangha. Sangha is usually all of you, the people that practice Buddhism, or in Sangha is all beings. I've been thinking about it this way. Taking refuge in Sangha is taking refuge in the mystery of meeting another person. It is a mystery. to meet another person, isn't it? And we take refuge in that mystery, that possibility of actually meeting another person. So those are the first three of the 16 bodhisattva vows that they'll be taking today. And basically, the 10 clear-mind precepts or brave precepts are... Prescriptions that an awakened person would, this is how they would act.

[13:28]

They would not harm people, and they would, whenever possible, do good things. But at a more kind of profound level, the precepts are basically, you will love everybody. You commit to trying to love everybody. There's an old saying by St. Augustine, love and do what you will. This could be an expression of the ultimate level of Buddha's precepts. Our heart-mind guides us. Buddha guides us. Reality itself guides us. This is ultimately what we want to do, which is to love every person that we come in contact with. A bodhisattva is a person who is making an effort to understand as deeply as possible their own life and doing it in the spirit of altruism, kindness, and helpfulness for others.

[14:29]

That's what a bodhisattva... So we're doing a bodhisattva ceremony. All these people are being initiated as bodhisattvas, and they're making an effort to understand as deeply as possible their life. That seems like a good thing to do, doesn't it? Don't we all want to understand as deeply as possible our life? And on the surface, maybe it seems kind of easy, but it doesn't take long before we realize, well, do I really know what's going on here? Dogen's comment on this is, to study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things, or as Siddhartha would say, be awakened by all things. So first we study hard, and then we let go, and then the whole world becomes us.

[15:31]

Sugarshi commented on this little saying, saying, the problem is that when you're studying yourself, you become attached to a temporal expression of your true nature. And you... actually think this temporal, meaning at this moment you're experiencing yourself, and you think that this expression is you. I mean, it is you right now at this moment, but unfortunately the next moment it's not you anymore because it's changed. But you're still involved with that past you. And this, of course, is one of our big problems. of understanding who we are is we keep attaching, grasping to the past person that we were. This is without going into all the ways we grasp into the past person, going back past our childhood, our parents, our grandparents, etc. So this is a great study, which I'm not going into today, but just to say a bodhisattva is committed to this studying themselves to get an understanding of who they are.

[16:48]

But I want to talk more today about the other side, which is how do we be helpful, how do we be kind and altruistic in our life. And last week, I guess it was last week, Mel gave a marvelous lecture. How many of you were here for Mel's lecture last week? And he covered the six paramitas, the six practices of a bodhisattva, generosity, ethical conduct, patience, effort, meditation, wisdom. And so since he did such a good job of that, I'm going to assume you all are well-versed on the six paramitas and have been practicing them all week long, especially the generosity, ethical conduct and patience. Isn't patience, gosh, don't we need patience? maybe more than the others, just because every once in a while, life really throws us a curve.

[17:54]

Really, it's hard. So sometimes I think about patience as endurance, just the ability to take it when it gets tough. If you can't take it when it gets tough, you can't practice generosity. You're not very ethical. And it's certainly hard to be wise and meditative. So this quality of being able to except the karmic consequences of what your life is giving you at any moment is a really important paramita. So I thought, since Zen is full of many, many lists, and so since I can't do the six paramitas about what a bodhisattva's practice is, I went to Dogen, who has the four methods of guidance of a bodhisattva. So I actually take the bodhisattvas' four methods of practice. And the first method of practice of a bodhisattva that Dogen lists is giving.

[19:04]

Isn't that interesting? It's the same as the six paramitas, generosity. Somehow almost all these lists start with giving as the central practice of a bodhisattva. And I'm going to read the first sentence and let you think about it while I get a glass of a sip of water. Giving is, I mean, non-grasping is already giving. So you think about that. Grasping is already giving. of a fundamental view of giving that is not to grasp for anything we're always grasping for something but if we're not grasping he's saying at that moment you're giving you don't even have to give anything away you just have to not be grasping something and you're giving you feel like you're giving if you're not you know

[20:19]

trying to get something. I have to find this text now because I'm going to read you some of it. Okay, here we are. Non-grasping means not to covet. So, when you know coveting, you've got something, I want it, I want this, I want that. Just not to covet is giving. Not to covet means not to curry favor. It's interesting, almost always when we give something, We do want something back, right?

[21:21]

Curry favor. I mean, we'd like a thank you. You know, you give something to somebody and they don't thank you. How does that feel? Not so good, right? We can't actually, or, well, eventually they'll thank me or something will happen down the road. I mean, there is some idea in our head when we give something that we should get something back. I think this is a natural thing. It's very hard to give without having that sense of it. Even we have this saying, well, it feels better to give than to receive. So even there, well, at least I want to get a good feeling inside myself for giving. So he's talking about a kind of giving that is totally unattached to anything coming back. That's where he's starting. Then he's giving some examples. And his first example, Dogen is so unusual in its way. It's like giving away unneeded belongings to someone you don't know.

[22:23]

I mean, normally when we think of giving something, we think of, well, I'll give something very big and important to somebody I really care about. He starts with, let's start by giving away things you don't need to people you don't know. Well, at least I can do that. I mean, I can start doing some of that. Then his next example of giving things away... offering flowers blooming on a distant mountain to the Tathagata. Offering flowers blooming on a distant mountain to Buddha. What a great idea. How do we do that? I don't think he's talking about going out in the meadows and cutting a bunch of flowers down and putting them in a vase, although we do do that. That is one thing we do. So we do do that sometimes. But I think what he's actually talking about is all those flowers, filling those meadows, we rejoice in them.

[23:27]

We experience them. We love them, we enjoy them, and we offer them to the whole world in our heart. That's a gift we give when we can walk through a field of flowers. I spent an entire summer when I was young, in my 20s, I was on a mission to find the best meadow-filled, flower-filled meadows in the western part of the United States. I started in the southwest, going to all the deserts, Grand Canyon, lots of beautiful flowers and canyons in the Grand Canyon and Zion. I did the High Sierras, early summer in the High Sierras, the Oregon Cascades. the coastal range of Big Sur and Oregon, Washington, Olympic Peninsula, the Canadian Rockies, all the way down through Yellowstone, through Colorado. You know, it's hard to actually enjoy a meadow filled with flowers when you're so busy trying to find the absolute perfect meadow filled with flowers.

[24:38]

These flowers are not quite there... They're a little past prime. I would go to the ranger station and I would say, okay, I'm here in the Oregon Cascade, don't know it well, what do you recommend right now at this moment where the meadows are filled with the most flowers? Jefferson Park, that area is fantastic. I hope some of you have been there. Just unbelievable. Of course, he forgot to tell me that the mosquitoes are about a thousand mosquitoes in a cubic foot. Can't see the flowers for the mosquitoes. So anyway, all I'm commenting on is it's not so easy actually to see the flowers and really take them in and offer them to Buddha. He goes on to say, whether it is of teaching or of material, each gift has its own value and is worth giving.

[25:41]

It doesn't matter whether it's a teaching or a material thing. I'd add we offer love. Love would be the best gift you could give. Even if the gift is not your own, there is no reason to abstain from giving it. I love that. How do we give gifts that aren't your own? I was thinking about this. It's like you visit a friend's house. this marvelous, beautiful house that they have, and you give it to them by telling them how beautiful it is and how much you enjoy their house, or driving around in your friend's new car that they're so happy with. You give them their gift. And then the last sentence in this paragraph, the question is not whether the gift is valuable, but whether there is genuine merit. It's... Not so much whether the gift you give is valuable, but in your heart have you actually given a gift.

[26:48]

Okay. Now I'm going to go on to the next paragraph here. When you leave the way to the way, you attain the way. What could be more beautiful than that? When you leave the way... Everybody get that? One of my friends said, yeah, when you get out of your own way, you get the way. We're so busy trying to manage the world, fix things, do things, adjust things. If it wasn't this way, if it was that way, we don't even can't remember what the way is. But this is a very hopeful statement. He's saying, The way is with you. The force is with you. That's a movie. I remember that. The way is with you. If you just leave it alone, you will attain the way. Don't mess with it.

[27:57]

Let go. Let go into the way. At the time of attaining the way, the way is always left to the way. When treasure is left just as treasure, treasure becomes giving. When treasure is just left as treasure, treasure becomes giving. When you don't possess the treasure, then the treasure becomes giving. This just keeps going on. It's great. You give yourself to yourself and others to others. Now there's an idea. How do you give yourself to yourself? Got any volunteers here? Okay, let's start with, well, give yourself, that's a koan. I think we'll leave that as a koan. Give yourself to yourself. I'm gonna give myself to myself.

[28:59]

Well, sometimes there's more than one self in there. There's that self that's going, Ed, you didn't do such a good job on that, right? So there's obviously some sense that I haven't really given myself to myself. I haven't owned my whole self. I'm going to give my whole self. I'm going to be my whole self. And I'm not going to separate myself into different parts. I'm going to become my whole self. And I'm going to encourage other people to become their whole self. And then the last sentence of this paragraph, the power of the causal relations of giving reaches to divas, kind of like demigods, human beings, and even enlightened sages. When giving becomes actual, such causal relations are immediately formed. This is sort of a big Buddhist idea, causal relations.

[30:04]

We're not here. by accident that is I'm here because my mom and dad got together my mom and dad got together because somebody else got together they came from Europe way back when some fish crawled out of the ocean onto the land became the first mammal you know we're here because of a huge long list of causal things that have happened this is a but at the same time we have to recognize that this is true of us. We can't take credit for being who we are and we can't criticize too much for what's going on. We're here because of a whole bunch of causes and conditions. And what he's saying here is the power of the causal relations of giving reaches to all...

[31:07]

gods, human beings, and enlightened sages. With all these causal conditions, you read the newspaper, it's pretty discouraging about what's going on sometimes in the world. You think, what can I do? Even our president, who's trying pretty hard, has a hard time getting anything done. It's pretty discouraging. But what Dogen is saying here is the power of the causal relations of beings Giving, the power of giving, the giving that he's talking about in this paragraph, this kind of pure giving, reaches to the gods, human beings, and enlightened people. We don't know the power of pure giving. To give reaches beyond anything we can understand. That's what Dogen's saying. So that makes us feel better, right? At least I can give. I can give something. And that will make things better, maybe. Maybe make things a lot better than I imagine I'm thinking they're making them better.

[32:11]

Well, maybe that's enough on giving for today. The other three guidances or practices that Dogen has to talk about are kind speech, which is actually pretty understandable. Beneficial action, doing action, we call it skillful means. That's also pretty understandable. And identity action, maybe not so understandable. Identity action means non-difference. That is, when you are in connection with yourself and in connection with everything, that is, there's no difference then the action that flows from that is the action of a bodhisattva. Oneness. When you're one with everything, then you don't have to worry about your action. It's solid.

[33:31]

I thought I'd give a couple of real quick examples of from Suzuki Roshi about giving. Suzuki Roshi was at Tassara and he was washing his feet on the doorstep after working in the garden. And his attendant who was standing just inside the door handed him a towel and she then reached down and pinched one of his toes. And he says, that's one of the powers of a Buddha. What is, she said, to see what someone needs and give it to them? Another example was over at Sukhoji, where Sukhoji first came to teach. They did a sort of soji, where you clean up after morning zazen. Everybody runs around and sweeps and stuff. It's very hard to get organized. The work leader sits outside after service here, and people go up and he tells them, you go sweep and you do these things. But at Sakoji, it wasn't very well organized because there were all kinds of new people showing up.

[34:35]

And one of the older students was getting very frustrated because he couldn't get any of his sweeping done because students would keep coming up and asking him, where's the brooms? Where's this? Where's that? And it was very frustrating for him. And I think he asked Suzuki Roshi something about it and Suzuki Roshi didn't say anything. But it was a real problem for him. He was getting irritated during Soji. So I guess finally one day he... decided to get over it, and he just saw somebody without a broom, and he walked right up and handed them his broom. And just as soon as he turned around, there was Suzuki Roshi handing him his broom. A student asked Suzuki Roshi, does a Zen master suffer in a different way than his Zen students? And Suzuki Roshi answered, in the same way. If not, I don't think he's good enough.

[35:40]

So I'm going to end the talk with this. If I can read it, I just printed this out, and it is a very small type. This was, I think, one of the very first lay ordinations here by Suzuki Roshi in this temple. And he said... As we have so many students here inside and outside of Zen Center, we need more help. I decided to have lay ordination for you old students just to help others, not to give some special idea of lay Buddhists, because all of us are Buddhists, actually. Every sentient being is a bodhisattva, whether or not he is aware of it or she is aware of it. As this is our conviction, I don't want to give you some special idea of lay Buddhists. bringing us back down to earth. I've just described this marvelous ceremony. We're all going to get dressed up. It's going to be very complicated.

[36:41]

We're going to be handing out presents. We're going to turn everybody into bodhisattvas doing, you know, giving like crazy in all directions. I just want to remind you, as Suzuki Roshi says, all beings are bodhisattvas and you're not that special. LAUGHTER But I needed some help, so I thought I'd make some of the older students wear these rock suits so they'd help the new students. Our way is like Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva. When he wants to say ladies, he takes the form of a lady. For boys, he takes the form of a boy. For fishermen, he becomes a fisherman. A more sophisticated Chinese expression is to be like a white bird in the snow. When people are like snow, we should be like snow. When people become black, we should be black. And always being with them without any idea of discrimination. We can help others in the true sense without giving anything, any special teaching or materials.

[37:44]

This is actually the Bodhisattva way. Did you get that? Should I read it again? That was clear enough. This is actually the Bodhisattva way. When people become black, we should be black. When people are like snow, we should be like snow. And always being with them without any idea of discrimination, we can help others in its true sense, even without giving anything, any special teaching or materials. This is actually the Bodhisattva way. Well, thank you very much for coming to this lecture. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please visit sfzc.org and click Giving.

[38:51]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[38:54]

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