This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. This week, in just a few days, I'll be celebrating my 65th which really seems almost impossible that this is true, but it is true. And I've been having some birthday celebrations in these last couple days. I was taken out to dinner, and then yesterday, a friend who lives here at Green Gulch, Arusa Chu, It was her birthday, her 65th birthday yesterday, so we got a little get-together with the crones and the codgers at Green Gulch.

[01:08]

So we had a crones and codgers lunch. Usually you had to be 60 to be invited. So at this birthday lunch we posed two questions which They're not just for crones and codgers. I think everybody could benefit by thinking about these questions. But the first question was, what are you ready to let go of? And the second was, for the rest of the time that you have to be alive, what do you want to devote yourself to? So I don't think, you know, it's necessarily just for people over 60. to look at those things. What are we ready to let go of? I think actually every New Year's when we have the big bonfire here and we write things on pieces of paper, it's really what are we ready to let go of, ready to put into the fire.

[02:12]

So we heard in the circle various wonderful things that people were ready to let go of, old ways of habitually acting, thinking, certain very old wanting things to be a certain way that never will be that way. You have to actually accept that they're never going to be the way you want them to be and being ready to let go of that. And for me, I felt what I was ready to let go of was material objects, you know, things that are stored in boxes and that, you know, unless I take the lid off and look, I wouldn't remember, you know, what's in there. Old correspondence and, you know, Mother's Day cards that my kids made for me in grade school and these kinds of things.

[03:16]

So I really felt it was time to pare down and simplify and go through the boxes and to actually, you know, save somebody else from having to do it for me, you know, which is hard to do for someone else. It's painful. So let me do it. So right after the party yesterday, I got out this box and it took me all afternoon. There were so many things to reread, but I did throw away a bunch of things. this, one of the persons who wanted to let go of old habits, you know, old ways that they thought they should be acting, it reminded me of this poem, actually, that I found in the box, which I didn't bring it with me, but it's a poem about being at a certain age where you can say things like, I think the poem, this is by Naomi,

[04:21]

I think so, it just said at the bottom, Naomi Nye. So it must have been before she was called Naomi, what is her name? She Hath Nye. And the poem said something like, if you meet somebody at the grocery store and they say, let's have lunch, you say, why? Or if somebody says, don't I know you? Say, no. If you're invited to a party, remember, you know, what did she say, the tasteless meatballs on the paper plate, you know, and before you answer, you know. And it was a very funny poem, actually. I probably should have brought it. So to be of a certain age where somebody says... You know, let's have lunch. You say, why? It's very different from, you know, there's a bodhisattva admonition, which is if you're invited someplace, unless you're sick or have to teach Dharma somewhere, you say yes.

[05:33]

So that's the other side, you know, of thinking about the party that's not going to be fun. But anyway, at a certain age, to have that freedom to say no, instead of feeling those kind of stale pressures to be a certain way and to meet everybody's expectation, no matter who they are. That kind of being ready to let go of that. So thinking about what I wanted to devote myself to with the time that I have left, which no one knows how long that is. And when we're young, we think, we don't think about it that much. It will happen to somebody else sometime, somewhere, but it's very little concern unless it comes close.

[06:40]

And now at this age, it's impossible. think you know later is not that much later you know later is of course it's always that way but but as we grow older it's much more clear we're willing to look at it so what I wanted to devote myself to I said was the Buddha Dharma the Buddha Dharma and all the different manifestations uh all the ways that it expresses itself Buddha uh The Buddha Dharma, another way of translating that might be the awakened truth, the awakened one's truth, or awakened truth. And that can take this form, sitting in the Dharma seat and giving a talk on a Sunday, but it can take any form, endless forms, to devote oneself to Buddha Dharma.

[07:43]

actually doing anything completely and with sincerity, one might say, is expressing awakened truth. So one of the most basic, basic practices, and maybe the defining practice of whether one says, I'm a Buddhist practitioner, I'm a Buddhist, or I follow the Buddha's way, I follow Buddha Dharma, maybe the first practice was taking refuge in the triple treasure, taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. And the origin of that taking refuge may be the first in this... in this... in the age of the Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha, because Shakyamuni Buddha said, this is not something that I discovered or created or made up, the Dharma, the reality.

[08:50]

In this time and in this eon or in this age, I rediscovered this truth. And he talked about many Buddhas in the past, and Shakyamuni... Shakyamuni Buddha is the Buddha of this time. So people who are followers of Buddha Dharma, it goes back to Shakyamuni Buddha and all the other Buddhas, we say Buddhas plural, Buddhas and ancestors who were and are followers of Shakyamuni Buddha. So after Shakyamuni Buddha sat under the Bodhi tree, the Tree of Awakening, and rediscovered or discovered anew the truth, the reality of all existence, he wasn't necessarily going to teach. You may know this part of the legend or the story that he felt nobody will understand.

[09:56]

This is inconceivable, and I can't teach it. But he was persuaded to teach by... It says Indra, which is one of the Hindu gods who encouraged him. Yes, there are people who can hear this. So he came down from the mountain, figuratively, left where he had been sitting and appreciating his awakening for about a week or so. And so this is the Buddha, the awakened one, went to... And there he met the five practitioners who he had been practicing with before he took his leave to sit and made his vow not to get up until he had understood. So there were these five practitioners who were very accomplished yogis and adepts. And he spoke what he, he spoke dharma. He spoke the truth that, the reality and the truth that he had

[11:00]

awakened to. So you have right there, you have the Buddha speaking Dharma or this, what he had awakened to, this truth. And then these five practitioners who woke up, who understood what he was teaching and said, we want to follow you. We want to practice with you. We want to practice this Dharma, this truth with you. And that's the kind of original, in this age, triple treasure, the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, the fellowship of practitioners who want to practice what the Buddha taught. And they took refuge in taking refuge, that's what I want to look at with you, what is taking refuge in the triple treasure? as the defining kind of act of someone who then calls themselves a follower of the Buddha.

[12:12]

You take refuge. Refuge means to fly back. And we use it, you know, refugees are people who are fleeing from something. They're fleeing to a safe place. They're fleeing. They're looking for sanctuary, safety, protectiveness, a peaceful place. So they fly away. They fly back to peace from a place of conflict or war or all sorts of conflicts. And I think in the broadest sense, We can have our own inner conflicts or inner wars or internal lack of peace, lack of contentment and quiet and acceptance of ourselves and others.

[13:13]

And so we need a refuge. But often I think there's a mistake where refuge is understood as or misconstrued as running away from. And I think in some ways it is turning away from confusion and disquiet and dis-ease and war of various kinds. Turning towards something of peace and that you can trust. So I think it's important to understand we're not escaping from life when we take refuge in Buddha, but we're turning towards something that will allow us to live in peace with all beings. We're not turning and running away from beings, but taking refuge, finding our sanctuary in order to be able to be

[14:23]

with beings in a new way, perhaps. And also this refuge, taking refuge, is that we may have realized that we've been taking refuge, trying to find peace, trying to find stability, trying to find happiness and contentment in all sorts of ways that are actually topsy-turvy. They don't actually give peace. or stability, or they add to confusion rather than clearing our confusion or finding clarity. So taking refuge in the triple treasure may be letting go of other things we've been taking refuge in that have not been a refuge. We thought they would be. We tried it out, and we found out for ourselves it doesn't really touch us. where we need to be met.

[15:23]

It doesn't meet us. So, taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, Suzuki Roshi, in a lecture about many things, but part of the lecture was about taking refuge. And he said, if we understand what it means to take refuge, The whole of Buddhism is there. And all the koans and zazen practice and everything is included in taking refuge. The most basic act and the definitive and everything's there if you truly understand it. I found that very interesting, very compelling actually to understand more deeply what it is to take refuge, to plumb that, and not assume, well, I know what that means, and I've been taking refuge for years or something, but understand deeply and thoroughly how it is that everything's there, that there's nothing left out of the vast teachings of the Buddha.

[16:44]

So there's a story that I was recently told and read that I... I wanted to also tell you, and maybe you know the story, I wasn't familiar with this story. It's from the Pali Canon, and it's about a practitioner named Sumedha. And in this story, Sumedha makes a vow out of a particular situation, which I wanted to tell you about. and then come back to taking refuge completely and thoroughly. So the story of Sumedha is in the Pali Canon, and it's a story of, it's a Jataka tale. Jataka tales are tales of the past lives of Shakyamuni Buddha.

[17:49]

And you're familiar probably with many of them because they're told often as children's stories. They have animals. The Buddha was born as a tigress or a deer or there's one where he was born as a bird and there's a forest fire going on and the bird goes, flies to the lake and dips his wings or her wings in the lake and then flies back and drops all the drops of water on the forest fire, then flies back to the lake and swoops down and gets her wings wet and then flies to the forest fire and drops the drops. This is a kind of, you know, it's like the Bodhisattva vow. You just make effort in this endless way to meet suffering. There's something very moving for me about that sincerity of trying over and over again and meeting the impossible with sincerity.

[18:53]

So those are Jataka tales, many very compelling tales. And this tale, the Buddha was born as this person named Sumedha. And at a very young age, Sumedha, who was born into a wealthy family, his Mother and father both died. Maybe he was about seven years old. And there was a government official who had been named as his guardian and his steward. And he showed the young Sumedha the wealth of his family that had been accumulated for seven generations. And he showed him the treasury and the storehouses. And there was gems and gold and silver and pearls and money. And Sumedha, this small boy, looked at all this and said, all of my relations, all of my relatives from seven generations back are all gone now.

[19:56]

His parents are gone. And none of them were able to take even a penny, even a coin with them. What do I... How is it that I would want to devote myself to accumulating more and guarding this treasure and And he had this turn where he decided he didn't want any of it. And he told this government official he didn't want any. And he gave it all away to the poor. And then he kind of apprenticed himself with religious teachers of the day and practiced religious practices of meditation and meditation. visualizations, all sorts of things. And he also... And there were many religious people in India, as there are today, not necessarily affiliated with a particular teacher or way.

[20:59]

And he became a hermit, Sumedha. And in these, as an adept, he became rather... possessed of magical powers, which happens, we've been told. It's just the way some people converted others by being able to do and exhibit these magical powers of clairvoyance and different things. Anyway, he had these powers, and the village nearby where he was a hermit knew this. And one day, the villagers... were told that the Buddha of that time, Dipankara Buddha, who was the Buddha right before Shakyamuni Buddha, Dipankara Buddha was coming with his followers and they were coming to that village. And the villagers were very happy about this and they wanted to make the village prepare and clean up everything and make it beautiful for this teacher, this wonderful teacher who was coming.

[22:02]

So they began to clean the roads and make it beautiful, probably hang garlands. And I just imagine getting ready for the Olympics or something. And Sumedha happened to come into the village. Maybe he came for food at some point. Anyway, and he was wondering, what is everybody all excited about? What are they getting prepared for? And they said, Deepankara Buddha is coming to our town. And he said he would like to help. And this is one of the details of the story. The villagers were very excited because they knew he had these special powers and they thought he could really do kind of a really fast job cleaning up things. But Sumedha didn't want to use his magical powers in cleaning up. He wanted to do it with his own hands. And so they asked him to clean the streets. And the streets were very muddy. They must be bringing in... stones and things to make like a cobbled, covered, clean place to walk because it was very muddy.

[23:08]

And he just began doing that work with his very own hands. Well, you know, he could only work so fast and pretty soon Deepankar was right there coming into the town and he wasn't finished. The street still had these muddy areas. and the Buddha was coming, Deepankara was coming, and Sumedha wanted to do something, and with devotion, he wanted to express his respect for the Buddha and care, and so he did a full prostration right in the mud, and he had long hair, and he threw his hair out onto the muddy street, and his whole entire body, one long full body prostration and the Buddha came and understood this devotion by this practitioner completely and accepted this gift of his whole body just laid out in the mud on the ground and his hair and he walked on his back and on his hair and

[24:29]

as he was walking on his body, Sumedha kind of looked up at the Buddha from right in the mud, looked up at him, and there was something that he felt, something very deep, some resonance, some resonance with this teacher, some resonance of awakening, some... understanding that this, I want to follow this teacher, I want to practice like this teacher. I want to be a follower of the way, of this teacher. This happened right there, right there in the street, in the mud, you know. And the Buddha realized that, that there was some, he looked at him, they probably looked at each other, you know, And the Buddha understood that Sumedha had really felt something.

[25:36]

And this story is thought of as perhaps the origin of the Bodhisattva vow and maybe the origin of the full prostration as well. Sumedha thought, now if I go and become a follower right now of Dipankara, I could become an arhat. This is from the Pali Canon. This is the old wisdom school. become an arhat and awaken myself and not return and not have to return for other lifetimes. Sumedha realized that I could become an arhat and end my suffering this life and lives to come. What happened was he thought, I want to be like Dipankara Buddha. I want to practice like he does and help other people forever. And so I let go of being an arahat and not returning.

[26:44]

And I want to be like Dipankara. I want to live for the benefit of beings endlessly, over and over, and be a Buddha. I want to be a Buddha, not an arhat, but a Buddha, an awakened one. So this is a different kind of a vow, and this is in the Pali Canon. This maybe is the origin of the bodhisattva vow, which is the kind of shape that Buddhism took in the Mahayana, or later schools, where the ideal was not arhat, but a bodhisattva who has lived... who lives and is lived for the benefit of all beings. And this is the Buddha's vow. The Buddha's vow is, Buddhas appear in the world to help suffering beings. This is the only, this is the one great cause of Buddhas appearing in the world, is to help suffering beings.

[27:46]

And Sumedha made that vow too, to become a Buddha and to help beings. And at this moment when he looked up at the Buddha and the Buddha looked at him, the Buddha made a prediction. This comes up in the sutras, many different sutras, especially the Lotus Sutra, where the Buddha predicts or sees in a future time in this land or another place in what the Buddha predicted for Sumedha was in the Saha world, in Roseapple Island, This is our world, Saha world. You will be a Buddha named Shakyamuni Buddha, and you will teach beings. So he predicted that Sumedha would be Shakyamuni Buddha. And then another kind of turn of the story is that Dipankara himself was Shakyamuni Buddha.

[28:49]

All Buddhas are one Buddha. So you have Sumedha and Deepankara Buddha and Shakyamuni and all Buddhas and ancestors, just one awakened mind, one awakened being that takes form in response to suffering, that takes form as Deepankara, as Shakyamuni, as all the Buddhas and ancestors born of that vow to help beings. So when we take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, we can think of it as taking refuge in Shakyamuni Buddha, who taught and whose teachings were learned by heart and passed on orally for hundreds of years. The Dharma, the teachings, the truth that he rediscovered and then written down. So these teachings themselves, Shakyamuni Buddha, his teachings,

[29:52]

as they've been passed on, and the fellowship or the sangha, the community of people who practice together. And you can think of the Buddha as just this one awakened mind. This is the one mind, triple treasure. And this body of the Buddha... This reality body of the Buddha is the Buddha that we take refuge in. And it takes all these different forms in different people, but it's really just one awakened reality. And then the Dharma is the reality itself that one awakens to. Not necessarily the teachings that are written down, or not only the teachings that are written down, but what are the teachings about? They're about the... truth or the reality of all existence and that dharma this is another way of looking at the triple treasure and take refuge in all existence the reality of all existence and then the sangha or the community of beings but also in this different way of looking at it

[31:16]

the harmony between the reality of all existence and this reality body of the Buddha that is like space. It's inconceivable. It doesn't come or go or is not born or dies. It's the reality body of the Buddha which responds to beings. And the harmony between the Buddha, this reality body, and the reality of all existence, and how that expresses itself throughout the universe in harmony is the Sangha. So this is like a... Now, when I think of Suzuki Roshi saying, if you take refuge in the Triple Treasure, all of Buddhism is there, all the koans, all the stories, everything's there in this... vast, kind of different way of looking at the three treasures.

[32:19]

And then there's another way of looking at the three treasures, which is called the manifest three treasures, which is how they manifest, like the Buddha, like these practiced beings that manifest as artists' representations of what? Of this vow. that takes form, vow to serve and save from suffering all beings. So then an artist makes a figure of that to help us to visualize that or to resonate with us. So you have, you know, temples and Buddha figures and sutras and books and then... that become members of temples and those are all the manifest ways that this one mind takes form. So in taking refuge in the Buddha or taking refuge in the triple treasure, there is this resonating that happens between a practitioner,

[33:38]

somebody who wants to turn their life around. Sometimes we say somebody who wants to be trained, to train in the truth, these teachings. It's not enough to just hear it once. We need to go over it and turn it, train ourselves. Dogen Zenji, the Zen master, And Japan says, I put a rope through my own nostrils. This is training. This is like an ox who wants to be trained. So there is a resonating between one who wishes to take refuge, wishes to turn their life around, and... the teacher or the teachings or the Buddha or the triple treasure, there is this resonating, just like when Sumedha looked up at the Buddha and thought, I want to be like that.

[34:48]

I want to practice that way. And the Buddha understood there was something that happened between them, which has a name. It's called, in Japanese, ka-no-do-ko. And there's various ways to translate that, but sometimes it's translated as... a kind of spiritual communion or a resonance of awakening or the characters themselves mean to inquire and respond. Someone inquires and there's a response kind of at the same time. Sumedha looked up and the Buddha looked down And they understood each other. There was a kind of communion between them or an interaction between them, an interchange.

[35:49]

And this is a very, in Chinese culture, this is a very, very, very old, like Confucius, you know, B.C., I don't know what you'd call it, teaching or understanding, or understanding of how things work, how reality works, that there is resonance between like, between like things. And the reason that we resonate when we hear the teachings or we can turn our life around when we see someone's practice or hear the Dharma or even see a figure sometimes, you know, we resonate with that because it's like resonating with like, because our own nature is awakened nature. So it's in this old philosophical teaching of like resonating with like, in Chinese this is kanying. This is a description of affinity, how it is that there's affinity between

[37:02]

teacher and student, between people, between couples, between family members. There's affinity, and it's a kind of like resonating with like. And so this is very old in Chinese culture, and when it meets Buddhism, it becomes this resonance of awakening or spiritual communion between student and teacher or practitioner. and the teaching that is palpable, that we feel, that we have to act on because it's so deep what we feel, this kind of affinity. And this is also, you know, the Quan Yin or Kanon, the Bodhisattva of Infinite Compassion. This is... connected with her practice of responding to the cries of the world.

[38:07]

When we ask for help, there is a meeting. The name Guan Yin means the one who hears the cries of the world. But it's not just hear, it's hears and responds. So... So this taking refuge, taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, there is this Kano Doko that happens between the student and the practitioner or the listener. Another translation of this Kano Doko is mutual affinity and interaction

[39:14]

So this is Dogen. The merit of triple refuge will always ripen when responsive communion takes place between the student and the Buddha. And those who experience this communion... Whatever realm you're in, whether in a very difficult time or a heavenly time or a fearful time, when you experience this, you will take refuge. Experiencing this is taking refuge, is putting awakened life and these teachings based on the reality of the way things are and then being in fellowship with others. Feeling that affinity or response is already turning our life in that way.

[40:30]

So, just in conclusion, when I first came to Zen Center in 19, this particular thing happened in 1971, I think. I had sat Zazen and then gone in the city center to the Buddha Hall for I was just following. I didn't know what people were doing. I was just following along. And in the Buddha Hall, all of a sudden, everybody kind of dropped, like the whole room dropped to the floor and did this prostration. It wasn't like Sumedha. They didn't go all the way out like that, which is Tibetan style of prostration where you spread your entire body on the ground. It was the Japanese traditional prostration. Full prostration has five points that touch the knees and the elbows and the forehead. But everybody went down into this posture. So I kind of followed along. Otherwise, I'd be the only one standing up. But it got me very worried because they were bowing to graven images.

[41:41]

They were bowing to this figure of the Buddha on the altar. I wanted to sit. I was sure about that. And, you know, completely clear that I wanted to practice with Sangha. But nobody had told me about full prostration. I hadn't seen that before. I guess the last time I was at Zen Center, a couple years before, we just sat and went home. You know, I didn't see this. So coming from a tradition that does not bow to any graven images, you know, Jewish... background, like, this was really imprinted strongly. You do not bow down to golden calves and et cetera. I was worried, like, uh-oh, what have I, maybe I made a mistake. What did I get myself into? And I asked the director of the city center at the time, who was Rev. Anderson, I went up to him immediately after and said, what are we bowing to? What is this?

[42:41]

And he said, oh, you're just bowing to your own true self. Don't worry about it or something. Thank goodness. That's why I came here. I wanted to bow to my own true self, study the self. That was what it was all about, right? So when he said that, it was like, oh, fine. I can do that. That's what I want to do. Fine. My own true self. That's very interesting. These practice figures, if we think of them as external, dualistically separate deities that are beyond the beyond, you know, of have nothing to do with us. We just have to have faith in that what they say is right or something. That will not be taking refuge. Taking refuge is taking refuge in our own true nature, our own awakened nature, which is not separate from Shakyamuni Buddha, the entire universe, and the reality of all existence.

[43:48]

that we are not separate from that. So taking refuge is not taking refuge in an external way. It's taking refuge in the deepest understanding of who we are, which is kind of an inconceivable reality that is ungraspable and that takes form like this. So when we bow, if we set it up like I'm bowing to graven images or something outside myself, I think it will be a problem. It will be a problem eventually. So to imagine that we're namu, we're plunging into the bow and into the vow,

[44:54]

Like Sumedha, who plunged, you know, he just threw himself down in this mud. And somebody had trouble with the fact that the Buddha walked on his back. Like, they were really surprised when I told this story at Tassara that they thought the Buddhas were going to say, please, Sumedha, get up. You don't need to lie in the mud for me or something. But it was, no, this was devotion. This was like the Buddha walked on him with... you know, great understanding of what had happened, what this person was expressing. He accepted the gift completely. Just like in his bowl, he accepted the handful of sand that this young child put in his bowl as an offering. And I imagine ate it, too, because whatever goes in the bowl, you eat. So the Buddha completely accepted. So to completely... throw ourselves into our life, whatever much of life we have left, and let go of peripheral and distractibilities and conventionalities that are not in accord?

[46:11]

Can we let go and throw ourselves into our life, like Sumedha? And this is non-dual, or this is not setting something aside, outside ourselves, when we throw ourselves in. And one image of this is from Suzuki Roshi. He says, you try to carry water in a basket. You want to carry water, but you dip and try to carry water in the basket, and it all falls out because there's holes. There's holes. And the way to carry water in a basket is to dip the basket in the water. Then it's filled with water. There's no holes. It's filled with water. That image for me is like plunging into our life, plunging into our vows, into our every activity.

[47:16]

And then there's no holes. There's just... sincerity of our practice and our taking refuge over and over again. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[48:06]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_98.01