and ours for all of you right now. So why don't we sit for a little bit, about five minutes or so, and then I'm going to talk about Ananda. Ananda meaning joy. And he was the third in the line of transmission from Shakyamuni Buddha through Mahgachapa and then to Ananda. So I'll ring the bell and then I'll ring it again at the end of our sitting. Welcome again.

[06:25]

Last week, for those of you who were here last week and perhaps even remember something I promised I was going to do, I don't want to forget that I told you that. And I was going to read to you from Reb Anderson's book, Being Upright. This one, which some of you may have. It's about the Bodhisattva precepts. And there's a really wonderful teaching on page 34. about great ancestor Yao Shan Wei Yang. And it's an incredibly important teaching and also applies to this third chapter about Ananda. The pattern of what's going on in the story that Reb tells on page 34 is the same pattern of what's happening with Ananda, but it's kind of lengthy. So I thought rather than read that to you, I just recommend it to you. It's in the chapter of his book called The 16 Great Bodhisattva Precepts, The Teaching of the Two Truths.

[07:27]

So this, again, is key to understanding just about anything, really, not just Buddhism, is these two truths, which I talked about quite a bit during the Heart Sutra a few weeks back. And it always bears a review. I review the two truths all the time, you know. It's like the ultimate truth and the relative truth. So when one side's illuminated, when the ultimate truth is being illuminated, the truth that includes such ideas and concepts as emptiness, where no words can reach it, or inconceivable, you know, this is what we should call the big mind. So when the big mind is illuminated, then small mind is dark. The little self, self-preserved idea of an individual is not seen. When the individual is seen, then this big mind is not visible. So one side is illuminated, the other is dark. So when our small, selfish view is up, we don't really see this big perspective. We're very caught up in our concerns, whatever they are.

[08:33]

We all know them. They run through our heads all day long. So that self-centered view, that view that drives us through the day is invited to know about its great big connection to this large view, the great mind, big mind, small mind. are intimately connected. They're conjoined at the boundary between one side's illuminated, the other side is dark. They're just two sides of what we are, of what all that there is, these two sides. So ultimate truth and then the relative truth. So you'll hear those terms again and again, and you'll also hear them illuminated in these stories again and again, because that's what these stories are trying to help us to do ourselves, is to turn, pivot. You get stuck over here, then go over here. You get stuck over here, then go over here. well-oiled little axis there that we can learn to turn on. So last week we looked at the very first Dharma transmission in the Zen tradition from Shakyamuni Buddha.

[09:33]

So that was chapter one of the transmission of light to Mahakashapa. And this was his first transmitted disciple known as the Great Ascetic. He's the skinny guy that stands next to the Buddha. On the other side of the Buddha is our third ancestor, Ananda, who is quite jolly and quite, you know, in images, quite large bodied and with a smile. Makashapa is very thin and doesn't smile. So we have these two contrasting aspects of our personalities or people we know or whatever. These are very human archetypes, as is the Buddha, only it's kind of a different feeling there. Are you a god? No. Are you a demon? No. Are you a water spirit? No. Are you human? Buddha said, no. He said, what are you? He said, I'm awake. So this character is awake, the one in the middle. And the two sides, Ananda and Mahagashapa, are two aspects of our very humanness and how awakening is a resolution of these two sides, of our extremes.

[10:36]

And the Buddha talks about that in his first sermon. So Ananda, I mean Mahagashapa, the great ascetic, So I talked a little bit about this role that the asceticism plays in the quest for awakening of many of our Buddhist ancestors, including the Buddha himself. He was an ascetic for many years. He practiced severe asceticism. And then as a result of that practice, what he discovered was that that was not the way. It was too much. So his very first sermon, hopefully familiar to you by now, called the turning of the wheel of the law, setting in motion, the turning of the wheel of the law. So this is the first sermon he gave to the five ascetics who he'd been practicing asceticism with. And he said, bhikshus, monks, seekers, there are these two extremes that ought not to be cultivated by one who has gone forth. Which two?

[11:39]

Two, dualistic. There is devotion to the pursuit of pleasure and sensual desires, which is low, coarse, vulgar, and harmful. Or there's devotion to self-mortification, to asceticism, which is painful, ignoble, and harmful. The two extremes are going too far. And then he said, it's the middle way discovered by the perfect one that avoids these two extremes. And what's the middle way? How you live your life. The Noble Eightfold Path. How you view the world. How you view life. Do you understand the two truths? Do you understand the Four Noble Truths? Have you kind of got the gist of what the Buddha understood when he looked at the star? Non-dual nature of the universe. Non-dual nature of each of you. With everything you see. Nothing separate from you. No two things. Just this one amazement that's being revealed in every moment. Just this is it. in Zen jargon.

[12:40]

So what is the middle way? It's the Noble Eightfold Path, that is to say, right view, how you see it, right intention. What's moving you? What's your intention? What drives your life? What's your plan? And what do you model your plan on? What's your life modeled on? What vows have you taken? What promises have you made to yourself, either out loud or silently? What kind of speech? are you doing you know how do you express your intention through speech and through action and through how you make a living so write speech right livelihood right effort right action and then write mindfulness are you paying attention as you do things as you touch things through that throughout the day and concentration this is a cultivated pathway you cultivating concentration is something that i think all of us have tried to learn to do and we're teachers tried to teach us to do by giving us a lot of homework, reading a lot of pages, having to concentrate in order to bring back the learning that we've been taught.

[13:45]

And maybe other disciplines you've done, athletics or art, whatever, requires paying attention for a while, for a concentrated period of time. Meditation is a concentration practice. Paying attention to just being upright at your seat. So asceticism, as represented by Maha Kashapa, remains a very important part of Zen training. You know, we actually have a value, a high value for asceticism at Zen Center. I think most of us who've stayed around did quite a bit of ascetic practices, certainly at the monastery, where you really reduce the amount of things that you're dealing with, the amount of considerations that you have to think about during the day. You don't need a watch. You don't need any money. You just listen for the sounds of the Han or the sounds of the bell. And then you go. Then you go. And you get food. And then you go. And then you go back to bed. And then you get up. And it's a very simple life, actually.

[14:47]

It's a great relief to have all of that moved away. So all you need to do is pay attention to your mind and to your thoughts and to your fears and your emotions and all of that. And yet it's always a good question, you know, to what end and how far do we go in our aesthetic practice? Some folks go too far. You know, we all have a tendency perhaps to go one way or the other, too far or not far enough. You know, the middle way is a little hard to, you know, it's not a place. It's a tendency that sometimes we go right past it and then we have to come back to it again. It's a little bit like navigating on a sailboat, you know, upright. Posture upright, intention, and all of that, writing your intention and writing your views, writing your speech, is an action that you do over time. You're learning it. How to learn to be upright and to care for yourself and to care for others. It's practice. It's training. it's been so you know throughout the history of buddhism what's too far and what's not far enough and it's also true in other religious traditions too you know how many times do you have to hit yourself you know before you're forgiven so uh how far do we need to go and where are we going even more importantly it's not enough to hit the horse but where's the horse going where are you going with that horse so an ananda is the um transmission story and he's now

[16:18]

disciple of maha kashapa so they were side by side as the buddha's attendants and and at this point because of what's happened with the non with the maha kashapa receiving dharma transmission and the buddha has now died so ananda becomes this the disciple of of his dharma brother of maha kashapta and there's not this really great relationship between these two as you can imagine between great joy and great asceticism there's a little bit of tension going on you know so this guy's really serious and this guy likes to play around he likes to tell jokes and play with children and hang out with women of all things so uh so this is the koan at the beginning of the chapter ananda asked kashapa maha kashapa what did the buddha hand on to you beside the golden-sleeved robe, the Buddha's robe. Ananda wants to know, because Buddha gave Kashyapa his golden-sleeved robe.

[17:19]

So what did the Buddha hand on to you besides the golden-sleeved robe? What's the business underneath the robe? What's really going on here? Kashyapa says, Ananda. And Ananda says, yes. Kshapa says, take down the banner pole in front of the gate. And Ananda was greatly enlightened. So what's going on? That's why they call them koans. So the banner poles were traditionally put up in India in front of temples when two teachers were going to debate some particular issue. they each had maybe a slightly different point of view and they were going to argue their points of view and whoever won the other one had to take his banner down so the winner's banner stayed up and the loser's banner came down so kashapa is saying take down the banner pole in front of the gate now as it turns out both of them had their banner poles up

[18:26]

in front of the gate. So Ananda's banner pole was up and Mahakashapa's banner pole is up. So they are now pretty neck and neck in terms of their devotion to the teaching, their understanding of the teaching and their reverence for the Buddha as their teacher. They're kind of, you know, they're kind of back to being peers in some sense. There's a little bit of something missing here. And that was Ananda's enlightenment. So at this point, when Kashapa says take down the banner pole, Ananda is suddenly awakened. So what's going on there? We can only imagine, but we should try to imagine. So Ananda is the Buddha's cousin and he was his attendant for 20 years. And there are two stories. One is that he was born the night of the Buddha's enlightenment and another version, he was born at the very same night as the Buddha. So it was about a 20 year gap there. So either he was the same age as the Buddha or he was about 20 years younger. than the Buddha, depending on the story.

[19:27]

And according to tradition, in Ananda's previous life, he had been a god in the Tushita heavens. That's the very high heavens where the gods hang out. A lot of bodhisattvas come from the Tushita heavens down to earth to help us out. So that's one of the places where they hang out waiting to incarnate. He was so extraordinarily handsome that everyone was happy to see him. And that's why he got the name Ananda, meaning joy or bliss. It was because of how he made people feel. This really good looking guy who is full of joy himself. And he had a wonderful temperament. So when the Buddha returned to his family home in Kapalavastu. So I don't know. Of course, you remember when the Buddha left home, you know, he cut off his hair. He gave the horse to his attendant. He went off in the woods. He spent six years and he vowed never to come back home until he had achieved his goal. until he'd become enlightened. So now he's wandered back toward home because he's achieved his goal.

[20:30]

So he said he'd go back once he did. And so this is two years later. It takes him that long to walk back to the Himalayas, the foothill of the Himalayas where he was born, to his hometown of Kapilabhastu. And when he arrives, many of the Shakyans, he's from the Shakyamuni, so many of the Shakyan youth, such as Ananda, when they see their cousin who is now pretty amazing, you know, is quite an impression, is the Buddha. They want to renounce a householder's life too, and they want to go with him and become monks under their cousin's guidance. So Ananda, along with several other youth, leave Kapalivastu, and they go with the ever-growing Sangha of traveling monks. There's a little side story about that, where the parents of these youth come to the Buddha and said, you know, you keep ordaining our young men, you keep ordaining our young men, and they're not going to have families, and we're not going to have a tribe if you keep doing that.

[21:31]

So the Buddha, he says to them, okay, okay, I won't ordain anyone without their parents permission. So he makes, he kind of makes some concessions to the families. So he's just not taking away all the future of their people. So after 20 years without a regular attendant, the Buddha asked if anyone wanted to volunteer to be his assistant, what we call a jisha. Would anyone like to be my jisha? Everyone, except Ananda, raised their hand. So, of course, the Buddha chose Ananda. And Ananda accepted on the condition of not being given any special favors of any kind for doing so. He didn't want to be pulled out from everybody else and made into some very special person by being with the Buddha all the time. So he said, I don't want any special robes or special food. I don't want to live in a special place, have a special room.

[22:33]

And I also don't want to be invited to go on visits to the wealthy donors. So he was kind of a thoughtful guy. He was thoughtful. He didn't want the other monks to... feel badly that he had these special things. However, he did ask for all of the requests for audiences with the Buddha, including any questions that the people had would go through him. So he was also kind of his personal secretary. So he would receive all the requests for an audience. He would arrange for those times for the people to meet with the Buddha. And also he'd take their questions and give them to the Buddha. And the last thing he asked the Buddha was, to please repeat any of the doctrines that the Buddha taught if Ananda wasn't present. He wanted to hear them. He wanted to know everything the Buddha said. So Ananda served the Buddha with great devotion. He brought him water. He swept his cell, washed his feet. He would give him body rubs when his body was aching.

[23:37]

He sewed his robes and he accompanied him wherever he went. He guarded the Buddha's cell at night. And he carried a staff and a torch to make sure that his teacher's sleep was not disturbed, and in order to be ready in case the Buddha needed anything. So his devotion to his teacher never wavered, right up until the Buddha's final parinirvana, his death, his final extinction, or so it seemed. You find out later, actually, he didn't go. But that's another story for another sutra called the Lotus Sutra. So in this way, through careful study of his teacher's words and manners, Ananda was capable of propagating all of the Buddha's teaching as well as the Buddha's deportment. However, the Buddha did not choose him to be his Dharma heir. And why not? The Buddha did, however, ask him to please help Mahakashapa.

[24:39]

which is something Suzuki Roshi also did with some of the other students who were very much devoted to Suzuki Roshi. When Suzuki Roshi was dying, he asked several of them, please support my student. You know, Richard Baker was the one that Suzuki Roshi passed the transmission to. And he said to other students, please support him. This is a very hard thing that I've asked him to do. And I would like you to support him. And a number of them did. To their credit, they supported someone who was not their teacher. And then Suzuki Roshi died. So, Ananda was the attendant to Mahakashapa for an additional 20 years, who had been his Dharma brother and was now his teacher. And he learned even more about the transmission of light, about the... transmission of the truth of the eye of the teaching, what's called the Shobogenzo in Japanese, the treasury of the true Dharma eye.

[25:44]

And these were all the enlightened teachings that the Buddha gave. And so Ananda had even more of that. He absorbed even more of that as he listened to his Dharma brother, Mahagashapa, talking and teaching. So among many of the things that Ananda himself is famous for, in his own right, is that he petitioned, while the Buddha was still living, he petitioned the Buddha to have his stepmother, Mahabhajapati, become ordained. And along with the number of shakin women who had followed her on foot, barefoot, to find the Buddha. They walked hundreds of miles because the Buddha initially had refused to accept any women into the order. He refused several times. He said, nope, it's going to be too hard. You know, he just was not going to deal with adding women to the order. And so, you know, this is kind of a heartache. You know, here we are many centuries later and go, wait a minute, that hurts my feelings.

[26:49]

But Ananda petitioned the Buddha. And he was very famous for petitioning on behalf of the Buddha's stepmother with a well-reasoned argument. the Buddha about the capacity of women to become enlightened. He said, but cannot women become indicted? The Buddha said, well, yes. He said, well, then, you know, so that was kind of did it that kind of put the case in and into play and the Buddha then accepted the women and along with these eight special conditions that were put on the nuns that were not on the monks, which are still to this day, kind of a thorn in the side of the Buddhist tradition. Most of these, these additional precepts are reducing the women to an inferior status within the Sangha to any male, even a male who's arrived one day ahead of a woman who's been there 30 years, has status higher than than that woman.

[27:51]

So this is this stuff was put into place. Now, it's a pretty good case made for nobody knows whether the Buddha did this or not, actually, because these things were written down several hundreds of years later. So whether it was the male Cenobetic tradition, which didn't want women to be involved, or whether it was actually the Buddha's own culture, which of course, at the time, women were property, as they have been through much of human history. So the idea that they would be free, and that they could live an independent life as ordained nuns, was a pretty big jump in terms of their social status at all. So there's some Yay, this is great. And there's some part of it that says, yeah, but yeah, yeah, but yeah, but what about that? So these things are still there as questions. I think we have the Japanese history to thank for the fact that women are fully ordained in the same way that the men are in everybody else's gender, gender free zone doesn't really matter. It's just really a matter of doing the teach, you know, learning the teachings and taking up the ritual and really being dedicated.

[28:53]

as a vocation to this way of life and so that that's that's a very special thing and I think we we can be very grateful here in California for that arrival of Suzuki Roshi with that Japanese heritage in hand which did allow for the ordination of women also to this very day Ananda is very, you know, warmly remembered by all ordained women, not only for this petition to the Buddha, but also he was willing to teach them. He would actually lecture to the women. And so, you know, in the modern day, ordained women, as myself, have a very soft spot for Ananda. I mean, he's my guy. You know, whenever I hear about Ananda, I'm like, oh, yeah, you know, he's the guy. He's the sweetheart, you know. And yet, after the Buddha's death at the first council that was held, all the monks gathered to try and collect the Buddha's wisdom because they were very fearful that this was going to be lost with the passing of the Buddha, that his teaching would be gone.

[30:01]

And so there's a great anxiety among the disciples for that not to happen. One of the things that happened at the... at the First Council was there was some criticism was made about Ananda, one thing for his friendship to the women, so he was criticized publicly at the First Council for that by Mahakashapa. And he was also criticized for something else that was quite important, and that was that as the Buddha was dying, he hinted to Ananda three times that if Ananda would just invite him to stay, he could stay for maybe another couple thousand years or something until the end of the kalpa, which is a really long time. So he kept saying to Ananda, well, if you just invite me to stay, and Ananda didn't get the hint for some reason. And so three times the Buddha said, well, you know, if you would just ask me to stay. And again, Ananda's like, didn't get the hint. And it turns out that Mara, the evil one was blocking Ananda's hearing, you know, so Ananda couldn't hear it because every time he'd say it, the Buddha would say it to Ananda,

[31:06]

Mara, the evil one, would get involved and block his vision. So anyway, he took the hit for that at the First Council. He was like, you didn't ask the Buddha to stay, so it's your fault. But all the while, the other problem the monks had is that Ananda had this incredible power of memory. There are people like that. I actually have a friend who memorized the entire Lotus Sutra. I asked him if he still knew it, and he said, no, it's gone. But he, at one point, he had it. He had the Lotus Sutra in his head. He had an exercise he did. I said, that is just amazing. But apparently that is not uncommon in our human species, certainly not me. But there are a lot of people who have this ability to memorize huge amounts of material. And Ananda was one of those. So he had memorized 84,000 sermons. topics that the Buddha had given, and 15,000 stanzas without omitting a single syllable, as it says in the texts. So here they have this kind of library of the Buddha's teachings, and he was the only one of the Buddha's disciples who could do this.

[32:15]

But unfortunately, the rules governing the first council, this gathering of monks, included the fact that you had to be an arhat. You had to have gotten this kind of enlightenment that arhats have. And you have been completely freed of your hindrances. I mean, greed, hate and delusion are gone. You're no longer tied to worldly concerns. You are basically out of here. And when you die, you're totally extinct. In the case of the Arhats, Nirvana means blown out. So you don't have to come back anymore. You don't have to come back and do another round as a human or an animal or a worm or anything. You get to go, which is really a relief. There's a lot of suffering in those days. Samsara means endless circling in the rounds of suffering. So the idea that you could exit the rounds of rebirth was a tremendous goal. And that was what the Arhats had accomplished, at least according to those teachings. And Ananda hadn't accomplished it.

[33:18]

He was not an Arhat. So this was a big problem. Anyway, having not been an arhat, he was going to basically continue in the rounds of samsara. And, you know, Ananda was going to be coming back again and again. That was kind of part of the deal. And so in the early tradition taught by the Theravadans, Theravadan Buddhists, and to some extent still, I think there's still the ideal of the arhat as one who's become free of the hindrances, who's no longer, there's no longer self, there's no longer self-clinging, there's no longer grasping, all of these things that poison us. this lifetime are released and the only final release is of the body itself and once that happens you're free you know that's that's sounds good I mean it sounds I don't know it sounds good to me so but the problem is over the centuries as the thinking around the Dharma and the thinking around the the vow to benefit others became more worked

[34:21]

They worked it over, like philosophers have done with Western philosophy as well. They started to say, well, but that's not much of an impact. If you just free yourself so that one person is free, well, what about all the rest of the suffering beings? What about everybody else? So they shifted from this Arhat ideal. And then in the Mahayana, called the Great Vehicle tradition, they basically adopted the Bodhisattva ideal. where the bodhisattva promises not to leave, that they promise to keep going through rebirth after rebirth after rebirth. I vow never to leave the rounds of samsara until all beings have been saved. So that's the bodhisattva vow. I'm not going to leave until everybody goes. Once everybody else is gone, then I can leave. I can be the last one off the bus, but that's it. I can only go when everyone else is free. So that might be a while. You might have to stick around for a few rounds of... of reincarnation.

[35:22]

So this is a big shift from this arhat ideal to the bodhisattva ideal. And, you know, Ananda's kind of a little bit of a transitional character in this teaching here. So another thing about this shift from the arhat, another criticism of the arhat ideal is that It may be that the one who wants to escape for themselves, you know, which I certainly remember feeling myself when I was in the monastery. I think I told you all that I confessed to my teacher that I really didn't care about anyone else. I just wanted to end my suffering. And he said, thank you for your confession. Anyway, that idea of shifting to the Bodhisattva ideal is that the Arhat ideal may be driven by fear. Like, I'm afraid of coming back. I'm afraid of reincarnating. I'm afraid of life. I don't keep wanting to have this pain, and I don't want to go through it again and again and again.

[36:23]

So because of fear, the aspiration to Buddhahood is blocked. So you really just want to go, you know. But if you're not afraid, if you're cultivating fearlessness, then the idea of coming back and facing the challenges of whatever it is offered to you is... just part of the whole deal, that you're cultivating courage, you're cultivating a willingness that no matter what, I will do my best to save others, to help others. So this model of the Bodhisattva is based on the model of the Buddha himself. So the Buddha was at one time a Bodhisattva, a yogi by the name of Sumedha, who had met a buddha and had been so inspired by a buddha that he vowed to become a buddha himself and the way you do that is to go through countless lives rebirth so those are the jataka tales so sumeda vowed to become a buddha and to become a buddha he went through countless lives again and again different animals different beings different incarnations until he became this earthling by the name of siddhartha who woke up

[37:36]

and became Shakyamuni Buddha. So he fulfilled his mission, his bodhisattva vow that he made many eons ago was fulfilled in his arrival as Shakyamuni Buddha. So that's the story. That's in the Pali Canon. The criticism of that story in that tradition was, well, that's just so hard. How many people can actually put up with that? That's gonna be really a challenge for most of us. So why don't we just go with the arhat thing? You know, let's make that. That's hard enough. Let's just do this arhat. Free yourself of your hindrances. And, you know, this other thing would be like, whoa, you know. So, you know, taking up that kind of banner. It's like Don Quixote. Taking up the banner of the Bodhisattva is really kind of crazy. I mean, that's what Okamura Roshi says. That's crazy. It's just crazy, you people. You can't do this, you know. But that's kind of what inspires you. Like when you're a kid, you know, you just really want to be. You want to go ahead and win. you know, go to battle, whatever it is that you think you should be doing, the heroic gestures.

[38:39]

So the bodhisattva is the heroic stride samadhi, the bodhisattva samadhi, heroic stride, you know, bring it on, whatever it is, I'm here, I'll do it. So a little bit more about Ananda. So the night before this first council, so remembering he's not an arhat, so he's not been invited to the first council, he's in his room, He's about to go to bed. He's feeling terrible because he's the one that's got all the information that they want. He's got all the teachings. He's soaked up like SpongeBob. He's got everything in him, and he can't give it out because he's not invited to come. So he goes to bed having not been invited to attend, and just before his head hits the pillow, he achieves the enlightenment of the saints. He becomes an Arhat. This is a true story. It's in the canon, so it's got to be true. So, you know, which is really interesting because he becomes famous for another thing. He becomes famous for having achieved enlightenment in none of the four traditional postures.

[39:46]

So the four traditional postures are sitting, lying down, standing, or walking. And Ananda achieved enlightenment by flying through the air. As he was jumping into bed, he woke up. So he's added a fourth posture. a way that you can become enlightened is flying through the air. So the next day, he arrives at the door where the first council is being held. And as Kezan reports in the story of the third chapter, he's asked by Maha-Kashapa, his teacher, to prove his superpowers. If you're an arhat, you have to show us something. If you actually have awoken, show us a trick. And so, Ananda appears in a tiny little body, And he goes through the keyhole into the meeting. And then he comes up to full size. So that did it. That got him in. That was his entry into the First Council. I love these stories. They're just sort of like, yeah. Okay.

[40:48]

We'd like to have been there. So once he's in the meeting, he is told by Kashyapa, now that he's made it. He's been accepted. He's one of them. Everyone is looking to you to recite the sayings of the Buddha, Ananda. Everyone's looking at you. We know you got it. And so then Ananda begins to give his recitation of the teachings, starting with his very famous introductory words, thus have I heard. So that's Ananda. Thus have I heard. And then he tells the story. One time the Buddha was in such and such place, and he said this, and then he said this. Sutra after sutra, he recites to the 500 gathered arhats. And Kshapa says to the other disciples who are present, is this any different from what the Buddha taught? So he's asking for confirmation. And the disciples all say, it is not different. The water of the ocean of the Buddha's teachings have flowed into Ananda.

[41:52]

So there's like this cup, this completely cup of the Buddha's teachings completely fills Ananda's... memories. And then another important point that Kezon makes about Ananda having carried the entirety of the Buddhist teaching within himself prior to his awakening. This is a really important point for all of us. You know, he says, for us to know for certain that this way does not depend on great learning or on the attainment of realization. So in other words, There's a term that we use nowadays called a Dharma vessel. Someone is a Dharma vessel. And we say it is really a tender thing to say about something. That's a Dharma vessel. And everybody's a Dharma vessel, really, because it means that the Dharma is carried by all of us, no matter how little we know or how much we know or whatever it is. If it's something we treasure, if it's something we care about, as Ananda did and as Mahakashapa did and as, you know, all of us hanging around here care about it.

[42:58]

No matter how little, how big, we carry a little bit of the Dharma to hold and to share with others as we're able. And that's how the Dharma is transmitted. I don't know how many of you have remembered a story that you told to a colleague at work, you told to a family member or whatever. It's like, oh yeah, I heard this story about, well, that's sharing the Dharma. And that's expounding the Dharma. And I think it's a wonderful point that Kezon makes. You don't have to have the whole thing. Ananda didn't. He had it, but he didn't know what it meant. He didn't have the realization. He hadn't penetrated into the true heart of what the Buddha was teaching. He just memorized it. So Kezon then also says this about what might have been holding Ananda back from his own realization of the Buddha's teaching. He says, in the distant past, Ananda had awakened the aspiration for complete perfect enlightenment in the presence of the Buddha called the king of emptiness. So this is former lifetime.

[43:59]

At the very same time as did the present Buddha, Shakyamuni. So Ananda and Shakyamuni have both had this aspiration for complete enlightenment at the same time, many eons ago, way back. However, Ananda was fond of intellectual learning. And that is why he had not yet truly realized enlightenment. Shakyamuni, on the other hand, cultivated energy. Cultivated energy. Whereby he attained true enlightenment. So surely, this is again Kezon speaking, surely much academic learning is a hindrance on the way. Here is proof of that. This is why the flower ornament scripture says, much learning without practical application is like a poor man, poor woman, counting another's treasures without half a cent of their own. If you want to find out what this way really is, do not be fond of academic learning.

[45:05]

Just be energetic in progressive practice. So this is a tremendously important point for those of us who have taken up the Zen training program. It's very physical. You know, I think all of you who've come to one of the Zen centers and practice with us even a day, you know that we're working all the time. We're working physically. There's a lot of work that goes on, physical work. Right now, they're out there farming. They're clearing the road. They're clearing the brush. They're making bread. They're doing, you know, it's all day long. It's like a little hive of busy bees doing something with their hands and with their bodies. And there's a tremendous, and Zazen is tremendously physical. all of you you know that it's very physical for you to sit there in your full body sitting up straight you know breathing opening your chest opening your heart relaxing your body it's extremely physical to just think about it you know to just think about it it isn't going to get you there you actually have to do this embodied effort of trying to find it with your body and looking with your body with your senses with your ears and your eyes your taste

[46:17]

how you touch things, all of it. It's like your whole body, your whole mind, full body, are engaged in the way, as was the Buddha. He cultivated energy. That's a really wonderful point. So in this story, as told by Kezon, about the lineage that began with the Buddha's first and second disciples, it's academic learning that kept Ananda back. Even though he had memorized all that the Buddha had to say during his teaching career, hadn't had this penetrating insight or understanding of his own. So Kezan aligns this failing by Ananda as evidence of the Zen school's teaching of a special transmission outside the scriptures. So the Buddhist lectures and the Buddhist rules of deportment are the scriptures. So we have all of that stuff that Ananda recited. And we treasure that. I mean, I've got lots of stuff. I got lots of books with lots of words that I really treasure. I care about those things quite a bit.

[47:19]

But the special transmission that Ananda didn't have until he flew into bed that night is the missing ingredient. It's like, aha. And we don't know what aha. There's no words that go along with aha. It's just aha. It's like, wow. And then you spend the rest of your life trying to figure out what was that I don't know, but I can remember that happened. I remember that moment, you know, you've all had those moments. I know you have. Kids have it all the time. And it's that moment of awe, you know, awesome. It's just awesome. And nothing you say is can possibly reach that experience. So, you know, Ananda had that moment. He wanted so badly to go and share what he knew. So badly. He was such a generous spirit, right? He always wanted to care. He cared for the women. He cared for the children. He cared for the other monks. He didn't want to stand out. He was a very kind, very generous human being.

[48:23]

And that wish to benefit others broke through as he flew into bed. And then he was free. So... So he says, if such a transmission, so this is a case on the end, if such a transmission of the real deal, of what actually was the core of the teaching, wasn't outside of the doctrinal teaching, wasn't outside of the scriptures, then Ananda of all people would surely have been enlightened because he had it all. He was carrying all of it. So if it wasn't something outside of that, he would have been the first to have it. He would have gotten it just by absorbing all of the Buddhist teaching. So and why would Ananda have attended to Mahakashapa if he himself, out of his own integrity, knew that he didn't have it? You know, he spent another 20 years taking care of his grouchy elder Dharma brother, you know, because he knew there was something there that Mahakashapa had understood that he hadn't made that turn yet.

[49:29]

He hadn't turned the key, that keyhole that he crawled through. He hadn't been able to get the key in the keyhole yet. then finally at that moment when his brother tells him to take down the manor pole kaboom something said something goes off in him you know that's it the final turning this is his zen enlightenment it's like something turned on kezon says that it is not that the heart of the matter is not in the scriptural teachings but that ananda had not yet penetrated So here's this thing. It's like the scriptures are great and you should, not should, but could, and I hope will spend time with the scriptures. It's penetrating the meaning of the scriptures. Can you put yourself through the keyhole? Can you actually put your own understanding in through those pages of words? Can you find it? Can you reflect back on like, what does this have to do with me? Or how do I understand this? Where's my place in these words, in this river of words?

[50:29]

How am I navigating the river of words? It's really always back, what about you? What about you? Which is the story in Reb's book that I hope you'll look at. What about you? And then he says, Kazon, if you want to reach the true path clearly, you should give up your idea of self, your old feelings of conceit and self-importance, and return to the pristine, inspired mind. comprehend enlightened knowledge. The pristine inspired mind is what Suzuki Roshi called our beginner's mind. When you didn't know anything, and you first went to your first Dharma talk, or you, you know, walked in the Buddha hall, or you smelled some incense, or I don't know what happened to you. But I was in a little cabin at Tassajara. And there was this tiny, I was sent to clean cabins. And I thought, I don't know who these people are. They're kind of weird, but we were all hippies then. So they were hippies too. And we were just hippies. And I went down to the cabin and I opened a door and there on the, on the little bedside table was this little white vase full of wildflowers.

[51:39]

And I was just absolutely floored. I don't know why. I have no idea. But it was just like, wow, who did that? How sweet, how wonderful. Somebody did that, you know. There was no note like, well, I left these for you. You know, there wasn't any claiming. There was no signature. It was just wonderful that that kindness of the way, of the way of giving to a guest. They didn't know who was going to go in there. They didn't know it was another cabin cleaner was going to go in there. So this kind of spirit of giving to others, you know, kind of like paying back, we used to do the tollblas at the bridge once in a while, you pay back to the car behind you just for fun. Yeah, oh, yeah, I'm gonna pay for them too. Yeah, just that spirit of wanting to do something for somebody else, you know, without credit. Beginner's mind. So from there, the story goes on to help us understand what the koan at the beginning of this chapter is all about.

[52:49]

So Kashyapa says, Ananda. And Ananda says, yes. And Kashyapa says, take down the banner pole in front of the gate. And with that, Ananda is enlightened. So that's what we want to know, what happened right there. And Kezan says that although Kashyapa called Ananda He called Ananda. He said, Ananda. He was not calling Ananda. And Ananda did not echo in reply. The universe calls out to the universe. Water into water. The water of the Buddha's teaching into Ananda. And Ananda into his students. It's like this great ocean of being that we're all in this together. And, you know, one wave comes up. like a hand and it waves at another wave, call them waves, right, and then they go back into the ocean. So Ananda, yes, the great ocean of being, of interbeing, of interdependence, calls out and the echo comes back, yes.

[53:59]

So we're talking to ourselves in the form of each other. We're talking, we're shouting out, hello, hello. Giving and taking, giver, receiver, and gift. Normally in India, when two banners are up, it means there's this debate taking place, as I mentioned. Then the one comes down, the debater has lost. And Khezan says, in this case, Kashyap and Ananda had set their banners side by side, like waves in the ocean. One arises, the other subsides. Over and over, in this timeless relationship. Teacher, student, teaching. student teacher generation after generation same ocean same wisdom same arising so this is the image that these transmission stories are offering to us not as a replacement of one teacher by the other you don't take you lost you take down your flag i won i'm the better teacher you know not that human thing that we do that's so hideous but this idea that they're in communion

[55:08]

the communion of the teacher and the student, that they're doing the same thing. They're trying to help beings to become free. They become free of their illusion of being separate, of being waves that don't belong to the ocean. No such thing. And Khe San says, after his enlightenment, Ananda took down even Kashyapa, and he took down the mountains and he took down the rivers and it all crumbled away. kind of fun. He was no longer separate. He was no longer outside. It was inconceivable. His liberation had become inconceivable. That's why he could go through the keyhole. That's just inconceivable. But he could do it because it was inconceivable. And as it shows in our Dharma transmission documents called the Ketch Myaku, I think I showed them to you.

[56:09]

one time held them up. If you've seen them or received them, there's a red circle at the top, and then Shakyamuni Buddha's name, and then Mahakashapa, Ananda. So all these names that we're looking at in the transmission of light are on Ketchumyaku, called the blood vein. And the red line is the blood vein. The vein, the blood running through the blood vein is the Buddha's precepts. And they come from this big red circle, which is this emptiness. Inconceivability. Out of inconceivability, out of the ocean, of all things, comes Shakyamuni Buddha, of all things. And then Ananda, and then, I mean, then Amagashabha. All the way down through all those names. And at the very bottom, as a teacher, you have your name and your teacher's name going through your head. And then through my body out to somebody else's head. And then I write their name. And then from their name, it goes all the way back to the circle at the top. So it's a circulating system.

[57:09]

It's alive like one body, triple body, single body, triple treasure. Buddha, Dharma, Sangha as a circulating system that goes on for centuries and generations. There's no end to it. It's just this continuous flow of precept practice, of illumination, of enlightenment, of awakening with no end, no beginning, no end. That's the image that we are given. when we enter into the play, the story, this play, this story. This is the script that we're given. So the line of the teaching returns back up from the most recent ancestors, the one who's just taken the precepts, to the source of it all, the large empty circle at the top of Shakyamuni Buddha's head, and then back down again. And with that, I glance up at the clock and there's one minute left. of the timeless, timelessness. It's all gone. So I've done it again.

[58:11]

I am so sorry. I keep saying, okay, I'm going to talk for about 20 minutes and then I'm going to ask you all to share your thoughts. And I'm so sorry I failed again. But if you'd like, any of you'd like to stay on for another, I don't know, 15 minutes or so and ask some questions or bring up some points of your own, I would be so happy. I'm happy to do that. And if you all have to go, you're certainly welcome to go. And thank you for coming. And I will be back here on what somebody called the waffle. I'll be back on the waffle next Sunday. So thank you so much for your kind attention. Our next transmitted being... I think I'm going to skip forward a little bit and go to... Well, I don't know. I think I'll surprise you because I haven't decided yet which would be the best one to do next.

[59:16]

I kind of think maybe Nagarjuna. Otherwise, we're going to, with 53 names, because it's going to take quite a while to get through them all. So maybe that would be good. Maybe I'll go to Nagarjuna. Yeah, Nagarjuna, his chapter 15, and he's the great, he's known as the second Buddha, and he certainly had the greatest impact on our tradition, second century A.C.E., Would any of you like to, I'm happy to receive a question or comment from anyone, if you'd like. You know how to do the little blue hand, I think you do. No? You can also submit anything to chat as well.

[60:23]

Chat or just wave. I mean, you can also just put your video on and just wave your hand. Bill has a question. Great. Hi, Bill. Bill Kelly. Yeah, great. Hi, Bill. Thank you for doing this week after week with us. Louisiana. Yes, we are well. You're welcome. Thank you for coming. I love having your family there week after week. My question is, the keyhole story, is that an analogy or are we to take that literally? Well, I like to take things literally, but then I think, could I do that? Hmm, that's quite a magic trick, you know. I think that, you know, all of those stories, the magic part, a big part of Buddhism has always been shamanic.

[61:31]

The Buddha was a shaman. If you read his enlightenment story, before he actually woke up, he had a number of shamanic visions. He saw grubs crawling up his body, these little white grubs with blackheads, and that represented the lay people who would come to him when he became a Buddha. He saw his former lives. He saw past lives. There's all kinds of things that would have been perfectly normal for any shaman to be able to do past lives and that kind of thing. So Buddhism has never really jumped away from shamanic or... exuberant, you know, storytelling. So I think it's really like all of our own tales, tall tales, or whatever, Babe the Blue Ox. And, you know, we have lots of stories like that. And for children, you know, for a while, they're like, it's not unimaginable that such things are so, you know, and then we shut down, we get kind of crunched, like, I don't think that could be possible, right?

[62:38]

But my imagination, I can see him doing that in my Imaginarium. I have this Imaginarium. I can see him shrink down and go through the keyhole, can't you? Yeah, piece of cake. So, you know, this is magic. This thing is magic. And we make magic with it, and we also make horror with it. So we have to learn to make white magic, you know. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. I was wondering about, what's his name? Oh, Maitreya, kind of like how Maitreya Buddha functions as like, yeah, just I don't know if you could speak on that a little bit. Just like what that archetype is about and like how to interpret that. You mean the one who's coming?

[63:40]

Yeah. The one we're waiting for? Yeah, because I remember having read certain things, like speculating, maybe Nagarjuna was this iteration, but then it's like, is this just... I mean, it doesn't seem like it's going to be Maitreya that's like, oh, Maitreya's here. They're here. They touched down. Yeah, and I guess... Because I feel like within something like Christianity that has a similar thing, like there are a lot of people that are actually waiting for that, like for a second coming or something. And then it's still like, what is, I guess, just like, what is that? How does that function as a part of the teachings? Well, I would say what comes to mind right off the bat is you. And we'll wait. We're all waiting. We're all waiting for each and every Buddha to be born and to come into their own and to mature and to help others.

[64:45]

And I don't think there's, you know, there's no limit. We need lots of Maitreya's. Billions of Maitreya's would be great women. Don't you think? I hope so. I think that's what we're betting on is that there'll be lots and lots and lots of of awakened beings in the future to help with this project of human suffering and plant suffering and animal suffering and, you know, it's going to take multiple armies of bodhisattvas. Looks like Gal has a question. There we go.

[65:49]

It took a click to unmute. Thank you again for your generosity of spending time with us. The question that I had, I've been, you know, reading Transmission of Light, and each chapter they tell you who is being discussed and what their background is. So there's really a discussion of caste. And, you know, Ananda, I think, is from what is considered one of the upper castes. I think a few more chapters in, you have someone who possibly is of the lowest class then, the servant class. But do you know, is there an untouchable or is that something which is outside of this whole context? I mean, do they include everybody or is untouchable kind of Hindu beyond this circle? You know, that's a good question.

[66:50]

And I could ask about that. I don't really know. I think they're called Shudras in India. There's a book now that's been written, you may well know, called Cast. which is comparing the assignment that white people have given to black people in America as caste, the lowest caste, and the same thing in India, the shudras is the lowest caste, and the Nazis did that with the Jews in Germany. So there's this caste system by which a whole group of people are designated as below everybody else. And that they have the same way they're treated. You don't touch them. They don't work for you. They have their own space they live in. They can't drink out of your same water fountain. All of that horrible stuff. So there's this common ground that human cultures have done of creating these castes. And I think one of the things about the Buddha that was pretty extraordinary was that he allowed people. I don't think he was dealing with the caste system.

[67:51]

I think he actually let anyone who came join. I don't. I don't recall ever hearing, other than the challenge he had letting women in, him not allowing the workers or the fudras to join. But I'll ask about that, because that would be interesting to know. But I do think in modern India that some of the so-called outcasts have become Buddhists and have kind of recaptured something of this caste-less cultural model, which You know, you could say that we kind of like to fantasize that Zen Center's cast list, but a lot of people keep pointing out, well, yeah, except that most of the people there have college education and didn't come from poverty and are not working class and da-da-da. So we do get, you know, analyzed as to whether or not our aspirations are based in any kind of reality or not. And I would say that it's a challenge, you know, that what are we doing? How are we not doing the thing that breaks down those things?

[68:54]

those structures, the systemic structures. So I think it's an ongoing challenge, and mostly to our awareness, starting with our awareness. Do we know? So I'd like to find out an answer to that question that you asked. I always want to find out just the very best thing about Buddhism, and sometimes I don't. I know some really bad things, you know, like Zen at war. That was a real wide eye opener. So I think it's really good to know your own tendencies as humans, how wrong, how off you can get, even with most beautiful teachings, you know, there, how distorted any one of us can be regardless. Was there more behind your question, Gal, than that?

[69:56]

No, I mean, I was moved really by, you know, hearing that, you know, even servants were considered to be included. But then I was just wondering about the concept of untouchable and whether that's separate or not. You know, it's really I'm just starting to learn more about transmission of light. So, you know, it's. relevant, like you're saying, to the questions that were up even today. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the question always, how about you? What about you? You know, before we assume the tradition is such and such a way, like, what about us? How are we holding this? What are we doing? This is really the challenge that we're all being, you know, not forced to make, but invited to make, like, please, you know, please look at what you're doing.

[70:59]

Well, we have one more from Guy. Did you want to say something before I? Yes, yes. First, thank you again so much. There you are. Yeah, thank you so much for doing this. another weekend it's been great um i was i just had a question uh of what is the difference between the realization that ananda had that allowed him to join into the you know the compiling of the teachings uh compared to the enlightenment that he had when um when kasyapa asked to take the banner pull down Yeah, that's a good question. I wondered about that myself. I think in terms of the historical narrative, his enlightenment before the First Council was the enlightenment of the Arhat.

[72:05]

So he was no longer destined to return to rounds of rebirth. Now, in the Mahayana teaching, that pathway is actually, according to the Lotus Sutra, there's no such thing as extinction. actually everybody's on the path of Buddhahood you know and that that story is being told to the arhats and they're going what you know so we worked really hard to get out of here and now you're telling us so we're not going to get out of here that we're all bodhisattvas and you know they say yeah actually this is you know congratulations and so in the heart sutra some of those arhats there's a book called the heart had heart attacks because they didn't want to have to keep coming back there was really no no no no so uh you know it's an interesting dynamic within the tradition between the idea of escape you can get out you can go and no you can't you're you're you're part of this and you're going to help fix it and and so relax sit back study study

[73:15]

be kind and be fine you know this one into the world will be till the end you're not going anywhere and as long as there's suffering you're going to be there yeah so i think that was his his take down the banner he now was in the ocean of enlightenment right great thank you where we all are thank you again thank you all very much look forward to seeing you again and um please you're welcome to say goodbye if you like thank you so much bye thank you thank you everyone I hope so.

[74:17]

Goodbye. Thank you. You're welcome. I have one last question, if that's okay. Are you there? Yeah. Sure, okay. Yeah, you asked me whether there was more there to the question. Do you want to turn this off now? I can. Are you done? Yeah. Okay. I was just wondering if at some point I might be able to have Doku-san with you. I do have questions, but they're more really of a one-to-one nature. And so that's something maybe I'll follow up with you in an email. So I'd be happy to meet with you. Yeah, that would be great. Or you can sign up and have a visit.

[75:21]

We can have Doksan together and talk about whatever you like. I'd really appreciate that. Thank you so much. Okay. Okay. Well, take care. Yeah, stay safe, everyone, please.

[75:39]

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