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 and welcome to Beginner's Mind Temple. This afternoon we're going to have a ceremony, an ordination ceremony. Japanese name for it's Zaikei Tokudu, entering the way while staying at home. And that's what I'm going to talk about this morning. I've come to think over the years that this ceremony and the particulars of the ceremony, the contents of it represent the path of practice, in particular in the Buddhist way.

[01:01]

The first part of the ceremony is invocation, invoking the wisdom and presence of our ancestors, trusting that we're already Buddha, we enter Buddha's way. And then we chant the names of the teachers and the names of the Buddhas. And then amazingly, then you get your Buddha's robe and your Buddha's name. I used to think, well, wait a minute. Don't you have to do something? Isn't there a process you go through? Aren't you supposed to purify your mind and clean up your bad habits and make friends with people you don't like? You receive the name and the robe. And then what we call avowal.

[02:05]

Some other traditions call it repentance. You avow the stickiness of karmic life, the stickiness in Buddhist teachings. Is this loud enough? Yeah, good. No? Okay. Well, I'm glad I asked. How about now? A little louder? A little louder? How about now? Take the hood. In that corner, you're okay? Yeah, good. Well, I didn't say much anyway so far. Invocation, receiving your new name and your new robe, and then a vowel of conditioned existence, maybe to put it in neutral terms, of which we're all part.

[03:10]

And then what's in our tradition, the 16 bodhisattva precepts. Refugees, pure precepts, prohibitive precepts. And then receiving a document that's what you might call the body, the map of the body of the Dharma, of the teachings of awakening, of the practice of awakening, of which each of us is part. And then congratulations. And we're done. So that's the process. And San Francisco Zen Center has been in existence 50 years, and I'm not quite sure when we first started doing this, but I suspect not too long after we began with our finders, Shunrei Suzuki Roshi,

[04:26]

And yet I still wonder, you know, we invoking the presence and compassion of our ancestors. Varo Chana Buddha, Lo Chana Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha, Maitraya Buddha. I was once at a Dharma talk many years ago. And the person giving the talk said, I don't think... most of us are so interested in being Buddhists as we are interested in being Buddha. And certainly as a self-professed Zen practitioner, I've often thought of myself as being more interested in the process of waking up and loosening up the afflictive habits of my own being than I was in following, complying with some orthodoxy that had been crafted as I think of it as a container for this process of awakening.

[05:45]

Since then my thoughts have become more complicated. Now I think, who knows? Who knows exactly how and what this process is? I spoke to a young man recently and he was saying he saw in himself three persistent activities. The first one was playing computer games. The second one was smoking marijuana. And the third one was doing Tai Chi. And one thing I've learned, I think I've learned over many years of practice is don't jump to conclusions.

[06:53]

Don't conclude what's right for somebody else. More, listen as deeply as possible and learn as much as possible. And I would say the same for each of us about ourselves. Listen and watch yourself being yourself. Watch your thinking. Watch the things you think about. Watch the things that you think about in a persistent way. Watch the ways you behave. Watch after a whole day of experience. What lingers? What do you dream about as you take all that and turn it into some fanciful narrative?

[07:57]

of what's going on. When I think of this invocation, I think, when you pause in your life and you think, okay, I'm spending an awful lot of time on computer games. I'm spending An awful lot of time on smoking pot. And then I'm fitting in some Tai Chi. I couldn't help but think. And who doesn't have their strategies? Whether it's your spiritual ambitions or how you're trying to lessen your suffering. and stay on top of what you think it is you need to be doing.

[09:06]

And if we hold that thought, we hold that sensibility, and I would say in some ways, it's a very important one. Even in the process of meditation, zazen. In one way, zazen, is very simple and very direct and very in the moment. Pay attention to what's happening. Pay attention so thoroughly that the experience of it is the most vibrant event that's happened. And then, of course, that opens the door. to the extraordinary complexity of being a human being. And then what do we invoke to support that?

[10:18]

Sometimes I think, well, you know, I was introduced to Buddhist practice, Zen practice in Asia, mostly in Japan and Thailand. And especially in Thailand, you know, I was exposed to Buddhism is the indigenous religion, the indigenous spiritual practice. So that invocation, that embracing what you might call the iconography, the cosmology, the inspiring symbolism that invokes, that in the invocation there's an evocation, something arises.

[11:27]

contrast to that, I think for us, and it's my own notion that this is what sparked the intrigue of our finder Suzuki Roshi, that in our newness, in our beginner's mind, I mean, actually our beginner's mind wasn't something we sort of astutely assumed, It was just a fact. That's how it was. We didn't know. We took nothing for granted. We just examined as carefully as we could what was being presented. We were open to learning. And as that young man laid out his version of his own preoccupations I sensed in him an availability maybe he wasn't invoking the formal names of the Buddhas maybe he wasn't invoking the lineage of the teachers

[13:04]

I felt he was invoking a trust. A trust in being a human being, in being the person that he was. I trust who I am enough to not need to either lie about it? Or pretend it's something it's not? Or to be overwrought with dismay at what it is? In some ways we could say, In the Zen school, this is the heart of Zazen.

[14:07]

We sit time with this honesty. I'm not doing this to pretend to myself I'm something I'm not. I'm not doing this in denial of who I am, hoping somehow get rid of it. I'm doing this to fundamentally and as fully as possible discover within it how to be fully alive. So maybe it makes sense that when we make that kind of commitment that kind of invocation we've already shifted something within us.

[15:08]

Basic Buddhist teaching, or one of the basic Buddhist teachings, is that from our conditioned existence, we have three deeply rooted inclinations. One is towards desire, and one is towards aversion, And one is towards confusion. Maybe we could say emotionally there's a kind of a yearning discontent. There is a frustrated aversion. And there is an anxious uncertainty. And then each of us has our own way of presenting those. Maybe we're more inclined to one than the other. I remember many years ago, when we discovered the teaching of this teaching, and then we had a little parlor game that we would play with each other, which was like, well, which one are you, you know?

[16:27]

I remember thinking, I think I'm all three. I have a special talent for them all. And then occasionally drop them all. Or as Dugan Zindi so sweetly would say, forget them. And then there's a complementary teaching which each one of them when practiced with, turns into an attribute of awakening. The desire becomes deep trust in practice. The aversion becomes wisdom. And the confusion becomes equanimity. How does each and every one of us come from that place and somehow invoke the courage, the wisdom, the compassion, the tenacity to practice?

[18:00]

And what is it to trust that? to cultivate the trust in that? So those sorts of ideas flashed through my mind when this young man told me his situation. And I reflected on, well, don't I have my own hang-ups too? I must confess, I tried once when my son, a couple of times when my son was young and loved computer games, to bond with him by... I just couldn't stand them. I think I lack the imagination to kill him. Or maybe I'm just confused enough by everyday life to...

[19:07]

not want to complicate it. Sigmund Freud said that we cultivate that trust. I'm shifting what he actually said a little, but what the heck. I forget the exact term. What was it? But the notion was something like this, that in those early experiences where we bond with mother, the trust is there. There's a kind of all-embracing giving over. And then, of course, we become a more complex person and That takes on all sorts of qualifications and hesitancies and yearnings.

[20:11]

But the foundation is there. So really you can blame your parents for all the things that are not right about your life. There's another beautiful teaching. Winnicott says, so he qualified that. by saying another psychoanalyst that really all we need is good enough parenting. It's actually helpful if your parents aren't perfect because then you learn the resilience of learning how to work with disappointments, something less than perfect. to construe it. However, your own range of seminal formative experiences has brought you to this place.

[21:22]

What supports you? What helps you to be yourself? What helps you to Just be here now the way it is. What helps you to accept the person that you are? Maybe even accept the disappointments and annoyances of certain aspects of yourself or certain hopes for yourself. Can something in you something in you invoke acceptance okay this is what I am this is how I am and when we you know I think when we think about that that's extraordinarily transformative

[22:39]

You think of all the ways we act out, you know. Someday, somewhere, the perfect conditions, the perfect person, the perfect job, the perfect experience will arise and it will all click into place. The point of view of practice is that we're placing our trust in conditioned existence. The solution to all my suffering is conditioned existence. Conditioned existence keeps changing. That's its nature. Even if there's a perfect moment, it will indeed be a perfect moment. And then there'll be other moments, other situations. shift is that we invoke, that we trust, that we commit to working with the conditioned existence and discover that there's an alternative to just yearning for

[24:11]

in the conditioned existence. And to the extent to which we do that, we shift. We shift what's motivating our intention, our involvement. We shift our expectation. We shift the motivation. And we even shift how we start to relate to what arises. And in the Zen tradition, we always return to that. Each time we sit down, we're starting over. Each time we go into some experience, we're starting over. Okay.

[25:14]

Each person we meet. This is beginner's mind. So maybe it's wonderfully profound that right there we put on the closing of awakening. Right there not in denial of our name that we were given. That that doesn't completely identify us. That there's some other way in which we can identify and reference. implicit in this invocation and trusting and then each person comes up to receive a robe and a name and then as I said then the deep acknowledgement this funny way

[26:43]

That you know you could say, and I think it often occurs in our lives, you know you could say, well what a terrible situation that young man was in. What a waste of a life. What an expression of stuckness. We could also say, in coming and stating as unadorned, who he was and how he was behaving it sort of sets the stage for something and in the Buddhist tradition this avowal of karma is there's two attributes one is this is me being me

[27:45]

And I take responsibility for it. And the other one is, this is me being me. And the causes and conditions of that are boundless. They involve so much realm. And it's not an either or, it's a both and. And sometimes I think the prohibitions, you know, in the vows that then follow, there's refuge, pure precepts, prohibitory precepts. In some way, I look at all the stuff I get caught up in, in a straightforward, practical way, and I would say,

[28:51]

hopefully in a benevolent and kind and compassionate way, we say, I need to work on that. Spending the bulk of my day in front of a computer screen playing games is really not that constructive or helpful. Especially when I see I'm avoiding other parts of my life. say the benevolence, the patience, the kindness, the compassion, they don't thwart the resolve to do that. They actually give it a foundation. So if we hear the prohibitory precepts as some kind of punishment or some, you know,

[29:54]

something that gives us a deep sinking feeling of our own inadequacies. In a way we've missed what we invoked and what we trusted. Already we've invoked the nobility of spirit, the courage, resolve to engage and to remind ourselves that these things that we're clinging to they just perpetuate suffering they're understandable as they are indicative as they are of conditioned existence they're not that helpful and then it's also helpful to remember that these will be, one way or another, this will be part of my practice for the rest of my life.

[31:10]

Maybe I will, and hopefully I will, not be so addicted to computer games. But that tendency to avoid that tendency to kind of set aside this and distract myself with this. That will show itself in a persistent way, most likely. This is the patience with the human condition. when it has the support and the trust of the spirit of practice something transformative happens. It becomes a teaching.

[32:13]

It's both personal this is me being me and it's impersonal. This is the human condition manifests. This is conditioned existence. We learn liberation from discovering it in the midst of conditioned existence. This is where we see it in action. This is where we see our own relationship to it. And then to support us in that process, the pure precepts. Just pure precepts. Don't say anything other than try to have a good attitude. Don't harm, do good. Just try to have an approach to life and living.

[33:26]

benevolent rather than destructive of yourself and everybody else. And when we do that, it's almost like there's a sense of relief. we come from a place of kindness or compassion, something in us is relieved. It enhances our ability to trust ourselves. And all this sets the stage for

[34:34]

taking refuge. In some ways all of this is taking refuge and then in some ways all of this activity helps us to deeply appreciate what it is to commit to awakening, to commit to letting the life we're living and the experiences we're having Teach us what it is to call forth, to enact awakening. And what it is to do it in an all-inclusive way. You know, I think many of us have heard the Buddha's teaching of interbeing and that all existence is part of Indra's net, this web of coexistence.

[35:49]

But I think it's very helpful to remember that there's something more simple, there's something more immediate, is that... We feel each other, we care for each other, we impact each other. We read or hear of someone's experience and we're inspired. We read or hear of someone's experience and we're horrified or we're frightened. They said, what? Lives are interwoven. And we're getting lessons on how it's not just our human lives, it's all forms of life.

[36:57]

It's arriving in the forms of hurricanes, that teaching. the last formal part of the ceremony is we receive what in Japanese is called a kechamiyaku. And it's a diagram. At the top there's a circle and it's in red. The top is a circle and then there's a line that comes down from the circle and on that line as it weaves snakes down the page, are the names of the seven Buddhas before Shakyamuni, and then Shakyamuni. And then all the teachers in the Zen lineage down to the person being ordained, and then the lion goes the whole way back up to the circle.

[38:08]

The image is that we are one body. this one body of existence in the Dharma realm, and we're all part of it. And that in our human bodies, in our human blood, the DNA is passed from generation to generation, from parents to child. And in the Dharma body, this blood vein of practice flows the Dharma. And the Dharma passes from generation to generation. And it's a circle. It's one body because it goes beyond time. It's not linear. It's not simply linear. It goes from you back to before Buddha through all the Buddhas to you and that we're all part of it.

[39:20]

Then on a human level, we can say, the more we engage this, the more our sense of separation, alienation, or inclination towards us and them starts to dissipate and dissolve. And there's more of an intrinsic sense of belonging we see floods somewhere. There's a Zen center in Houston and I was talking to the teacher there a couple of days ago and she was telling me that when the houses get flooded if they're left in that condition even when the water subsides it

[40:33]

because of the climate, they'll immediately, there'll be a bloom of mold. And in that, then everything gets covered by it. And so the whole thing is uninhabitable. So they have to go in immediately, and the word she used was gutted, you know, strip out all the sheetrock, all the carpets, everything. Now in their city, they have these low-lying areas. And from the outside, the house looks just fine, but when you go inside, it's an empty shell. Imagine going back this afternoon to where you live, opening the door, and there's nothing there but an empty shell. This is our world.

[41:44]

We belong to it and it belongs to us. We care and it creates within us compassion, kindness and generosity. It creates within us the antidote to limited self involvement, separation. So this ceremony is an attempt to somehow symbolize all this. It really goes beyond the ideas we have about it.

[42:52]

Whether you hear it and think, oh, that's marvelous. Or whether you hear what I just said and think, hmm, not sure I agree with any of that. Still, we're all alive. Still, this planet is still exhibiting its way of being and its people and animals and plants and birds and insects and fish are all manifesting as they do too. Still for each of us there's the existential prerogative and imperative. What will I do with this one wild and precious life? In the wonderful world of Zen, we do this ceremony like we know what we're doing. But in the wonderful world of Zen, we also freely admit we're just offering something up for that which goes beyond knowing.

[44:09]

It's a marvelous ceremony to do. And to watch people come in, and almost to a person, they're kind of bewildered and overwhelmed. Like we rehearse it in advance and we say, come in, stop here, walk up here, do this, and then walk back. And then they come in, and then they do it all wrong. And it's perfect. we all do it all wrong? And hasn't it so much to teach us? And don't we curse so much? And if we didn't curse so much, would it matter what we did or what we didn't do? Would it help anything? So we'll offer the ceremony.

[45:20]

And those who've chosen to do it will do it. And the next person will turn up at the door and hopefully be themselves. Thank you. 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. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[46:15]

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