Are we on? Yeah? Can everybody hear in the back? Okay, good. Say something if I fade away at any point. Good morning. Hi everybody in front. Happy to see you. So, do you guys know about King Arthur? Anybody over there heard of King Arthur? How about over there? So, King Arthur lived a very long time ago in what is now called Great Britain, also called England, the place where the English language came from. In fact, King Arthur lived so long ago that we can't really be sure if the stories we know about him really happened or not.

[01:12]

But we do know that we love the stories, and we still read them today. So King Arthur supposedly lived about 1,500 years ago. Let's figure that out. Let's have each of our fingers be 100 years. Okay? One finger, 100 years. Now, does anybody here have a grandma or a grandpa or a great-grandma or a great-grandpa that's almost 100 years old? How old? 107. Awesome. Anybody else? Over there?

[02:14]

How old? 105! This is wonderful. Anybody else? Yes? No? Well... So if we say that each finger on our hand is like one old grandma amount of time, then what we need are 15 old grandmas. So everybody hold up all three of your hands. There you go. Two hands and a foot. There you go. I see foot, I see two hands and a foot. What you could share by like, if you have two hands up and the person next to you has two hands, you can loan them a hand and then loan that person a hand. So everybody can have three hands in front of them.

[03:17]

So if you have three hands in front of you and each finger is one old grandma ago, Then by the time you get to the 15th finger, you get about to about the time when King Arthur lived. That's a long time ago. Yes? That's right. He actually probably lived a little even older. It's probably a little farther back than that. I'm just giving what we call ballpark. You know, ballpark, I think, refers to baseball, but today is the Super Bowl. So I think it's a... I have to come up with a different expression. And by the way, happy Groundhog Day, everybody. So King Arthur, 1,500 or more years ago, he is known for many things.

[04:26]

but among them for gathering groups of knights at a round table for meetings. So there are stories of King Arthur and the knights of the round table. Does anyone know why they say King Arthur thought of the idea to have a round table? Yes. Exactly. He said, so that every person around the table is equal. So when you sit at a round table, everyone at the table is equal. Nobody is more important than anybody else. Maybe you sit in a circle at school sometimes. So you know that when we sit in a circle or at a table that is round, we can see and hear everyone equally. This is something that we remember and love about King Arthur. 1,500 years ago.

[05:29]

Someone so long ago who thought about people seeing and hearing each other equally and everybody being equally important. So I'd like to tell you about another person who lived a long time ago in China. His name is Hui Nung. He lived about 100 years ago. after King Arthur, so that would be like 14 old grandmas ago. So you still need two hands and a friend's hand or a foot. You could use a foot. Hui Neng and his mother lived in southern China. They were very poor, and Hui Neng worked hard chopping wood to sell. One day, while Huenang was delivering wood to a shop, he heard someone reciting a poem.

[06:36]

And he loved the poem so much, he asked the person where he'd heard it. That person told him he heard it from a teacher at a monastery in the north. So Huenang made sure his mother was taken care of, and walked for a whole month to that monastery. Does anybody know what a month is? Yeah. And that's right. Does anybody know how we got the idea of having a period of time that's 28 to 31 days? That's right. The amount of time, you want to say? Actually, doesn't month mean moon?

[07:39]

Yes. Month is month. So it took Huinang a whole month to walk to the monastery in the north. Yes. He did not walk in the moon, as far as we know. But this story we're not sure of either. That's right. Definitely not even one grandma ago. Yeah. So Hui Nung walked to the monastery. And when he got there, he met the teacher who asked him why he had come all this way. Hui Nung said, I have come all this way because I want to be Buddha, nothing else. The teacher looked at him and said, you are just a poor man from the south.

[08:41]

How could you possibly be a Buddha? Bye-bye, sweetie. Hui Nung replied, people come from different places, and my life is poor, and it's not the same as yours. But how can our Buddha nature be different? So Hui Nan, just a little more than a hundred years after King Arthur, said pretty much the same thing as King Arthur, that people are very different from each other, some rich, some poor, some tall, some short, but each person is equally important, and each person equally has Buddha nature. So that is what I wanted to share today with the kids. Equally, everyone is equal and everyone has equal Buddha nature.

[09:42]

So, would we like to try a little tiny bit of meditation before the kids go? Okay. Are you ready for a little tiny bit of meditation? Okay. Settle your body lightly on the floor so that you feel stable and not too tippy. You can put your hands like this. You can do this. You can just rest your hands softly on your lap too. So now, bring the Earth's atmosphere. into your body, the life force of air. Bring it in. Lift your body up with the life force of air. And now allow your body to fall with the Earth's gravity into the Earth.

[10:54]

And once again, life force of air lifting up, fall into the earth as we exhale. Inhale, life force up. Exhale, falling into the earth with the force of gravity. We sit with these forces, Earth's atmosphere and Earth's gravity, balanced in each breath. This body, this moment of life on Earth. So thank you very much. Bye you guys.

[12:09]

Bye bye. Bye-bye. See you later. You must be Cody. Is that right? What's your name? Wyatt. Wyatt. Wyatt and Cody. Well, what I especially love about reading these old sutras is that they reverberate through time, along with the stories and words of successive Buddhist teachers and practitioners, an old, old, continuous conversation through human history.

[14:17]

And we can listen for this chorus of voices through time and join in with our own voices. And how extraordinary to think that these people thousands of years ago were also grappling with issues like equality, human self-worth, lack of self-worth, and what to do with it. The stories and the commentaries of successive generations further amplify and may echo the teachings of the Platform Sutra of Hui Nung. Hui Nung is very important in all Zen lineages. In fact, it is credited as the founder of Zen. The Platform Sutra is the only sutra written in Chinese, by Chinese, in China. And like King Arthur, we don't know how true the story of Hui Nung really is.

[15:22]

The poem that Hui Nang heard when he was selling wood in southern China was from the Diamond Sutra, which was possibly written as much as a thousand years before Hui Nang. Or rather, it was memorized and passed down, since no sutras were written down until hundreds of years after Buddha's death. We don't know what verse he heard, but here's a famous verse from the Diamond Sutra. This is a Red Pines translation. As a lamp, a cataract, a star in space, an illusion, a dew drop, a bubble, a dream, a cloud, a flash of lightning, view all creative things. like this.

[16:26]

As a lamp, a cataract, a star in space, an illusion, a dewdrop, a bubble, a dream, a cloud, a flash of lightning, view all created things like this. So hearing this, or some other verse from the Diamond Sutra, Hui Nung was changed. he heard another language and another possibility opened for him. And so he made arrangements to leave his home to practice the way. When he arrived at Hong Run's monastery in the north, he was received by Hong Run and had the conversation I told at the beginning of this talk. But what I didn't say is that Hong Run called Hui Nung, a jungle rat, which is a racial slur, which, according to Red Pine, probably meant that his mother was a member of one of the ethnic hill tribes in the South.

[17:40]

Hui Nung's father was an exiled Chinese official, exiled to the South, and he lived there for the rest of his days. He died when Hui Nang was maybe three or four, according to the story. And so Hui Nang and his mother were illiterate. He never learned to read or write. So think about Hui Nang coming back at Hong Run, a very famous abbot of a very large monastery. We're talking Tang Dynasty, golden age of... China, by some accounts, and of Zen. Probably, possibly thousands of monks. And Huenang came back with, jungle rat, yeah, I'll give you that. But Buddha nature knows no such categories. That must have taken a lot of nerve.

[18:47]

As the story goes, Hongran saw his brilliance, also saw that the other monks were not going to accept him. So he sent him to work grinding rice. Then, sometime later, Hong Run was ready to choose a successor. So he set up a poetry contest. His number one disciple was the only one that actually had the nerve to write a verse. But even he, according to the story, didn't have the nerve to sign it. He wrote it on a wall in the monastery. And that verse goes like this. The body is a Bodhi tree. The mind is like a standing mirror. Always try to keep it clean. Don't let it gather dust. The body is a Bodhi tree. The mind is like a standing mirror.

[19:51]

Always try to keep it clean. Don't let it gather dust. So Hui Nan, often the rice grinding shed, got wind of the poetry contest. He heard the number one disciple's entry and asked another monk if he would write his poem on the wall. Since he was illiterate, he couldn't write it himself. So his poem goes like this. Bodhi doesn't have any trees. This mirror doesn't have a stand. Our Buddha nature is forever pure. Where do you get this dust? Again, Bodhi doesn't have any trees. This mirror doesn't have a stand. Our Buddha nature is forever pure. Where do you get this dust? who Hongran saw that Hui Nung understood the matter at hand and secretly made him his successor, and then told him to get out of Dodge for his own safety, since the other monks were not going to tolerate a jungle rat as the sixth ancestor.

[21:12]

So, Hui Nung did leave Hongran's monastery and returned south. where he eventually began to teach and live the rest of his life. The Platform Sutra is named for the platform from which he gave his talks to hundreds, maybe thousands of monks. And, you know, we hear this a lot in the Buddhist sutras. The sermon, the talk was given to thousands of monks, and we think to ourselves, how does that work? Like they didn't have microphones. So my theory is, you know the human microphone of the Occupy movement? You know about that? Yeah. That's what I'm thinking they must have done. Does anyone not know what the human microphone is? So I'm saying, so Huanang did leave Hongren's monastery and returned south. And then you all repeat that so the people behind you can hear it.

[22:17]

So the The whole talk gets repeated in waves so that everybody can hear it. But we don't know. Here's part of his first Dharma talk, that is, after he told the story of his life. He said, Good friends, you already possess the prajna wisdom of enlightenment, but because your minds are deluded, you can't understand by yourselves. you need to find a truly good friend to show you the way to see your nature. Good friends. Buddha nature isn't different for the ignorant and the wise. It's just that people are deluded or awake. When people are deluded, they're ignorant. When they wake up, they become wise. So, The Platform Sutra represents what is called the sudden school of enlightenment, as opposed to the gradual school.

[23:27]

That's what you might find if you look it up. However, in our lineage, we value both aspects of practice as expressed in these two poems, because they are one and the same. They are not different. In human life, we work hard to make things better. At the same time, being fully present for the way things are, and with gratitude and astonishment. It's not two different things. It's human life. Even so, I'd like to talk about this notion a bit of sudden enlightenment. First of all, enlightenment. This is a problematic word because it implies a special experience. Warm and fuzzy, or ecstatic, or psychedelic, definitely not your everyday run-of-the-mill experience.

[24:33]

The word itself, as we define it as an experience, may leave us feeling outside that experience. It's the sort of word with which we end up beating ourselves up because we've defined ourselves as other than that enlightenment. In Zen, we tend to use terms like just-as-it-is-ness or thus-ness to indicate rather than nail down this thing which sometimes we call enlightenment. As for the so-called experience of enlightenment, If we think of enlightenment as an experience, just as if we think of love as a feeling, we know the nature of experiences and feelings is to come and go. Then we'll also notice that we can't have very much of any one experience or feeling.

[25:35]

So by naming enlightenment an experience, and by characterizing it with certain qualities, or by naming love as a feeling, we've set ourselves up for scarcity. We commit to live with scarcity. When beings live with scarcity, it's common for beings to be very focused on strategies for acquiring that which seems scarce. We make goals for acquiring scarce things in the future, which involve hard work and planning in the present. And then there are competitive, secretive, all kinds of dishonest and dishonorable strategies that beings will use and justify using to acquire that which is scarce. We humans seem to spend a lot of our energy on this sort of thing. Hui Nung, I think, is saying something different, is offering a different linguistic and mental model.

[26:45]

What came to be called sudden enlightenment, as taught in the Platform Sutra, I don't think means acquiring something scarce suddenly. I think it means seeing that the thought that there is me over here and what I want and need, which is scarce, over there, and I must figure out how to get a hold of it, that thought, believing that thought to be true, is the problem. That thought causes suffering. That is, in Hui Nung's words, our minds are deluded. But in our practice, we're not going to pull out a machine gun and blast away that thought. And we're not going to pick up a duster and wipe away that thought. We're just going to look in another direction and let the thought fall away of its own weight, like falling leaves.

[27:52]

What direction should we look? No direction at all, really. Just this breath. this body, this moment of life on earth, whatever the condition, messed up or sublime or bored. We don't have to get good at this. We don't have to judge how we're doing at this. We just return over and over, each time new, each time sudden. This breath is this body, this moment of life on earth, this moment of gravity and atmosphere. When we do this over time, this becomes our home, this breath, this body, this moment.

[28:55]

And it's always sudden. We don't have to get good at coming home. We just come home when we can. In this way, our practice is refreshing. It's like taking a bath, not so much like a tedious self-improvement project. When we take a bath over and over again, each time we feel the warmth of the water anew and suddenly. Yes, we take a bath to get clean, And we know that there is no bath in which we can finally be clean once and for all. We don't really evaluate the quality of one bath compared to another that much. We don't regret taking a bath that much. We may or may not look forward to taking a bath.

[29:57]

Taking a bath is just what we do. It's part of our day. And even though bathing has a purpose, we're probably not very focused on the purpose while we bathe, because it's just what we do. So for me, bathing is a very good model for how we understand these two verses of the Platform Sutra, because bathing is both polishing a mirror and sudden return home, and it's ordinary. It's nothing special. So, you know, I'm a recovering school teacher. I retired about almost four years ago. And even so, I still think about the similarities between human behavior in general and seventh-graders' behavior. For example, one of the worst things for a 12- or 13-year-old human

[31:01]

is to be publicly humiliated or blamed. So one can observe a common strategy of deflecting attention. In a social situation, when a seventh grader feels uncertain about her status, afraid of being singled out and ridiculed, she may turn her attention on someone else in the group and begin to ridicule that person, thereby deflecting attention away from her. Or if he is accused of wrongdoing, he may blame someone else for making him do it or deny doing it at all. And he may use a shrill and emotional tone of voice because hurt and outrage are often effective tools for implementing the strategy of deflection. But you know, if you hang around Buddhists, you might notice

[32:01]

that we don't always fall for the deflection strategy. Sometimes we do, of course, but not always. If someone is deflecting, whether it be someone else or ourselves, we tend to keep our attention on the deflector, not the deflection. For example, when we justify something we do with a narrative, when we repeat the narrative over time, so that it becomes familiar, seems really personal, really true. Sometimes we might have a sudden return home to this breath, this body, this moment of life on earth. And at that time, we might catch a glimpse of the flimsiness of that familiar narrative, of how we have created it. to deflect attention, and how, come to think of it, we'd really rather hang out here at home.

[33:09]

The lengths we go to to deflect attention becomes more clear to us, and the impulse to deflect becomes less compelling. As with many of our behaviors, we can often spot this tendency in others. before we can spot it in ourselves. I think that is why Hui Nung says, you need to find a truly good friend to show you the way to see your nature. We all know what a delicate matter it is calling someone's attention to a behavior pattern that we observe in them, but they can't see so clearly in themselves. But just witnessing each other Saying nothing can be enough. That is how we are all truly good friends to each other, because we see each other.

[34:15]

So, Huinang's sudden enlightenment, the way I'm speaking about it today, has to do with this sudden return home over and over again. How many times? Nobody's counting. Just sudden return home over and over again. This breath, this body, this moment of life on Earth. This moment of Earth's gravity and Earth's atmosphere. This place is not a passing experience. It's not a feeling. This place is our evolutionary inheritance. It's the ground we walk on, sit on, stand and lie on. It is the air we breathe, right here, sometimes hiding in plain sight, sometimes not, always here and always sudden.

[35:23]

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