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 evening. So there's a board meeting tonight, which means that a lot of the people with positions are... sitting in a board meeting right now someplace else. So if you want to come in closer or use more props or whatever, you can do that. And I want to encourage you to come on in and make yourself balanced and comfortable as we look at some of what we want to look at this evening. My name is Shosan Victoria Austin.

[01:03]

I started practicing in 1971, and I'm a student of Sojin Bell Weitzman, who passed away a couple of years ago. And I've been remembering him quite a bit recently, and particularly remembering how he studied. So pretty much every time I would go to a formal interview with him and, you know, hi, people online. So this is not a secret. It's spreading out. But basically every time I would speak with him in a private interview, he would fall asleep. So I didn't necessarily get answers from him because if I asked him about it, he would say, I'm not sleeping.

[02:07]

I'm not sleeping. I'm just resting my eyes. But now I find that his presence is pretty much always with me. And if I neglect to give Dharma teachings, if It seems like the Dharma's going to be cut off in me or in what I do. I hear from him, even though he's not physically with us. And we have precept practice. And precept practice has a kind of a living presence like that for us. Once we make a vow and say something like, I really want to wake up for the benefit of all beings, or... I take refuge in the Buddha, or I vow not to kill. That intention, that presence of the Dharma, has changed us forever, even if we're not very good at it.

[03:11]

And today is Earth Day. And that's an example of something that I don't feel like we're particularly good at, but have to keep remembering. And so I would like to speak about our bodhisattva intention or our awakening intention in the context of the earth. Okay? So I was wondering how ethics have presented themselves in the tradition of Buddhism going back to the time of the Buddha. And so I spent part of the day reflecting on the different teachings I've heard from the different eras of Buddhism and Buddhist practice and how they differ in relation to the world, what we call the world and how we take care of the world.

[04:22]

And what I realized was that when I think about the teachings in the Pali Canon, that the ethics, like not harming and not lying and not taking what's not given, those precepts are there. And they're taken up as things that we undertake to do and that protect us and protect the world. So I was thinking about three sutras in particular. So there's one called the Chakavati Sivanada Sutta, which is in the Dhyanikaya. And it's a story about how, pretty much how people used up the resources of the earth through greed, or even divine beings used up the resources of the earth. and they just got sucked dry and the earth degraded.

[05:28]

So it's a story like that. And so to me, the message of that is that the Buddha was putting forward that loose moral conduct leads to using up what's good and developing what's bad. And that really goes along with the Buddha's basic teaching of when this happens, that follows. When this does not happen, that does not happen. The Buddha was very straightforward in his teaching, and he wanted us to understand that action and results often are very similar and related. Not always, because causality in his teaching is not always prescriptive. A lot of times it's descriptive. This happened, and then that happened. and not this happened, and because of that, that happened. So then I thought of another sutra, it's called the Aganya Sutta, which is also in the Dighinikaya.

[06:35]

And again, this is how, it's another sutra about how primordial beings were greedy, and so the naturally beneficial aspects of the earth, the naturally nourishing parts of the earth, got gradually used up, but also the beings themselves, their way of understanding got coarsened because they were using resources without caring about how they were used. And so that actually changed their ability to be sensitive to their relationship with the world. it led to their objectifying the good things of the world as consumables and commodities. And that changed over, I guess it's more than millennia, eons, the nature of what existed on Earth.

[07:41]

So that was pretty interesting, that sutra. And then a third sutra I thought about was the one that we recited this morning, the Metta Sutta, the loving-kindness sutra, which talks about how to keep in mind all living beings, whether strong or weak or great or small and high or middle or low realms of existence, visible or invisible, near or far, born or to be born. And just may they be happy, may they be safe, may they be free. And that we need to have a heart and mind just like a mother who at the risk of her life watches over and protects her only child. And I thought, well, wouldn't that be amazing if we cared for our surroundings and each other in that way.

[08:43]

Of course, you know, we wouldn't want to be an overbearing mother, but we might want to be a caring mother who cares about the nourishment and replenishment of the environment in which we live. So the Theravada is the way of the elders. And it's important to remember what the Buddha actually said and what his teachings actually were. And so that's why I wanted to mention these sutras, to give a feeling for those teachings. But Zen, of which San Francisco's Zen Center is a teaching environment, is a Mahayana discipline. Mahayana means great vehicle. And so it's meant to be an inclusive form of Buddhism that's about protecting, nourishing, helping, and maintaining all beings on this earth and in world systems that we have contact with.

[09:54]

And so in Mahayana practice, environmental ethics are part of not harming and part of doing good, part of not doing evil and part of doing good, part of living and being lived for the benefit of all beings. And they permeate the universe at all levels of truth, like in the realm of oneness, in the realm of difference where there's different beings, in the realm of oneness where there's integer connection and peace and harmony. The environmental ethics are there. So in the realm of oneness, life is not killed. So if a being eats another being, there's still the same amount of life. It's just located differently. But the ethics of Mahayana practice exemplify for me or embody for me the truth of skillful means.

[10:59]

So they have in them the world of oneness, the world of difference. and the world of skill. And so I'd like to give an example of a Zen story. There's a collection called The Book of Serenity, and it's a wonderful collection of stories from the ancients. And this is the last, it's the number 100 of 100 stories in The Book of Serenity. So the stories start They don't really start simple and end complicated, but you'll see that this one has quite a wide view. So each of the cases has an introduction, a case, a commentary, and a verse. Is it okay if I just read you the introduction and the case and the verse? And we can think of our own commentary if we wish.

[12:03]

So, okay? You want to hear it? So this is the introduction. One word can cause a nation to flourish. One word can cause a nation to perish. This drug, the drug of words, can kill people and can bring people to life as well. Benevolent ones seeing this call it benevolence. Wise ones seeing this call it wisdom. But tell me, where is benefit and harm? Where do they lie in life? So that's the introduction. So you got the idea that one word can give life. One word can give death.

[13:05]

And people will call it different things depending on their point of view, depending on where they stand in the situation. So if you're a kind person, you'll call it kindness. If you're a wise person, you'll call it wisdom. If you're a worker, you will call it work. If you're a player, you'll call it play. Right? But this is the case. So there was a master of Mount Langya. and his name was Zhao. So a monk asked Master Langya Zhao, Purity is originally thus. How does it suddenly produce mountains, rivers, and the great earth? Langya Zhao came right back and said, Purity is originally thus. How does it suddenly produce mountains, rivers, and the great earth? And that's the story. And the verse says, seeing existence without considering it existent, turning the hand over and back, that person on Mount Longya doesn't fall behind Gautama, meaning the Buddha, meaning he got it, he got what Buddha had to say.

[14:33]

So purity is originally so. How does it suddenly produce mountains, rivers? and the great Earth invites us to be with the mountains and be with the rivers and be with the great Earth and see, never be apart from its purity. So purity is originally so how. It doesn't say why, it says how. It's not asking us for reasons. It's asking us to see. Knowing that one word of description such as giving a Zen talk, which is a booby-trapped activity, if ever there was one, right? Because you can't really tell the whole story. No matter how great a priest you are, the moment you say something, it's not quite going to meet everybody's experience. So you have to realize that you're not going to be able to do it perfectly, and you have to do it anyway, because you promised your teacher.

[15:36]

And they'll haunt you for the rest of your life if you don't do it. Okay, so. I like the verse, turning the hand over and back. Oneness and difference. Harmony and difference or conflict or whatever. Whatever the conditions are is one side. And whatever is common to all conditions is the other side. And Sojin used to say that our practice does include mindfulness. It's not separate from the mindfulness that was taught by the ancients. But he said what makes it distinctly Zen Buddhism is that mindfulness springs forth from a sense of oneness, peace, and harmony. It's not just mindfulness to be aware in a detached way.

[16:38]

It's mindfulness to be aware and heartfelt with all of the sense of connection we feel, but without, what should I say, defending, without glomming on. You know, so even it begs us, this practice begs us to understand love differently than we ever have. Basically, love and wisdom. The practice is asking us to mature in our understanding of what is love and what is wisdom, to understand that those are actions. And they'll always be incomplete. We'll always be learning. And so I would like to posit that there's a hand position that seals this state of mind.

[17:42]

And that's this. Okay, so this posture, the base of the hand is at the expression level of the throat. And it's not stuck very close to the face, and it's not really far away. It's here. so that you can really feel it. This is called gasho. And gasho is a variation of an Indian mudra called anjali mudra, which is at heart level, and this is at throat level. This is different. They're not the same position. And there are many different kinds of gashos. And so, Traditionally, it's said that the right hand is the world of Buddha, the Kongo Kai, or Vajradhatu, the world of luminous, diamond clarity and brilliance and oneness.

[18:57]

You know how when you... Who here is a really experienced sitter of Zaza in like more than five years or so? Okay, I'm just going to ask your opinion. I think it's time for something. I'm going to ask your opinion. When you get up from sitting, have you ever felt like the world was completely fresh and clean and just luminous and shiny? Yeah, and it doesn't last long, usually. Eventually, you realize that the world can seem that way and we can treat it that way. But it takes many repetitions, usually. And then the left hand is traditionally thought of as the world of beings, the tai zōkai, which is also, it's like the matrix world or the womb world, the world that gives rise to beings. Please make yourself comfortable. I don't want anyone's knees to get damaged on my watch, okay? And then the space between the hands varies quite a bit.

[20:02]

So check this out. You can have your hands all the way together with the edges of the palms all the way together where you're uniting the touches, right? But then feel what happens if you keep your fingers and your thumb together but make just a tiny bit of space in between the palms. It feels different, right? Or if you make more space between the palms. It becomes like a lotus bud. Those are actually different mudras or seals of different meditative states. And if you look at the doorway, sometime when you're here for a meal, look at the doorways in the dining room, okay? Or look at the Chinese Buddha statue downstairs in the hallway and you'll see three different gashos. It means three different relationships between the world of oneness and the world of difference. So Katagiri Roshi's is the one with the hands all the way together. Suzuki Roshi had his finger broken, and so the hands are a little bit apart.

[21:09]

There's a real space in between, but they're still united. And then you'll see that the Chinese Buddha downstairs is more like a partly open lotus bud. And those are actually different mudras that stand for different relationships that we can have with reality. And so, of course, there's mantras that we can recite that also give this for people who understand practice through sound. And then there's mandalas, or visual representations of the earth in this tradition as well. And I was going to draw some of them, but I ran out of paper and time, so I didn't. But one such mandala is the mandala that we're in right now.

[22:09]

So if you look around the room, you see that this bowing mat has four corners. So the one underneath has four corners, four silk corners. And then the mat that I bowed on, it was called the zagu, has four corners as well. And the room has four corners. And those are traditionally thought of as guardians of the north, south, east, and west. And they have names. And then we're sitting in a circular arrangement in relation to a central axis on which the priest walks up and down and offers incense and various things. But if you go to morning service, it's pretty similar, except everyone's standing in rows in an array. And those are different mandalas or arrangements for how we can see the world. When you see the world in a circle, It feels one way to us.

[23:11]

When we see the world in an orderly array, it feels another way. But we should just know that one of the things that's constant is that there's guardians. And downstairs in the zendo, they actually put super experienced and responsible people in those four corners, and they guard the place. So they put habits and tantos, heads of practice, and enos. you know, in the corners. And they kind of hold down the rows. So you get a visual of the mandala of the world of protection and practice. And you get a physical and physiological feeling of that protection as well. And I'm not making this up, okay? I'm not making this up. This is actually part of the tradition. So then there's a precept view that goes with that. Precepts are, they're not rules.

[24:12]

They're kind of guidelines for how we practice. And if you come to the full moon ceremony in a couple of weeks, you'll hear. well, every morning you'll hear all my ancient twisted karma from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion, born through body, speech, and mind, I now fully avow. So you'll hear those repentances which purify us. And then you'll hear refuges in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. And you'll hear... pure precepts of not doing evil, doing good, and living and being lived for the benefit of all beings. And those are ways that we are vowing to take care of ourselves and the earth. That's not different because what is the self but everything that we think of as not the earth? What is the earth or the world but everything that we think of as not the self?

[25:15]

They fit together like the left and right hands. The world, its inner boundary is shaped like this for me, or like that for you, right? I mean, I'm sorry if I sound totally obvious, but this is how we experience And we usually have a delusion that the world and the self are separate, but they're so intimately connected by the skin, by the eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue, and the ability to think that we don't even notice. It's like a really good multipixel, you know, high-quality sound representation, right? and we don't notice that that act is happening. It's become transparent to us.

[26:18]

So there's a Mahayana Sutra called the Brahmajala Sutra that lies in its complexity someplace between the very complicated precepts of the elders and the more simple ones that we recite here. That sutra has 10 major precepts and 48 minor ones. And it's Mahayana. It comes in time after the Theravadans and before today. That's when it was probably put together or increased in popularity in around the seven and eight hundreds. And it's intended for bodhisattva practice or awakening being practice. And It's really interesting. I was reading the Brahmajala Sutra in a number of different traditions, and suddenly, this past weekend, I was instructing a Dharma transmission, which is very highly ritualized, transfer of responsibility from one generation to the next.

[27:29]

So I was instructing the ceremony, and I realized that the words at the beginning of the Brahmajala Sutra are the same. as the setup for the ceremony. And I thought, whoa, the ceremony is set up to be a kind of scale model of this sutra. And then I realized that Dharma transmission, which most of us think of as kind of a graduation, has exactly the same formal setup, not exactly the same words, but many of the same elements as another ceremony that's just for lay people called Jukai-e, which is when people first receive the precepts or the vows. And isn't that interesting that this kind of graduation ceremony or legacy ceremony should be the same form as the ceremony that starts people off with being Buddhists?

[28:38]

So what is that form? So I looked at, I was trying to visualize that form. You'll have to use your mind pictures because I couldn't actually draw it today. So if you picture Vairocana Buddha, who's a Buddha of infinite Buddha, of infinite ability, infinite skill, infinite light, infinite vision, infinite resources, sitting on a lotus seat of a thousand petals. A thousand stands for infinite petals. So he's sitting on this big lotus, and each petal is a Buddha of a different world system. And those Buddhas are like what we wish, you know, the Senate and the House would be like. You know, they're all gathered around the Buddha waiting to do acts of infinite goodness and mercy in their own world system.

[29:45]

Right? Without bias or desire or hatred or competition or anything, but just, hi. You know, I'm here for you. And so each of those Buddhas... receives awakening in the form of light that emanates from Vairacana Buddha, and then they kind of truck on back to their own world system and they spread it around. That's their job. That's what a Buddha is supposed to do, to go to their own system and spread it around. And so that's how this sutra comes to us. according to the beginning of the Brahmajala Sutra, which is the Indra's Net Sutra. And each of those Buddhas, as a point of light, is connected by the energy of awakeness and kindness.

[30:47]

And there are points of light on that net, and that whole system is called Brahma's Net. And this Brahmajala Sutra is Brahma's Net Sutra. which means the entire universe composed of multi-zillions of universes is completely connected with wise, compassionate energy, with zillions of points of light continually emanating truth and goodwill in all directions. Can we handle ourselves and the world in this way, knowing that that's what this system of study is trying to teach us, right? And so I just, I don't want to go on too long, but if it's okay with you, I will read one of the teachings of the Brahmajala Sutra and then Thich Nhat Hanh's variation that he wrote a couple thousand years later.

[31:57]

So the first precept of the Brahmajala Sutra is not killing, not harming, not taking life. So like if your knee is starting to be harmed, sit at the edge of your cushion, you know, hold behind the knee, see if you can soften the back of the knee so that the inside of the knee has circulation and life. If you need to rest, please rest. and then balance. That balance helps us hear and see and respond. So the Buddha said, in giving this precept, you know, after he got home to this world system from Vairocana land, he said, Buddha children, addressing us, if you yourselves kill incite others to kill, facilitate or praise killing, take pleasure in seeing it done, or even kill with a curse or a spell.

[33:07]

If you're involved in the causes, conditions, methods, or circumstances of killing, even if in general you never deliberately kill anything living, always, you know, maintaining compassionate, sympathetic, filial thoughts proper to an awakening being, And even if you use lots of skillful means to save and protect all beings, but just on the side, turn and take life with an unrestrained mind, impulsively, full of passion. These cases, anything that happens like this constitutes a bodhisattva-parajaka offense, which means you're out. So that's what the Buddha said. And so why is it first? Why is not killing the first of those Brahmajala precepts? And there was a Zen master called Fatsang, and he said, because not harming, the understanding of not harming, that you're always conscious of many times in the breach,

[34:23]

that idea of not harming, that vow of not harming preserves our compassion, which is the source of our practice. So His Holiness said, my religion is kindness. And he also said it's because it's the original precept. Not killing is the original precept. He had this idea that it was the original precept. And because of the heavy nature of the karma of killing. And this is how Thich Nhat Hanh reworked it. So in 1966, he wrote the Thiepien precepts, which later became the 14 mindfulness trainings. And they're very much derived from the Brahmajala. This is what it says on the website of the order of interbeing. Actually, of Flum Village, I'm sorry. The 14 mindfulness trainings are the very essence of the order of interbeing.

[35:28]

They are a torch lighting our path, a boat carrying us, a teacher guiding us. They allow us to touch the nature of interbeing in everything that is all over the world, to see that our happiness is not separate from the happiness of all else. Interbeing is not a theory, it's a reality. that can be directly experienced by each and every one of us at any moment in our life. They help us cultivate concentration and insight. They free us from fear and the illusion of a separate self. So this is what it says. Not killing is actually the 12th mindfulness training. Before you get to not killing or not harming, you've already cultivated body, speech and mind. So here it is. So this is his teaching about how to relate to the world. It's called Reverence for Life.

[36:32]

Aware that much suffering is caused by war and conflict, we are determined to cultivate nonviolence, compassion, and the insight of interbeing in our daily lives and promote peace education mindful mediation and reconciliation in families, communities, ethnic and religious groups, nations, and the world. We commit not to kill and not to let others kill. We will not support any act of killing in the world, in our thinking, or in our way of life. We will diligently practice deep looking with our sangha to discover better ways to protect life, prevent war, and build peace. So I highly recommend reading these precepts, okay? There's more that helps us understand the world, so I'll leave you to research this.

[37:37]

This is the 14 mindfulness trainings of Thich Nhat Hanh. And read also Right Livelihood, because that also talks about our consumeristic relationship with the world and how we use things going back to those teachings of the Buddha. So I'm going to zip my lip now for a moment. We have just a few minutes if you want to comment on any of this. I have about 300 more years of things to say, but I'm not going to, OK? Because it's, you know, well, Buddhists have to go to sleep eventually. So if you want to comment or speak about an example of how to work with the world, please do. Well, you'll get a mic to do that. Thank you for your talk.

[38:42]

Mosquitoes. Yes. That's the question. It's like, I vow not to kill. Oh. Uh-oh. Right? Yeah. Yeah. And mosquitoes, mice and rats, cockroaches, you know? And sometimes... Like, I'm old enough to remember the New York garbage strike in the 60s where rats were jumping into strollers, right? And when I was work leader here and we had a flood one fall in November, water started bubbling up, and then mice and rats came up through the drain in the kitchen. So you're lucky you weren't directed then, right? Because it was not pleasant.

[39:43]

And what do we do? And I have a heart traps, insect traps that don't kill, and you release it back out, then it comes back in. So when I go to a, you know, when I'm in a damp, warm climate, I often have DEET that I put around the window sills and door frames to discourage mosquitoes from coming in. And then I'll wear something more like lemon balm or something like that to make myself unattractive. But if I have to, I'll break the precept. I've seen too many people get dengue fever and other sicknesses. And I haven't worked that out. And I have to say that when I, you know, the health department gave us like a three-day deadline and said they were going to close us.

[40:48]

And so all the powers that be were screaming, get the exterminator. And then the director called the exterminator. And I was very sad, but I had already been cited by the police for trying to trap mice and rats and then release them various places around the city. That was not a good solution. It didn't help the environment at all. No, I had to eventually take responsibility for killing the mice and rats and the cockroaches. And I did, and still... include them in memorial services. And I know it would be very easy to just go around killing and then have more memorial services, but I really try to take it more seriously than that. I don't know, I don't think it's possible for us to do everything perfectly.

[41:51]

I think that we have to, like for instance, if they're children, and their mice and rats, we may have to prioritize the health of the children. That's what we do on the farm as well. You know, we weed. Plants have lives too. We eat. We drink. We do all sorts of things, right? We have to discern, not decide. And we have to do our best. Thank you for your question. Thank you. Yeah. Cats? We can have cats, except I'm allergic, unfortunately. Yeah. Yeah, thank you.

[42:56]

Victoria, for your talk. And I'm sitting with, you know, what it feels like to break the precept in paying my taxes, which I'm aware is supporting a war. Yes. And, you know, there was a day, back in a day, we didn't pay our taxes for... And that was one form of resistance... So I don't know, you know, it really feels sad. It really does. And, you know, Aitken Roshi talked about one time he and Anne, his wife, they were in their 80s and they wrote to the IRS something like, Dear IRS man, we're an old married couple. And we pay our taxes all the time, but it's come to our attention that 51% of our taxes are being used for war.

[44:01]

Well, we want to let you know that we've put this year's taxes into escrow. We're just a harmless old couple. Anyway, it went on and on like that. I can't. I paid taxes this year. And that's another thing that I join you in that sadness. I paid the taxes. And now I have to pay the taxes of my ethics. I have to pay more here than I did there. What am I going to do? So I'm in the process of planning some activities for next month that will help me take responsibility for my whole big picture. And I don't know what that is for you. I can't say. But I do know that if you do that process of sitting with what is and searching what's right for you, it will help me.

[45:10]

It will inspire me. I really appreciate that you have that question. It's a practical one. Thank you. Thank you. That's helpful. Okay. How are we doing with time? Couple minutes over. Couple minutes over? Are we killing? Thank you, Victoria. You mentioned killing even with a spell or a curse. I wonder if you might say more about that. Is wishing someone ill a form of killing and speaking the words I wish they would Yes, that is. Jump off a cliff or something. Yeah. There's a spectrum. Actually, doing the act is worse. Okay. I think that we need to let people rest. And if you want to continue the conversation, we can.

[46:14]

I invite you to write to me, care of San Francisco Zen Center, Victoria. www.austin.org is my address here. And if you have another question that didn't get answered, please let me know. Okay? Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma Talks are offered at no cost, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[47:03]

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