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 good morning to the online SACA who's here with us also at Green Gulch. And thank you for wearing your masks. Since I'm not in the Green Gulch bubble all the time, I go in and out of it. Today is the vernal equinox. The particular time in the northern hemisphere when the day has become, there's more light.

[01:12]

And in the southern hemisphere, it's fall, beginning of fall. And change. had a ceremony this morning. We have ceremonies at Green Gulch for the equinoxes and the solstices. And this morning, the ceremony took place next to our friend and protector, a great cypress tree that's been living at Green Gulch in the valley that many of you have Many of you who've been here know the tree well. It's right in the resident parking lot. Can you hear me okay? And it has, it's dying or has died.

[02:21]

And even in its death, it shelters, protects, is a home for beings and makes offerings. to the world. So we had our ceremony and our dedication. Abbas Fu did a beautiful dedication to our friend. And we celebrated this mix of celebration and also gratitude and sadness all mixed together as our life usually is. So in the Greek mythology, the vernal equinox is the day that Persephone returns from the underworld where she, depending on which version, she was carried away. And her mother, Demeter, who was the goddess of growing things, went into

[03:31]

total grief and despair when her daughter disappeared, was taken, and she couldn't function. She couldn't do her usual activities of taking care of the earth and growing things and animals and so forth. And those of you who know the story, The whole world was suffering because of this rupture in this mother-daughter bond and relationship. And so Zeus worked it out with his brother Hades that Persephone would be sent back. However, Hades knew if Persephone ate something in the underworld, she would have to come back and he offered her pomegranate and she ate six seeds of the pomegranate.

[04:37]

And so she's up with her mother and on the earth for six months of the year and in the underworld for six months. And this is this old myth, thousands of years old, of the turning of the seasons and the gladness and delight and joy and rejoicing of Demeter and Persephone coming together again. There were ceremonies and mysteries, ceremonies of mystery in Greece, celebrating this important bond and this archetype, mother-daughter archetype. So springtime, and this is right in the middle of this war that we're watching and reading about and maybe have personal contact with people.

[05:40]

And the daffodils are coming up and the crab tree is coming into bloom and the wisteria. This is our life. We can't pull those two apart. Today also is the anniversary of the death of my mother, Miriam Cutts, and she died in 2004. So I just wanted to acknowledge that and say that I am... remembering her today. And two stories came up about her way at the end of her life, because at the end of her life, she had dementia and wasn't, was a different person than the mother I grew up with.

[06:52]

And for most of my adult life, at the end, it was very, very different. However, there was something still alive and well in terms of the mother-daughter bond. And so I'll tell you two stories. One is she was in an assisted living place in Chicago, and I went to visit. And she said, I don't know who you are, but I know you're mine. And that... So at what level was that understanding, you know, of the relationship and the blood bond? It's hard to know, but he didn't know who I was. That's one story. And the other story, I had to do this, was in 2000. I was at Tassajara preparing for...

[07:55]

The installation ceremony, the mountain seat ceremony, for me as one of the abbesses of Zen Center was blanched, was already seated, and Norman, Soketsu Norman Fisher was stepping down, and I was stepping up. And I was invited by Tenshinurashi to be a Tassahara to... I had a kind of leave of absence and I was preparing. There's 17 different statements and poems that one makes in the ceremony. So I was happy to be at Tassajara working on that. And I thought, well, I'll just call my mom, see how she's doing. So for those of you who know the Tassajara phone, it's like there's a delay and you can't quite hear and static. So I called her and... I, you know, told her who I was and what I was doing.

[08:56]

And it's like she had absolutely no idea what the ceremony was, what Dasahara was, what writing statements. And I was saying I was, you know, I had, what was the word, like trepidation about This huge, big ceremony, the biggest ceremony I'd ever been in and all the different parts that I had to learn. And so over this phone at Tazahara, she said, you're going to do just fine. You'll do just fine. You'll be fine. And where that voice came from and that meeting me kind of right where I was, without really knowing anything about anything, because she had dementia. But she understood something and just met me there. It was very settling, very settling.

[10:06]

So today, of flowing from thinking about our friend the tree and also my mother's life and and the teachings that have been passed down to us. I wanted to bring up again something I brought up with the group at Green Gulch who sat the one day sitting last Saturday and this is the teachings around no gaining idea, not having an idea of gain. So this is something in the senior seminar that I'm in came up around studying a particular fascicle of Dogen. So this is the chapters or essays are called fascicles. And this one was called which means making offerings to Buddha or serving Buddhas.

[11:19]

And in looking at that with a study group and then reading more on my own and then knowing that Suzuki Roshi used to use that phrase a lot, like to have no gaining idea. So in the archive of Suzuki Roshi transcripts, There is, you know, you can choose a teaching or a word and see where in the index what lectures Suzuki Roshi brings it up. And for no gaining idea, there was a long list, like 17 or 18 entries where he brings it up more than many other, you know, subject matter. So no gaining idea. So I wanted to look at this no gaining idea from not the point of view, but out of the teachings of Suzuki Roshi, Dogen, Shakyamuni Buddha, and Bodhidharma, and the tree about no gaining idea.

[12:45]

and making offerings, which is the name of this particular fascicle, making offerings, serving. So when thinking about the tree, the tree made offerings for however old it was. We were not really sure. Is that true, Suki? We don't know for sure. The age of the tree? More than 100 years. And during that time, without any gaining idea, it provided beauty, shade, shelter, homes for various kinds of animals and sounds of the wind through its leaves. But freely, just as its nature, with no idea of... Even making offerings, right? Just this is the nature. And I think that point is really what keeps being brought up in these various lectures and things that I've been reading about no gaining idea.

[13:58]

So wanting to understand more thoroughly because it feels like really key. essential to understand this. So that's why I'm taking this up and taking it up with you all. So I thought I'd start and see if we can come around full circle to all the places I wanted to bring it up. But in this fascicle called Serving... offerings or making offerings to Buddha. And in this particular fascicle, Dogen does a lot of quoting from Mahayana to Mahayana sutras or maybe more. And in these sutras, our very own Shakyamuni Buddha is talking to his disciples, Shariputra,

[15:09]

and Mount Dalyana about some vision he had of past lives in the past. And one of the sutras he quotes is the Sutra of Buddha's original practice, and the other is the Sutra of the Treasury, the Buddha's Treasury Sutra. So in this, so here's Jogen pulling from the Mahayana scripture, Shakyamuni Buddha's words. So Shakyamuni Buddha begins in this first Sutra of Buddha's original practice saying that he made offerings and served an incalculable number of Buddhas in the past and gave them the requisites of food and shelter and bedding and medicine. Those are standard gifts to the sangha, the ordained sangha for their maintenance of their health, etc.

[16:17]

And he served these Buddhas, countless Buddhas, immeasurable Buddhas, for immeasurable eons. And they list, you know, six billion eons. And then he says, but those Buddhas that I was serving did not, me or confirm me and that's a kind of a technical term sometimes in English said I use the word prediction which is very particular it's the Buddha saying to another Buddha in a future life you will be this Buddha named this name and you will abide in this place etc and it's the Lotus Sutra is filled with these instances of prediction Because usually there's only one Buddha in these teachings per kind of time.

[17:20]

So you will be a Buddha. But they didn't predict this Shakyamuni Buddha. They didn't say that. So then he goes on into this other sutra, the Buddha's Treasury Sutra. And here he quotes, there's like Dogen, there's maybe 18 different paragraphs. where he pulls out teachings from Chapter 8 of the Buddha's Treasury Sutra, in which Shakyamuni says, I had a vision, Shariputra, that in the past I served innumerable, immeasurable, incalculable Buddhas with everything they needed, and I did everything I could for eons and kalpas. I think... Kalpa is like, one kalpa is immeasurable. And they did not predict me. They didn't affirm me.

[18:21]

They didn't confirm me in my Buddha. And then in this sutra, the Buddha says, wherefore? Or, you know, how come? Because I had expectation of gain. This is our very own Shakyamuni Buddha, is saying they didn't confirm me because I had expectation of gain. I wanted, I was, there was something extra there. And he goes on, paragraph after paragraph, and you can read it yourself. We have, you know, Nanahashi-san's translation, Ishijima Cross translation over and over again. And I was a wheel-rolling king, and I... served these Buddhas, and they all were wonderful, and they wouldn't confirm me. Why? Because Tanahashi-san's translation is grasping mind, grasping mind, expectation of gain, grasping mind.

[19:28]

So the word for gain that's used here is u-shoutoku, u-shoutoku, and it means to gain, to grasp, to have some expectation or trying to get something out of something, an ulterior motive other than just doing what you're doing fully. So there's this extra, you're doing wonderful things, practicing wonderfully, supporting and serving. Buddhas and others. And yet, right in the middle of that, kind of like, and this is Shakyamuni Buddha and past lives we're talking about, so I figure there's hair's breadth deviation. There's a slight, maybe, expectation of something to get out of doing this good work, this wonderful offering, making offerings of his entire life, but with

[20:38]

What am I going to get out of it was still there. So. He was doing his practice with grasping mind. Chakyamuni Buddha admits over and over. I had expectation of gain. I was not able to understand the reality of all things. but only had a mind greedy for attainment. That's a quote in Tanahashi-san's translation. I didn't understand the reality of all things is, we'll come to that, but the reality of the emptiness of all things. And so when we don't have that wisdom, of the true nature of all things, we think we can get something.

[21:40]

Not only material gain, but, you know, other kinds of getting spiritual gain. So finally, after really an incalculable time, these measurements are meant to just... You can't hold it anymore. It's so long or so many beings that you just have to let it go and just sit in the middle of inconceivableness, really. So the Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha, finally met Bipamkara. Now there's other stories of the Buddha in a past life, meeting Dipamkara, who had come to this village when he was a religious practitioner, a kind of yogi, who had heard about this wonderful teacher, Dipamkara, and wanted to help prepare the town for his visit.

[22:56]

And he had kind of shamanic powers and all, but he didn't want to use those to help the townspeople. He wanted to shovel and help with his own hands. So he was busy working on getting this muddy street ready for Shakyamuni Buddha to come, for, excuse me, Dipankara to come. These are these teaching stories that we can turn now, but about stories of the Buddha's And bodhisattvas of the past. So Sumedha, Shakyamuni in the past, didn't finish completion of this cleaning of this muddy street. And here comes Deepamkara. And he didn't want him to have to walk through the mud. So he undid his long hair and he threw it over the mud for Deepamkara to walk on.

[23:58]

And he raised his hands in respect. And then the story is that Sumedha, from this position with his head down on the ground, which is the origin of our full prostration that we do, he kind of looked up. I picture him kind of all muddy, his hair all muddy. And he looked up at Deepankara, and this thought arose in him of wanting to become a Buddha. Now, I'm not sure this is the exact same story of this... meeting with Deepamkara where the Buddha had gaining idea, Shakyamuni, because in this story of the serving Buddhas, where he served all these Buddhas, he meets Deepamkara and it says he attained, it says it in different ways, but he had attained

[25:00]

patient acceptance of dharmas which fail to be produced. Now this is a kind of technical term. Ut anupatika dharmakashanti. The dharma means all things and kashanti is patience. So he realized or had the patient or the intuitive patience understanding the patient acceptance of dharmas which fail to be produced, meaning that all dharmas are beginningless and endless. All dharmas are empty of separateness, and therefore, although it doesn't say therefore, there is nothing to gain. There is nothing to get. And to have the patient acceptance, or another translation is Robert Thurman, the intuitive tolerance of the inconceivability of all things.

[26:11]

It's a kind of a realization that a bodhisattva can have. That includes the wisdom and the compassion together. The wisdom of seeing that there is nothing to gain because all things are empty. and they neither arise nor cease, just like we chant in the Heart Sutra. And so in this meeting with Deepamkara, he was affirmed, he was predicted, he was confirmed by Deepamkara, which means he had dropped any expectation of gain or a grasping. All those other instances, there was this grasping. Maybe even like, I'm picturing my son who does bouldering, and I saw a picture of him with a teeny tiny handhold with like three fingers on this boulder hole, like that, like even, you know, hair's breadth deviation.

[27:27]

And that was like, dropped in this realization of the inconceivability and this patience with all things are like that and there's nothing to get and to be patient with that and have a tolerance for that. This teaching of no gaining idea or nothing to get, we know it, this teaching very well from our koan, the first case of the Blue Cliff Record, which is about bodhidharma,

[28:30]

our first ancestor in China, an Indian teacher who came to China, was called the first Chinese ancestor of China. And Bodhidharma, when he first came from India, went to see the emperor, Emperor Wu of Liang. And so here's this teacher coming from India, and Buddhism was in China, Then, the beginnings of Buddhism, and Emperor Wu of Liang said, what is the highest meaning of the holy truths? That was his question to Bodhidharma. This is the first case of the Blue Cliff Record. What is the highest meaning of the holy truths? And Bodhidharma said, empty without holiness. And there's a back story to this, which I'll... And then the emperor said, who is this before me?

[29:41]

And Bodhidharma said, I don't know. And then he head off and crossed the Yangtze River, came to the kingdom of Wei and sat for nine years facing a wall. But when he left, after he left, the emperor said to his... dependent master juror, who is that mass bandit, you know, who is this person? And master juror told him, this is the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara. And then the emperor was regretful and wanted to send an emissary to bring back Bodhidharma to come and teach. And master juror said, You can't bring him back, not even if you sent the entire country to bring him back. He won't come back. So this story has been told and retold.

[30:45]

It's told for most every Shusou ceremony, the ceremony that ends the practice period that someone serves as a student or a head monk. And the back story is that Emperor Wu of Liang was served served the Buddhist community greatly. He made offerings. He built temples. He built monasteries. He provided the four requisites, you know, the food and clothing and bedding and medicine. He was a wonderful, you know, benefactor. However, he may have had ushotoku, some gaining idea or expectation of gain, like what kind of merit will come to me by virtue of all these wonderful things I'm doing.

[31:48]

So he asked Bodhidharma, you know, what is the highest meaning of the holy truths? And I don't know if he was like kind of fishing for Bodhidharma to say all the wonderful works you have done, that is the highest meaning or what. And Bodhidharma was, As Avalokiteshvara, Bodhidharma, who doesn't look like what we think Guan Yin or Tara Buddha looks like, or the Avalokiteshvara, Bodhidharma was kind of a rascal. He looked like a rascal. He didn't have any eyelids because he... Oh, no, that comes later. Sorry, he had eyelids. He was wearing... Well, that was maybe later, too. Anyway. He was a very straightforward guy. And, you know, an emanation or that was a form that Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Infinite Compassion, took to go to China.

[33:01]

So this compassion, Avalokiteshvara, and wisdom, the emptiness of all things, combined. It's compassion as the heart of wisdom, or wisdom as the heart of compassion. You can't pull them apart, because the imbalance of and nihilism of nothing exists, nothing arises, nothing so... So it's not worth anything. The bodhisattva way is all beings without exception are empty of separateness. Therefore, we take care of and serve and live for the benefit of. They're combined rather than falling off to one side or the other. Wisdom and compassion come together with no...

[34:07]

Gaining idea because the wisdom part is there is nothing to gain. Rasping things is basically delusion. What is the highest meaning of the holy truths? Empty, no holiness. Nothing to gain. The last... So in looking at some of Suzuki Roshi's transcripts, where he brings up gaining idea, no gaining idea, and the practices around it, I came upon a one-day session in 1967, I think, six or seven. where Suzuki Roshi is commenting on something called the Guidelines for Studying the Way.

[35:14]

In Japanese, it's yaku do yo jinshu. And it's in Moon and a Dew Drop, you can look at it, Guidelines for Studying the Way. And it's a series of like little headings, and then This is in Dogen, in Dogen's work, Guidelines for Studying the Way. And Gyakudo Yojinju has these headings and then a paragraph of commentary. So this particular is number four of these guidelines for studying the way. And it is, this is Dogen. And Suzuki Roshi commenting on, you should not practice Buddhist teaching with the idea of gain. There it is, not Dogen quoting from other sutras about Shakyamuni Buddha, but saying these are the guidelines for our practice.

[36:20]

You should not practice Buddha's teaching with the idea of gain. And then there's commentary. which I found really important. This is like when I say key and essential, it just seemed so important. Dogen is saying, when only if you practice with gain, then, or the mind of gain, you will be in disheartening You will have discomfort. You will not be calm and at peace because the mind is constantly trying to get something out of our practice, out of sitting, out of making offerings, you know, out of taking up the practice.

[37:33]

it can't settle because there's this leaning into our life of trying to get something out of it. So this is Jogan. Buddha's teaching cannot be attained by having ideas or not having ideas. Only when the mind of pure practice coincides with the way will body and mind be calm. If body and mind are not yet calm, they will not be at ease. When body and mind are not at ease, thorns grow on the path of realization. So it also reminded me of Zazen instruction. When we first come to practice, we're given Zazen instruction. And included in that is... you know, in terms of working with our mind.

[38:36]

Don't chase after thoughts. Don't push thoughts away, right? This is part of this teaching around the idea of gain. I want more of that. If it's pleasant things arising, I don't want this. I want to get away from that. That's the kind of gain. And also, so that's how we work with our mind, to not push things away or grab at things, just sitting upright in correct bodily posture. And also, this sitting upright says it all, you know, not leaning into our life, not leaning away, not trying to get away and have some handle on things. that we can use, by means of, that we can use. This is very subtle, I feel. I mean, it can be subtle and gross, but I think it can, over the years, become more and more subtle, subtle grasping, subtle expectation of gain.

[39:54]

To see yourself as you are, that is perfect combination of body and mind. That is perfect calmness of mind. So this, just as you are, accepting yourself, right in the middle of that is a peace and a joy, even if we know there's many things to work on, many areas. that we're not clear about yet, but including all that and accepting that without somehow trying to use our practice to get away from that or to make it go away or be better or get respect. To see yourself as you are.

[41:06]

And right in there I can almost feel the settling and the calm. Even if there's sadness there. Or grief. To be able to have the patient acceptance of dharmas which fail to be produced. Right there is... and a peace and wisdom and compassion together. So, I'm taking this to heart and, you know, being aware. large and small expectation of gain. So this is for me a very rich teaching and there's a lot a lot more for me to turn and maybe turn with you.

[42:28]

But I think it's a good time to stop, and we'll do our closing chant, and then there'll be time for question and answer, both at Green Gulch and from the online group. 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.

[43:14]

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