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, everyone. It's a joy and honor to be with you all. I'm delighted in seeing a number of faces I haven't seen in a while. And maybe it's because we actually have a public lunch today. So the soup and salad it's brought you, or maybe some dharma, you know, connection with other friends in the dharma. So it's beautiful to see you all. Thank you. Thank you for being here. For those of you who might not know me, my name is Tenzin David Zimmerman. I serve as the fighting abbot here at City Center for a little while longer. And what more can I say?

[01:01]

I just want to welcome you all, whether you're here in the Buddha Hall or in the virtual Dharma Hall. Thank you for your presence. So before I delve into my talk today, I want to just take a moment to acknowledge that many of you, perhaps like me, may be experiencing varying degrees of grief. sadness, anger, distress in the face of the recent flood of gun violence in the US. And it's hard to fathom that, from what I read, more than 70 people have been shot dead at mass shootings already this year. And it's only been a month, right? Including those in the Asian community at Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay in California on the lunar solstice, a lunar new year, a day that was meant to be a day of great celebration.

[02:10]

And then there are the recent unjust murders by police officers of yet more black men, including perhaps the one that's getting the most media, Tyree Nichols. also on Lunar Beer. So with heavy hearts and minds, we may be struggling to understand, to know how to hold and respond to such tremendous suffering, with such hatred and violence. And I want to acknowledge that these deaths have particularly impacted many in the BIPOC community. And as someone who is queer, I have myself experienced great distress whenever I've learned of yet another shooting at a gay bar or other forms of violence perpetrated on members of the LGBTQ community by either individuals or groups or

[03:23]

some cases representatives of governments or institutions. So given this, it's important that we each take whatever time and space we need to consider and offer ourselves and perhaps others as well whatever compassion, ease, and support that we can within our means. course, no one person or group or institution can ever fully meet our needs or ever fully take away all of our particular suffering. Even in the light of the Bodhisattva vow to save all beings, the Buddha himself taught that each of us must personally take complete responsibility for recognizing and freeing ourselves of whatever suffering we're experiencing.

[04:32]

And yet, and yet, there is much that we can offer each other, each of us, offer to others in times of great harm and distress and heartbreak. Even if it's something as simple as saying, I see you're in pain, how can I help? While it might not fully take away the pain or root causes of the great distress, it can go a long way in providing some measure of solace and refuge as we personally and collectively navigate the myriad forms of adversity and injustice that we experience as human beings just take a moment to just feel into your own being and offer whatever love compassion light for this one right here and if it's possible see if you can extend that feeling

[05:50]

to those around you, to others in the room, maybe beyond this building, into the wider community and beyond. May the light of your compassionate heart-mind extend to as many beings and as far as possible to bring ease and joy to this world that is in much need. of ease and joy. So now to introduce the main topic of my talk this morning, which is a teaching by Bodhidharma. It's known as the outline of practice. At Beginner's Mind Temple, each year around this time, we hold our annual Bodhidharma Day. And this is a day, we have a memorial in the fall. to acknowledge his passing.

[06:54]

And then we have another ceremony right about now to acknowledge his awakening. So for those of you who might know, Bodhidharma was a semi-legendary Buddhist monk who lived during the 5th and 6th centuries current era. And he's traditionally credited as the transmitter of Chan Buddhism or Zen. to China, and thus he's regarded as Zen's first Chinese ancestor. And this year's ceremony at City Center will happen later next week, and it's going to be during a morning service time. I think it's on Friday, if I remember correctly. And it's going to include the chanting of a sutra known as Bodhidharma's wake-up ceremony. Although I'm not going to be talking about his wake-up ceremony today. And Bodhidharma's life is shrouded in mystery, right? In fact, there's a lively debate and reason to doubt whether or not Bodhidharma actually existed.

[07:57]

I'm going to give you a talk by someone who we're not even 100% sure actually existed, but this is Zen. We're going to work with this, okay? So the standard biography is that he was born into a privileged upper-class life in South India, apparently the third son of a king. And like his father, Bodhidharma became a disciple of Prajantara. And although historically, Prajantara is generally assumed to be male, some scholars suggest that Prajantara might have actually been a woman, which I greatly appreciate. In time, Bodhidharma left his homeland to spread the Dharma in China, and where his exploits and escapades became the stuff of legend. course, with all greats and mysterious people, accounts of Bodhidharma's life, they've kind of developed these mythic elements, you know, these fantastical elements at some times.

[09:03]

And a lot of what we actually know about Bodhidharma comes from Zen koans and riddles, basically, that other people have mentioned him in some way. So while I could give a whole talk, whole Dharma talk on the various stories involving Bodhidharma, I'll leave that for another day. However, I will note that the Chinese often referred to the immigrant Bodhidharma as a blue-eyed, red-bearded monk, or a barbarian, excuse me, blue-eyed, red-bearded barbarian, and that he's typically depicted in Buddhist art as a somewhat gruff and ill-tempered character. And sometimes he's got these kind of bulging eyes or these kind of very stoic staring eyes, and he's got this scowl on his face. And in fact, here at City Center, after the Dharma talk, if you haven't seen it before, there's a very large Sumi painting hanging in the hallway just below the main staircase, just at the main staircase.

[10:04]

And it's a very typical traditional depiction of Bodhidharma. And legend has it that... In order to keep from falling asleep during his nine-year silence sitting in a cave, he ended up ripping off his eyelids and throwing them to the ground so his eyes wouldn't close. And then, apparently, where his eyelids fell on the ground, tea leaves, tea plants grew. And so, basically, that's why he's credited for bringing tea to China. So in order to support all the practitioners who were trying to meditate and kept falling asleep. He's also known as the first patriarch of Zen, although it seems he only had four students at most. And the second one, or one of them being Hueca, who became the second ancestor. Now...

[11:06]

Apparently, very few of Bodhidharma's teachings have survived, and of the four that are attributed to him, the best known is the outline of practice. It's sometimes referred to as the two entrances and four practices, or just simply the two entrances. In fact, it seems that this is the only one that scholars think is actually genuinely his. So that's like, okay, which is one of the reasons I wanted to explore a little bit more deeply. So apparently it was written in the early 6th century, and it's considered by scholars to be the very first Chan or Zen text in China. So it's like the heart of our tradition in terms of written text. So it's a short text, just about a page, but every sentence of it is very dense. with deep dharma. And while I'm not going to be able to do bodhidharma's outline to practice justice today, because in fact, you could probably do at least four or more talks on the short piece, I thought I'd just touch upon a few of the key points in this seminal work as a way to honor him and his contribution to our tradition.

[12:26]

So Bodhidharma begins his outline of practice in this way. Many roads lead to the path, but basically there are only two, principle and practice. To enter by principle means to realize the essence through instruction and to believe that all living things have one true nature, which isn't apparent because it's shrouded by sensation and delusion. Those who turn from delusion, So, a path... Here, Bodhidharma means the living path of Zen or the Buddhist life. And he's saying that there are essentially two ways to enter, by principle and by practice.

[13:45]

And these two ways, principle and practice, reflect the Buddhist teaching of two truths, absolute and ultimate truth and relative truth. Now, Bodhidharma's two entrances are not so much about what brings us to practice. And they're not so much kind of basic steps for beginning a practice. Rather, they are points for entering into the mind of practice in this very moment. Right here, right now, how do you enter into the mind of practice? And so his entrances are fundamentally about how to enter and dwell in a mind that is awake, attentive, receptive, clear-seeing, equanimous, and responsive, which is the Buddha mind at all times. So to enter the path by principle means to do so by way of a direct realization of emptiness or suchness.

[14:51]

And this means that through one's study and applications of the teachings of the Buddha Dharma, one comes to could say intuitively recognize by virtue of one's own experience the truth that all phenomenon is empty of a separate inherent essence or existence. So in Buddhism, describing phenomena as empty is just another way of saying that everything is interdependently conditioned or manifested. So emptiness isn't a thing. Sometimes we kind of like... Oh yeah, I can get, I want to get some emptiness. It's just describing the way things are, meaning there's no inherent self and that everything arises simultaneously. So emptiness and the pentacle arising are basically the same thing. It's just describing the way things are, but they're not things. So in other words, every person, place, and thing is entirely dependent on others, on other people, on other things as a necessary condition for its existence.

[15:57]

So I can only be here because all of you are here. And so a person who enters through principle thus recognizes that all living beings share the same essential or true nature, what we call Buddha nature. A person with this depth of insight and understanding of the Buddha Dharma, the Buddha Dharma here means the teachings of Buddhism, is said to naturally manifest the teachings in everything they do without actually having to do it as a practice. how they are. They just naturally manifest this without practicing it. So now, according to Bodhidharma, most of us don't recognize this principle. We don't see our Buddha nature. We don't see the ultimate truth of everything because it's shrouded by our human tendency to what? Grasping. Right? Grasping at our thoughts, at our sensations, at our mistaken concepts.

[16:59]

And then all that grasping does is cloud our minds and it misleads us. We get lost in the clouds of our grasping, right? So what does Bodhidharma claim is the way in which we can overcome our delusions in grasping and thereby experience the principle or the ultimate truth of softness and emptiness? Anyone? Oh, come on. Zazen, right? By way of Zazen, of course, right? But what he describes here, he calls it sitting and meditating on walls. And, of course, the practice of sitting silently facing the wall really means silently facing ourselves. It really means to study ourselves. And the theme of this practice period is to study the self, studying the self. So being led by Paul Haller, and this is actually focused from a Dogen quote, to study the Buddha way is to study the self.

[18:03]

And in time, as we continue with this discipline of meditating and silently facing ourselves and studying ourselves without discrimination, without judgment, but rather with compassionate acceptance, we discover how to accept whatever arises in our experience. without grasping or pushing it away. So we let go of our judgments and evaluations. We let go of our concepts and our stories. And of course, this is not very easy. I don't know if any of you have had the experience. You sit down and you're like, I'm going to let go of my thoughts. And 10 minutes later, you're realizing you've been collecting all as many thoughts as you possibly could, right? And it's often not comfortable. The stuff that comes up, it's not pretty sometimes. And it's really hard to stay with it, to see it clearly. But when we do stick with it, in time we naturally open up to, we think of it as a partnership with all things.

[19:11]

Partnership with all things. Which has always been there. But we've just been too distracted to notice this foundational intimacy of who we are. along with everything, right? So sitting in silence and stillness, sitting unmoving, right? Unmoving in the body, unmoving in the mind, we can naturally open to a felt sense, right? An innate truth of the fundamental independency and oneness of the world. And it's in this way that we can truly experience what Thich Nhat Hanh called interbeing. our connectedness, our relationship, our profound intimacy, how it is that we co-create each other. And when we meditate on the, as Bodhidharma says, the absence of self and other, the oneness of ordinary person and sage, we learn to let go of our dualistic preoccupations.

[20:16]

We learn to forsake our habit of othering, of creating opposites. And we just notice when these come up and when we drop them. We drop the dualistic thoughts and the tendencies. Whenever they arise, we're not trying to analyze them or add more thinking on top of them. We just drop them. Kind of like you tell your dog, drop it, leave it. It's hard. It's hard to do. And so we stay, we sit here steadfast in stillness. cultivating a mind of equanimity, one that doesn't kind of, you know, do this, right? But one that's just upright. And in this way, Bodhidharma says, without moving, without effort, actually, you know, he says that we enter the principle, we enter suchness, things that it is just now, and it's entirely, it's completeness by the direct experience of it, right?

[21:20]

So this is the first entrance on the path of the Buddha way. So Bodhidharma's second avenue for entering the way is that of practice. And here he outlines four relative, and you can think of them as all-inclusive practices, for how we might study, adhere, and integrate the Bodhidharma enters in our lives as best we can. And he writes, entering by practice means following four practices that encompass all other practices. They are accepting adversity, accepting circumstances, seeking nothing, and practicing the Dharma. So accepting adversity, accepting circumstances, seeking nothing, and practicing the Dharma. And for those of you who are more familiar with Buddhism, maybe you can hear within these how the way that they correspond to the Buddha's Four Noble Truths. The truth that suffering exists, that there is a cause of suffering, craving, grasping.

[22:23]

that the cessation of suffering is possible, the end of suffering is possible, and that there is a way, a means to take steps to realize the cessation of suffering. So then, Bodhidharma immediately goes and he presents the first practice, that of accepting adversity. What is the practice of accepting adversity? When suffering, a practitioner of the way should reflect, for innumerable eons, I have pursued the trivial, instead of the essential, have drifted through all spheres of existence, created much animosity and hatred, maligned and harmed others endlessly. Even though now I have done no wrong, I am reaping the crummy consequences of past transgressions. It is something that neither gods nor humans can foresee or oppose upon me. Therefore, I should accept it patiently and with an open heart. without any resentment or complaints.

[23:25]

The sutra says, when you meet with adversity, don't be upset, because it makes sense. With this understanding in mind, you are in accord with the principle, with the ultimate truth, while advancing on the path. This is called the practice of accepting adversity. Now, I don't know about you, but in my mind, this first practice by Bodhi Dhamma is probably the most difficult of his four practices to actually work with. and in part because it challenges deeply a lot of our own self-cherishing tendencies and ideas. And the practice of accepting adversity has been translated in different ways, including accepting suffering, accepting injustice, knowing how to requite enmity or hatred, and enduring the results of past actions. Now, Of course, upon hearing this, some of you may explain, what kind of insane Buddhist practice is this? Why would I want to take up Buddhism if this is one of the first things I'm supposed to be practicing, right?

[24:33]

So, Bodhidharma's first practice is essentially, in this case, about accepting the result of karma. And without enmity, without pushing it away, opposition to it, and without complaint, actually. And for those of you who are not so aware of karma, Buddha taught that karma is intention. And karmic intention resides in individuals, in our minds and within people. So intention rises out of a way of our seeing oneself, right? How we see ourself in the world. And it gives rise to our desire in some fashion, which in turn becomes expressed and then may manifest. through what we think, say, and do. So karma, tangential action, expressed through actions of body, speech, and mind. And those actions create karma. So the Buddha taught that the suffering that is occurring in this moment is the energy of this moment produced by actions and conditions in the past.

[25:41]

You got that? And Bodhidharma echoes that here, right? He's saying that when we experience suffering, including that which is inflicted by others in this lifetime, it's because we have committed negative actions or karma in our past lives that are coming to fruition at this moment in whatever difficulty we're having now. So this is a somewhat traditional Buddhist take on karma. And it may, you know, you could kind of get in there and pick it apart and kind of... tweak it to more of a different orientation, but this is basically fundamentally where Bodhidharma is coming from. So in other words, now even though I may have not done anything wrong in this life, I'm trying to live a good ethical life, right? There's something bad that is happening to me. Something bad is happening to me. So what the teaching is saying, in this case, is to know that this is happening because of past actions.

[26:44]

either yours or, in many cases, others. Others' karma. And this adversity, from a Buddhist perspective, makes sense in the framework of karma and karma conditioning. That is why moments of adversity are considered so important because they're opportunities to exhaust or, you could say, shift our karma. to send the stream of karma in a different direction. So Bodhidharma says, accept your karma, accept it patiently and willingly, without opposition to it or without complaint. And when you do this in this way, the experience of the adversity or the injustice actually becomes a gateway for entering into practice. It's a gateway for entering into liberation. Now, when Bodhidharma says, don't be distressed or upset by adversity, because it makes sense, this doesn't mean you deserve it.

[27:51]

Or that this adversity was preordained and there's nothing you can do to improve things. It does mean that a whole infinite web of causes and conditions led to this moment, led to this set of circumstances. One thing led to another, and hence we're here. And there's no use in dwelling on what might have been. Or clinging to your ideas about the rules about how the world is supposed to be. No matter how just and appropriate you might think those rules are. The reality is, here we are. This is happening. This is how things are in this moment, whether we like it or not. And there's some measure of relief in our body and mind. We're able to accept this is it. This is what's happening now without resisting it.

[28:53]

Fundamentally, Buddhism is saying it's resistance that is suffering. However, we don't have to accept this set of circumstances from here on out. because doing so is just passivity. Bodhidharma is about accepting the causes and conditions that have led up to this moment, which we can't change. We can't change the past, no matter how much we want to. But we can work to change what happens next, to create the conditions for less suffering, for less injustice. Bodhidharma wrote, upon meeting hardship, don't complain, but recognize from whence it came. So in other words, he's saying there's no value in complaining. Complaining in and of itself doesn't create lasting change. Instead, we should ask ourselves, how do I quell the fear and hatred in my own heart, mind, right here and now, in order to create the conditions for a better world?

[30:05]

Now, This practice of accepting adversity is a tricky thing, right? And the teaching can be easily misunderstood and misapplied. In fact, all of these four practices can be misunderstood and misapplied. So it's really important to study them and really understand what Bodhidharma is saying. The world is filled with hatred. People are filled with anger and hatred in their hearts and invariably they afflicted on others. And those people we're talking about include us, by the way. Can we acknowledge and accept and work to transform the anger and hatred and confusion within our own hearts and minds? So often we point to others as the problem. but we don't recognize the ways that we recreate aversion and separation rather than connection and belonging by closing our hearts, by closing others out of our hearts.

[31:18]

In the name of addressing all natures of harm and injustices, we can inadvertently end up replicating the very dualistic othering stance that we claim we're railing against. I've spoken with a number of self-described social justice activists who have told me that they had to step away from activism for a period of time for this very reason. Because they wanted to regain their compassionate heart and take a less antagonistic, less dualistic approach to how they go about advocating and working for social change and justice. So we need to know what it is that we... we need to do to resource ourselves to really affect beneficial change in the world. So essentially, Buddhism teaches that when presented with hatred, with bias and bigotry, with sexism and racism, with injustice and equality, that needs to be met with insight and compassion, not with further hatred and enmity.

[32:27]

It does need to be met and it does need to be effectively changed. When we are the recipient of any type of enmity or an injustice, whether initiated by an individual or some collective, such as a government, and when we are experiencing suffering and anger as a result, we need to, for a moment, pause and ask ourselves, going forward, do I still want to create harm? We all know the experience of wanting to hurt the one who hurts us, of hating the hater, of wanting to kill the one who is killing. But from a Buddhist perspective, doing so doesn't ultimately bring an end to the karmic roots and conditioning that gave rise to the harm and suffering in the first place. As I was reflecting on Bodhidharma's teaching of the four practices, particularly this first of accepting adversity, injustice, and enmity, I recalled an article that my Dharma brother, Greg Snyder, who's co-founder of the Brooklyn Zen Center, wrote for Lion's Roar in the aftermath of another shooting.

[33:48]

And this was in Parkland, Florida, about five years ago. And in the article, Greg speaks of gun violence and the experiences and lessons that have come through his own life and his own experience of violence, both as a perpetrator of violence and as a recipient of violence. And he said that when a person goes out and commits violence, that if we trace it back through the person's anger to the impetus of them committing violence, Ultimately, underneath the anger and the violence, there's humiliation. There's shame in any number of other difficult emotions that are being felt. So in a sense, all the violence that's being committed by people, and it's often committed by men, is being committed by individuals who can't tolerate the thoughts and sensations that they are experiencing within their own body-minds.

[34:53]

It's as simple and as terrible a reason as that. Not being able to tolerate the thoughts in my mind and the sensations in my body. And not being able to tolerate them, I inflict them on others. I try to let them out in some way. I have to release this. I have to get away from this. So I inflict it out onto others, someone else. And so we end up acting out our own internal sufferings onto others, and in many cases, intentionally creating harm. So in the light of this, we really need to consider how it is that we're meeting our own suffering in our Dharma practice. And we can begin by accepting the truth of suffering, of a particular adversity or distress that we're experiencing right here, right now, in this moment. Whether or not we directly contributed to it, or to the circumstances that are giving rise to it.

[35:54]

So you can tap into your own sense right in this moment. Is there any sense of disease, distress? And then one of the essential practices, as we noted before in Zen, for doing this is in Zaza. So again, we take our meditation seat, and we face the wall of our own mind and heart, and And then practicing tolerating our experience, including your feelings, whatever those feelings are. To face what is difficult to face. To hold what's difficult to hold. To acknowledge what you don't want to acknowledge. That which you would rather much deny. And when we develop the courage and the capacity to do this, then we're able to remain upright in the midst of tremendous suffering and heartbreak, while also being able to meet the circumstances with a little bit more genuine clarity and equanimity and compassion.

[37:07]

And it's from this fundamental ground that we can then choose more wisely whatever beneficial and skillful actions that we want to take to effect more lasting and compassionate change. So whether or not you believe in past lives or rebirths, or if we are currently experiencing anger or hatred, of another person or of a group, or the harmful structural biases of a government or institution or a society, then it becomes something that we need to address. We need to meet and address in this moment, right here, right now. And we understandably want to address the myriad forms of greed, hate, and delusion that are embedded in the current conditions and circumstances in which are creating

[38:15]

you know, causing great harm and suffering, even loss of life. But we need to be careful to do so in a way that doesn't further perpetuate the three poisons, because that will only create more unwholesome or negative karma. But ultimately, Buddhism tells us that the most important place we need to affect change is in our own minds. To be careful not to lay further karmic seeds in our consciousness that will later come to some kind of unwholesome fruition. So in other words, I need to take responsibility for my own karma, my own intentions, my own consciousness, and my own actions. The only place you can truly affect change is with this one, and then it reverberates outward from everything you do and say. So Bodhidharma's second practice for entering the way is that of acceptance of circumstances.

[39:22]

And this second practice is also rendered in translation as adapting to or acting according to conditions, as well as another version is being obedient to karma. So Bodhidharma writes, sentient beings have no unchanging self and are entirely subject to the impact of their circumstances. Whether one experiences suffering or pleasure, both are generated from your circumstances. If you experience fame, fortune, and other forms of karmic consequence, you should realize this is the result of past actions and causes. So again, he's talking about the results of past karma, whether past lives or just this life. And he continues, Although you may experience good fortune now, when the circumstances are exhausted, or the arising of this situation is good fortune, it will disappear. But then could you take joy, how then could you take joy in good fortune?

[40:24]

Since success and failure depend on circumstances, the mind should remain unchanged. It should be unmoved even by the winds of good fortune, but mysteriously in accordance with the path. Therefore, this is called the practice of acceptance of circumstances. So here we can see how this particular practice is closely related to the first one of being willing to accept or suffer adversity without impatience or complaining or retaliation in some way. So the circumstances are the current conditions in which we live, in which we find ourselves, right? And again, many karmic factors have influenced this, have contributed to this current moment. including whatever suffering and joy we're experiencing. And at the same time, Buddhists teach us this is not permanent. It's not fixed. It's going to change, folks. It's going to change. It's just a river flowing. So we live in this world of always changing conditions.

[41:29]

And when Bodhidharma speaks about experience the various winds of fortune, he's reminding us of a traditional Buddhist teaching called the Eight Worldly Winds. which are said to be constantly blowing. So that's the winds of pleasure and pain, gain and loss, success and failure, and praise and blame. So he's basically saying, don't build your happiness on any particular condition, anything being a certain way, because it's not going to last. But again here, this acceptance of circumstances, it could be a tricky practice because acceptance isn't enough. Sometimes people think that's what Buddhism is all about. Oh, I'm just going to accept this, right? And then that's it. It's not. It's not enough. Our practice needs to cover, you know, we would say, all of heaven and earth. And of course, while we want to be careful about not creating additional negative karma for ourselves, sometimes it just happens.

[42:35]

It's kind of just necessary in some cases. Sometimes we're going to feel angry. and impatient, and upset, and many cases for very good reason, right? Telling me to practice accepting circumstances, especially when my life is threatened, or my loved ones are being killed, isn't going to cut it, right? Someone told me that, I probably got it, you know, whacked on one, right? But, which would just perpetuate more suffering, right? It wouldn't be a skillful response, but we shouldn't You know, we shouldn't take a stand there in whatever anger or upset that we're experiencing, right? Because the conditions of our mind, if we're standing in anger and hatred, are eventually going to affect the conditions in the world around us. So if I want to live in an awakened, caring, and beloved society, I need to create conditions for such in my own mind. And as a practitioner of the Buddha way,

[43:39]

I need to hold myself accountable for my actions, for my bodhisattva vows, and for my state of mind. I see that I'm running out of time. And I have two more practices to get through. So I'm going to skim these really quick. So if you can hold on for five minutes, just so I can just name them and give you a little bit of a flavor of them. And I'm hoping... You know, Bodhidharma will forgive me and my apologies for not being worth their order. So Bodhidharma's third of the four practices for entering the way is that of seeking nothing. And he writes this, People of this world are deluded. They're always longing for something, always, in a word, seeking. But the wise wake up. They fix their minds on the sublime, and they let their bodies change with the seasons. often I'm on our entry, he writes, to dwell in the three realms, greed, and delusion, is to dwell in a burning house.

[44:43]

To have a body is to suffer. Those who understand this stop imagining or seeking anything. The sutra says, to seek is to suffer. To seek nothing is bliss. When you seek nothing, you're on the path, meaning you're on the path of liberation. From my experience, the majority of people come to Dharma practice longing for something, right? Usually more happiness or an end to suffering. Anyone here come to Dharma practice? Mine, the only one? Come on. Oh, okay, great. So, right? So in Bodhidharma's third practice, he's not only reminding us of the Buddha's second noble truth, which is that seeking in the form of craving and thirst is the root of all human suffering. He's also pointing out that the ultimate objective to practice is the end, the problem of seeking and craving once and for all. Feeling incomplete and longing for a feeling of wholeness.

[45:51]

I don't know about you, but many of us have that. I feel incomplete. I don't feel whole. There's something missing in me. There's something missing in my life. This is kind of existential longing that I just can't satisfy. my being, right? So what do we do? We look high and low for something that will complete us, that will make us whole again, right? And so we look in our bodily sensations, we look in the pleasures of the mind, Netflix, anyone, right? We look in our relationships, oh, you know, just another partner, one more partner, then I'll find true happiness, right? But we look towards the objects in the world. You know, Ben and Jerry's Cherry Garcia frozen yogurt is one of my, you know, things. But even if we find something that temporarily satisfies our yearning, right, it never lasts. The pint of ice cream always disappears at the end, right? And the sense of existential dissatisfaction of the disease once again wells up within and leaving us never at rest in our hearts.

[46:58]

And even not wanting something is another form of craving. I don't want this. I don't want is another form of craving. I want things to be different. It's, again, the root of suffering. And so, as Bodhidharma says, it seems that we're forever doomed to a burning house of greed, hate, and delusion. But what the Dharma teaches is that every moment is whole and complete in and of itself. Every moment is connected with the whole because of the first principle, emptiness. Because of interbeing. And given this, essentially, there's nothing there to grab onto. There's nothing separate. And therefore, there's nothing to seek. And yet, our discursive thinking, our egocentric minds, are always wanting more. More, more, more, more. And so Bodhya Dharma encourages us to let go of our thoughts. which interrupt everything. That little story, that little voice back there, ticker tape, more, more, more, not enough, not enough.

[48:04]

When you stop seeking, he says, you'll stop suffering and experience joy and ease with just this. Okay. Bodhidharma's fourth practice, that of practicing the Dharma, or in other words, in acting in accords with the Dharma. So I'm not going to read this. It's a little on the longest side. I'm just going to... summarize it for you quickly. And so by acting in accord with the Dharma, Bodhidharma is essentially saying that it behooves us to continuously keep in mind, in our minds, the teachings of the Buddha Dharma. And to practice them. Especially the core teachings of understanding, realizing the inherent emptiness of all things and the interdependency of all things. Those foundational teaching, right? And when we really fully understand those two, compassion naturally arises. When we understand emptiness and interdependency, there's nothing but, how do I say that?

[49:10]

Compassion is just going to come up on its own accord, just the way it is. So when we live in this way, adhering to the teachings of the Dharma, with constancy, with dedication, it's said that the qualities of the bodhisattva, the one who lives for the practice to support all beings, the peer free of suffering, naturally arises within us. And the key practices and characteristics of a bodhisattva are the virtues known as the six paramitas. For anyone who's not familiar with those, those are generosity, morality, patience, effort, meditation, and wisdom. And you could say the greatest practice in the generosity of all, according to Bodhidharma, is to give up the attachment to the self. And so it's in this way that Bodhidharma's four practice, or four entrance practices, you could say, when they're taken all together, they become our natural mind. Our mind becomes these, and therefore each step of our life itself begins to express them.

[50:18]

And it's this way that we begin to learn how to help others. and we enter into and you could say create the path of liberation not only for ourselves but for all beings. Okay. So I'll end there. Thank you very much for your patience and your kind attention. 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.

[51:10]

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