This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for coming this evening. I want to thank all of the guests who are here at Tassajara for coming to Tassajara, coming tonight to this event, including my fellow Sangha Week people. I'm here with about 16 people as part of Sangha Week, and we are... quickly or slowly but surely, I don't know, forming our own little sangha together, practice group.

[01:06]

Somehow it happens, just, you know, it just happens. And I also want to thank all of the resident students here at Tassajara, whether you're here for just a few days or a few months or a few years. Thank you all very much for your sincere efforts to take care of Tassajara, take care of the practice here. It is felt and appreciated by so many people. So thank you. I arrived Tassajara here for the first time when I was 34 years old 20 years ago this summer and I thought when I was 34 arriving here at Tassajara that it was kind of like too late for me you know it's like I missed I missed out you know and at that point my uh

[02:30]

frontal cortex had fully developed. I'd spent about eight years developing what I thought would be habits that led me to happiness. Some kind of realization, but they were actually not such good habits. They usually involved some kind of alcoholic substance or some kind of powder of some sort. And it always started off pretty well. But fairly quickly, it wasn't going so well. So when I showed up here at 34, I was basically a complete wreck. I was a walking disaster for the most part.

[03:34]

Not that I could really see it. I mean, there was something inside of myself that couldn't quite see what was happening. I certainly had no vocabulary for it. I was just getting, over and over again, I was getting feedback that... whatever I was doing just really wasn't working. I was losing friends and had been for a long time. Things weren't going so well for me. In fact, a number of friends tried to intervene on my behalf. Bless their heart. They would tell me, Robert, this is really bad, what you're doing. And one of my good friends even made the reservation for me here at Tassajara and drove me down to Tassajara and then drove back to the city.

[04:43]

So I can safely say that Tassajara saved my life. without any reservation whatsoever. And the practice saved my life. And the people who were practicing saved my life. You know, besides... I think maybe Leslie here is the only person who was here at that time, but there were so many people who were so kind and patient and caring and generous to me, including Leslie, of course. And I will be forever grateful for their example, their compassion,

[05:58]

their guidance, mentorship to me. But there was one aspect of practice that actually, looking back, made a huge difference to me, and I want to talk about that a little bit tonight. That is this or concept of the Bodhisattva path. We usually think of it as one thing, the Bodhisattva path. There's two pieces there. Bodhisattva and path. Bodhisattva being that person just like us, any old person. who vows to turn away from the path of an unhealthy path of attachment to views, grasping, seeing some kind of lack within themselves and looking outside for

[07:34]

happiness or fulfillment, turning away from that and turning on to the path of benefiting themselves and all beings with their action in the world, awakening to the way things are and living with and for and from the benefit of all things. The bodhisattva vowing to awaken in each moment with all beings, for the benefit of all beings. This notion of the bodhisattva connected with something that I knew was in me, but I just, for some reason, wasn't letting come out.

[08:46]

I wasn't accepting that part of myself. I wasn't letting that part of myself be seen, show itself. But I knew it was there. So when I... saw that there was this model, example, like archetype of a being who lives their life awakening for the benefit of all. I knew just intuitively that there was something true about that and there was something about that that was in me. And then this notion of the path was very important because As I said, I already thought that I'd missed the boat. I was too far along in my delusion or the habit energy that was driving my life to actually catch up.

[09:49]

Maybe. But the path offered an alternative there. Or it offered me a way. Because the path would start like right here. It gave me permission to be completely deluded right now, but to actually set my sights on something and start. Head in a direction. So the bodhisattva path became a very important... picture of my, in some ways, a picture of my life, of practice. Suzuki Roshi, the founder of Zen Center, said that the bodhisattva has way-seeking mind, cultivates, develops the mind that seeks the way.

[11:01]

So I took this up. and started just seeking the way. So this notion of the path comes from the very earliest days of the Buddha. From the very beginning of Buddhist teachings, the path is central to everything that the Buddha talked about and taught. So the story goes that 49 days after the Buddha's enlightenment, he gave a teaching that was called the Four Noble Truths. The first truth being that we, as human beings, suffer. There is suffering. We create suffering for ourselves.

[12:05]

and that there's a reason why we suffer. There are causes for this suffering. We develop views of ourselves and of the world around us, and we solidify those views, we attach to them, and thereby we create our own suffering. And then the third truth that he offered people was that there could be an end to this kind of suffering. And the way to end the suffering was to not just get enlightened in, okay, we're not going to suffer anymore, but actually to start living our lives on the path of practice. path as he described it was right action, right speech, right livelihood, right meditation, right mindfulness, right effort, right intention and right view.

[13:32]

And then we start to cultivate these or characteristics. We train our mind in this way. A few centuries after the Buddha died and the concept of practice and who it was that could get enlightened and the whole notion of the Sangha kind of started to expand, grow, and include not just the hermit monks and or the monastics, but also householders and lay practitioners. In the centuries after the Buddha, this notion of this person in the world who had a family, lived

[14:36]

seemingly normal life with a job, a family, commitments. Not a monastic. People just like us, lay practitioners. These people could get enlightened just like the monastics, just like the Buddha. Could realize their Buddha nature. So the notion, this vision, this model or archetype of the Bodhisattva became very important to a style of Buddhist practice that went from India to China, Tibet, across to Japan, Korea. It's called Mahayana Buddhism. Even before it was Mahayana Buddhism, it was bodhisattviyana and then developed into Mahayana style.

[15:43]

So the Mahayana practitioners took this noble eightfold path and for the bodhisattva, they modified it just a bit and it became six. Six characteristics of this enlightened practitioner, this bodhisattva archetype. Six characteristics, but also six practices. So the ideal is simultaneously an ideal and a practice at the same time. A goal and something we do right now. And these six practices of the awakened bodhisattva, or awakening practices, enlightening practices, became generosity, moral and ethical conduct. Sometimes we think about that as precepts or the values that we carry with us in our practice.

[16:58]

patience or tolerance is the third one. The fourth one is effort, joyous effort, or bringing energy to our activity. The fifth one is meditation, concentration. And the sixth practice or characteristic of the bodhisattva is wisdom. And the notion is that ultimately this wisdom is informs and transforms each one of these practices into practices that actually help us wake up to the reality of our lives and how things are. Our giving becomes just not normal giving, but giving as awakening, patience. tolerance, acceptance, inclusion.

[18:06]

So then centuries later, in Japan, a monk went from Japan to China and in some ways brought Zen, a true Zen practice back to Japan. A. He Dogen Zenji, the founder of Sodo Zen, he took this list of six and he turned it into four. Simplified it a bit, made it a little bit more specific. His four are giving, kind speech, beneficial action, and identity action. Identity action is maybe the hardest one to get.

[19:18]

It's basically living within the realization that we are all connected, that none of us are separate from each other or separate from anything else in the world. functioning, operating, acting from that place. That the entire universe is the true human body. So I'm going to come back to the bodhisattva, but I wanted to... bring up something else really quickly. Up until fairly recently, I was the president of Zen Center. And I used to have to go to various events.

[20:28]

And a year or so ago, I went to a gathering of non-profit leaders. sponsored by Craigslist and a bunch of other Bay Area organizations. And at this event, one of the keynote speakers was a futurist, a guy who is head of a kind of like a think tank or something like that in the Palo Alto area where all they do is look at data and think about the future. What's going to happen? And I think they get paid a lot of money by big businesses to tell us what's the next big thing or where is it all going or what's going to happen? I didn't even know there was such a thing as a futurist. But he got up there and...

[21:29]

started talking about the future, and they'd done this big study where they predicted what the world was going to be like 10 years out. And I found that fascinating. I think it's pretty predictable, but still, to have somebody kind of articulate it was interesting. And he said the world... of the future, or even the world now as it's developing, as it's moving forward into the future, is going to be characterized by four things. I have a lot of lists tonight, don't I? Yeah. Four things. We're not going to be tested on this, so don't worry. There's no recall required. Four things. And this is not connected to the bodhisattva one bit. It may eventually, even tonight. But as far as he was concerned, this was not a spiritual teaching of any kind.

[22:36]

So he said that increasingly the world is getting more volatile. The world and life is becoming more uncertain. the world is becoming increasingly complex. And life, for all of us, is increasingly ambiguous. So he had this little acronym, you know, a VUCA world. Volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. They made all these studies and all this money and everything kind of boiled down to those four things. And this was across all kinds of disciplines or areas of activity in the world, whether it's food production, energy production, governance, financial markets,

[23:51]

world pollution, climate change, community development, species habitat. Maybe some of those areas fit in especially in one of those four characteristics. volatile in the sense that, for example, the difference between the haves and the have-nots is only going to grow, creating even more instability. Those who have wealth and those who don't have wealth, that gap is only going to increase. Those who have

[24:53]

access to technology and those who do not have access to technology those who are educated those who are not educated that kind of thing and this growing gap creating instabilities and volatile swings uncertainty in the sense that even in areas where we thought we could predict or development or change, it would be increasingly difficult to do that. Complexity, whether it's technology or as a result of this interconnected world we live in, in terms of maybe something like genetics or education.

[26:07]

And ambiguity in the sense of making it so difficult to know what is right and what is wrong anymore. You know, some new medicine being developed that can help all these people but has all these terrible potential impacts. Wonderful products being developed that are then thrown away and end up in the middle of the ocean. You know, making it so difficult to decide whether something is good or bad, helpful or not helpful. Maybe helpful for one group over here, but for another group, disastrous.

[27:25]

So I started, I'd been thinking about this ever since then. And I thought, surely the bodhisattva must be able to come to their rescue somehow or have some way. There must be an idea of somebody, some model, some way to think about facing these really serious and Well, you didn't come to Tassajara to get all the bad news. So here's a little, what for me at least is some good news. The Bodhisattva vows to help others. And there's no particular way that help needs to be

[28:31]

That help doesn't need to look like anything special. Certainly as far as the Buddha was concerned or any of our teachers, any of the ancestors, practice looks a lot different now than it did 2,500 years ago. And it will look different in the future. So I came up with a VUCA acronym for the Bodhisattva that I'd like to share with you. So the Bodhisattva of the future, maybe it's tomorrow, maybe it's ten years from now.

[29:32]

But the Bodhisattva is going to meet these huge challenges. that we face is going to have to confront this volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world. That's clear. So, to meet this volatile world, I would suggest that the bodhisattva will be able to bring Vision and vow. Vision, a vision of possibility, a vision of the path, and a vision of the ultimate accomplishment of the path. Sometimes we call this, even in our practice today, we call this taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.

[30:34]

creating a vision of possibility that at some times kind of pushes us and other times pulls us towards an ideal of what is possible for our lives and for the lives of those around us. Vow being that which helps all beings. direct themselves on the path, persevere, take the next step on the path. And in its somewhat broad form, it's I vow to avoid that which is harmful. I vow to cultivate all of that which is good and helpful. I vow to live my life and awaken for the benefit of all beings, with all beings.

[31:50]

So this vow, in this uncertainty, this vow that is the path keeps us moving forward, focused. Not uncertainty, volatility. The uncertainty, the bodhisattva meets the uncertainty with understanding, wisdom, the ability to understand things as they are, even in the uncertainty of the present moment, knowing that things are always changing. and that everything is connected with everything else. Linda Ruth Cutts, who is the abbess at Green Gulch Farm, told me a story once.

[32:55]

She said that she was in the room when Suzuki Roshi, who founded Zen Center, was dying in San Francisco. Everybody was very sad and they were crying and he was just in the hours before the end of his life. And he looked at them and he said, do not worry about me. I know who I am. So that's kind of an ultimate example. but of facing uncertainty, the uncertainty of life and death. But we will all be facing an increasing amount of uncertainty in our life. Can we face that uncertainty with an understanding of how things are

[34:05]

and be skillful in how we meet that uncertainty. As opposed to having it throw us off balance, can we work with it skillfully? And for this increasing complexity, the bodhisattva will meet that with clarity. taken up the practice of meditation, settling the mind. The bodhisattva meets situations seen clearly, not pushed around by their views and attachments, but seeing things for how they really are. part of this vast interconnected web of life.

[35:15]

And in seeing things in that way, seeing things or responding with compassion, the bodhisattva meets this ambiguous world. with an agile mind, an adaptable mind, a mind that is flexible and ready to respond in a skillful way. I am so glad that there is a place like Tassajara here in the world and that there are places like Tassajara where all of us can come, even if it's just for a day.

[36:42]

But like myself, I ended up staying for a while and actually turning myself and putting myself on a different path and then walking on that path and learning how to be on that path as I walked on the path with the support of others. And it's a very special and tremendous and unique offering in the world. And it's so important that there are places for people to go and cultivate the bodhisattva's mind and practice. It's going to be even more important.

[37:46]

So thank you all for, in your own particular ways, supporting this activity, the Sangha, Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. Pretty good, Greg. 920. Okay. Thank you very much for your attention. Again, thank you for support of our Sangha Week. And may your practice continue and flourish and benefit all beings. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center.

[38:57]

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, visit SSCC.org and click Giving.

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