This podcast is offered by San Francisco's Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening. I'd like to introduce our speaker, Blazahn Allen Sanaki, who is the Vice Abbot at Berkeley Zen Center, where he lives with his wife, Lori. And... He is the founder of Clearview Project, developing Buddhist-based resources for social change. And in recent years, Clearview has been working with India, ex-untouchable Buddhists, and supported Burma's monks, minds, and activists as they build their country. He was executive director of Buddhist Peace Fellowship for many years, and is now their senior advisor.

[01:01]

He is an active member of the International Network of Engaged Buddhist Advisory Council. And he's a fabulous musician. He's been a student and performer of American traditional music for 50 years. Thank you, Dr. Lee. Good evening. It's really wonderful to be here. There are many new faces and many people that I know for a long time. I remember seeing Rosalie the first day I came to Tassahar, and also my wife, Lori, and also Blanche. While that was a long time ago, it's very fresh in my mind, and it's always just an honor to be here.

[02:08]

I'm going to try to stick to my subject, because I have too much material. And I could get distracted even talking about sex, and they're talking about talking about what it is that we're doing together. So I want to use as my point of departure a text by Dogen that you may have read. It translates the Bodhisattva's Four Methods of Guidance. It's in Dogen's fastballs, it's Bodhisattva Shishopo. And I've had the privilege of being able to translate it with Shohapu Pokabura Roshi.

[03:15]

And this is the subject, this is the title essay from the book that I put out called The Bodhisattvas in Brace. And the title that we translated, looking at the Bodhisattva, Shisho Bo, very carefully, is the bodhisattvas for embracing dharmas. And it's a wonderful word, embrace. Because when you embrace, you have two individual beings who for that moment merge. And when seeing At distance you see one being, not two. And then they re-individuate and join together in other ways with other people. And this is what the bodhisattva does to help people.

[04:17]

So the one line that, almost the throwaway line that Dogen sticks in the middle of this fascicle. He says, the mind of a sentient being is difficult to change. You may have noticed. But you keep on changing it. As long as you can, you keep on helping deeds. That's the bodhisattva's task. So the bodhisattva path is the, that's the focus of your practice period. So it proceeds from the Bodhisattva vows and proceeds from the first prime directive, the Bodhisattva sentient beings are numberless and vow to sing.

[05:22]

So then There's a question about what the particularity of saving them is. That work is very hard and very challenging. Towards the end of the Vidmola Kirti Sutra, there's a poem. And it outlines what is our task in this troubled world. What's the bodhisattva's And we are all bodhisattvas. Some of us may be more obviously bodhisattvas than others, but this is what, by taking up this practice, by taking up the vow, we have taken on ourselves. So here's what the bodhisattva does. During the short

[06:26]

eons of swords, they meditate on love, introducing to non-violence hundreds of millions of living beings. In the middle of great battles, they remain impartial to both sides. For bodhisattvas of great strength delight in the reconciliation of kindness. And in order to help living beings, they voluntarily descend into the hells which are attached to all the inconceivable Buddha fields. In order to help living beings, they voluntarily descend into the hells which are attached to all the inconceivable Buddha fields. Everybody up here? How do we do this? This, to me, is what the meaning of this, what Dogen is.

[07:38]

It shows us a way to work. Four methods. Giving, or dana, which actually, each one of these methods includes all of the others. Giving, or dana, loving speech, beneficial action, and what Tolkien calls identity action, which is probably what I'll focus on for you. Each one of these methods or dharmas is a way to connect to sentient beings, a way for me to connect with you, for you to connect with a person. Who's sitting next to you? And because we are not really separate from others, they allow bodhisattvas and sentient beings to dance together, to embrace, and to become free from greed, hatred, and delusion.

[08:50]

In the embrace, the so-called bodhisattva is indistinguishable from the so-called ordinary being. Right there. They've emerged in something that's been tricked me. So these were already ancient practices in Dogen's time. In the Pali texts, there's the Sangaha Sutta, which is the Basically, very short sutta is just these four. Sometimes translated as the foundations for social unity. And you'll find it in the Lotus Sutra, and the Vimal Kirti Sutra, the Maha Parana Sutta, and many other places. It's a very common formulation. But Dogen used it in a slightly different way as is typical.

[09:54]

This festival was written at a very interesting time in Dogen's life. It was written in 1243. And just about two months before the community that he had created, he created a zendo outside Kyoto. It was called Koshouji. And he was the first Soto-style zendo in Japan. And he had been living and practicing there with community for 10 years. And nobody knows exactly what happened. But within a period of months, they just left. They left a beautiful temple. they moved to Etchizem province, which was really the wilderness, and ultimately built what is now APG.

[11:01]

But this move was very sudden, and it was probably the suggestion that there was a very, very strong sectarian conflict going on in among the different Buddhist sects at that time. And they didn't fool around, but they had conflicts. It's not like, you know, they had dharma combat. They had the rip-up. And they would go around and burn down each other's things. So he left his beautiful place. And I have this intuition that The urgency of that conflict brought forth this teaching from Dogen about how to relate to difficult situations, difficult people, difficult circumstances in our society.

[12:09]

And I think this was the teaching that he gave. It was the last passage that he wrote before they left. and I think it was the teaching that he was doing to his community. So, and also, just to say, to me, this is one of the most, one of the most clearly social teachings that we find in doga. And you can find that also going back to the source, that his Sangaha Sutta was, as I said, it was translated as the foundations of social unity. But it applies to us as society. It applies to us as individuals. And of course, the society that we have is made up of nothing but each of us. So, the first teaching is giving. We give one's attention.

[13:14]

We give friendship and material aid. We give spiritual teachings, community, and we give our energies, and finally we give fearlessness. In order to give fearlessness, it might be that we have to have fearlessness, which is something that we cultivate. But then when we attain any measure of it, we give it away. And it's in this act of giving that quality exists. If I have fearlessness and I keep it to myself, ultimately it will fade. If I have anything precious and grasp it, clutch onto it,

[14:19]

It's a lifeless, or a lifeless calling. So, Domit puts this in an interesting way. He says, giving, or offering, means not being greedy. He says, not being greedy means not to covet. And then he says, not covet means, commonly, not to flatter. It's like offering treasures that we are about to discard to those we do not know. It means when we have something we're about to discard, we put it out on the curve. And if it's of any value, mysteriously disappears. We think somebody is using it. We offer treasures. Right. It's like offering treasures we are back to discard to those we do not know.

[15:24]

We give flowers blooming on the distant mountains to the Tocococcus. And we offer treasures accumulated in our past lives to living beings. I really love that image. We give flowers blooming on the distant mountains to the Tocococcus. Give away what we don't ordinarily think of has powers. And yet, because we are intimately, inextricably bound up with everything on this planet, we give it away, which really means we allow those flowers to bloom. We allow those flowers on the mountain to bloom. Rather than, say, you might find it in certain areas, rather than tearing the hills down to get what we think we need, to mine them, to cut them down, to kill all the wildlife on those mountains.

[16:33]

Rather we let them float and we give them to the Buddhists, it's awful. And this admonition not to covet and not to flatter is not to want something for oneself, but to, you can't just give freely of oneself. That giving is the ultimate wealth you might find. Ken Gary Roshi spoke about fearlessness in his commentary. He has a commentary in returning to silence and grieve on the table. And he said, giving means giving fearlessness to others by standing up even in the face of our own despair.

[17:35]

We are knocked down. We stand up. I think there's an expression from Suzuki Roshi, stand up by yourself. Is that right? We were talking about stand-up. So when I fall down, in order to offer myself back to the world, I have to stand-up. Second embracing dharma is kind speech, which means telling the truth in a way that leads to bright action. loving speech or kind speech, it has certain parameters for speaking. The Buddha suggested that before speaking, we consider whether our words are true, whether they're useful, whether they're timely, and whether they're kind.

[18:49]

The more you think about each of those, the more you realize this is really tricky. True. Maybe. Useful. Maybe. Maybe not. Timely. Maybe my time, but it may not be your time. The only thing that actually you can register within yourself is your attention. Is it kind? So coming back to this idea of embracing, are your words about turning towards each other, or are they about establishing your own ground to separate from others? This is the intent of loving speech. Loving speech is the expression of connection. Even if it's tough,

[19:52]

reasons, especially tough love. I'm not so crazy about it, but sometimes words have to be strong. But the intention should be to connect, not to divide. So I'm going through these very quickly here. Dogen writes, Loving speech means, first of all, to arouse compassionate mind when meeting with living beings, and to offer caring and loving words. In general, in general, which is in general, we should not use any violent or harsh words to rule it out entirely. But you can't just be what your purpose is. Is it? connecting, or is it dividing?

[20:55]

Beneficial action, as Gobi talks about it, it includes our zazen, which harmonizes ourself and the world. And essentially, it means listening and helping. Again, the ground of this is turning towards others. It's towards connection. Tobin said, we should equally benefit friends and followers alike. We should benefit self and others alike, so you don't exclude benefiting yourself. And some of us are very harsh to ourselves. So what you see That's the thing. This teaching is not just about our relationship to other beings or other groups.

[21:58]

It's as if it resonates to me with the six ancestors' formulation of the Bodhisattva vow. Where he said, sentient beings of my mind are not bliss. I vow to save them all. So you include yourself. And if we attain such a mind, we can perform beneficial action even for grass, trees, wind, and water. And the fourth dharma is what I was talking about as identity action. So The great Bodhisattva may appear in this world as a homeless person, as a soldier, as a bank killer, as a mechanic, prostitute, musician, preacher, mail carrier, monk.

[23:13]

Bodhisattva will appear in any form that's beneficial. to whomever she is meeting. So you could say that the practice of identity action implies the continuous reinvention of self, which of course is not so hard because our impermanent self is recombining and reforming every moment. But this is a conscious reinvention. It's an invention. It's like we meet each being as the form and the person that they need to meet in order to help. And this is called skillful means. This reinvention is not a pretense or an act.

[24:21]

or it's actually tapping into our Bodhisattva nature and allowing ourselves to be flexible. Dogen writes, Identity action means not to be different. Again, that neither different from self, nor from others. So in other words, not divided in oneself, which we... many of us are familiar with, but not divided from others as well. In the human world, the Tathābhata identifies himself with human beings. When we realize identity action, self and others are one such. So this is, the word from Pali, that's been used as identity action is .

[25:23]

And it has that first syllable, S-A-M, is, I think it's the root of our word, same. It's same. It's recognized what we have in identity with each being that we meet. But we have to be able to see it. And that's really worth. Tova asked me to, I've been working in India for the last four or five years. And I go over teaching at a school for young ludists. who come from all over India. And their background is usually what used to be called untouchable.

[26:30]

And they have been part of a Buddhist revival, Buddhist rebirth. Actually, I'm trying to get some copies. I have a new book called Heirs to Ambedkar. I think Tobah spoke back up right back then. The rebirth of Asian movements in India. And so this renewal movement is really only about 50 or 60 years old. And what it is right there within that community, it's the reinvention, the re-identification of a group that has been objectified by others as outside their society as not worthy of any respect, sort of consigned to the lowest occupations in the society all through India.

[27:46]

And, you know, it's given the word untouchable. gives it away. But in the book, Laurie and I, when we were there last winter, we collected life stories from some of the students. The students are back, you know, about 18 to 23 or so, having finished high school. And they do a year of training at the school, Nagaloka, the Magarjuna training. And what they do there is they meditate twice a day, two hours a day. They study basic Buddhism. They study Buddhist social thought, as taught by the founder of this movement, VR at Bedgar. And they study, in a lot of ways, how to become community organizers, how to develop these skills, both the meditation skills,

[28:51]

and social skills to go back into their home areas. They come from all over. They come from 22 different states. So that they can set up both meditation groups and projects. And the effort here is people have rejected on their own strength. They've rejected this identity. of untouchability and embraced the identity of the Dharma and thereby also embraced each other. So forming a community where there were these discrete groups who had no relationship to each other except in their respective and minutely different forms of oppression. For myself, I tried to figure out, you know, why was I drawn here?

[30:06]

Recognized that I also had the privilege of leaving. But there was something that hawked me about this community, and it did for a long time. read about the Dalits of these new Buddhists when I worked at Parallax Press in 1989 or 90-something before. And as soon as I read about them, I just thought, I'd like to see this. And I never found the right connection until it came about. But then once I was there and got to meet these young people. That can be many of the older people who had been practicing for 20 or 30 years. Some of them were still living in very difficult circumstances, the cities. But they had a quality of self-respect that was very, very powerful.

[31:19]

And I remember walking through a very, very poor area in Mumbai. And, you know, the alleyways between the houses, the houses were like, each one was spent by a cement cube, maybe 15 feet square, and you would have four or five or more people living there. And it sounds, it sounds bad. But each, we would be led by people who lived there. They really wanted us to see their homes. They went into each home, and each home was impeccably clean and organized. And all of the kids, their children, were well-dressed, and they were all in school.

[32:21]

They were all in high school or going to a college. They were all really dedicated to education and offering something back to their society. And what occurred to me, as I was walking around, was, oh, here's the seed of identity action. Because within historical memory, these people had become 30 or 40 years ago, 20, 30 years ago, from rural India, where the oppression was very, very difficult, to the city where life was extremely hard and poverty was endemic. But they had a little room to grow there. And I realized that, you know,

[33:24]

It's less than 100 years since my grandparents did something similar. And that many people here in this country have a background like that. And also that some people don't have a background. Some groups in this country were brought here against it or were driven out. That aspect you may remember as well. But to remember my grandparents And I think they lived in very crowded tournaments. And as these people did, the whole village lived in an area of this housing section. Just as my grandparents, basically everybody from their village who came over here from Eastern Europe, they would settle in the same apartment door. And they were crowded. And they were poor.

[34:26]

And they placed a value on education. And I realized, OK, that's a connection to me. That is how identity action arises for me. And how can I help people? Is there a way, something I can offer back? So I can offer what I know of the dharma. I can offer friendliness. And the complex, and this is something we really explore in some depth, one is the complexity of recognition. People who are unrecognized as Buddhists within their own country, certainly by the dominant social group, it means something to be recognized by Buddhists other parts of the world. Not necessarily there, also.

[35:30]

Japan, Taiwan, and they've been building connections with different Buddhists and bringing them in so that they could see there's something really vital going on there. So finally, And Domi talks about identity action. There's something very interesting. He talks about society. He says, because mountains do not refuse to be mountains, they can be mountains and reach lake heights. Because wise rulers do not weary of their people, they attract many people. Although people always desire to form a nation and to find a wise ruler, few of them fully understand the reason why a wise ruler is wise or how that wisdom manifests.

[36:37]

They don't realize that they themselves are embracing a wise ruler. Thus, the principle of identity action exists both in the wise ruler and in the people themselves. So this applies socially, and it means that we are responsible for the leadership that we have. It also means that I am responsible for myself. This nation that Dominic talks about in this paragraph, it's also the nation of my body. You know, it's like the kidneys fade, large intestine state, lung state, brain state, pan. It's like if they don't all manage to get race, get along together, this whole ship of state is going to collapse.

[37:41]

So we are manifesting in our healthiness, we are manifesting identity action. All of these hormones working together We have within our body the model for how our societies can interact. Different orbits, different abilities, different functions, and complete interdependence because whole organism will not survive otherwise. And this practice is constantly a practice of integration, reintegration, and allowing the self to flow forward.

[38:44]

But recognizing that the self that we have in this room that I might feel And also that we are created for this moment. So to recognize that and to connect and embrace is the Bodhisattva path. And that's all. I don't know if there's any time for questions. I found something you said about, in very Western terms, about

[39:52]

Establishing self-respect. That's the basis for the full prestige. Mostly we try to really, what do you say, a downplay of full position. It reflects the heart of this. Well, one of the things that I think is... I'm sorry, can you paraphrase the question? Yes. Oh, sure. The question, as I understood, was about the nature of self-respect in terms of speech and how sometimes we We feel that we're supposed to downplay ourselves.

[40:55]

And so it's hard to know what's the proper expression, is what I sort of get. So yes, I think that the question we're taught in this practice to have, on the one hand, to have composure. And kind speech is loving speech. To actually read Dogen's fascicle, you see it's like, asking your teacher, how are you? You know, just all of these quite formal expressions. To my mind, the other aspect is, so this is, so another way to manifest self-respect, I always, I often give this example, Katagiri Goshi's first two books, First one is Returning to Silence. I'm not talking about titles.

[41:58]

The second book he wrote was You Have to Say Something. That is also the fundamental expression of self-respect. If you silence yourself out of politeness or out of, oh yes, I should be very low, I should be quiet, I should talk slow, peacefully? Well, not always. You should have the ability to reinvent yourself according to what's appropriate in each moment. And sometimes that means speaking strongly. And it means speaking directly. And in terms of self-respect, we have to consider how am I speaking to myself? What messages am I giving myself? So that's You know, that's probably a good place to stop, given the time, and that's really a good question.

[43:00]

So, thank you very much. 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 sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

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