Good morning. Welcome to Green Gulch Farm and Green Dragon Temple on this day, which we are recognizing as Buddha's birthday. And that's pretty arbitrary. Here we decide when that is. But it is a special day, and so we celebrate a miracle, what is inconceivable. And all births, anyone who's been present at the birth of a human being knows it's quite powerful, amazing. And... Even with all of our, let's say, scientific knowledge about the human anatomy and how people are conceived, it's still something we can't completely explain or understand.

[01:19]

And we keep trying. So 2,500 years ago, approximately, There was a birth, and a particularly rare and unusual human being emerged from that. And so we're faced with kind of trying to come to terms with what is that, and what was that, and what is it for us right now. We have the teaching that there was historic and historic Buddha. And we also have the teaching of no Buddha, of no separate self.

[02:25]

So it's wonderful to me that the very person who we're celebrating was... a teacher who recognized that there was no self. So we carry this profound paradox, actually, into our celebration today. And I may refer to it again and again, but there is this notion then, this teaching, of what we usually think of as a person or as self, as not being something separate but being some but each one of you in the room insofar as you understand your existence and you penetrate the way in which you are completely interconnected with everyone else in the room and the floor you're sitting on and the ceiling above you and the air that you're breathing and the light that's

[03:31]

flowing throughout the room, that totality is what's producing you, as we say, dependently co-arising with everything. So it's actually a great challenge for us to face the reality of our own existence and the reality of our own non-existence. So we do then create various stories, create, in this case, create a great legend of the birth of Buddha, Shakyamuni. Scholars, I think, mostly agree that such a person existed historically, was born to a tribe, the Shakya tribe, in northeastern India at the near what's Nepal today, foothills of the Himalayan uplift.

[04:38]

And for some reason, this tribe also took the name of Gautama as their clan name. And there was a leader, maybe like a mayor of a town today, or a Raja leader. who sometimes we call a king. And so Suddana King and his wife Maya had this wonderful, wonderful child born to them. I hear one in the room now. And parents and grandparents know, you know, that when a child is born, it's the most amazing thing. And I think particularly grandparents now know that that first grandchild, anyway, is the most perfect being in the world.

[05:53]

So this most perfect being in the world was named Siddhartha. And siddhartha means something like the one who has accomplished what there is to accomplish. And so there were various, as the legend that was written down, and I'll read a little bit in a minute from translations from the Pali canon, which was written down several hundred years. after Shakyamuni. Shakyamuni, if I refer to Shakyamuni, Shakyamuni means the sage of the Shakyas. So later on he became known as Shakyamuni, the sage of the Shakyat clan or Shakyat tribe. So at this birth, there were various signs and wonders, you know,

[07:00]

And reflecting on this, it's wonderful to me how we as humans, we try to account for how someone unusual can come into existence. Recently, I saw a little clip again from the Scorsese film about Bob Dylan, and people are trying to account for, well, how could this person, Bobby Zimmerman, little Bobby Zimmerman from Heming, Minnesota, turn into this amazing, say, voice of a generation. And people are looking for signs. When did we first notice anything kind of unusual? Or when was there some turning point? And then those of you who know that film know that Dylan himself was interviewed and And there was a question about, you know, was this the time that you went to the crossroads?

[08:04]

I said, yeah, yeah, the crossroads. I guess I went to the crossroads. Made some kind of a deal. There is a legend among blues guitarists that, you know, you go to the crossroads and you make a deal. Depending on the kind of blues, you know, to make a deal with the devil. Robert Johnson supposedly made a deal with the devil and then he could sing. I'm refraining. There's going to be lots of music later on today. Give me a moment. Well, they struggle with my tendencies. But anyway, then Dylan said he himself didn't know where these songs came from.

[09:10]

Where did they come from? Where did they... There was some inspiration, and he entered this stream of a mind that was greater than what he could actually now... say, even do. He said, I couldn't write those songs. Later in Shakyamuni's life, he was invited by his sangha to give some account. And according to some part of the legend, he said that he had many lives as a bodhisattva. So he prepared for this over other lifetimes. And this would be characteristic of the understanding of the world view of Indian culture at that time, that the world is vast, boundless.

[10:14]

Within the world there is human existence. And actually all of existences, humans and animals exist in various realms, but we all cycle through birth and death repeatedly, cycling through birth and death, a kind of endless wheel called the samsara, never ending turning. Samsara means a never ending turning. And so in those terms, he said that he had spent many, many lifetimes cultivating his own moral understanding of how to live. And in the one previous lifetime to this birth, he had spent that lifetime in the heaven of complete contentment. And then I'll read a little bit here.

[11:17]

So... This is Ananda, the disciple of Shakyamuni Buddha, reporting. I heard and learned this from the Blessed One's own lips. Mindful and fully aware, the Bodhisattva remained in the heaven of the contented. For the whole of that lifespan, the Bodhisattva remained in the heaven of contented. And then, mindful and fully aware, the Bodhisattva passed away from the heaven of the contented and descended into his mother's womb. When the Bodhisattva had passed away from the heaven of the contented and entered his mother's womb, a great measureless light, surpassing the splendor of the gods, appeared in the world with its deities, its maras, and its Brahma divinities. In this generation, with its monks and Brahmins, with its princes and people, and even in those abysmal world interspaces of vacancy, gloom, and utter darkness, where the moon and sun, powerful and mighty as they are, cannot make their light prevail.

[12:28]

There, too, a great measureless light, surpassing the splendor of the gods, appeared, and the creatures born there perceived each other by that light, and said, So it seems now that other creatures have appeared here. And this 10,000-fold world system shook and quaked and trembled, and there, too, a great measureless light surpassing the splendor of the gods appeared. When the bodhisattva had descended into his mother's womb, four deities came to guard him from the four quarters so that no human or non-human beings or anyone at all should harm him or his mother. And when the bodhisattva had descended into his mother's womb, she became intrinsically pure and refraining by necessity from killing living beings, from taking what is not given, from unchastity, from false speech, and from indulgence in intoxicants. So the first five precepts were immediately and intuitively adopted by his mother.

[13:38]

So this is quite a story of conception. with all this great measureless light. And it goes on explaining that during this pregnancy there were no afflictions and his mother actually could see him within her womb and could see that he was perfect. However, seven days after this bodhisattva was born, his mother died And she was reborn in the heaven of the contented. So there are many more details. This is a translation by Bhikkhu Yanapoli. Many more details, and some of them will come out in the pageants and story that we'll see later. But I wanted to mention this part

[14:43]

As soon as the Bodhisattva was born, he stood firmly with his feet on the ground. Then he took seven steps to the north. So he knew his directions. He took seven steps to the north, and with a white sunshade held over him, he surveyed each quarter, and he uttered the words... I am the highest in the world. I am the best in the world. I am the foremost in the world. This is the last birth. Now there is no more renewal of being in future lives. So, another version of this that I had heard was that the Buddha said, after taking these seven steps that this baby said, I alone am the world honored one.

[15:50]

And that used to bother me when I heard that. Sounds, how can that not be egotistical? So I Googled it yesterday. I Googled alone world honored one and got a whole list of commentaries, one of which said, well, you should think of alone as two words, all one. I thought, oh, that's curious, but that kind of is skirting. Makes it kind of too easy, right, just to say, oh, okay. So we have to deal with this statement of establishing one's self, complete, confident, and the teaching of no-self, which is beyond our ability to put those two together simultaneously.

[16:54]

So we tend to go back and forth. On one side, when you say, when you think, this is a being who says, I alone in the world honored one, it's hard for you to experience that as yourself. You may think, oh, this being, this Buddha, exists apart from me, separate from my own being. It sounds like that. It sounds like, oh, I am the world-honored one, which means you're not. So how to hear that as I alone am the world-honored one, which means that everyone is the world-honored one, that all beings are Buddha, with that statement.

[17:55]

How can we support the little baby who stands up? And at some point, we all have this experience, right? And we've done it, and we've seen it, right? At some point, the little baby Maybe not immediately in this case. For most of it, it takes a few months. So this was a truly precocious being who immediately after birth, after being born, could just stand up and speak. So there's this sense of this is a mature, mature entity. This is a mature being. After all, what's the value of all those other lifetimes as a bodhisattva, right? So here he is, stands up. But all of us do that. And when you see a little baby, make that effort, that supreme effort. And that with great patience and persistence, pulling up and standing, finally standing, and standing alone on two feet, right?

[19:07]

And then there's that feeling of, ah, here I am. Here I am. And you can see it, the little baby standing up. So we have this image now of the baby Buddha who says, beneath the heaven and above the earth, pointing up and pointing down, I am. I'm completely amazing. And everyone should recognize, you know, everyone should recognize me. So when you see a little child do that, you know, it's appropriate to recognize them. It's appropriate to recognize this is, this emergence of a human identity out of the vastness of the interconnected oneness of things.

[20:14]

It's completely, say, true for that person, each of us, to say, I am. I'm here. And if each of us is not recognized being here, then we have some trouble. It's actually damaging not to recognize the baby Buddha standing up. So please be generous and recognize the baby Buddha. This Buddha baby then has to accomplish what we may think of as a kind of destiny. there is that, say, predilection. There is, say, the karmic potentiality in each of us to completely realize who we are.

[21:25]

And so for Shakyamuni, this little baby Buddha, it meant living for many years, gradually clearing his mind and coming to understand more completely. Who is this? Who am I? Who am I and who am I not? This is a kind of a heroic journey. All of his previous lifetimes then are kind of recapitulated in the sense in his lifetime over the first 30 years or so of his life until he clarifies his own mind and sees that this mind is vast. This mind is Buddha mind. Someone told me today that there's one pilgrimage, there's one journey, and that's like the Odyssey.

[22:30]

That during the course of the Odyssey, Odysseus has to meet many challenges, has to clarify what is his true course and not be distracted by all the, let's say, distractions. So similarly for Buddha and similarly for each of us. And in the course, we may find that we can meet the the true depth of our being, which is really indescribable. So we sometimes call it unborn. But that which is unborn is beyond the cycle of samsara, beyond the repetitive loop of our own, say, of our own grasping mind. So one of our Zen teachers said that

[23:33]

17th century Japan, Manke, talked about the unborn, saying that everyone here, and this is from a talk just like this, he's giving to an assembly of people, and he says, I'll read this little section, he says, there are no unenlightened people here. Nonetheless, when you get up and begin to file out of the hall, you might bump into someone in front of you as you cross over the threshold. Or someone behind you might run into you and knock you down. Or when you go home, your husband, son, daughter-in-law, or someone else may say or do something that displeases you. If something like that happens, and you grasp onto it and begin to fret over it, sending the blood to your head, raising up your horns, and falling into illusion because of your self-partiality, the Buddha mind turns willy-nilly into a fighting spirit.

[24:40]

He's talking about getting angry. Until you transform it, you live just as you are in the unborn Buddha mind. You aren't deluded or unenlightened. But the moment you do turn it into something else, you become... an ignorant, deluded person. All illusions work the same way. By getting upset and favoring yourself, you turn your Buddha mind into an angry spirit and fall into a deluded existence of your own making. So whatever anyone else may do or say, whatever happens, don't worry yourself. Don't side with yourself. just stay as you originally are, right in Buddha mind. If you do that, illusions don't occur and you live constantly in the unborn Buddha mind.

[25:46]

You're a living, breathing, firmly established Buddha. You have an incalculable treasure right at hand. So, today we're celebrating the one who lived the birth, the birth of one who lived constantly and unborn. Even this whole event of entering this life, entering the human life, was simply another, say, phase or stage of being unborn. So we celebrate this. We hear it. We feel it. Sometimes we get caught up, as Banke was talking about, with our own busy, selfish ideas.

[26:56]

And so we tend to forget about it for for a while. But then we feel unsatisfied. Our life becomes kind of thin. and unsatisfactory. And so we then look for how to return to the original Buddha mind that's actually accessible to us at any time in this present moment. How to return to that? Sometimes it's pretty difficult even to remember that that's possible. So we create a place like this meditation hall. We create a place to return to our silent, vast mind. So when you go out and we have the ceremony and there's this chance to pour a dipper of water over the baby Buddha with his

[28:02]

arm up and his arm down, standing right here in the middle of heaven and earth. You might remember that there is really no heaven, no earth. That when you are right here in the middle, fully present, there's no separation. Heaven and earth are one. You might actually feel that as you're pouring the water over the baby Buddha, that you yourself are being completely connected with the flow of things, the totality of existence. And it's you yourself that's being bathed. So I think this is pretty good. A short talk. the Eno's happy.

[29:04]

It's a short talk. We have other things coming up. As we close, see if you can follow Banke's advice moment by moment and appreciate your own true mind and don't get too wrapped up in the selfish ideas that tend to crop up. Thank you for listening.

[29:38]

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