And especially good morning to all the young people who are here today. I'm so surprised it's a full, such a full zen, because I think there's something called the Super Bowl happening today. I thought perhaps everybody would be somewhere else. Supposedly... Today is one of the days when avocados, more avocados are sold on Super Bowl Sunday. So the young people today will talk a little bit together, then off you'll go to your program, which today is about trees. I think it's Trees Are Our Friends is the name of the... what you're going to be talking about today and a project you're going to be doing. Do you all feel that trees are your friends?

[01:03]

Yes. Do some of you have a tree house or a special tree that you climb? Yes. I had a tree, an apple tree in our neighbor's yard next door to my house where I would climb and hide from my parents. And that was my very good friend. I don't know if you know, but this summer, this past summer, the tallest trees in the world were discovered. Did you hear about that, some of you? They're redwood trees, coast redwood trees, right in California, up north, Mendocino County. And these trees are so tall. Do you know what the Statue of Liberty is, some of you? A big, tall statue. They're like eight stories taller than the Statue of Liberty. 379.1 feet. And they're 2,200 years old, these trees.

[02:09]

It's really hard to imagine, isn't it? So trees give us so much... What did trees give us? Can somebody just name something? Yes. Air, oxygen, right. What else? Fruit, that's right. What else? Yes. Paper, right. The wood can become paper. What else? Yes. Houses, that's right. We can use the wood to make houses. Lots of different things, paper and houses. They also, who lives in trees? Yes, we make Buddhist statues too. This is wooden. And we have a Buddhist statue, a different statue on the other altar that's made of wood.

[03:13]

Many, many things. can be made out of wood. They also, lots of animals live in trees, right, and use trees for shelter. Also, the way the roots are, they hold the soil so that the soil doesn't get washed away. They protect from erosion. And they create climates, actually, little microclimates where little animals and insects can survive. So we really, really need trees. Definitely more than our friends. Trees are us. Without trees, it would be a very, very different world. Kind of an unlivable world, I would say. You know, the Buddha's mother, when she gave birth to him, the story says she was standing up, which is a little unusual. Or, I don't know how unusual that is, but she was standing up holding onto a tree. And then when the Buddha kind of realized and woke up to the truth of his life, he was sitting under a tree and he spent a lot of his life meditating under trees and walking amongst trees and taking care of trees.

[04:26]

And then he died between two trees, two solid trees they were called. So all throughout Shakyamuni Buddha's life, trees were really a part of his everyday life. So I want to tell you a story about The Buddha, before he was the Buddha, this is, these are, there's lots of tales about the kind of lives that the Buddha had before he became a Buddha. And this one, he was, it's called the Wishing Tree. This is the name of the story. Okay, you ready? So once upon a time, he was, The Buddha began to tell this story after this thing happened. There was a very wealthy merchant, and he had a very good friend who was very poor. And the wealthy merchant's friend said, oh, you shouldn't trust that man who's so poor. You shouldn't be good friends with him. But their friendship was very deep, and the rich merchant went out of town and left his friend, the poor man, in charge of everything.

[05:33]

and everything turned out just fine. They were very good friends, and it didn't matter if one was poor and one was rich. So the Buddha said, a friend rightly called is never inferior or less. The standard measure for friendship is the ability to befriend. The standard measure of friendship is if you can be a good friend. That's the only measurement for friendship. It doesn't matter, rich or poor, that doesn't matter. Can you be a good friend? So this is a story. Once in the life that was to become the Buddha, that was before he was a Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha was born as the spirit that lived in a clump of Kusa grass. And kusa grass was grass that they used to make meditation cushions out of. And the Buddha was a spirit that lived in the grass.

[06:37]

That was a kusa grass spirit. And right nearby was a wishing tree. And there was a spirit that lived in the wishing tree. And this wishing tree was beautiful, tall, like one of those tall redwoods, strong and sturdy. And it was so beautiful that the king always brought his throne out there to sit under that tree. and the spreading branches and the little kusa grass, which is just a kind of a clump of grass. Those two spirits were very good friends. Well, one day, it was noticed that in the king's palace, one of the wooden pillars was getting kind of rotten and they needed to replace it. So the carpenters went looking for a good, sturdy, tall tree for the palace pillar. And they came upon The wishing tree, right? That was very strong and beautiful. And they took a look and they said, I think we're going to have to use this tree.

[07:37]

They talked to the king about it. He was really sad because it was one of his favorite trees. But he said, okay, I guess you'll have to. So the carpenters went to the tree and made, did a ceremony and asked permission and said how sorry they were, but they were going to have to cut down the tree. And they let the tree know that it was going to happen the next day. So the tree spirit was very, very unhappy and was crying. And all the other tree spirits came and said, oh, we feel so badly that this is going to happen to you. But what can we do? Oh, dear, too bad. Well, that night, the kusa grass spirit, a little tiny clump of kusa grass with the spirit, went to his friend, and said, what's going on? And the tree spirit said, I'm going to be cut down tomorrow. And this kusagrass spirit vowed that he would help his friends somehow.

[08:41]

He didn't know how. And then he had an idea, and he changed into a chameleon, which is a kind of a lizard-y thing that changes colors. And he got into the wishing tree, down into the roots, and went up through the tree and made holes that looked like holes all throughout the tree. And then he sat up on the branch and moved his head from side to side. Well, in the morning, the carpenters came, ready to cut it down, and the head carpenter kind of knocked on the tree, and it was all, didn't sound sturdy and not a clear sound. It was all rotten sounding. And he said, well, you didn't look carefully enough. This tree isn't, we can't use this tree. And off they went to another place. And the tree spirit sang the praises of the little kusa grass spirit who had thought up this way to help his friend. And even though all the other tree spirits were much stronger and much more older and stronger, this little kusa grass spirit was the one who really was able to help his friend.

[09:55]

And at the end of that story, the Buddha said that Ananda, his very good friend, was that tree, was the wishing tree, and the Buddha himself was the kusa grass spirit. So that's one way that the tree was saved by his good friend. So thank you all very much for listening to the story, and off you go to learn more about trees. and have snack, I think. So thank you very much for coming. There's more room up in front if anyone wants to come forward.

[11:36]

You can come up there, Patty. Around the floor there? Our children's program is getting bigger and bigger every month. It's wonderful. I wanted to talk today with you about delusion and intoxicating mind and body of self and others, or the precept to observe how it is that we do and do not do that, and to talk a little bit about some things I've been doing the past couple weeks. So actually, last Saturday, a week ago yesterday, I was participating in the march in Washington, D.C., the Peace March, or Anti-War March, whatever you want to call it.

[13:27]

The idea to participate was kind of last minute. I hadn't planned for months to go and do this, but kind of last minute, Steve Weintraub, my husband, and I decided we were just going to go to this march. We just wanted to put our bodies in that place and express joy. our feelings about what's going on. And so we, Friday night, we flew a red-eye, JetBlue, which was really comfortable, into Washington, D.C., got theirs pretty crisp. And we missed the interfaith service that was being held that we had known about and ended up waiting and watching people, watching people heading towards the mall.

[14:38]

We're in a few there at the march. And we saw a contingent of people with clerical collars and carrying certain signs that led us to believe this might have been part of the interfaith service. And we just waited until the Buddhist Peace Fellowship contingent showed up, and we just joined in with them. So before the march, there was a big rally and thousands of people. You know, the official count, I don't think there was an official count, and it's always disputed, right? The organizers said 450,000. The newspapers said tens of thousands. But there were lots of people. There was a crowd. And we... It's amazing to be in a crowd of that many people and feel the power of it, the power of words and bodies and also feeling how one can be affected very strongly and be pulled in one way or another.

[15:57]

You can feel how a crowd can turn into... a mob or how a gathering can turn into something dangerous. But this group felt very committed, you know, to a peaceful march, peaceful gathering. It was wonderful. We wore our Buddhist robes, the small robes that we wear around our necks, and There are a number of other people from other groups and other places across the country. One person came up and said, are you from Greenville? I was just Layer Day and my teacher lives there. Attention, Rev. Anderson's my teacher and look. Anyway, very excited from a small group in Cleveland to see people from the bigger temple in California. Other people we've known who one young person just got off a bus from Brown University

[16:59]

which bussed in a number of students. And she said, oh, my parents sit at Green College. So it's a small world. So the Buddhist delegation sat first while the rally was going on. So lots of loud speeches of various kinds. from haranguing sounds, one might call that kind of a sound, to more religious and just the whole, quite a range of speakers. And to sit quietly in the midst of that many people and that many, and music and speeches and noise of all kinds, and just settle and pay attention. was exactly what felt right.

[18:03]

So the march then went down and around the capital and took a long time. And we marched with a group that was an eclectic Buddhist group. There was a group that chanted the name of the Lotus Sutra, Nam-myo-ring-ge-kyo, a small group with kind of a drum and very concentrated and very beautiful chanting that overlapped one sound and then the next sound, just Nam-myo-ring-ge-kyo, just the name of the Lotus Sutra over and over. They were part of our... But we got separated because there's so many people. And as you rounded the corner, more streams of people would come in. Lots of very interesting signs, some rather funny, like one said, Bush, the fascist done in the West.

[19:11]

And there was a lot of signs that said another and then a blank. that you got to fill in for peace. So another mother for peace, another Buddhist for peace, another Democrat for peace, another whatever. And the one I found the most humorous and kind of wonderful was another vegan dyke for peace. So just a wide range of good feeling. And there was also the anti- on the side carrying signs, there was signs like hippie smell, that was one, and things about supporting the troops, thinking the peace march wasn't about supporting the troops. So in participating in this, I was studying, making an effort to study how I changed and how I was affected

[20:22]

or what I was in a crowd, in a group like that. And feeling, you know, the delicate nature, you know, and the impact of that many people with that clear intention and creating creating a situation out of this intention, the power of it, and also the... When I say delicate, what I mean is that there is nothing for sure about this group that it couldn't... be influenced in one way or another by circumstances.

[21:25]

You know, maybe I'm not being clear enough, but the... Well, maybe I'll describe it better by saying the next day I went to the Holocaust Museum, which is on the mall further down. And for those of you who haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. And in this museum, the very... beautifully, very carefully and lovingly teach and expand one's understanding of what happened in Europe and other places. And they show these videos of crowds being really taken over, becoming mad, you know, with certain ideas that, you know, maybe sounded very beautiful, but were completely crazy ideas.

[22:30]

But thousands and thousands of people, and to see these videos, and young people, there's a video of the Hitler's youth, beautiful young people, and shouting, and... So here's another, here are these other crowds, and this delicate... the possibility of being deluded, the possibility of misunderstanding, the possibility of corrupting one's own intentions, or being affected strongly and not realizing how we're changing and becoming other than what's in alignment with our own deepest intention. So I felt this delicacy, you know. And, you know, contrasting the two days, in the Holocaust Museum there was also an area where people were interviewed, those people who had helped others and not fallen under the sway of the kind of madness, the madness that was supported by the intelligence, you know, the...

[23:45]

and doctors, and they showed the ways in which the propaganda was scientifically verified and so forth. And people fell under this, intelligent people. So knowing that in hearing the videos of the people who didn't fall under the sway, How was it that they stayed true? How was it that they didn't, out of fear and so forth, fall into this vortex of activity, actions of body, speech, and mind? And one wonders, and I ask myself, And this has been a question I've had for decades, you know, for my whole life practically.

[24:46]

What would I have done? How would I have acted? Would I have stayed true to, you know, what I see in hindsight? So this is an extraordinarily important question I feel for our practice life and for our... our life of precepts, our life of staying true to our deepest, deepest understanding. So this, one of our precepts is a disciple of the Buddha does not intoxicate mind or body of self or others. And you can feel, you can feel in a crowd the possibility of being intoxicated, being inundated and having the flowing in of this energy, you know, intoxicated skin, be poisoned by even, I would say, the strong and good energy of, you know, demonstrating for peace.

[25:57]

I think that can also be intoxicating. That can also be ungrounding. And one can... fall into the thought that I'm better than others who aren't demonstrating, or better than the ones who want war, or somehow to split it off, to split into opposing polarities and believe it. This intoxicating mind and body of self and others, pulling others into this. So the effort... And I feel like the effort of many, many people is not to polarize, not to set up opposing, but to... to accept and understand how another person might be thinking.

[27:03]

When I say accept, I don't mean accept their... what they're teaching or how they're acting, but accept that another person has another world from which they're acting from, a real, really another world of body, speech, and mind, of mind out of which flows speech and action. This is, it's encountering other worlds and appreciating that rather than hating that or setting up another world in opposition. So this, I find, when I say delicate, is very possible to fall into them and us, the other, I'm praising self at the expense of others, I'm better than, or...

[28:07]

And to stay humble, grounded in our own knowledge of our own ability to be deluded and mixed up and confused and acting out of that. So... want to just move from there to a discussion of, which I hope illustrates what I'm trying to talk about, which is the non-dual nature of realization and delusion, or our own, that it's not realization in opposition to delusion, where we destroy delusion and then we're somehow realized beings.

[29:12]

There's this wonderful new book that was just given to me by Hee Jin Kim, who years ago wrote a book about Dogen, Mystical Realist, and this is a new one that's out. And he talks about our misconceptions of what realization is. And I remember when I first came to Zen Center, I'd been there one week, this is when I came to stay, 1971, I'd been there one week and I was eating lunch and a new student came and they sat next to me and they said something like, so how long have you been enlightened? And I can't remember what I said, the lady death protest too much, you know, But we have and had ideas, maybe some of you also. It's like everybody who's practicing at Green Altar something is enlightened. Or maybe you don't have ideas like that at all.

[30:12]

But there are these kind of popular views about what it all means. And he lists them. And I found this very helpful in terms of dispelling these. The first is... The enlightened one is in but not of the world of delusion. Like, in it but, you know, not... This is, I think, a misunderstanding of a lotus, the lotus in muddy water, as the lotus, you know, rises up out of the muddy water. But it is completely of... It is in the mud and of the mud. It couldn't exist... outside of the mud. It is of mud, you know. That's the first one. The second one is, inasmuch as the enlightened one is liberated, he or she is no longer affected by delusion.

[31:14]

Right? Somehow outside of confusion and delusion and leaving all that behind. I think there is this persistent view that we have that somehow... an enlightened person is outside of maybe even causing effect, there might be some belief in that. The third is enlightenment is sufficiently powerful so as to burn off karmic effects. You know, actions that we did in the past when we were completely confused, the one view we might hold is that enlightenment just burns that all up, that's done. But I think our stories of our ancestors actually counter that story, but that may be something, you know, that will be somehow with realization will be, we won't have to be bothered anymore with any problems that we might have caused sometime before.

[32:19]

You know, that kind of view we might have of that. And number four, only... when enlightenment frees itself of delusion, does it attain its total purity? So this idea of enlightenment is apart from, completely separate from, any kind of delusion. So I think that when he calls these popular views, I can imagine that all of us, including myself in this room, have held to those or thought those or been caught by those and wanted to practice perhaps in order to be above it all and not have to worry about karmic retribution, you know, fruits of our unskillful actions somehow. If we just had realization, then we'd be free.

[33:22]

So... So let's see. So how can we understand our practice as practice and realization together, practicing because we are in the midst and live out the life of delusion. So in the Genjo Koan, in a famous piece from Dogen Zenji, it says, in describing this non-duality of realization and delusion, that they're not two separate things where you have one and that gets rid of the other, or one is above the other or something. Those who have great realization of delusion are Buddhists. Those who have great realization of delusion are Buddhists.

[34:31]

Those who are greatly deluded about realization are sentient beings. So in this first one, those who have great realization, great realization of what? Great realization of delusion, great realization of how it is that we create our life, of our karmic activity, of the karmic forces, to have great realization about all that. And it's not that it dispels that either, but we just keep on keeping on, keep on realizing and studying endlessly how it is that we are living each moment. and creating our life and acting out of how we think about things. This goes on endlessly.

[35:37]

So in these popular views, this notion of having great realization, getting rid of delusion, bringing that together with great realization of delusion, great realization of how it all works, how our delusion works, and great humility and attention because we know we too are susceptible, are... make mistakes, can't see far enough can't see widely enough all the causes and conditions that make up what's going on now. We do make mistakes. We do our best and we do make mistakes. And to have great realization of our delusion, these are Buddhas, these are awakened beings, according to Dogen.

[36:47]

And those who are greatly deluded about realization are sentient beings, oh, you know, just get out somehow. I'm going to just get out of here through my own efforts or something. I had these ideas. So because we're deluded and confused and have dim eyesight, you might say, we see the moon hazily through the ivy. There's a poem... It's very grounding. It's not intoxicating. Intoxicating is kind of... Sometimes I think of intoxication as, you know, balloons that lift up off the ground and fly off, you know, making trouble for sea creatures in the ocean. So to be grounded in this and slowed down or speeded up, whichever way... aware enough...

[37:52]

bringing our attention to each action, each interaction in a grounded way with great humility and acceptance of this is our life. This is our, our life is like that. And to kid ourselves or to fool ourselves, I think we get into big trouble. So to go to this march, And, you know, also in these videos, hearing the sound of the bands, you know, revving up German marching music, you know, you can feel, I felt the body respond to the march and this clarion call or whatever. And it's very delicate. Even... listening to that music and feeling, would I have been caught up in it all?

[38:53]

Having great humility, not knowing. It's very humbling. This is one of these lectures where I keep wanting to add more, and maybe this is enough. Let me look at my watch here. My watch says 1015. 1058. Oh, we're still good here. This watch never keeps time, but I love it. So I wanted to illustrate again what I've been talking about with a koan, which is... Actually, there's two koans, but I'll restrain myself.

[39:55]

The reason I want to bring up this koan is because in studying it over the years, there's a particular translation in here. And then I found a commentary by Suzuki Roshi, and he has another translation, which is kind of a capping phrase of one of the most, for me, important lines. He says it very, very differently. And that interested me quite a bit. So the koan is about Dengshan, Tozan, who's the To of Soto Zen, is Tozan or Dengshan in Chinese. And Dengshan and his spiritual uncle, they had the same teacher, spiritual uncle, me, were walking along the road together. And a white rabbit ran in front of them. And Mi said, swift.

[41:06]

And Dugan Shan said, how? And Mi, spiritual uncle Mi said, it's like a commoner being made a prime minister. And Deng Shan said, such a venerable person still says such words? And his uncle Mi said, and what about you? And Deng Shan said, generations of nobility temporarily fallen into poverty. Generations of nobility temporarily fallen into poverty. Now, this line, generations of nobility temporarily fallen into poverty, hearkens back to a parable in the Lotus Sutra, perhaps, about a rich man's

[42:19]

son who separates from the family and goes off and thinks he's poor and suffers as a poor person and then realizes much, much later, through very careful introduction to who he rightfully is, by giving him more and more responsibility, his father then reveals to him, you're actually my son. So generations of nobility. temporarily fallen into poverty, or this is generations of nobility in terms of our own, how we actually are, our awakened nature, and this mistaken, this is one way to think about it, some mistaken understanding and delusion about who we are. This sets it up as a kind of opposing thing. Generations of nobility temporarily falling into poverty as if the poverty and the nobility were separate.

[43:26]

But he lived out that poverty life completely and knew the life of a poverty-stricken person and had the fears and the anxieties and the skirmishes of a poverty-stricken person. And so this is what Suzuki Roshi says. He takes up this koan. And I brought this up during the Rohatsu Sesshin talking about the Buddha. Sometimes we talk about the Buddha going up to the mountain and realizing and then coming down the mountain and teaching. So... In bringing up this koan, Suzuki Roshi says that we are originally Buddha, originally awakened, and there's no difference between Buddha's and sentient beings.

[44:30]

And so when Uncle Mi says about this rabbit that it's swift, like a commoner becoming a prime minister, It's a regular commoner doing lots of work and studying and then becoming a minister. One can change in that way. But what's even faster than that is that you already are noble. You already are noble before you even have to try. So Tozan says to Uncle Mi, when Mi says, like a commoner becoming a minister, This is what Suzuki Roshi says, Oh, you look like a great Zen master, but what you said was very slow, very dull. I thought you were a greater Zen master. So his brother asked, Well, how swift is it, do you think? And Tozan said, Old, old hairpin, you know, given by mother.

[45:36]

Suzuki Roshi says he didn't say so. He didn't say given by Mother, that's the security. Old hairpin and comb. Beautiful old hairpin and comb was broken. Was broken. Do you understand? So, I'm not sure if the translator thought... I'm not sure, I don't... I didn't read it in the original, but... When Tozan was asked, you know, well, how fast is it with this hair running across? And he says, old, old hairpin and broken comb. So already these treasures, they're already broken. They're already, nobody wants them. They're just... left there on the dresser broken.

[46:43]

And Suzuki Roshi says, so from the beginning you know to go directly to the common is swifter. Already it's broken. Already there's delusion completely and we study it. We study it with our realization rather than some kind of nobility thing where we're a apart from it, to stay with just old hairpin and broken comb. Suzuki Roshi, anyway, you know, even though they are beautiful comb and hairpin, anyway, it will be broken down by children, by grandchildren. So it may be much better to be a broken hairpin from the beginning, so you don't care. You don't care what they treated, he says. There's no need to say be careful to the children. Let them play with it.

[47:44]

It's already broken. Old hairpin and comb. So, to have a great realization about delusion, This is this image of old hairpin and broken comb, to stay all ready to know that that is our life together. No need for aggrandizement or... setting ourselves up. We're all together as old, old hairpins and broken combs.

[48:47]

There's nothing that we need to strive after. We just need to study exactly how we are, which is our confusion and our delusions and our our anxieties, and our hatreds, our greed, hate, and delusion, studying it, studying it. So Hee Jin Kim in this book says, no separation whatsoever of delusion and enlightenment. They are not strange bedfellows. On the contrary, they are working companions and need one another with a shared purpose of actualizing this life and liberation.

[50:03]

It's a relief, isn't it? It's already broken. Old hairpins. broken comb. Okay, well I think that's all I wanted to say and talk about with you today. This is the last lecture that I give on a Sunday morning as the seated abbess of the San Francisco Zen Center, and you were there. Thank you very much. May our intention equally extend to every day.

[51:07]

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