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 morning. That sounds loud enough. Is that loud enough? So how many people are new here this morning? Oh my goodness. Well, welcome, all of you. The strangest thing happened when I was bowing this morning. My little toes cramped. Has that ever happened to you when you're bowing? Could barely get up. Never happened to me before. So my name is Ed, and today is a very special day. It's the day we celebrate Buddha's birthday at the city center. Are all of you aware that that's what's happening this morning? Yeah. And... What a beautiful day it is, a perfect day for Buddha's birthday. All these spring rains we've had, bringing much-needed nourishment to the hills and all the flowers that are coming out.

[01:08]

Several of us drove into Tassajara on Wednesday to celebrate Lucy Shusso. Is Lucy back yet? She'll soon be back. Wonderful ceremony. But as we were going over the ridge... It was a winter wonderland. There was five inches of snow on the ridge. All the trees were covered with snow. It was fantastically beautiful. On the way out, most of it was gone, but still, we were there early enough, so really wonderful spring we're having. A wake-up call. So there are three important days in Buddha's life that we commemorate. Buddha's birthday. Buddha's Enlightenment. Buddha's birthday is usually celebrated in the springtime. April 8th is the traditional time it's celebrated in Japan. And Buddha's Enlightenment in Japan is celebrated on December 8th. And in Zen Center, we sort of celebrate that at the end of whatever seshin we're doing.

[02:13]

So if it's a seshin that ends on December 8th, great. Otherwise, if it's December 15th, that's when we celebrate it. And then... Buddha's pari nirvana on February 15th. So what do you think is the favorite of those three? It's Buddha's birthday because Buddha's birthday is about birth and renewal and springtime and flowers and birthday cake and we're having chocolate birthday cake today at lunch. So I've been told I have to limit the length of my lecture to make sure that we're not late getting to lunch in our birthday cakes. We'll have a shorter lecture today for Buddha's birthday. Because we have a very complex ceremony we have to go through. So I was mentioning that in Japan, Buddha's birthday is celebrated on April 8th.

[03:16]

It's called Hana Matsuri, Flower Festival. And I've never been to it, but from what I've heard, it's practically a national holiday in Japan. All the temples open up, and people stream in, and they have little baby Buddhas under altars, and they're sprinkling sweet spring water on them, and there's festivals and huge parades with giant elephants, and it's just, and of course, they time it perfectly with all the cherry blossoms in Japan. A nice touch, I think. So anyway, we're trying to figure out what to do with Buddha's birthday here in America because we haven't been doing it very long. I did a little research on our favorite research instrument, the Internet, and I was reminded that in 1965, on April 8th, the first circumambulation of Mount Tamalpais to celebrate Buddha's birthday was conducted. Hundreds of individuals participated, some sleeping overnight in Muir Woods, And they started early in the morning up Dipsy Trail.

[04:20]

You guys are all familiar with Muir Woods, Dipsy Trail, Mount Tamalpais. The session was led by Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, and Philip Whelan. Gary Snyder has been a long friend of Zen Center and an avid Buddhist for many years. And Philip Whelan actually was a priest at Zen Center and lived here and died here and spent the rest of his life here when he was young. So it's a 15-mile trek around Mount Tam, and they would stop at different places and chant different mantras. What a beautiful way to begin celebrating Buddha's birthday in America. And actually, one of my neighbors, I live in Mill Valley on the weekends, one of my neighbors, Matthew Davis, is still leading that every year, and he's done it 140 times since that beginning in 1965. Pretty impressive. He wrote a book called Opening the Mountain, Circumambulating Mount Tamalpais. Over breakfast this morning, I was talking with many of my friends that have lived at Tassahara about the way we've been celebrating Buddha's birthday down at Tassahara.

[05:26]

I think it was in 1969 was the first time they did it, and they all marched up to the horse pasture. I don't know how many of you have been to Tassahara. Tassahara is our beautiful mountain monastery. deep in the Las Padres National Forest. And at that time, we owned a 160-acre parcel called the Horse Pasture, which was about, I don't know, two miles maybe up from Tassajara, up in this gorgeous meadow. And they all walked up there in their black robes, built a little altar under a beautiful oak tree, and set up the little baby Buddha and bowed to it and sprinkled sweet water on it. And I think I was there in the early 70s. We still did it once. Yeah? Yeah. Am I going too fast? I'm happy to slow down. That chocolate cake is driving me a little too fast this morning. So anyway, when I was there in the early 70s, I believe we did hike up to the horse pasture and celebrate Buddha's birthday up there, but we weren't wearing our robes.

[06:35]

We had already... lost some of our enthusiasm. I think we were wearing more normal hiking clothes. And now I've heard that they do a beautiful ceremony down in the lower garden or maybe in the front office. So at Green Gulch... He started a tradition, I think about 10 years ago, where we reenacted the legend of Buddha's birth. And there were all these very large puppets made by Annie. Is Annie here today? Annie Hallis? So I heard out, but they're not, and they would reenact it with large elephant puppets and the head of Buddha. It was a marvel. How many people have seen that pageant? quite an amazing thing.

[07:35]

We're not going to do it this year because we're doing a large construction project at Green Gulch and so one of the fortunate things is I think Annie's bringing the Buddha head today and we'll have it in our walk up to the park where we'll do our celebration. So, of course, Buddha was born, according to many books, the historical Buddha, in 563 BC. So that was a couple hundred years before they had good written records. So there's all kinds of scholarly work trying to figure out if that's an exact date or not. And some books say, well, plus or minus 20 years. And then there was for a while an argument that it was plus or minus two centuries. But recently, I think I read in the New York Times that they had found a temple underneath one of the major temples that dates it back at least into the 5th century.

[08:41]

So for this ceremony, we're sticking with 563 BC for the historical Buddha. And there isn't an awful lot known about that period. It was a period of growing wealth in India. They were starting to farm and form trade routes up into Europe and Greece. Shakyamuni Buddha was born into a fairly wealthy political family in the neighborhood on the Himalayan border, and he was sent to some of the best schools at that time, and most of his friends were the elite of the society, and of course he dropped out and went on a quest to get to the root of suffering, which he did, and then for 45 years wandered around... lecturing and talking about what he had learned. And so there's many interesting books written about the historical Buddha, and I'm not going to talk much about that this morning.

[09:44]

A recent one by Stephen Batcher I enjoyed quite a bit, which sort of laid out the fact that Buddha was not only a deeply spiritual and religious man, but also knew how to operate and live effectively in the world. And I saw an article recently where they were comparing his way of working in a society at that time to Gandhi. He had the sense of what the society needed to do to change, to improve situations, and became quite a force, of course. Since 500 million people are Buddhists, that carried forward pretty well. What I'm going to talk about this morning is a much more fun thing, which is the legend. of Buddha's birth, which we'll be reenacting in some way up there in the park. How many people are familiar with this marvelous legend of Buddha's birth? Did I see those hands?

[10:47]

Okay, so according to the legend 25 centuries ago, there was a king, Suddana, who ruled a land near the Himalayan mountains, and his queen, Maya, retired to her quarters to rest, and she fell asleep and dreamed a vivid dream. Four divas, you might say four angels, carried her high into white mountain peaks and clothed her in flowers. A magnificent white bull elephant bearing a white lotus in his trunk approached Maya and walked around her three times. The elephant struck her on the right side with its trunk and vanished into her. And as you can imagine, nine months later, Buddha was born. This may be something else actually entered that evening, but we'll leave it with the white elephant.

[11:51]

Anyway, the white elephant is a symbol of a sacred animal representing fertility. and the lotus is a symbol of enlightenment. So she told her husband about this dream, and the king summoned a bunch of spiritual Brahmin, and they interpreted the dream and said that Buddha would be born, and he would either be a great leader of a world conqueror, or he would be a great spiritual leader. When it came time for the birth, the queen wished to travel back to Kapila... from Kapulavati, where the king's capital was, to her childhood home, and to give birth there. And on the way, and she was carried in a palanquin with a thousand courtiers, it was a big deal, the procession passed the Lubini Grove, which was full of blossoming trees. And she got out and wandered into the grove and held on to one of the blossoms in the tree, and Buddha was born out of her side. And...

[12:52]

The queen and her son were showered with perfume blossoms, and two streams of sparkling water poured from the sky to bathe them. One rendition has a stream of warm water and a stream of cold water, so it was a nice, clean thing. And the infant stood, because he was precocious, and took seven steps and proclaimed, I alone am the world-honored one. The seven steps represented the four directions, north, south, east, west, up and down, and his present location. I'm going to talk a little bit about I alone am the world-honored one a little bit later, what that might be. Anyway, the queen and her son returned to the capital and she died seven days later and Buddha was raised by her sister, Pajapati.

[13:56]

So that's the legend. And one of the things that I think is sort of so wonderful about the legend is all these lotus flowers and flowering trees. In fact, they said that each step he made lotus flowers bloomed on his feet as he moved forward. And I was, I don't know, I was cruising, again, the famous internet a week or so ago, and I came across this marvelous video about flowers and how flowers, you know, the insects come and they transfer the male pollen, the pollen from the stamens to the pistils, and the pistils, you know, create little things that run down inside to the ovaries and... and they make little seeds, and then they grow fruit. There's 400,000 of these flowering plants, wheat and apple trees. It's where all our food comes from. It's fertility. Flowers are fantastic. Of course, if you were going to create a legend, you would have flowers falling down on a child who's born.

[15:02]

Because birth is... Why not make a legend out of it? Because do we really understand birth? Do we really understand how life happens? I mean, science has lots to tell us about it, but it's like a miracle, all of this birthing going on all around us. And that's, of course, what we're going to celebrate today is the springtime, the flowers blooming, the birth of the baby Buddha, and your birth, your renewal, your capacity to change your life, to transform your life, to renew your life, to wake up to a new you. So that's the real celebration that goes on when we celebrate Buddha's birthday.

[16:06]

I wanted to talk a little bit about this comment that Baby Buddha made when he stepped out. I alone and the world honored one. That sounds a little over the top, probably. Another translation that I saw was, worlds above, worlds below, there is no one like me. I like that one, too. Pretty good. I used this before. This is a famous story from Dait. Daizetsu Suzuki, who was an early Zen master that came to America, and he told this story. A young student said to his master, am I in possession of Buddha consciousness? The master said, no. The student said, well, I've been told that all things are in possession of Buddha consciousness. The rocks, the trees, the butterflies, the birds, the animals, all beings. The master said, you are correct. All things are in possession of Buddha consciousness, the rocks, the trees, the butterflies, the bees, the birds, the animals, all beings, but not you.

[17:19]

Must have been a discouraging moment for the students, I think, if I was in that situation. Not me, why not, said the student, because you are asking the question. So we, of course, know that he was... filled with Buddha consciousness. This was the first thing that Buddha said on Attaining the Enlightenment. He stepped out and he said, how marvelous, how marvelous, I am now awakened with all beings. In this marvelous, marvelous, I am now awakened with all beings. In this moment, with all beings, I am awakened. Suzuki Roshi's way of putting that, was, it is wonderful to see Buddha nature in everything and in each individual. So basically that's what Buddha said. He didn't say, I've made it. He said, I am awake and I see that everyone has Buddha consciousness.

[18:22]

Everybody has Buddha nature. Every one of you is Buddha. It's kind of a wonderful... Sometimes we forget that. Does anybody here forget that fact? Maybe that's why we sit zazen sometimes, to remember that fact. So, of course, Suzuki Roshi elaborated on that worlds above, worlds below by saying the following things. Worlds above, worlds below, there's no one in the world like me. So Suzuki elaborated, they tell me that when a baby is born, it cries. What does the baby say when it cries? The baby says, Worlds above, worlds below, there is no one in the world like me. And there is no one in the world like you when you were a baby. And there's no one in the world like you right now, right? No one. You are totally, uniquely you.

[19:23]

And, of course, your great responsibility is to make your totally unique life flower. and feel joyous and free. So what does it mean that you are totally uniquely you and you have this Buddha consciousness? What is this Buddha consciousness that you have that is totally uniquely that is with you and you're totally uniquely you. This is one of these things that Zen people talk about all the time. What is that aspect of yourself that is completely connected to everything in every moment? I'm going to get back to that a little bit later too.

[20:31]

So as part of thinking about this Buddha's birthday, I went back and found the first lecture Suzuki Roshi gave when he was... We bought this building in 1969. I keep forgetting how new Buddhism is to America. That's like 45 years ago. And in 1970, on April 8th, everybody was running around painting the walls and sprucing it up for the first Buddha's birthday party here in this building. And Suzuki Roshi gave this wonderful talk where he was saying how wonderful that we were cleaning up the building for Buddha's birthday. We should really do that and do it well. And then he talked about how he was going to dress up in his best robes for Buddha's birthday. But he also emphasized that we don't lose the spirit of what Buddha's birthday is in putting on a big celebration. And I just thought I'd read you the last two paragraphs of that lecture that he gave. He said, celebrating our Zen Center effort, the headquarters in Japan promised to give us $3,000, and they allowed me to wear the yellow robe.

[21:41]

That is the robe I wore for the first Buddha birthday down at probably must have been Tassahara. I don't know why, but I do not like that kind of beautiful clothes. Something's too beautiful. Sukiroshi, if you've ever seen Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, the picture of him on the back of Zen Mind, he always sort of dressed down. He wore sort of black robes. He was a real sort of down-to-earth Zen master. But today I felt something quite different. I appreciate their appreciation of our effort to develop Buddha's Way, which has been transmitted to us from 2,500 years ago. This is the most meaningful way, this most meaningful thing. In this way, if we make our efforts, something will result in this country. And as the Buddhist or Bodhisattva vow that we take is to continue our way forever. If so, Buddha's teaching, something which was told by Buddha will be developed forever.

[22:46]

With this spirit, we should celebrate Buddha's birthday even though the way we celebrate it is not perfect. His language is not perfect. So that was maybe hard to follow. But basically, Suzuki Hiroshi was proud enough of what we were doing here to try to create Buddhism in America that he was willing to put on his bright yellow robe and wear it for Buddha's birthday. And hence, after I get through with this lecture, I will go upstairs and put on a nice robe too for Buddha's birthday, not as bright and yellow as Suzuki Hiroshi's. And to remember that We are embarked on a very unusual effort to bring the message of Buddha or the message of Buddhism to America. We've only been at it for hardly over 50 years. We're still figuring out what our ceremonies are like and how to do it, but it's an important task, a wonderful task, and a task that will transform our lives and I really think will transform

[23:57]

the world, and we certainly know that the world needs some transformation now. If we want to have all these flowering plants continue to flower, we need to change a few things. I've always felt, and I think it is true about our practice, that you begin, if you need to change the world, you begin by changing yourself. You begin by renewing your commitment to live a happier, freer, more authentic life. And so today is a day in which we all will renew our commitment to do that. And in doing that, we will make an impact and change the world for better. In an effort to stay on the timetable, I'm going to end in about three or four minutes, but I thought I would tell you one last story.

[25:27]

There's koans. You're all familiar with koans in the Zen world, and there's collections of them. There's probably three or four hundred famous koans that we study, but only four of them feature Buddha as the teacher, which is kind of surprising, actually, in a way. and so I picked one of them that is my favorite, and I'm going to read it to you. It's titled, The World Honored One, that's Buddha, Twirls a Flower. It's a case six from the gateless barrier. Once in an ancient time, when Buddha was on Vulture Peak, Vulture Peak was one of the famous places he gave sermons on, he twirled a flower before the assembly. All were silent. Only Maha-Kashapa broke into a smile. So I'll read the setup again.

[26:31]

Ancient times, obviously 2,500 years ago, Buddha was on Vulture Peak giving a sermon, but he didn't say anything. He just picked up a flower and twirled it before the assembly. Everybody was silent. except for one of his disciples broke into a smile. At that moment, Buddha said, I have the I-treasury of the true Dharma, the subtle heart of nirvana, the true form of no form, and the flawless gate of this teaching. It is not established upon words and phrases, It is a special transmission outside the tradition. I now entrust it to Maha Kashapa. So I'm going to read that again. I have the I-treasury of the true Dharma, the subtle heart of Nirvana, the true form of no form, and the flawless gate of this teaching.

[27:43]

It is not established upon words and phrases. a special transmission outside the tradition I now entrusted to Maha Kashapa. Of course, you can give entire lectures on this koan. In fact, many people do, and probably I will down the road. You can spend a lifetime pondering it, so I will just say a few things. One, of course, this is the first story of transmission. This is the story of Buddha taking the insight and knowledge he got and affirming that he had given it to the next generation. That was a very important thing, and of course it's lovely that it was done without a bunch of words. It was done silently between two people. And of course, thanks to the dedication of many

[28:47]

future generations of teachers and students doing the same thing, that treasury of the true Dharma eye is here, in this room with us now, has been brought to America by Suzuki Roshi 45 years ago, 50 years ago. So I, of course, feel a great deal of appreciation for Buddha's effort and for the effort of all the succeeding teachers that have made this marvelous teaching available to us, which is freely given for you to use to help you with your suffering and awaken your heart. So the second point I'd make about this story, which I find particularly interesting, is this awakened heart-mind is already with you and is ready to come forth.

[30:00]

When you can meet your life in this moment, when you can actually meet your life in this moment, when you can intimately meet another person. This is a story about two people intimately connecting to each other. And in that intimate connection, the true Dharma is there. So if you can meet another person, a flower, a spring breeze yourself, then you'll be standing on the ground of your authentic self. And you can be the author of your own life. Maybe that's enough for today.

[31:09]

For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[31:18]

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