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. Welcome to Green Dragon Temple, Green Gulch Farm. And I was curious to know... For how many people is this your first visit to Green Gulch? Welcome. This is a celebration day, a celebration of the Buddha's birth. And it's also May Day, which is another kind of celebration, the birth of... spring, a festival of spring, and both of these ceremonies are ancient and celebrated in different ways in different countries.

[01:07]

The Buddha's birth is celebrated in Japan on April 8th, and in other Asian countries, there might be a different day when it's celebrated. But at Green Gulch, we've chosen early in May to have the celebration. So in the midst of a world that's filled with war and violence, oppression, natural disasters of all sorts, we still and maybe imperatively need to find joy in our lives and celebrate our lives together. In the midst of our suffering, in the midst of difficulties, still our practice is to touch joy, express joy,

[02:21]

and find a way. This is our human life. So the Buddha... I thought I would... Some of you know the story very well of the Buddha's birth, and others of you may never have heard the story of the Buddha's birth. But there is a legend, there's a particular... written in the second century that describes beautifully the birth of the Buddha in very fairy tale way, legendary fairy tale mythic language. And all of these tales, allegorical tales or mythic tales, speak to the reality in our own body-mind of The birth of what? The Buddha, the word Buddha means the awakened one, comes from the root bud, which means to awaken.

[03:31]

So the Buddha is the awakened one, and Buddhism is, if you translated it into English, is awake-ism. The practice of being awake and being fully present with all parts of our life. and joy and everything in between. So this is a celebration for the birth of a teacher who taught how to be awake, who taught practices, and it was an example of practice and taught beings with one intention in mind, which was to benefit beings and help them to wake up. So today is the birth of the awakened one, which is our birthday as well, because the teaching is each one of us has the nature of awakened life.

[04:36]

This isn't something relegated to a person who lived 2,500-plus years ago in India, but the teaching that all of us have awakened nature. And we may not feel that or understand that or may not have thought that we have touched that in our lives. However, our lives cannot be separated from awakened nature. It's our nature. It's our birthright. So this ceremony today, the pageant, which enacts the Buddha's life, and also ceremonies where we offer, in a very traditional way, we offer food and sweet water and sweet tea and light and incense. These are very traditional ways to honor our own true self, actually.

[05:44]

And we honor it by in these traditional ways by having, let's say, a practice figure, like lots of these figures in this room, that awakens or resonates with our own awakened nature. And it's a chance to bring this out into actions, that which is true internally, to externalize the truth. So just a bit about the story of the Buddha's birth, and then soon after we'll see it enacted on the lawn, on the stage with wonderful characters coming to life. So I hope you're all staying for the pageant. Those of you who didn't know there was a pageant today, this will be followed by a ceremony, traditional ceremony, and then a pageant, and...

[06:51]

Many of you brought your bag lunches, and if you didn't, there's bread and peanut butter, I think, that we put out for you if you forgot your lunch. That's in the dining room in the snack area. And then there'll be tea and Buddha's birthday cake a little later and a chance to just enjoy being outside and enjoying the springtime. So the Buddha's parents were an Indian... leader of a clan, or often said King Suddhodana, and his wife Mayamaya. And they were part of the Shakyamuni Buddha from this particular clan. And the story is that Queen Mayamaya had a dream one night where a six-tusked white... a giant, a large, six-tusked white elephant came into her dreams and entered her body.

[07:59]

And when she awoke, she had conceived, so she was carrying a child. And she and Suddhodana were together in Kapilavastu, but when she felt she was about to give birth, She wanted to return to her family's kingdom, or where her family lived, and she set out to go there. And she didn't make it all the way home, but ended up giving birth in Lumbini, in Lumbini Gardens, which is in present-day Nepal. And she gave birth standing up, holding on to a sal tree. And the Buddha in the story emerged from her side, her right side painlessly. These are all motifs from many different legends, these kinds of miraculous births. So it is the same with baby Buddha.

[09:01]

And when the Buddha was born, there were all sorts of miraculous things that happened. First of all, the descriptions of him, he was this like a burnished golden color and shone. And he had... In the poem it says he has long eyelashes. And he was able to walk, and right away, with steps that were lion-like, big strides, he stepped seven steps and turned in the four directions with a lion-like gaze and pointed to the heavens and the earth and said, I alone am the world-honored one. And one might think, well, that's kind of brash, you know? Well, this is a kind of koan.

[10:03]

How is it that this little newborn baby who had these kind of miraculous attributes, what is he saying? I... and the world honored one. How so? What is this I alone? Was that pride or ego? I don't think so. This was acknowledgment of, I would say, the oneness of everyone in Buddha nature. So he named it. This is even before he had completely realized his true self, but he announced this. And another rendition of this story says, he said, I am born for enlightenment for the good of the world. This is my last birth in the world of phenomena.

[11:05]

So I'm born for awakening or enlightenment for the wheel of the world or the good of the world. This is my purpose for being here, is to benefit beings. I'm born to awaken in order to help beings. And the Buddha was born out of vow, this vow to help beings. This is what makes Buddhas. A vow, a turning to help beings and wanting to help them. helping ourselves and others at the same time. This is the awakened one's vow. This makes for awakened ones, makes for Buddhas, this vow. And it's said that the mother of Buddhas, in this story, in the legend, it's Maya Maya. Suddhodana's wife was the Buddha's mother. But in a wider practice sense, we say the mother of Buddhas is

[12:08]

is wisdom, the perfection of wisdom. And it's wisdom whose heart is compassion. That's the mother of Buddhas. From out of that, our Buddhas are born. Awakened ones are born. And this is everyone's birthright. Out of wisdom and compassion are born awakened beings, born for the wheel of the world, born to benefit beings. So you can see how this is This is a birthday that we can all celebrate. So after the Buddha took these seven steps, which we will see today in acting, you'll get to see this, there were various other signs. The Buddha had special signs on the bottom of his feet, wheels, and webbed hands and feet. a kind of whorl or whorl of hair in the middle of his forehead and various things.

[13:12]

And a sage came because he saw people celebrating and he wanted to see what it was all about. This is the sage named Asita, who was very well respected, and he came to honor the baby. This is very similar to other baby animals. birth stories, where wise sages come to pay homage and to honor. And when Asita, this sage, came, he, the Buddha was, wasn't the Buddha yet, the baby Buddha, Siddhartha, which means Siddhartha, he was named Siddhartha Gautama, and Siddhartha means to fulfill one's aims, Siddhartha. was lying in the lap of his nurse, and when Asita, the sage, came, it said that the baby Buddha put his feet on Asita's head, which was unusual.

[14:16]

And he inspected the Buddha, these different signs on the soles of the feet, and began to cry. And the Buddha's father, Suddhodana, was very concerned, what do you see? Because he was a kind of seer. You know, do you see, do you foretell something terrible is going to happen? And he said, no, no, I'm sad because this is a very, this will be a teacher for the world, this, or a sage for the world. And I am too old and won't be able to be there when, to receive the teaching. So he was sad for his own self that he wouldn't be there. So other things that happened at that time were waters came out of the sky, both warm and cool waters to wash the baby Buddha. And part of the ceremony is a bathing of the baby Buddha where dippers full of sweet tea are poured over the head of the baby Buddha.

[15:22]

And this will happen. I'm leading the ceremony, so I'll do that during the ceremony and then You'll be able to do that just throughout the morning, afternoon. The baby Buddha will be in a little pagoda of flowers because flowers fell from the sky also and rained down over the land and this water. So you'll be able to bathe the baby Buddha too. I invite you all to bathe the Buddha as part of the ceremony of today. And also, both the Buddha's parents had both joy and anxiety, or fear and joy at the exact same time with the birth of this child. And I think this is a very accurate detail in the story, because... in our love for each other and in our love for our children and parents and friends, there is within that the knowledge that nothing is guaranteed, that there is old age sickness and death that comes right along, right wedded to, unable to be separated from the life and love

[16:52]

of each person is our impermanence, and we don't know. We don't know what is to come. And we feel that. We feel that in our hearts, that with birth is birth and death. There isn't a separate birth without birth and death. However, when the Buddha taught, The teachings of wisdom allow us to enter and understand thoroughly what is birth and death, what is birth that is neither coming or going, the truth body of our life together. So these teachings in the world of birth and death, out of our love and suffering for one another comes beings who teach how to live in that world, how to wake up in that world, neither pushing away suffering nor trying to grasp on to

[18:18]

what we feel is the opposite of suffering. This becomes just more and more confused. So out of this confusion come beings who, responding to sufferings, to our sufferings, come to teach and to awaken us to our own true nature. So other things that are spoken of when the Buddha was born or when this being who's going to teach awakening is born was all throughout the land there was a peaceful, a descent of peace throughout the land. And the usual disagreements and problems among both animals and people calmed down during this. This is, you know, as a parable or as an allegory, the peace of understanding what our life is and how to live together without greed, hate, and delusion, or how to live and wake up in the midst of greed, hate, and delusion.

[19:38]

This is peace. And so in the story, this peace descended upon the land. So today in the pageant there's a poem written by one of our former abbots, Norman Fisher, where he takes these motifs from the oldest stories and brings it into a contemporary language and images and really weaves the two together. Because we are making these celebrations and these ceremonies, we are evolving and changing as we practice, the longer we practice together. So this isn't a stagnant kind of stuck way, but it's responding and evolving according to what's needed in 2011, in the 21st century.

[20:47]

So this pageant, always this current, Eau Courant, it has... It addresses what we're all facing and dealing with today. I wanted to share with you something that I found particularly humorous and also kind of poignant, too. It was from the New Yorker last week. Maybe some of you read it. It was from... the little section in The New Yorker called Shouts and Murmurs, which is a kind of humorous page, often taking something from current events or a letter or some article in the newspaper and then taking it much further in satire. So this one is called Just in Time for Spring, and it's... I wanted to bring it up because...

[21:53]

We at Green Gulch have been experiencing these beautiful, these last days of sunshine and bird song. And we did a silent walk in the evening the other night throughout the farm up the middle of Green Gulch Trail and around and through the farm. And it's wonderful to walk in silence and just allow the land and the... the sky and the wind speak and affect us without being distracted by various, could be frivolous talk and idle chatter or not, but it's wonderful to walk in silence. And we also had a sitting outside for an evening period of zazen, and everyone took their zafu, their cushion, and found a spot and sat on the lawn. And this was also a wonderful experience with lots of evening birds and there was gobbles of wild turkeys which happened to arrive and insects and breezes in the grasses and to be able to sit outside quietly, mindfully and just experience our life in a fresh way.

[23:19]

And I was thinking of how Even living at Green Melch, how often I'll find at the end of the day I spent the whole day inside doing email catch-up or house cleaning or studying or whatever, but being indoors all day. And then thinking of all the people who kind of never get outside to have a silent walk. So this kind of speaks to that, this shouts and murmurs called Just in Time for Spring. and it's introducing kind of a new game, sort of like a new... It says, Introducing Going Outside, the astounding multipurpose activity platform that will revolutionize the way you spend your time. Going outside is not a game or a program, nor a device, nor an app. not a protocol or an operating system.

[24:21]

Instead, it's a comprehensive experiential mode that lets you perceive and do things firsthand without any intervening media or technology. Going outside supports real-time experience through a seamless mind-body interface. By going outside, you'll rediscover the joy and satisfaction of actually doing something. To initiate actions, simply have your mind tell your body what to do and then do it. And then it has some examples. Example, Mary has one apple. You have zero apples. Mary says, hey, this apple is really good. You think, how can I have an apple too?

[25:22]

By going outside, it's easy. Simply go to the market physically and buy an apple. There's some other very funny ones. Going outside also supports viewing visuals in a full range of orientations. For landscape mode, simply look straight ahead at a real landscape, if you so choose. To see things to the left or the right, shift your eyes in their sockets, or turn your head from side to side. Supports, going outside supports all known and all unknown smells. Some call it the missing sense. But once you start, every time they write going outside, it's all in caps.

[26:25]

But once you start going outside, you'll revel in a world of scent that no workstation, media center, 3D movie, or smartphone can hope to match. Inhale through your nose. Smell that? That's a smell which you are experiencing in real time. Going outside enables complete interactivity with inanimate objects, animals, and nature with TM written next to nature. Enjoy the texture of real grass. Listen to authentic birds. or discover a flower that has grown up out of the earth. By going outside, you'll be astounded by the number and variety of things there are in the world. This is the last one I'll read.

[27:29]

Going outside affords you the opportunity to experience completely actual weather. You'll know if it's hot or cold in your area. because you'll feel hot or cold immediately after going outside. You'll think it's really raining when it rains, because it is. Millions of people have already tried going outside. Many of your friends may even be going outside right now. Why not join them and see what happens? It's sad, but true, you know. So our practice helps us, you know, what are we doing?

[28:32]

There's a koan that says, A monk arrived at a temple and said to Hyakujo, the head of the temple, is there something special happening at this temple? And Hyakujo said, I've been sitting on this mountain. Mountain is another name for temple. A temple, whether it's on a mountain or not. Anything special happening here at this temple? I have been sitting on this mountain. And then the monk bowed deeply. And then how could you have slapped him? But is there anything special happening here at Green Dragon Temple, this temple? I have been sitting on this mountain. Many people have been sitting on this mountain, but I have been sitting on this mountain. I alone and the world-honored one have been sitting on this mountain.

[29:34]

Who is that? It was that sitting on this mountain together. This practice is offered, it's being given away, it's being offered unconditionally and unreservedly, and you can't take it or push it away. Actually, you can live it out So I invite you to go outside today, go outside of one's own, each of our own, and explore our created world as it's changing and evolving and transforming through our practice of presence and awareness and

[30:43]

compassion so thank you all for this is a shorter lecture this morning so we have plenty of time for the rest of the activities for the day I hope you enjoy yourselves and turn this question of this birthday celebration being your birthday our birthday together. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[31:48]

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