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. Are there any people here this morning for the first time? Quite a few people. Welcome to Beginner's Mind Temple. Perfect place for beginners to show up. And you're surrounded by beginners this morning because you're here on an unusual day. This is the seventh day and the last day of our Ruhatsu Sashin. Sashin is where we have an intensive sitting for seven days we sit from 5 30 in the morning till nine o'clock at night sitting and walking meditation and we do take a two-hour break in the afternoon to clean the temple and do some exercise but it's all silent and for seven days we sit a wonderful thing to do and even if they weren't to be even if we weren't beginners when we started the seven days of sheen we're certainly beginners now

[01:26]

If there's enough surprising challenges along the way when you sit with your mind for that long. Rahatsu literally means the eighth day of the twelfth month, which is the day that traditionally is celebrated as Buddha's enlightenment. So all over Japan on December 8th, they're all sitting a seven-day sushin and ending it with the Buddha's enlightenment celebration. And, of course, this isn't the eighth day of December. Even though we've been sitting for seven days, we're still capable of understanding that. So it's sort of an interesting phenomenon. There's a group of you, of us here, that feel like you've been here forever. And then a group of people that just arrived for the first time, wondering what's going on. Anyway... One of the things that people sometimes ask me at the end of a session is, how do I bring this practice into my life, into my daily activities?

[02:39]

And so I have a little formula I give, which is, first of all, a little bit of daily sitting. If you can sit a little bit every day, if you could sit for 30 minutes, that's good. If you can sit for 20 minutes, that's good. some form of mindfulness activity during your busy work day where you have some way of staying aware of what's actually going on internally with you while you're busy. And it's also useful if you have some sort of way of looking at your conduct. We call it the precepts, some way of observing whether you're conducting your life ethically. and sometimes various mindfulness techniques to sort of wake you up to the fact that you're alive and doing all this. And then it's nice if you can meet on some regular basis with a group of people that are practicing to encourage you. So, you know, we have, I call it sangha practice, where you get to...

[03:42]

You can come here and sit with us once a week on Saturdays, or you can come to various affinity groups we have in the evening, or you can have your own small group somewhere. Some group that shares your interest in looking into practice is encouraging. And then once a year, if possible, come and spend maybe seven days sitting with no distractions. I mean, while you're sitting here for seven days, there's no Internet. There's no TV. There's no phone calls to your workplace. There's no family issues. Except for all the stuff that's still going on in your head. That's here. But it's not being reinforced by any connection to the outside. And after a while, you settle into some sense of who you are outside of all of that. Who you are outside of... all the definitions that come from your work, from your family, and outside of all the problems that you have to solve, some kind of fundamental sense of your own living beingness.

[04:52]

And that sense is a very kind of encouraging thing because, as we know, we can get quite distracted by our problems. Problems abound in our life. We're very busy, and there's many of them. And we forget. As Siddhartha would say, we forget the fact that we're alive. The fact that this phenomenal event of being a human being for you is actually going on. Because we get so distracted by solving these problems. Siddhartha used to say, I sometimes think you think your problems are more important than the fact that you are alive. And... That's just a sort of a fundamental relationship that we should try to keep straight. Anyway, so it's nice to sit a seven-day sasheen every once in a while, and I would recommend it for those of you who have a kind of interest in what it would be like to find something out about your mind in that way.

[05:58]

Well, in addition to the seven-day sasheen, we had our annual service celebrating Buddha's enlightenment this morning. wonderful ceremony where we chanted the Heart Sutra, one of our fundamental sutras, while we marched around the boot hall and threw flowers in the air to a marvelous drumbeat led by one of our students. So according to our Zen tradition, when Buddha attained enlightenment under the bow tree, he said, It is wonderful to see Buddha nature in everything and each individual. It is wonderful to see Buddha nature in everything and each individual. A slightly different translation in the transmission of the light is, I and all beings on earth together attain enlightenment at the same time.

[07:02]

So this sort of sense that enlightenment is not some kind of solo event that occurs with you alone. As the Lotus Sutra says, only a Buddha and a Buddha can be enlightened. It's that connection to something that is what enlightenment is. All the enlightenment stories in the Zen literature are always either about some a student talking to another student or a teacher and either having some kind of verbal thing that makes them connect to everything, recognize their deep connection to the whole universe, or maybe it's some physical thing, you know, twisted nose or something, or maybe it's some relationship to the natural world, the pebble hits a bamboo, a stream, moving along its way in the mountains, the autumn leaves falling, something, and you all of a sudden are awake to your life, that kind of connection.

[08:21]

And we've all had those moments in our life to remind us about what a phenomenal thing it is to be here. So, of course... It is traditional on Buddha's Enlightenment Day to say a little bit about Buddha's life and his enlightenment experience. And this, of course, who knows? 2,500 years ago, there were no written records for 500 years. I'm going to say, according to tradition, he lived from 563 to 843 B.C. And then I would say plus or minus 100 years. were pretty certain he actually lived. There was someone that lived during that period of time and started a religion. So he was born of the Shakya clan, and his appellation, his name Shakya Muni, means sage of the Shakya clan.

[09:23]

And, of course, there's all kinds of magicalness about how he was conceived. His mother, Maya, had a dream that a white elephant entered her right side and impregnated her, and she gave birth to him in a standing position while grasping a tree in a garden. And Shakyamuni emerged from Maya's right side, fully formed, and proceeded to take seven steps and say, Above the heavens and below the heavens, I alone am the only honored one. With his hand up in the air, pointing to the heavens, and his hand pointing down. Obviously a precocious child. And a lot of times on Buddha's birthday, we'll sort of explore that whole story. But since it's not his birthday today, we'll just sort of mention that. Anyway, his father was rich enough, apparently, that he lived in a palace. And apparently after he was born, there was a prediction that he would either become a great leader and ruler or a sage.

[10:29]

And his father so much wanted him to be a ruler instead of a sage that he sort of protected him. from the outside world. And he lived in this palace with beautiful women and all the food. He was a great archer. Apparently he was quite a talent as a young man. But apparently at some point in time, I can't remember exactly what the circumstances were, he ventured out of the palace into the city and he noticed three things on three different trips. He noticed old age, sickness, and death. And he had seen none of this while he was in the palace. And for some reason this triggered something in him that he wanted to know more about what was going on. Of course, this story of Shakyamuni's quest or search is kind of a metaphor for our own. At some point in time,

[11:32]

in our life. Maybe we were raised in a place with enough food and a heated house and a place to take showers and went to college or went to high school. Anyway, things were looking pretty good by most standards. And then we sort of woke up to our suffering. We noticed that, wow, things are not exactly like I thought they were going to be, this being a human being. I wonder what's going on here. I wonder if there's more to this situation than I was taught in third grade. And so our quest begins, our sort of search. And it's very similar to Buddhist search. He, at one point in time on his fourth trip, he saw a wandering holy man and he decided to leave the palace and he gave all of his clothes and riches to his assistant who took them back to the palace. And he put on the robes of a beggar and went out to practice asceticism.

[12:36]

I suspect this was a great disappointment to his father. And not only to his father, but to the entire family and village, because he was clearly a favored son of some sort. It was certainly a great disappointment to my father when I announced to him that I was not finishing my PhD in mathematics and was going off to a Zen monastery in the middle of California to do nothing. Well, Ed, why don't you just finish the thesis and then go off to your monastery? And then after you come to your senses, you can come back and be a professor of mathematics, which is what I raised you to be. Anyway, I think at some point we all sort of wake up to the fact that we're not living our parents' life anymore, and we're not even living our society's life anymore. We're stuck with this problem of how we're going to live our life.

[13:46]

And what is that? What is our life to live? How do we even know what we say around here? We talked about what our deepest intention is. What is your deepest intention? What would it mean to have your life aligned with your deepest intention as a human being? Would it be a different life than you're leading right now? Would it be just slight modifications? What is your deepest intention? A human life is certainly, by any measure, a staggering responsibility. I mean, first of all, we have such a huge effect on everything. You know, we go through a day interacting with so many people, we can barely figure out what we're doing, much less how we're affecting them. We're spewing so much energy and stuff around the world, how are we affecting the environment?

[14:49]

I mean, we're, you know, we're... we're making a lot of noise. And is it the right kind of noise or not? Anyway, so Sigurushi spent, not Sigurushi, although he spent a lot of time on monastery too. Our hero, Buddha, spent six years in ascetic practice. And he, first of all, he became a master of all the yogic meditation practices at that time in India, which were quite and were practiced by a lot of people. And apparently he, again, was quite adept at all of that and was asked by most of the teachers that he studied under that he should teach them because he was so good at it. And that wasn't really working, so he decided to take up asceticism and he almost starved himself to death. There's beautiful pictures and statues of Buddha, so thin that you can see every bone in his body. And finally, at some point in time, he had a kind of realization that that was not the way to go either.

[15:54]

And a young woman passed him while he was sort of almost passed out under a tree and gave him a bowl of rice. And he drank that and thought, well, physical austerities were not the means to achieve his spiritual liberation. Asceticism is not the way. And so he sort of set off on what he called the middle path, the middle way. It's interesting, you know, asceticism still sort of flourishes in certain ways. I remember when I first came to Zen Center, people were kind of early picking up on all of this practice, and so some people were into, like one of my friends, only ate red peppers. Period. Period. Another student went out and sat a hundred-day sashin in the woods because seven days certainly wasn't enough for him to achieve enlightenment.

[16:56]

Suzuki Roshi was always very sort of, I don't know, he had a kind of nice way of dealing with all of this. I'm sure you've all heard the story of the monk that was totally into vegan stuff, but he had taken Suzuki Roshi out for a visit to an appointment of some sort, and And they needed to have lunch, so Sigurishi said, oh, there's a nice little coffee shop, let's eat there. So they went into the coffee shop, and of course there was nothing on the menu that the student could eat. One thing, which wasn't even at all acceptable because it was cheese in it, was a cheese sandwich, which he ordered, and Sigurishi ordered a hamburger. And as soon as it was served, Sigurishi took a bite of his hamburger and said, oh, I don't, I don't, This is not really what I want. Gave the hamburger to the student. Took the cheese sandwich. He didn't like food trips that much. So, and asceticism goes on a little bit too.

[17:59]

Even there's a certain amount of asceticism when you sit a seven-day sashim. You know, you're going to sit there and no matter how much pain you're in, sitting in this posture for... hours a day or however much we sit in it can be physically taxing on your knees and back and shoulders and neck and everything so you have to you have to take care of yourself because we're not into just punishing pain and because this is not this is the metal middle way not ascetic practice because even if you do take care of yourself you still have your mental demons and this of course is the last part of the story of buddhist enlightenment he finally sat down for seven days and mara which is the sort of example we give of this the mental demons in our head came and tested him with saying you're not worthy and tested him with having beautiful maidens come and trying to lure him away from his seated posture and and when we sit at sashim that's the same thing we're sitting there and our mind says what are you doing you're not worthy go out and you know

[19:05]

leave this place or this is crazy or, you know, various things go on in our mind that would distract us from just trying to be ourself. Because sometimes we're not willing to accept what we're experiencing. We don't seem to accept that, oh, I'm experiencing this. Why is that? I shouldn't be experiencing this. Well, How do you know you shouldn't be experiencing this? This is what you're experiencing. This is the memory, the thought, the something that's come into your head at this moment. And there is some reason for that. So let's accept that to begin with. But it takes a fair amount of courage and uprightness to accept everything that's coming your way. So we sit in this posture, which is helpful. for accepting things.

[20:06]

It's kind of a noble posture. You're sitting upright. You're not leaning into your life. You're not sleeping away from your life. You're sitting upright in the middle of your life and saying, I'm going to experience what I'm going to experience and see who I am, what happens with all of this. Anyway, the wonderful... And this, of course, image here on the altar is a beautiful kind of example and inspiration for us of that sitting posture that Buddha sat in and that we sit in. Very sort of upright and kind of composed. We use composure a lot. It's one of the characteristics we like to have in our life. You're going to have many difficulties, all kinds of crazy things happen, but underneath, below that, a certain kind of composure, a certain kind of peace and joy about just being alive in the midst of all your difficulties.

[21:22]

Your suffering and difficulties will never go away. That's just the way it works. you might get more sort of settled in some of your early childhood personality difficulties, and you might get a little bit more open and generous, and that means you're just more available to other people's suffering. And they're your good friends, and they're suffering, so you suffer with them, because that's the best way to help people, is to be willing to suffer with them. But there always can be a kind of composure, a kind of joy and a kind of peace in the midst of all of that. So after Shakyamuni Buddha had his moment in the morning where he saw the morning star and said that beautiful thing,

[22:32]

I and all things are enlightened together. What did he do? Apparently for seven weeks or seven days, I can't remember, he sat there thinking, well, how can I explain this to people? What should I do? And apparently he decided, well, he would just go out and he spent the next 49 or 45 different stories, years of his life teaching. probably to over 300 to 400 assemblies, wandering from village to village, teaching what he had learned. No vacations to Paris, France. No sitting under groves of grapes and olives in Italy. Teaching a life committed to helping other people. certainly a very big inspiration until the day he died.

[23:35]

Which is a kind of reminder that no matter, even if you manage to find some personal peace, you have a responsibility in your life to help other people, or the world, or the universe. This is part of what comes along with being a human being. So that's the other side of Buddha's enlightenment story, is that it's not just about an event or something that happened a long time ago. It's about passing it along, passing this sense of life along to other people. And this is characterized in our tradition by lots of stories about transmitting the light. famous story of transmitting the light is called The World Honored One Twirls a Flower.

[24:43]

This is case six of the gateless barrier. For those of you who are not aware of these things, in Zen there's been this long tradition of having stories of interactions between students and teachers or mostly students and students that sort of epitomize a certain element of what we consider practice, and then they get recorded in collections. This is a marvelous collection of, I think, 80 of them called The Gateless Barrier. A wonderful title. A barrier with no gates. Does that mean there's no way to get through it? Or no problem getting through it? Anyway, here's the case. Once in ancient times, when the World Honored One was at Vulture Peak, he twirled a flower before his assembled disciples.

[25:44]

All were silent. Only Maka Kashapa broke into a smile. The World Honored One. The World Honored One is Buddha. He was referred to as the World Honored One. He announced that early on. Remember when he walked out of his mother's side, put his hand in the air, said, I am the World Honored One? Anyway. The World Wanted One said, I have the I-treasury of the right dharma, the subtle mind of nirvana, the true form of no form, and the flawless gate of the teaching. It is not established upon words and phrases. It is a special transmission outside tradition. I now entrust this to Maha-Kashapa. beautiful story. So it was traditional, I think, to have flowers. In fact, if you notice, we have a few flowers around our altar today.

[26:46]

We have more flowers today than we normally have because it's Buddhist enlightenment, but typically we just have one flower vase. Is that all we got right now? Maybe it was this morning that we had more flowers. If Dina was here, she would correct me on this. Did we have more flowers this morning? Put it back to normal. One quiet little vase of flowers. Anyway, somebody... Clearly we were having a party this morning with lots of flowers. We had a lot of food on the altar too. Did we offer lots of... We had rice cakes and nectarines. Nectarines and rice cakes. So I guess it was traditional with Buddha was there that somebody would come and present him with a flower. So he had this flower somebody had given him. And he held it up and Makakashapa smiled. So what's that about?

[27:48]

What did Makakashapa see or experience or what happened between the two of them? Some kind of connection beyond words and phrases. And, you know, this is quite traditional in our art. There's all kinds of stories in Zen about the teacher holds up his finger, you know. One finger is Zen, and the student goes, ah. And the teacher makes a big circle in the air. Some kind of demonstration, because the truth of our connection with each other You know, you don't need to do it in words. I mean, words are very useful. A lot of times you need to talk about things. You're not getting along well with your spouse because one of you isn't putting the dishes away or washing the dishes, and you need to talk about it.

[28:50]

But what kind of real connection exists between people at a level beyond words and phrases? And part of a sashin, of course, we spend seven days together. We're not talking to each other. The only thing we do is when we pass in the hallways, we just bow together, just honoring each other's effort, honoring each other's just being here. So this being awake enough to notice what's going on around you outside of the surface of all the words and phrases in your mind, words and phrases in the dialogues about you to see whether you can find that deep and intimate connection with your life and the other person's or tree's life. Zhao Zhou was a famous teacher who, when he was asked, what's the meaning of bodhidharma coming from the West?

[29:58]

What's the meaning of Zen practice? He said, the oak tree in the courtyard, or actually depending on the translation, the cypress tree in the courtyard, because all the courtyards in China at that time had massive, huge, hundreds of year old cypress trees. Can you relate to the cypress tree right in front of you? Can you connect with something? And it doesn't require having a bunch of words and phrases. brought this book along because I was going to read a whole bunch of interesting things in the commentary of this case. But maybe I think we don't probably have enough time for that. The eye treasury of the right dharma is a phrase that Dogen picked up for all of his essays.

[31:03]

The treasury of the true dharma eye. It's a beautiful sort of sense of the eye of the truth. I give to you." Anyway, in this story that began the transmission of Buddhist teaching to the next generation, and in our tradition that transmission has been continued generation after generation through India, through China, through Japan, one person, one person to person, warm hand to warm hand, face-to-face transmission to Suzuki Roshi, who brought it and gave it to us here in America. So I thought I would give you... It's interesting, there's hundreds and hundreds of koans, these case studies that talk about all of these teaching stories, and there's only about three or four of Buddha, which is kind of interesting.

[32:10]

But anyway, here's another one. One day the world-honored one ascended the seat. Ascending the seat is taking the teaching seat. Manjushri was the disciple that was the wisest disciple of all the disciples, spoke the gavel and said, Clearly observe the dharma of the king of dharmas. The dharma of the king of dharmas is thus. clearly observed the Dharma, the teaching of the king of teachers, Buddha, clearly observed Buddha's teaching. Wake up, everybody, he's about to say something. The world-honored one then got down from the seat. That was his lecture. It's probably an easier lecture to give

[33:15]

from some point of view, but probably you would need to be Buddha to give that lecture, which makes it harder to give. But you don't have to have as many pieces of paper in front of you. He just presented himself. See if you'd meet him. So, I thought I'd make a few comments from Suzuki Hiroshi that come from a chapter called Not Always So. This is mostly for those people that sat at the Sashin with us together for seven days. I'm actually feeling a little sad. I think I'm going to miss. People are actually going to leave. I've gotten too close to them. During a sashin, at some point in time, you get up and you're doing something and you just feel so grateful that all the people that are making such a great effort together to practice.

[34:30]

It's really something. So anyway, the title of this chapter is Not Sticking to Enlightenment. Sikharishi quotes here from the sixth ancestor. If you dwell on emptiness and stick to your practice, then that is not true zazen. So even if your zazen is great, totally concentrated and everything is wonderful, if you stick to it, already it falls off the mark. When you practice zazen moment after moment, not just on the cushion, you accept what you have now in this moment and you are satisfied with everything you do. So if you've got to the place where you can accept what you have now in this moment, you'll be satisfied with whatever you do, and when you take that out into the world, you can carry that with you. And I'm quoting him, even though it is difficult and even though you are busy, you will always have the taste of calmness in your mind, not because you stick to it, because you enjoy it.

[35:44]

Once you've had that taste of that calmness in your mind, you can bring it with you even when it's difficult and you're busy. Real enlightenment is always with you, so there is no need for you to stick to it or even think about it. Because it is always with you, difficulty itself is enlightenment. Your busy life itself is enlightened activity. That is true enlightenment. words from Suzuki Roshi on the last day of a seven-day sashin that he led. And I'm going to end with a poem. I carried this poem into every lecture I gave for the first time During a sesheen, it's quiet, except for I get up and fill this room with a bunch of noise.

[36:48]

But other than that, it's quiet. But anyway, so for every morning at 10 o'clock, I would give a lecture, and I had this poem that I was going to read at the end of the lecture, but I never had enough time. I ran out of time. Finally, yesterday, the sixth day of the sesheen, I had enough time to read this poem. Where was it? was not there. And I had been lecturing on one of our practices to go from achievement to non-achievement. That is to not get attached to, we have a lot of desires in our life. I want to do this successful thing. I want to do that. And of course, it always never really turns out exactly how we want it to turn out. So then we get disappointed. And I was giving a lecture on how you don't get attached to the results of your desire. You desire something that's good. That's The energy of our life powers our life. But if it doesn't turn out exactly the way you imagine, you accept how it turns out and deal with that.

[37:51]

So I accepted that I did not have my poem yesterday. I have brought it to read today. I'm not sure it has anything to do with the lecture I gave today, but I'm going to read this poem anyway because I'm trying to read. So you just have to go with it. Okay? This is a favor to me. Okay, and I'll end right on time. This is titled Enough by David White. Enough, these few words are enough. If not these words, this breath. If not this breath, this sitting here. This opening to life we have refused again and again until now. until now. I'll read it one more time. Enough.

[38:52]

These few words are enough. If not these words, this breath. If not this breath, this sitting here. This opening to life we have refused again and again until now. Thank you very much for coming and sharing our Buddha's Enlightenment Day with us. It's been a pleasure sitting with you here today. 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.

[39:51]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_95.42