This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Looking at you all helps me to arrive just a little bit more fully and completely. Thank you for all of you for being here at Beginner's Mind Temple. on this rainy, sunny, something happening out there day. So, whatever it is, it's welcomed. Whoever you are, you're welcomed. Thank you for being here. Maybe you'll help me to arrive by allowing me to join you in a brief meditation together. So if we could just sit here and find your upright, alert, Attentive posture. If you would like, you're welcome to close your eyes if that helps you to focus.

[01:05]

Otherwise, keeping them open, but gazing downward in a soft gaze. Just taking a moment to connect to the breath. Becoming aware of the inhale and the exhale. the inhale and the exhale. And on your next exhale, extend it just a little bit longer, maybe twice as long as the inhale. And before you take the next inhale, imagine that this next breath is in fact the very first breath of your life.

[02:05]

What would it feel like to know that this is your very first breath? Taste the air. Feel its temperature. Feel as it enters your nose or mouth, goes into the lungs, Notice how the body responds, how it moves to accept this mysterious, transparent, empty, spacious aliveness, how it fills your lungs and eventually makes its way to every cell of your newly born awakened body. Feel as then your body releases this first breath, surrenders it, lets it go, and fully renounces its grasp, allowing the breath to die completely.

[03:28]

And then notice a pause. before, miraculously, there's the birth of another breath. Seemingly out of nowhere, out of emptiness. And this process of birth and death of the breath continues. Breath after breath. Moment Each one unique. Each breath whole and complete in itself. With each breath we are birthing into the present moment. And dying into this present moment.

[04:34]

And just as it's almost impossible to perceive a distinction between the inhale and the exhale, even in the pause, it seems there, the inhale already includes the exhalation. And the exhalation, the basis for the next inhale. Not one, not two. Savor this breath, this mystery, this direct experience of what it means to be alive and to die with the whole universe. driving each moment in this way.

[05:43]

Thank you. Can you still taste your breath? So for those of you who don't know me, my name is David Zimmerman, and I am the head of practice, or Tanto in Japanese, here for Beginner's Mind Temple. And I have lived and practiced at Zen Center for 17 years, so they can't get rid of me for some reason. I just want to acknowledge that I think many of you are aware, and maybe even are here today, because this is a special occasion. We are celebrating Buddha's birthday today. So every year around this time here at City Center, we have this wonderful day in which we offer a Dharma talk of some sort where the speaker speaks regarding the Buddha's life in some way and some teaching.

[07:01]

And then afterwards, the more fun part of it, is we have a procession in which we go to Kaushman Park across the street And then we have a ceremony in which we celebrate the Buddha. And part of that celebration is doing a circumambulation around this beautiful pagoda that's covered in flowers, all these beautiful spring flowers. And inside the pagoda, there's this little statue of a baby Buddha who's standing like this. And we each take turns bathing the baby Buddha with the sweet water. He's standing in a pool, if you will, of sweet water. And we both take turns three times ladling the sweet water and cleansing the baby Buddha and chanting the heart of great perfect wisdom as we do so. And then we come back and we have a wonderful lunch together. So it's a simple, beautiful, sweet ceremony. It's great to have you here and I hope that you can all join.

[08:02]

Hopefully the weather will permit us to actually go to Koshland Park and if not, We may do it here in the courtyard or maybe even the dining room, depending on what happens with the weather. So we'll figure out another mystery. So I'm going to start by just giving you a little bit of overview of the Buddha's life. But I really don't want to spend a lot of time talking about his particular life story. I want to focus on something else today that's related. But many of you have heard Buddha's life story, and it's wonderful. And I have another agenda for today. Many of us are intrigued by origin stories, particularly the origin stories of those who we deeply admire. Our teachers, our spiritual leaders, people like the Buddha, like Jesus, Muhammad, particular culture and social figures like Hamilton, Martin Luther King.

[09:15]

Others have made significant impact on our lives. For me, I'm very interested in the origin story of Wonder Woman, Superman, Batman. All those intrigue us in some way. I'm going to put a plug now for the new Wonder Woman movie coming out. I'm very excited about it. And it focuses on her origins. So, I'll give a Dharma talk later about that, I'm sure. So, what were the causes and conditions that gave rise to the formation of this amazing being we call the Buddha? So, the legend has it that Shakyamuni Buddha his given name was Siddhartha Katama, was born in a garden in the town of Lumbini, which is right up on the Indian-Nepalese border. He was born over 2,500 years ago, about 6th century BC.

[10:16]

He was a son of a prominent family of the Katama clan in the Republic of Shakya. And shortly before his birth, the story goes that there was a prophecy given to his father. His mother had a dream, and then they analyzed the dream, and in the prophecy that came out of this particular dream, it was said to the king, whose name was Sudodhana, Sudodhana, I think, that's how you pronounce it, Buddha's father, that his son would either be an amazing world conqueror or a holy man or sage. Those were the two choices. And, of course, the king had a lot of concern because he wanted his son to be a world conqueror, someone noble and amazing in that way. He didn't maybe hold much credit for those who are so-called holy sages.

[11:21]

So it happens that his mother, Queen Maya, was on the way to her family in order to have the child. with her family when she went into an early labor. And she asked to step aside and go into a garden in order to have the child. And as she was kind of reaching up, looking at these beautiful sala flowers, she gave birth. But the way she gave birth wasn't the usual way that most women gave birth. The baby Buddha just kind of sprung painlessly out of her side. How many women would appreciate having that kind of birth? Very gently, sometimes the story goes, the gods and deities gently escorted the Buddha out of her side. And the Buddha then precociously stood up, took seven steps, and in each footprint where he stepped, a lotus flower bloomed.

[12:29]

And after the seven steps, the Buddha then spoke. And he said, Above the heavens, below the earth, I alone and the world honored one. Above the heavens, below the earth, I alone and the world honored one. Now, I don't know about you, but if my child would just kind of pop out of his mother's side, start walking and talking, I'd be a little freaked out. what is this thing in front of me? It's no child of mine. Anyhow, a miraculous birth, a miraculous occasion, very mythological in the way that's described. Unfortunately, seven days later, the Buddha's mother died. And his aunt, Mahavajapati, also his father's wife, ended up nursing him

[13:31]

and becoming his mother. And it also so happens that many years later, once the Buddha became the Buddha, she also became the first female disciple of the Buddha, and the first in the female ancestors. So quite a wonderful event in its own accord. So the Buddha grew up in the palace of his father. It was a very sheltered and extravagant life. But while he was there, he was very ignorant of the world, what lay outside the palace. And in large part, because his father didn't want him to know anything about the world. He wanted him to be protected from the world and so that he could guide his son into this career of being a conqueror rather than possibly a sage. And... He married, the Buddha married at the age of 16 to a girl named Yasudara.

[14:32]

And years later, he had a son named Rahula. And Rahula translates basically as fetter. Now, fetters as in kind of this idea of something that restricts you, confines you in some way. So not a great name to give a child, you know, and maybe it too was in its own sense something the Buddha had in the back of his mind about how he felt about household life. It so happens that on a fateful day in his 29th year, curiosity led him outside of the palace gates. He snuck out with an attendant in the night and wandered through the streets. And during his wandering, it is said, he came upon four divine messengers. And the first three messengers were an old man, a sick man, and a corpse. And these taught the Buddha the shocking truths of old age, sickness and death.

[15:35]

The fourth messenger was a wonder aesthetic or monk. And this particular monk revealed to him the truth that there is a path whereby all suffering can be transcended. Confronted by these truths, by these four divine messengers, the Buddha had a significant change, transformation, in which he decided to leave his life of ease and comfort and go out into the world to seek the end of suffering. So he spent six years wandering and studying and meditating, meeting with various teachers, becoming accomplished in different aesthetic and meditation practices in order to discover true liberation. And it's said, though, that even though he gave his all, he still did not find liberation that he was seeking.

[16:47]

He even went so far as almost coming to the edge of death in the way he starved himself. Finally, he decided there has to be another way And he left his friends and went to sit under a tree. Just as he did as a child, carefree, just sitting there, opening, being fully present, being fully aware, fully receiving the world, allowing the world to receive him. Just being presence itself. And he made a vow. I will not move from this seat until I awaken. Fortunately, he didn't have to sit too long, just one night, because in the morning, upon seeing the illumination of the morning star, the Buddha awoke. Or you could say he was enlightened. And he awoke to his true nature, to who he truly was, and to the nature of reality itself.

[17:54]

And then, a period of time after that, he started to teach and taught for 55 years before his death. So I'm not going to go into the rest of his life. We'll leave that for another time and place. But I do want to emphasize the first part of this amazing story and use it as a springboard for the rest of my talk. So what does the Buddha's birth have to teach us about life, about coming into our own being, about being born into this world? What does it have to teach us about Zen practice, about this sacred activity of zazen in which we get ourselves involved in here? Zazen is fundamentally the direct experience of being born now, in this very moment.

[19:00]

Right here, right now. And so the Buddha took seven steps, pointed to the sky, pointed to the earth, and said, above the heavens, below the earth, I alone and the world honored ones. Now obviously newborns can't usually do this. This is a mythological extrapolation that went on. And yet each of us can say this. From the very beginning we are born. I alone am the world honored one. How is it that we can say this? We can say it by fully being present. To right here, right now. To how it is that we're being born in this moment. just as a baby, if you ever really look and notice a baby, they're fully present, they're fully here, they're fully engaged in this moment, they're fully coming forth and abiding here as themselves, knowing this moment just as they are.

[20:10]

Just right here. And they are one with their environment. They're not separate. There's no sense of other yet. That comes later. That comes a number of months or years later in terms of our maturation as a human being as we kind of separate from our mothers and fathers and then from others and begin to develop a sense of self. But initially, the sense of self is the whole world. Whole world coming forward, whole world being present, whole world here. I alone am the world honored one in that way. being born is difficult. It can be very painful. And yet each of us, unless we were born by a cesarean birth, or maybe popped out of our mother's side like the Buddha, end up basically being born through the birth canal. Brother David Steneros, when he was here a few years ago, said something that struck me very deeply.

[21:21]

He said that the words... Anguish and anxiety come from similar Latin roots. Auguste means distress, which itself comes from the word augustus, which means narrow or narrowness. So basically, essentially, the narrowness of the birth canal. And we're all born through this narrowness. We all go through this original narrowness in order to become human beings. So this is a natural experience. This discomfort which actually leads us into life. If we resist it, if we hold back, we're going to die. We'll be stuck. So what we need to do is let go, release, open, allow ourselves to be carried forward into whatever is next in the next moment.

[22:26]

And you could say that if we hold fear in any way, if we go against the flow of what's coming, going against the flow of this kind of tightness of the birth canal, that we're going to suffer. It's going to be uncomfortable. It's kind of like we are resisting or going against the grain in some way of our lives. Kind of like wood. If you go with the grain of wood, it's very smooth and easeful. But if you go against it, it's rough. You can even get splinters. And splinters is suffering. Resistance is suffering. Fear is suffering. How do we let go into life? And a baby doesn't worry about what's coming next. They're not kind of thinking about, oh, I wonder what's outside the birth canal here. Is it going to be okay? Am I going to be okay? And the minute they're born, they leave the womb behind. They don't hold on to it.

[23:29]

They don't keep clinging to that which supported them to be in the moment before. They let go of the moment before to enter into the moment now, to fully be born here now, the fully now in this particular universe in which they have fully arrived, in this particular breath. So they have to, in a certain sense, give away the self that came before. Give away the embryonic sac. Give away the womb. Give away what was familiar and known for so long in order to be born completely and freely liberated into this next breath that they have. So we can't carry the womb with us. The womb of five minutes ago, the womb of yesterday, you know, even the womb of a thought a second ago. We have to be able to let it go so we can be born into the here and now. And this is what we are doing in Zazen in every moment.

[24:34]

We are being born into our life right here, right now, giving ourselves away completely, letting go of the womb of the moment before and arriving just here, just now. The point of celebrating the Buddha's birth is celebrating our own birth, our own life. How many people really care about someone who was born 2,500 years ago? That's nice. There were many people born before us. What matters is our relationship too, our feeling of being this shared life with this person whose teachings still impact how is it that we are being born now through this deep, intimate, ancient relationship that is nourishing us now in this moment, giving birth to us now? So each moment, our practice is being born, being born to the now.

[25:42]

And it requires us to let go of everything in order to be completely alive and engaged. And so in that first breath, we breathe in the whole universe. We take it all in. And the whole universe breathes us at the same time. So what is it to be this alone in the heavens above and the earth below? Kind of sounds a little bit egotistical, doesn't it? It's all about me. I am alone. I'm the only one here. And that is not the alone that we're talking about. That alone is a form of suffering, the form of pain and difficulty, the form of separation. The aloneness that's being talked about is aloneness that is not about duality, not about self and other.

[26:46]

It's the aloneness of oneness. It's an aloneness, if you will, of the flowers on the altar, of the light coming from the chandelier, of the glint of the rain on the trees. It's the aloneness of the whole universe that came before all the causes and conditions that brought about this present moment and which are included in this present moment here. So in this way, this is lowness is really talking about a very deep intimacy. It's this full intimacy in which there is no other, no separation. Any story of separation that we have is dukkha, is suffering, is dissatisfaction, expression of stress. We keep forgetting so often we are not alone.

[27:49]

So many times we walk through the world with this story, this idea, I am alone, rather than I am intimate with all of life, all beings. Can you feel that intimacy here and now with each other? Do you sense it? So the Buddha's declaration, I alone in the World Honored One, is a declaration of authenticity, of connectedness, of truth, of wholeness. And we can make the same declaration in every moment of our lives. I am here. I am here by virtue of all beings, all things, all of life. I declare I am one with the universe. And the universe is doing the same declaration at the same time, moment after moment. This deep intimacy is our true function.

[28:55]

How do we connect to that deep intimacy? How do we realize this true function of our lives? How do we celebrate this true function, this true intimacy? We do so by having ceremonies like Buddha's birthday today, coming together raising our voices, chanting, offering, being with each other in this wonderful way. That's how we celebrate our lives and how we celebrate being born moment after moment. And it's hard to navigate the birth canal of life. That's why we practice. That's why we keep clarifying in what ways am I still holding on and clinging to the womb of before, to this concept of the womb as self, self-centeredness. How do we let go of that particular womb of me and I and the ways in which we cling in order to be fully born into this moment?

[30:04]

What is it we have to let go of? How might we become our own, if you will, Doulas. Doulas are people who help women give birth. Attend to them. Care for them. Support them. Encourage them. Bring whatever they need. Remind them to breathe. Breathe. It's okay. Breathe. You'll be okay. Even though it's very painful, this is beautiful. This is life-giving. Remember that. Don't forget. Don't we all wish we had a coach like that all the time with us? A little life doula on our shoulders, supporting us and encouraging us. So we have to remember, however, that the three messengers are always with us. And I want to come back to the messenger of death. Because death is right here from the beginning. From the moment we are born, it's actually embedded in ourselves, in the nuclei of our very being.

[31:08]

two weeks ago, right after Sushin, I came out of Sushin and got home and got an urgent message that a friend of mine was in the hospital. And he was in the ICU and basically on his deathbed. And I rushed to the hospital because he had asked for me, both in a capacity as a priest and also as a friend of his. And was with him over the next several days, you know, several hours each day, just doing what I could to be present and to encourage him and support him in this deeply mysterious transition. And he was hooked up to many, many machines because he had a lung condition that, because of, he ended up getting pneumonia. And they put a tracheotomy in. And... Also, he was in a drug-induced coma, a medically-induced coma, for several weeks while they could figure out how to keep him alive and what it would need to be able to help him.

[32:17]

And finally, they decided, there's nothing more we can do. He won't be able to ever breathe on his own again. And so they woke him up out of the coma, basically, so his husband could tell him, you're going to die. Now imagine that. waking up and being told you only have a short while to live. So everyone came to his bedside, friends and family, family as far away as Jamaica, to be with him, to spend the last few days as a circle of love to accompany him, sing to him, celebrate with him, joke with him, just being present. And I happened to be there the moment he died. I got a call about an hour before that they were going to unplug the machines. They decided finally to do this, and he was willing to let go. And so I was there holding his hand, kind of touching his forehead, speaking to him, quietly chanting as the rest of the family and friends were circled around him, all again expressing, we love you.

[33:35]

We love you. It's okay. It's okay. It's nothing but light. From the beginning, it's light. In life, it's light. In the end, it's light. All the way through, it's luminosity. You'll be okay. And I was watching very carefully after they had unplugged the machines because I've never been with someone who died before. And I was very curious about this moment of transition, life and death. And so he was holding his hand and watching, being with him as he breathed his last breaths. They got more subtle and subtle. They had anesthetized him in such a way so there wouldn't be pain. And at some point he took his last breath. But to be honest, I couldn't quite tell you when that happened. It was so subtle. In the same way that we can't quite tell what happens between the inhale and the exhale. What is that moment of transformation?

[34:36]

Sure, there was a couple of gasps, which is natural as the body, in its own conditioned way, reaches for air. But beyond that, there was really no sense of this separation between life and death. It was very peaceful, very at ease. And after he died, You could quickly see. It was quite unique to see how his body began to change and take on the appearance of a corpse. The color changed. The skin tone changed. Something settled. Something deepened. Something became deeply still. And all the way, this was very subtle. And so we bathed him like we would the baby Buddha. And then we laid flowers around him. this beautiful array of flowers to support him in his transition.

[35:39]

And sang to him. And kind of just this way of celebrating this amazing life of this wonderful person as he birthed into his death. Again, no difference. Life, death. It just became kind of one in that moment. Life, death. Not two. But thinking again about the breath, the miracle of breath, what it was like to meditate with him as he struggled to breathe, as he depended on machines to keep him alive. And as I was thinking of the breath, I was thinking of how the breath itself is this kind of miracle. We use it as a touchstone for our meditation so often, coming back to us to ground us and to root us. and how in which this unique kind of space and matter converge and convene and integrate and become something other.

[36:47]

Kind of the way in which the breath is this boundless, potent emptiness. As I was with him on his last breaths, I was reminded of Mjogan Steve Stukki's death poem. in which Yogan was the former abbot of Zen Center. He died in December of 2013. And he wrote, a few days before he died, a poem, which is a tradition that many Zen masters do. And so this death poem was going through my head while I was with my friend Paul. And this is the poem. This human body truly is the entire universe, entire cosmos. Each breath of mine is equally one of yours, my darling. This tender abiding in my life is the fierce, glowing fire of inner breath, linking with all pre-phenomenon, flashing to the distant horizon, from right here now to just this.

[37:56]

Now the horizon itself drops away. Bodhi. let me read this again this human body truly is the entire cosmos we are the universe each breath of mine is equally one of yours my darling one breath so intimate this tender abiding in my life is the fierce glowing fire of inner breath There's that sweet vulnerability of each of our particularity in the midst of our interconnectedness, in the midst of this glow of life itself. Linking with all pre-phenomena, flashing to the distant horizon. From right here now to just this. Now the horizon itself drops away.

[39:01]

Bodhi, svaha. Now the horizon of self, itself, drops away. There's no longer anything to measure, to gauge, to say there's a dividing line between self or other, life and death. Bodhi, awake. Svaha, so be it. Wow. Amazing. Just like this. It's thus. I think Steve fooled us when he wrote this poem. You might think it's a death poem, but I think it's a birth poem. I think every line in here speaks to birth, to living, to coming into life, into being, to letting go of the horizon of self-grasping and self-clinging, to connect with the fire of our lives, to illuminate, to be illuminated, to be illumination itself.

[40:03]

boundless, vast, empty, everywhere, birthing, birthing, birthing. It's endless. It's interesting that the Chinese character for nature is means basically, shows, the characters show the mind giving birth. The mind giving birth. What is our true nature? What is it that gives birth to this moment? What mind are you giving birth to in this moment? Is it the mind of liberation? Or the mind of clinging and grasping? You get to choose. That's what our practice is helping us to do.

[41:08]

Deciding how does this one want to enter in as a liberated being into this moment. You're already that way. We forget that. We're already that way. And yet we still need to go through the birth canal of what it is to be human and discover it. Be intimate. with that particular narrowness, that suffering, that difficulty, to be familiar with it, to come to love it, to come to know it's what makes who we are. It's our origin story. But don't be fooled by thinking that the trauma of life is your origin. Who are you really? Who is the true self? What is it that doesn't die? What is there before life and death, birth and death? Return to that one. Return to that source.

[42:10]

Abide in that source. You're already there. You're already intimate with it. How do you get to know it? How do you live there each and every moment? So I hope you'll be interested in joining us today for the procession, wherever it goes. Who knows? This is a mystery. We'll find out as soon as the Eno stands up and tells us what's going to happen. But stay close to your breath. Stay close to the experience of being born in each moment. Don't step away from that. Don't pretend that you already know it. Don't hang out in the womb. afraid to enter into the birth canal of your life. Yes, it's difficult. Yes, it's painful. But it's amazing.

[43:11]

And it's the only way you're going to live, to be completely born here and now with each other. We're not alone in this. Everyone is doing this together. It's kind of one universal birth canal. Enjoy the ride, you know, and celebrate your life. Celebrate who you are. Let me read Steve's poem one more time. This human body truly is the entire cosmos. Each breath of mine is equally one of yours, my darling. This tender abiding in my life is the fierce, blowing fire of inner breath, linking with all pre-phenomenon flashing to the distant horizon from right here now to just this. Now the horizon itself drops away.

[44:13]

Bodhi, awake, so be it. It is so. Thank you. 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 sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[44:52]

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