This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. Thank you for coming here in such a great number on this podcast. A little bit foggy, Equinox Day. Welcome to Green Girls Farm. And welcome to all of those who join me, who join us here online. My name is Timo, and one of my jobs is here to schedule Sunday speakers. And so I got very much encouraged to invite myself to talk today. I need a lot of encouragement for that, and I thank very much our Abbot to you who can't be here today for encouragement, for lots of encouragement.

[01:09]

I wanted to talk today about a ceremony, a special ceremony of our tradition called Jukkai, or lay ordination or bodhisattva initiation ceremony chukai the term comes from ju means receiving and kai means precepts so it's about receiving the precepts and i thought i'd talk about it today because um we just had a chukai the day before yesterday then we have one this afternoon and then we have one again next sunday afternoon So to my mind came like, oh, that it seems like becoming a bodhisattva is really high interest. It's like bullish. It's high in trade at the moment. So for those who are not familiar, or maybe there are some friends here who want to participate or cannot participate in the ceremony, I thought like I talk a little bit about the

[02:28]

structure of the ceremony, and then I talk about the precepts, and then maybe a little bit about how they came into my life, how they developed in my life. Yeah, let's start with ceremony itself. So at the beginning of the ceremony, the The ordinands are led around and chanted, and then they come in, and then there's an invocation of all the Buddhas to be present by name. And after that invocation, there comes a part where all the ordinands receive a small version of a rope called rakusu. And just for those who... have no idea how that looks like. Maybe there's a little bit of feedback in there.

[03:30]

Can we reduce that a little bit? And so this is just a version of a small rope. There's a large rope, which I'm wearing, and then all the lay ordinarians have sawn their own rakusu. And this is, you see this is a complex pattern. It's mimicking the rice fields. And so with every stitch which they sawn into the rakosu, they took refuge in Buddha. They say like namo, kye, butsu, with every stitch they do. And so this is part of what is transmitted. And on the back of the rakosu, not of this one, but usually there is then the name which is given to the student, a new Buddhist name, and so they receive their rakasu, their robe, and their name, and then there comes a purification part of the ceremony, and then after that they receive the bodhisattva precepts.

[04:48]

And in our lineage, There are like 16 bodhisattva precepts. And I know most of you know them, but I felt like it's still a good idea to just bring them up and to repeat them here. So there are the first three ones are called grave precepts. And they are essentially taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. And then there comes three pure precepts, which are committing to, I'm just thinking about how they start. Embrace and sustain. Thank you very much, text. I'm glad I wrote it down. Embrace and sustain. right conduct is the first one.

[05:50]

Or sometimes it's actually called ceremonies, forms and ceremonies, which is not equal, but sort of related to conduct. Then the second one is embrace and sustain all good. And the third one is embrace and sustain all beings. So these were the three pure precepts. And then comes the 10 And then we are done. It comes at 10 major precepts. And the 10 major is not killing, not stealing, not intoxicating mind or body of self or others, not misusing sexuality, not lying, not slandering, not being possessive of anything, not praising self at the expense of others, not having ill will, and not disparaging the triple treasure.

[07:04]

And the triple treasure is Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. When I just listed them, I actually felt the strength of the precepts. But looking at my history, I have to confess, when I heard these precepts for the first time, I was not impressed at all. Maybe to the background, I'm coming from a very Catholic background. And so I was very used to the 10 amendments and to some other things. And I left this phase because I really felt like I am not interested in this religious stuff and in these rules.

[08:06]

And that is not fulfilling in any way my yearning of what I was looking for. And so I actually moved to then. to sort of get rid of that baggage. And my idea of Zen was like, oh, Zen is not about thinking good or bad. I mean, Zen is like this thing which is this transmission outside of any rules or scriptures. It's like emptiness. And, or like koans, you know, like, I was really interested in like, how does the clapping of one hand sound? And I thought, oh my goodness, once I solved that question, I will have no questions in my life anymore. Why would I? So, that's sort of what I came to Zen for and I definitely was not into

[09:15]

into this rule thingies. Maybe in a nutshell you could say, like, I was into enlightenment, even if I didn't say that. So that's what I was looking for. And so you might have heard that saying, like, the thing you want to escape, I mean, will chase you. And I think so... It might have happened. So this was all like maybe more than 30 years ago. And then in 2000, that's now already 24 years ago. In 2000, I went to a Zen retreat in the UK, Gaia House. And there something very unexpected for me happened. I was very involved in a Zen group in Germany. And I met this teacher, and I realized this is actually the teacher I was looking for in my whole life.

[10:22]

And it could not be clearer than that. So I did not expect that experience, but that was for me like, yes. And you might expect the only odd thing was this teacher was really into precepts, and Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and all that religious stuff which I had hoped to escape. So that's how things happen in life. And I remember actually one day I asked my teacher if there is anything for me in addition to giving up my my aversion against these figures and these rules and these things, is there anything in addition to that other than giving up aversion? And he said, no, I don't think so for you.

[11:26]

I think that's enough. So after that, it took me only like a short 10 years until i asked my teacher for receiving the precepts and um yeah you could ask like what what happened what happened in these 10 years and um i would say i warmed up to them very slowly and One reason maybe was just like I was getting older and I was more and more appreciating people having commitments to ethical and moral values and how that is beneficial and necessary for the connection, for the harmony in the world.

[12:36]

And... So that was one of the main warm-up aspects. And the other one which addressed more my aversion was that I also realized or found out that actually these precepts are in a way addressing what I was looking for. And maybe I didn't call it enlightenment at this point anymore, but maybe more like the understanding of the reality, of the inconceivable reality. So these were the two parts, I think, I felt about the precepts. And interestingly, you might have heard, the meaning of the precepts is often divided in two parts.

[13:38]

namely the conventional and the absolute. And so I want to talk about them a little bit. It's so funny that, again, Zen, just like, Zen is the teaching to let go of concepts. And then it gets very precise and detailed into these different concepts. And I have to admit, I'm not using actually perfectly the concept of ultimate truth. If some scholars are here, they might win what I'm saying about the ultimate. But yeah, so then you get this concept, and then finally you think, oh yeah, I got them. And then comes, if you have a good teacher, and then comes the teacher and says like, no, no, no, no. And takes this all away. It's the same with forms here in the Zendo. sometimes you know like we are very precise in our forms and we know exactly what to do and then the next day they are just they're just different so going back um so i want to talk a little bit about the conventional now and what i call the ultimate or let's say the inconceivable non-conventional truth of the precepts and i want to do that and just on the example

[14:57]

of one precept, which is simple to understand, like not stealing, or sometimes translated as not taking what is not given. And the conventional truth, of course, of not stealing seems very obvious. I mean, everybody has an idea what that means. But also we could all probably mention to go a little bit deeper, go a little bit more subtle. There is not stealing, but when you think about not taking what is not given, that opens up a little bit of a bigger field of like what we might do, which nobody would call stealing, but what we feel ourselves is maybe taken what is not given. And, I mean, if I could just give one, a simple example.

[16:01]

It's more like a confession. And, of course, I have much stronger ones. This is just a confession because I'm also recorded here for the Internet. This is a confession. This is a confession which I can have okay to be on the Internet. It's not that I'm as good, that I have not much worse ones, but I can tell them to you outside. LAUGHTER So what came to my mind is like, it's Mexican night dinner here. We call it Mexican dinner. It's very good dinner. And what is served there is, for example, guacamole or avocado as whole pieces. And I love guacamole and avocado. So, you know, you're standing in the line and you... finally come to the servings, to the buffet table, and you see, oh, there is not so much left. Still pretty good, but not so much. And then you look behind you and see like, that line is pretty long.

[17:05]

And then you have your plate, and you put some things on your plate, and you realize, hmm, maybe this is a little bit more than if you would equally divide that on all of the people standing behind you. And then, yeah. And then I have that on my plate. And one way I realize this is not completely okay is like, I can see, I think, I want to hide a little bit something here. I mean, if somebody would come up for me, it's like, oh, can I make a movie of this? You know, like, how our head of practice, I'm Tando, head of practice is picking up his guacamole and then zoom into the line. And we watched it then on movie night, and so he's like, mmm.

[18:07]

So, yeah. Anyway, so you can imagine there are a million other ways how you could think about taking what is not given and applying that. I mean, even from, not from others, even from your own body or so, where you might think like, this is asking too much. It's not freely given what I request from this body, from this mind or so. And... One thing, maybe going back to the guacamole example, but what comes up is like, if you don't follow the precepts, you get easily into a situation where, what I said was, where you try to hide, where you try to exclude something, exclude the other people in the room, or exclude your mind, which tries to tell you that this is maybe not okay.

[19:13]

And so you get in a shape, your mind gets in a shape where it is just not completely open. It's not open for meeting the present. And in this way, if we follow the precepts, it gives us the container gives us a container where we are sort of in some way protected from the situation where we want to exclude ourselves. So that's one very important aspect. And by protecting us from going into this mind state of closing down, it allows us to open up to receive, to open up to what... recall maybe the reality as a whole the unconventional reality and so one aspect of practicing the conventional um precepts the precepts in a conventional way as i just mentioned is just to help us to stay upright in the situation and another one

[20:39]

is like i think the precepts are giving us or painting us a picture of this not conceivable reality like each picture each precept paints a little bit of a different color of that reality and so if we follow the precepts we observe them we sort of align, we align our mind to the reality and therefore allow us to move more freely. That's one idea how the conventional moves us forward to the more ultimate truth of the precepts. Maybe I talk a little bit about the non-conventional, I would say now, and ultimate understanding of reality in Buddhism in general.

[21:56]

I think... So one way to say it is like that the... not... the reality as we cannot perceive it is like that in every moment all things arise together with each other all things arise together and things are not separate from each other so everything is connected and this whole process even on top and that is called the ultimate is also an empty process that cannot be found. So it's a complete, vast, non-dual picture of reality. And Suzuki Roshi often uses to bring up that picture to something we can relate on, the picture of a screen and a movie. You probably have all heard about that, where the screen is the ultimate reality onto which the

[23:07]

the movie, the conventional, is projected on. And so the screen sort of just reflects what is. But because the screen has no contrast itself, we cannot catch the screen. We just see the movie. There's no way to really grasp the screen on which everything is completely connected. And when I thought about that picture, the next morning I was standing in front of the mirror and I was like, oh yeah, it's just the same. Of course, the mirror is just a screen. And even knowing that there is a screen, there is a silver layer behind the mirror, I tried to select, can I sort of see, find somehow that silver layer behind the mirror on which everything is reflected? And you probably... try it but it's impossible I mean it's really like even if you know and you try that it's just no way because the only thing we receive is reflection maybe if it's damaged on the side you can see a little bit of it but yeah so how about now

[24:31]

if the teaching is true we are all facing this inconceivable reality just directly right in front of our face how nothing is separate how all things are connected how they are just reflections how the screen never changes anybody here who volunteers to see it the problem is it's not visible not only for our eyes it's not visible for any of our perceptions and the reason or one simple explanation would be it's just our perceptions itself

[25:42]

It includes everything. When I try to reach for it, then reaching for it is the screen. And when I think about it, then the thinking is not separate from the screen. And so in this way, you could say the ultimate truth is that we might be yearning for to feel at home is just in plain sight or let's say in plain light. And we don't see it because we are light ourselves. And maybe going briefly back to the precept of taking what is not given.

[26:43]

In this ultimate view, which is just one aspect of the reality, in this ultimate view, of course, there is nothing taken or given because nothing changes, everything is connected or appears with each other. And so there is one description of that precept view in the ultimate from our founder Dogen. He actually has a nice description from every single precept which we usually hear in the conventional view. He has a written version of the ultimate view too. And the ultimate poetic view of this precept taking what is not given says, in the suchness of mind and object, In the suchness of mind and object, the gate of liberation is open.

[27:47]

What I think to realize that suchness of mind and object, what we need to do is to take a leap. There is no way we can grasp with our perception, we can climb into this realization. There is no holes there anywhere. That's why I say a leap, and it's a leap into unknown there's nothing of our concepts which reach that and so a leap into the unknown sometimes it's described in zen like just jumping from a hundred foot pole for that leap we need quite a bit of courage because we are usually used to just like to cling on and to feel safe in what we know about the world and to leap into the unknown needs the courage to let all of that go and practicing the precepts in its conventional way gives us that courage and it gives us that courage

[29:46]

for one reason is that we get used by practicing the precepts, our mind gets in a shape, gets transformed, which resembles this ultimate reality. And so, by practicing the precepts, there is a familiarity which grows even though, of course, we are fully it. a familiarity which allows this strange thing of what we call needs courage. Maybe I end here with a short sentence of a koan.

[30:50]

And that is a koan which I feel very nicely describes how to wholeheartedly follow conventionally the precepts. And the koan is called Yunnan's Great Compassion. and it stars the bodhisattva avalokiteshvara which is the professional in compassion and helping beings or in you could say following precepts embodying precepts and the coran goes like that union asked the war what does the bodhisattva of great compassion What does she do with so many hands and eyes? And Da Wu said, it's like someone reaching back for the pillow at night.

[31:58]

I feel this is a wonderful picture. brought many more things to say but I think I'll just stop here 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 sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[33:02]

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