Welcome to San Francisco Zen Center's Beginner's Mind Temple, Buddha Hall, where you are all Buddhas. Today we're having a one-day sit. It's a one-day festival. of silence. Am I making that scratching sound like something up here? That's better. Try a little lower here. Let's see if that works. Does that still pick it up?

[01:01]

No? Okay. One day sitting. And then we're having a Jukai receiving the precepts ceremony this afternoon before dinner. At about five o'clock. Is that right? Yeah. And so you're welcome. to participate in that. The Jukai receiving the precepts is a ceremony, which is a public recognition of someone entering the bodhisattva path that they've already entered many lifetimes ago. But now, in this lifetime, today, people receive the 16 bodhisattva precepts. precepts which you could say are some guideline or some intention or some recognition of how we all want to live as Buddhas.

[02:20]

How we all want to live as awakened beings. The first three of those precepts are The refuge is taking refuge in Buddha and Parma and Sangha. Buddha, what is it to be awake? What is it to be present? What is it to be here completely right now? Dharma, what is reality? What are any true words that we could say about it? And Sangha, who is it?

[03:23]

Who is the community? Who is it that you are in relation with? The three refuges work together, you know, like a tripod. None of them can stand alone. Without Sangha, there can be no Buddha. There's no... Until Shakyamuni, we recognize a Buddha, someone who, say, awakened to what it means to be completely at home. And we have inherited this form, this particular image up here. This one comes from Afghanistan. Northern Pakistan.

[04:25]

Kashmir and that area. Something to remind us that... we have, each of us, has the capacity and the intuitive sense that we'd like to be completely awake and present. But none of us can do that. Chakyamuni Buddha, the historic Buddha, couldn't do that by himself or herself. And we wouldn't know about it if there wasn't some speaking about it. So Dharma also has to do with some language, some teaching. So a week ago I was in Costa Rica and it was raining.

[05:40]

Rainy morning. And there were frogs in Costa Rica. Costa Rica, famous for frogs, which I felt connected with the Sangha here, because frog is kind of our totem animal, right? In San Francisco Zen Center. Suzuki Roshi liked frogs, talked about how frogs just sit, like we sit. And you might, if you walk around any of our Zen centers, you might notice there's some frogs. And you can even think of this Buddha up here as a frog. Just sitting there. And I learned that the frogs that you can see in the daytime are the poison ones. Walking on one One path I saw this, not a very big frog, but the size of an egg, and it was black and green, very vivid colors, green standing out, and it didn't seem to be particularly fearful.

[07:08]

Some of the walks I took there were with a biologist, and he said, well, you know, this frog can be out in the daytime. It doesn't need to be afraid. If any animal picks it up, its mouth would go numb very quickly. And it's the kind of frog that people use to make poison darts. So... You can touch it, but you wouldn't want to put it into your bloodstream or in your mouth. And then there are frogs at night that you don't see in the daytime, but you hear. And there was one... It was a sound that at first I couldn't believe. I didn't know what it was. It was just a little... It was just like a little tiny hammer hitting something metal.

[08:16]

Then when I listened closely, I could hear that there were actually two tones. Plink. In a slightly different tone. And they're actually two... I never learned the names, so I just called them the plink-plink frogs. So the plink-plink frogs... Actually, I called them the plink frogs. Because then later, another night... I was walking to a different place, and then I heard a tink, tink, tink, tink. So then there were the plink frogs and the tink, tink frogs. And so I was just becoming acquainted with the sangha and the voice of the Dharma in Costa Rica. I went there for my daughter, Robin. who also has, every year actually for the last 10 years, I think she's given me a frog calendar. And a couple of years ago she went to Costa Rica and came back with a frog t-shirt for me.

[09:20]

This time she said she wanted people to come to Costa Rica for her and have her wedding there. So we did have the wedding there. Someone asked me, was that the real wedding? And they met. Was it legal? And I said, yes, it's the real wedding, and it's not legal. They said it was too complicated to do the legal wedding in Costa Rica. And then... So that during the legal wedding in Santa Clara County... This, of course, may be interesting in the light of Proposition 8. So what's the real wedding?

[10:23]

What's the real... Who decides, you know? What is the real marriage? So we can declare a liberated space where we have a real wedding that we decide. I would say it takes at least three people, maybe four. Two people plus someone to officiate the ceremony and someone to witness the ceremony. Two witnesses would be good. I think five. Basic real wedding party. I'm just making this up, though. It makes sense. Don't you think this makes sense? Then when you have to get the state to agree, then it's another matter.

[11:26]

So there's more, say, work to be done in that. So sangha is this mark of relationship. When the Buddha began to speak, there was someone listening. That is sangha. When that person asked a question, it says, well, I don't get it. What are you talking about? That's Dharma dialogue. That's the inquiry into what is real. We've been studying here the Vimalakirti, teaching of Vimalakirti.

[12:33]

Vimalakirti a sutra that was written down probably about the same time that this Gandhara Buddha was created, maybe first or second century of this common era. And in the Vimalakirti Sutra in the chapter 7, there's a dialogue with Mandirashri Bodhisattva, the Bodhisattva, the wisdom being it. who's able to stay with Vimalakirti and have a dialogue. And Vimalakirti asks, how do you, as a bodhisattva, how do you, as someone who's a wisdom being, regard living sentient beings? And Vimalakirti goes into this whole... Basically, he says... They're like holograms, right?

[13:37]

They're not real. All these beings are not real. It says things like they're like the tracks of birds flying in the sky. So then, Manjushri asks, in that case, how... do you generate, how do you generate some feeling for them? If they're like holograms, if they're like illusions, if they're so transient. Where does this connection come from?

[14:38]

And Vimalakirti says, because of realizing that there is no Vimalakirti, because of realizing there is no self, because of this, experience of being liberated and completely relieved of the burden of having attachment to some self this is something that's so great I really want to share it with everyone else this is such a great thing to realize that there isn't any self to be attached to. And this wonderful freedom is something that I want to then convey.

[15:42]

And then there's a whole section of teaching about how to do this. And it begins by generating love, generating netta, loving kindness. And continues with the cultivation of a spirit of compassion. Of joining with the feelings of other beings who themselves are caught up in the belief of their own existence. And as a... transformative joy a realization of this is it's just so great to realize that you don't have to hold on to your idea of self and then the spirit of equanimity of seeing that everything is just what it is

[16:59]

So the poison frogs that live in the daytime are just what they are. And the plink-plink frogs that live in the dark and are afraid to come out in the daytime for good reason, they're just what they are. So this equanimity is what Vimalakirti then wanted to convey. And as the dialogue continues, there's this question about, so what is the basis? What is the basis of this teaching? And Vimalakirti says, there is no basis. There is no one thing that it depends on.

[18:14]

It is the totality. So this is this teaching that everything is mutually supportive, mutually arising. Even though there are poison frogs and other frogs that are distinct, they're sharing the same jungle. So I'm thinking that today we're all in the same jungle. So this is then Costa Rica and the rainforest and us being in this room are in relationship. Although it's dry here, the air that we breathe is connected to the breathing of the jungle, the rainforest.

[19:37]

is possible to be viewed as you know just a couple of people in relationship and it's also possible to be viewed as the next circle the people who are outside this room not in this room and then beyond that ultimately nothing is excluded So it shouldn't be such a big surprise when anything shows up. And yet people do come and tell me about when something shows up that shouldn't be here. Someone else's anger shouldn't be here. That's pretty easy. It's pretty easy to see. in a nice peaceful community, right?

[20:43]

Someone else's anger shouldn't be here. And also then my own anger shouldn't be here. So then how I live that we can live together with whatever arises, you know. things that are poisonous and things that are nourishing. And the idea then is to be willing to just see that everything that appears is arising as some teaching, actually.

[21:51]

Some opportunity for you to meet Buddha. Because it's not something that's fundamentally separate from you. So whatever comes up is also you. Earlier this week, someone was giving what we call a way-seeking mind talk here. And he mentioned that the key point was to realize that sangha doesn't exist to make me comfortable. Sangha doesn't exist. The community here, the people who are all in this room practicing to be awake together, isn't for the sake of my comfort. But it's for the sake of my enlightenment. So you might think that you want enlightenment.

[22:53]

What Buddha, you know, what Buddhists have. But then you might not like it. So to accept that Sangha, then, is whoever shows up in this room, whoever wants to... And this is an open Zendo. Anyone can come in and sit in a Zendo. Whoever shows up is immediately part of the Sangha. They don't have to do anything except show up. They don't have to be any kind of special person. They don't have to understand anything about Zen. or Buddha, or bodhisattvas, they just have to show up. Walk in the door, sit down. If they don't sit down, they say, please sit down.

[23:55]

We have a thing about that. We'd like to invite people to sit down. I particularly like to invite people to sit down when there's some agitation. Oh, it's good to sit down. So we all have some agitation. Probably there's no one here in the room right now who would say that their agitation level is absolutely zero. There's nothing that would ever upset you. Nothing that you would ever be fearful about. So then you sit down and then you discover, oh, I feel something bothering me. Now I wanted to come in and feel peaceful.

[25:05]

I wanted to come here and be... I wanted to come and be at peace and now I'm here and there's something bothering me and so maybe I should leave. Or maybe the other person should leave. Maybe they're bothering me and they should leave. Then I would be at peace. So this is our practice of understanding how that works with each other. How can we harmonize with each other? It's okay to come up and, for you to come up and tell me, you think, well, I think you should leave. I really don't like what you're doing, you know? And then we can have a conversation. This week we had, for some of the staff people, we had a diversity training having to do with class.

[26:09]

And I didn't know what to expect myself. I wasn't leading it, and so I participated in it. And there was some discomfort that came up. I think in the group I was in, we had several different sessions, so I don't know how it was with other sessions, but in the session I was in, there was some real discomfort, even to talk about class. We are... All here as Buddhas, we are people of no distinctions of rank. And I think in America also we like to have the idea that we're all equal. But does equal mean that we don't have differences? Does equal mean that we all have the same amount of money? Well, it turns out, no, we don't. Even in Zen Center. Someone who was raised in Czechoslovakia, I think you know, Eva.

[27:16]

Some of you know Eva, that Green Gulch. She said, she grew up in Czechoslovakia. I said, we were a socialist country. And you Americans called us communists. Which we thought was giving us more credit than we actually deserve. We were aspiring. to be communist. But actually, we weren't at that level. But there was some difference in that culture. There was at least some degree of reducing the disparities between people in terms of wealth. And I remember that after I lived at Green Gulch for most of the 70s, when I moved in the 80s, I was living in Mill Valley, which is a very wealthy community for the most part.

[28:25]

And one day my kids, James and Hannah, came home and they were talking about something. And they came up to me and said, Daddy, are we poor? Oh, okay, yeah. This is this dawning of this consciousness of some difference, right? I said, okay, well, we don't have much money, right? We don't have much money. All the years that I lived at Green Gulch, I didn't have much money. In fact, when I moved from Green Gulch, I was in debt to Zen Center. And... someone loaned me a car for a while. So I had a car and then found a job and started working from there. But, okay, we don't have much money, but does that define us as poor?

[29:27]

We have tremendous wealth, right, because we have each other. And not only that, they didn't really quite get it, but We have the culture of wisdom and compassion. We have the culture of dharma in our house, in our household, in our family. A great wealth. Still, you know, I had to go out and find a job. But, and creatively work out, you know, how to survive. Just as the frogs and the monkeys in the jungle have to each day deal with how to survive today. For a frog, it may be catching an insect. For a monkey, it may be finding the coconuts that were just ripe.

[30:34]

Actually, they were eating coconuts at different stages. They were sharp enough teeth to chew right into a green coconut. And then with the hard, mature coconuts, then they'd have to use rocks. They could use rocks and break coconuts. But then someone had reported that they had been out hiking, and this was a couple weeks before we got there, and they had seen two pumas, mountain lions, two pumas eating a howler monkey. So the pumas have to eat too, the jaguars. And so I thought, OK, this monkey was either slow, not paying attention, because they can scamper up the tree and be completely safe, or old or sick.

[31:42]

There are many stories of the previous lives of Buddha where Buddha is offering this body to feed a tiger. So I thought, okay, this haura monkey Buddha is feeding the puma. It's hard to accept this life, you know, that there is... birth and death. It's hard to accept that the attention that you feel is just of some separation when you emerge as different. So the teaching of equality is important to help us see that OK, we're different and at the same time, fundamentally, all part of the same fabric.

[32:50]

So this fabric, then, is not something that we can exactly name. We can't actually say. It's so vast and so subtle we can't exactly say what it is if we choose to take one part of it and hold on to it we should know how that also traps us so if I feel like I should be in a particular way I should be having peaceful thoughts. And my breath should be deep and full and relaxed.

[33:57]

If I feel that, that's something extra. I say that's something extra. Sometimes the breath may be deep and full and relaxed. But to say that it should be that way, something extra. Sometimes... you may notice that you're having negative feelings. That something's irritating. And it's a good practice to know that. Good practice to notice, oh, I'm having negative feelings. I'm being irritated. And where is that coming from? Is it coming from internal? Something internal? Or is it coming from something external? Or is it coming from the interplay of something external and internal? Most likely the case. It's often the case that something outside then activates something inside.

[35:00]

This is the way that we know that we are connected. So even something that's irritating should be some confirmation. Ah, yes. This is connection. Now if I want to push it away, then that's also connection. Even though you don't see it that way. Also connection. So in this sangha, this lineage sangha, we've been discussing this for a couple of thousand years. And occasionally we really see it clearly. Looking at my watch saying, oh, there's not so much time.

[36:05]

People are restless. People moving around. Please feel free to move around and sit comfortably. That in itself is a big question. How does this comfortably? It turns out that there's a difference between the pain that you may feel or the physical discomfort you may feel and the fear about it. So part of this sitting down that we invite people to do, part of this sitting down is to be willing to be uncomfortable for a while. So you get to know your whole being, the comfortable, the uncomfortable.

[37:09]

And notice where you are drawing the line. And notice how is it that you're drawing the line there. And what happens if you don't even move the slightest? One of our ancestors, Zhao Zhou, as a young person came and he visited various teachers. He visited Nanxuan. And Zhao Zhou visited Nanxuan. And he says, he had this question, what is the Tao? What is the way? What is it, really? And Nanxuan says, ordinary mind. Everyday mind is the Tao, the way. I like that because you can completely depend on ordinary mind.

[38:22]

You don't have to even evaluate it. It's just what it is. Whatever is in your mind is what it is. The way is right here. But Jiaojie wasn't so clear about that, so he said, well, what does it have some particular orientation, some particular disposition? And Nanshwan says, even the slightest disposition is to lose it, to miss it. So then Chiajo is still not sure. He says, so what do I do? How do I even know it? And then Nanshwan says, well, it's not a matter of knowing it.

[39:24]

not a matter of knowing it or not knowing it. Knowing it, you begin to build some hetifice, some construction in the mind. That's usually what we call knowing. But not knowing it can be kind of going to sleep, some kind of dullness. So it's not that either. So the Tao, this ordinary mind, is Right now, a parent. And then Zhao Zhao says, oh. They had a glimpse at that point. Oh, okay. He didn't have to move. He didn't have to turn toward anything. He didn't have to reorient himself. He just had to be right there. So with that glimpse, then he went off and visited Nansong and was ordained as it formally took the precepts as a Dharma practitioner.

[40:41]

He felt this is a good place to be and this is someone who understands what it is to be awake. And he came back then and spent time with Nansong. He spent a few days and then he stayed and then spent a few more days and ended up about 30 years or so. Clarifying his understanding of what is the Tao, everyday, ordinary mind, just this. So this is, that's a demonstration of Sangha. noticing that you have some place of, some uncertainty, maybe some little cloud, maybe some irritation, maybe some kind of excitement.

[41:49]

But whatever it is that you come to your fellow Dharma traveler, teacher, spiritual friend and you say, okay, here's what I'm wondering right now. This is the edge of my understanding. So let's look at this together. The place then of the way is each of us is already sitting on the diamond seat, I say. The ordinary mind is the same as the diamond seat. There isn't some other seat that Buddha sits on. I know it's hard to believe.

[42:51]

And this seat where you sit, again and again, has what you need to be completely at home. So today, those of you who are sitting, one day sitting today, please, when you return to the Zen Do, recognize that you're taking the diamond seat. You're taking the seat of awakening. Of course, you realize it now already, right? So before you even get there, You're taking the diamond seat. This is an expression that means everything is precisely just what it is. Perfect. Shining. Can you stand it?

[43:55]

To be still with it. No matter what comes up. And you'll notice, oh, I'm wiggling a little bit. Let me stop right here. Vast and absolutely precise. Maybe that's enough. You're all so beautiful. I hate to end it. Thank you for listening.

[44:54]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_95.92