In the 11th chapter of the teaching of Vimalakirti, there's a departure in that Vimalakirti, who's this layman who's been sick with all the ills of the world, and Manjushri, Bodhisattva of great wisdom, have teamed up. And they decide to go and visit Shakyamuni, the Buddha. And in the course of that, Vimalakirti greets the Buddha, bows to his feet, circumambulates seven times around the Buddha, and then invites his companions to do that. So there's this tremendous sense of respect veneration of the Buddha.

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And then Vimalakirti asks for some teaching. And at that point the Buddha says that a bodhisattva should train in the liberation of the destructible and the indestructible. The bodhisattva, someone who is interested in the enlightenment and liberation, clarity of mind, should understand the dharmas that can be destroyed and should understand the dharmas that cannot be destroyed, which are actually not dharmas, that are empty. And should respect that the practice of respecting the dharmas that can be destroyed means to not take advantage of them, to not exhaust them, to not deplete them.

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I would say to diminish them or to not Maybe to fail to love them. And that the bodhisattva should not abide in the indestructible, the uncompounded. The bodhisattva should not rest in bliss. in some particular state. So in this way the Bodhisattva has a complete understanding. Not to be just taking one side. Not to be just involved with the things of the world. But also not to ignore the things of the world.

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Not to ignore phenomena. And To know, to be able to understand how things are not things, but how things are unborn. How you and I are not separate beings. But not rest in that kind of belief either. So, This is the background of what we're doing here this evening. This evening is a full moon night. We, this morning, did the bodhisattva vow renewal ceremony. And at the conclusion of it, the dedication of that goes to

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dedicating the merit, any benefit that comes from all of our intention and all of our vows and all of our joy in being on this path is dedicated to the totality of things and to the unborn nature of beings. So there's this idea of the unborn as well as the myriad beings. A week ago I was in Costa Rica. And I went there because my daughter Robin asked me to come and be present at her wedding and perform the ceremony.

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So I had to do a role of being the father, so-called giving away the bride, and also the priest who was performing the ceremony. And I'd never been to Costa Rica before. And we were planning to... it was kind of difficult to get our flights arranged, and so we flew, as it turned out, we flew last Tuesday, which was the election, the day of the election here. And I thought, well, it's too bad. I won't be able to watch the election returns and know what's happening. But then, as it turned out, our flight was delayed. But we had to transfer from the from a major airline to a small plane. We said to the person at the counter, oh, this looks like a small plane.

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He said, no, no, it's a full 18 seats. But that plane couldn't fly because the runway was obscured by rain and clouds. And of course it couldn't land if the pilot couldn't see the runway. And that they didn't have radio or radar. I think they had radio, but they couldn't land without visible sight lines. So it turned out that we spent the night in San Jose in a hotel and watched election returns. And saw Barack Obama give an acceptance speech. And one line I think that's been quoted, if I quote it right, or if I quote it wrong, you can correct me, but he said something like, our stories are individual, but our destiny is shared.

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So that's a pretty good line. And it combines the condition and the unconditioned. The individual stories. that each of us have. And destiny, sure, but the word destiny, I thought, I have an idea about what destiny means, but I wonder. So I looked up destiny, and the root, what is it, destinare, I think it's the, what is it, the feminine past, participle in Latin but the root meaning is to make firm to establish which surprised me that we tend to think of destiny as something that is preordained so we talk sometimes casually about karma as if karma is fate

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But the meaning of karma is action, to actually take action. So the destiny that is shared is something that we all create, we establish. And it's not only that we establish it, but all of the people who have participated in this, say, cultural... development. I was about to say evolution, but then that's arguable. Cultural development, we do participate in together. And so I was reflecting on that, and I wanted to read a couple of poems tonight. One from, to begin with, from Bill Stafford. Bill Stafford grew up And Hutchinson, Kansas, which is about 35 miles from where I grew up, his older generation is no longer living.

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But I thought this poem is called Serving with Gideon. And Bill Stafford took action, actually, in this poem. And I was reflecting that this is one of many actions that contributed to Barack Obama being elected. I don't know when this happened, but it was probably... Oh yeah, I know, it happened in the 30s, it says in the poem. So this is Bill Stafford in Hutchinson, Kansas. in the 30s, serving with Gideon. Now I remember, in our town, the druggist prescribed Coca-Cola, mostly, in tapered glasses to us, and to the elevator man in a paper cup, so he could drink it elsewhere, because he was black.

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And now I remember the legion, gambling in the back room, and no women but girls. Old boys who ran the town, they were generous to their sons or the sons of friends. And of course, I was almost one. I remember winter light closing its great blue fist slowly eastward along the street in the dark then. deep as war, arched over a radio show called the 30s in the great old USA. Look down, stars. I was almost one of the boys. My mother was folding her handkerchief. The library seethed and sparked, right and wrong arced, and carefully I walked

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with my cup toward the elevator man. So this kind of action, this kind of thoughtfulness in a boy in the 30s is part of the work of taking care of the destructible dharmas. part of the work of taking care of the things that are compounded, that are put together, mutually conditioned. On the morning after the election, Lane, my wife, and I went to Denny's in San Jose, Costa Rica and ordered Gallo Pinto, the Costa Rican national dish at Denny's.

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And we talked to our waiter named Freddy about the election that had happened. And he said that he had... worked yesterday from 6 in the morning until 10 at night. And when he got home, he had to turn on the news and see what happened. And he was pretty excited about a Negro in La Casa Blanca, which is what the headlines in the Costa Rican papers were saying. But he said that he was kind of feeling us out to know where we were at. We could not disguise our approval.

[14:49]

This could be a good thing. He said, this is a new wind. This is like a new wind. And he thought it was not, said a couple of things. He said it was not something that he thought was driven by a desire for power. That it was not hungry for power, but that this was a sign that Americans were more completely grown up. And he said But this is easy for us, more difficult for you. It's easy for us because we can only hope. Difficult for you because you have to do the work to make it a reality. So this is the...

[15:56]

Just one little vignette from a waiter thinking about how these things come to be and feeling that Americans have a particular responsibility to do the work of making his hope a reality. Stories are singular. Our destinies are shared. So how to actively participate? We just had, I think some people in the room here probably participated in a diversity training for the staff here yesterday, tomorrow. Another group of us are doing the staff training in diversity.

[16:59]

I'm going to be going to Green Gulch for the morning session. Looking forward to it. And in thinking about that, I was noticing my own mixed feelings about the fact that, okay, the Proposition 8... which denies marriage to people of the same sex. This denial of this freedom to act, freedom to actually say that you can be committed to each other, this was actively supported by the bishop of San Francisco, the Catholic bishop, and according to the newspaper anyway, bringing in support, particularly of the Mormon church, and I felt, oh, this gives religion a bad name.

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And what am I doing here? And What about my own feeling about that? How do I feel that I can meet the bishop? Or anyone else who actively worked for Proposition 8. Can I meet with equanimity? This is a challenge for me. So this diversity training I think needs to include how do we How do we not, say, devalue or destroy that which is destructible? The relationship that we have with each other.

[19:15]

When I did the wedding, the marriage ceremony, I was actually surprised that my daughter, Robyn's fiancé, wanted to do all the bodhisattva precepts. We viewed the whole wedding ceremony that we usually do, and he was very enthusiastic about the bodhisattva precepts. He was just learning about Buddha Dharma. in preparing for this wedding. And the wedding is a one statement in it that I wanted to read is conveys that the vows that two people take for each other also extend to everyone. So this bodhisattva marriage

[20:23]

The way we've developed it here in this lineage in San Francisco Zen Center has this kind of a statement and it says, marriage is expressed in the giving of words, of rings, of light, but more fundamentally, it is the giving of the heart's true intention. This is an unconditional giving. For in joining oneself to another, we join ourselves to the unknown. Although you cannot know the road ahead, the way is clear in your commitment to the path and to each other. In a Buddhist wedding, we are married mind to mind, body to body, nature to nature, and true nature to true nature. Please give up your small selves and take refuge in each other. Taking refuge in each other is to take refuge in all people and all things.

[21:28]

Nothing is excluded. This is how we live together, knowing the far-reaching nature of our interdependent existence. So, in this ceremony of taking these vows, this is an active sense of destiny to establish something. To establish a direction in the unknown. Even though the causes and conditions are so variable that we say, okay, rightly, that it's inconceivable. Still, in the midst of that, we set a direction. So to take this bodhisattva path is to establish... the value of the connection and commitment in a particular way.

[22:34]

It's the kind of thing when we bow to each other and each person is completely recognized and recognized as distinct and also recognized as connected. So this turns the, I'd say, the cultural bias based on fear, based on separation. The bias, I think, it's in Proposition 8 that is, I think there's really in it, there is a fear of our own bodies, a fear of of human consciousness, that we actually have this awesome experience of consciousness.

[23:38]

It's so hard to stay still with the excruciating experience of reality that we're capable of, that our senses are capable of taking in and that our minds are capable... of seeing. It's very, very difficult to stay still and take that full comprehension. So if we can't stay still, then we get busy trying to protect ourselves. Trying to protect ourselves from the very experience of our life. And in this way, then we see each other as enemies. See each other as doing things that are frightening and that we have to defend ourselves against.

[24:48]

So how can we cultivate The capacity to be completely present with what is. Inconceivable, what is destructible and what is indestructible. So as I was just before I came down here, I thought, well, I will also pull Mary Oliver into this. So. I. I think this poem is familiar to many of you. In Blackwater Woods. Look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars of light, are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment. The long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away over the blue shoulders of the ponds, and every pond

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no matter what its name is, is nameless now. Every year, everything I have ever learned in my lifetime leads back to this, the fires and the black river of loss, whose other side is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know. To live in this world, you must be able to do three things. To love what is mortal. To hold it against your bones, knowing your own life depends on it. And when the time comes, to let it go. To let it go. So again, these three things... coming from the revelation of... the particular, the particular pond, the particular drop of water being universal.

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We say that, you know, the dew drop contains the moon, the full moon in the dew drop, the dew drop that is just falling off the crane's beak. That's in an image of Dogen's poems, right? This is the experience that we have of being willing to be intimate with things. Knowing that things are impermanent. That things are dying even as we love them. As we take care of them. As we take care of each other. And knowing that our whole experience, our whole life, is also that which is impermanent, that is gone, even as we take a hold of it, even as we breathe it.

[28:09]

And knowing that, to let it go. So this is to be willing to move from the destructible to the Uncompounded. To let it go is to have confidence in the uncompounded. To have confidence in what we call Buddha nature. So pretty difficult. And it's a big responsibility. Who can do it? I don't know. We need each other's help. Today someone was telling me how they felt disregarded at certain points during the evacuation from Tassajara when, in the case of the fire, those of you who remember, we had a fire this summer.

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And it was a messy situation, the evacuation. It was not what we'd planned, and some of us stayed and and others left and it was not so clear and this person helped me today realize that I could have done a better job I could have been clearer in communicating with the people who were there at that time and because I was hurried and I was feeling that I was under pressure I didn't communicate so clearly and so some people felt there was a rupture in the sangha at that point. And it's a reminder to me and I want to be open to hearing the part that I may not see or feel myself.

[30:22]

That part is carried by anyone else who does see it and feel it and can tell me about it. So I want to close with another Bill Stafford poem. This one, he works a lot with language. Maybe I will do two of them. Bill Stafford's father was, I'm not sure what, I think half-blood Native American. So he has a sense of tribal language. This is a short poem. Purifying the language of the tribe. Walking away means goodbye. Pointing a knife at your stomach means please don't say that again. Leaning towards you means I love you.

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Raising a finger means I enthusiastically agree. Maybe means no. Yes means maybe. Looking like this at you means you had your chance. So as a poet, he's very concerned about how we communicate. And this poem, which is the final poem in the book, this collection of his poems called The Darkness Around Us is Deep, is called A Ritual to Read to Each Other. If you don't know the kind of person I am, And I don't know the kind of person you are. A pattern that others made may prevail in the world.

[32:33]

And following the wrong God home, we may miss our star. For there is many a small betrayal in the mind. A shrug that lets the fragile sequence break. sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood storming out to play through the broken dyke. And as elephants parade, holding each elephant's tail, but if one wanders, the circus won't find the park. I call it cruel, and maybe the root of all cruelty, to know what occurs, but not recognize the fact. And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy, a remote, important region in all who talk. Though we could fool each other, we should consider, lest the parade of our mutual life gets lost in the dark.

[33:41]

For it is important that awake people be awake. or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep the signals we give yes or no or maybe should be clear the darkness around us is deep so It's pretty serious business, you know, how we communicate with each other. And so I think we do need to take it seriously, but not too serious. So it's okay if when you say, when you mean no, and you say maybe, there's some room, I think, for kind speech.

[34:48]

some gentleness and some humor. So, as I was telling someone earlier today that I'd been in Costa Rica and they said, where are your tan? Well, I was in the rain forest. It rained, in any rain. They don't even measure the rain anymore, I don't think. It's like... And every day I took a hike, a walk in the jungle, and I had, sometimes I had an ecologist, bird watcher, naturalist, ornithologist, Carlos, guiding me, who could see things that I would never see. you can look up in the trees and point out a little bird and say, you know, that's the trogon that's related to the Quetzal.

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And that there is, can you see it? No. And they set up this scope, this telescope. And then I would look and I saw a bunch of leaves up in the tree. And then they said, Now watch it. Now watch it. And then he started making some sounds. And then something started to move. And I said, what sounds are you making? And he said, I'm making sloth mating calls. And sure enough, it was a three-toed sloth that was sleeping up in the tree. And it began to move. And look around. It has kind of a wonderful, comical face. Moving very slowly. Okay, that's the way sometimes our practice is.

[36:59]

Moving very slowly. The sloth moved so slowly that I think Western... Biologists who were studying the sloth for decades thought that the sloths never came down from the tree. They thought that they stayed up in the tree the whole time of their lives. But it turns out that the sloth comes down once a week, more or less, once a week to go to the bathroom. They make the big trip all the way down out of the tree, dig a little hole, defecate in the hole, cover it back up. And then hurriedly, because of the jaguars and pumas, climbed back up into their tree. So in the place I was at, I was very fortunate to have a chance to see a sloth, thanks to Carlos.

[38:06]

And each day I was awakened by the Howler monkeys, people know. Like this wind blowing through the jungle early in the morning. It's an uncanny, you know, wild sound. And it turns out that the monkey is about the size of a cat, you know. But it sounds more like King Kong. Very, very impressive. And we were fortunate that the day of the wedding it stopped raining about an hour and a half before the wedding which they wanted to have outdoors and so we were able to have that ceremony with the Pacific Ocean and the sunset right in the background. And all of my clothes got so wet

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And they never dried out. And I came back with a suitcase that weighed about five pounds more. With wet clothes. So I didn't get a tan. It was a wasting trip. Thank you for listening.

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