This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. The Lord was reading a book in a room. Lumpyan was planing a wheel outside in the hall. Lempion put aside his mallet and chisel, came up to the Lord and said, my Lord, may I ask, what are you reading? The Lord said, a book of the sages. Lempion said, are the sages alive? The Lord said, they're already dead. Lempion said, then what you are reading is the dregs of the ancients. The Lord said, when a monarch reads a book, how can a wheelwright discuss it?

[01:06]

If you have an explanation, all right. If not, then you will die. Lempian said, I look upon this in light of my own work. When I plane a wheel, if I go slowly, it is easy going, but not firm. If I go quickly, it is hard and it doesn't go in. Not going slowly or quickly, I find it in my hands and accord with it in my mind, but my mouth can't express it in words. There is an art to it, but I can't teach it to my child, and my child can't learn it from me. Therefore, I have been at it for 70 years, grown old, making carts. The people of old and that which they couldn't transmit have died.

[02:11]

Therefore, what you are reading, sir, is the dregs of the ancients. Good morning, everyone. I'm kind of wondering how you're all feeling. The Buddha said that we only have three choices when it comes to feelings, either positive, negative, or neutral. And I would say that for me today and recently, feelings are mostly somewhat negative. full of intermittent bouts of pain and fear. And as our First Lady, Michelle Obama, said in her passionate and, as always, articulate speech, it was last Thursday in New Hampshire, if you haven't heard it yet, you might want to do so, I wish this were just a bad dream and that I could simply ignore it.

[03:24]

wake up and find that it was over. Well, in fact, Buddha's teaching tells us that this is a dream. A dream that is dreaming us. And furthermore, that we are the makers of the dream. Dreams of yesterday making today and dreams of today making tomorrow. But it seems like an endless stream, a story. Unfortunately for her and me, and maybe for most of you as well, dreams, including those as bad as this one, have a great and terrible power to destroy lives, to violate human decency, and to incur deaths of horror and anguish that can never be repaid.

[04:26]

This particular dream that we are living through right now was originally authored by the founding brothers of this nation, using words I was given to memorize many long years ago. We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and ensure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and to our posterity to ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. So this dream, when viewed in the light of our own work, the work both of each of us as individuals, but also as a nation, has been turned by some into a nightmare of vicious, slanderous speech, advocacy of sexual assault, outright lies, and worst of all, justifications for such immoral behavior.

[05:51]

In the name of what? In the name of what? Economic prosperity? Military prowess? World dominance? Or is it simply the veiling, yet again, of an insidious belief in ethnic and racial superiority? such beliefs and actions as emperors are wont to do, while slurping on the dregs of human history. So much has been said, and a lot of which I've been reading and streaming, about what's happening right now in our nation, in our world. And yet, no matter how deeply I listen and consider the words of others, I am left to find my own words and to take my own actions while holding a balancing scale in my hands.

[07:04]

On one side of the scale are the teachings of the Buddha. Compassion, kindness, respect, diligence, equity, nonviolence, generosity, patience, the words and the work of our hearts. And on the other side are the seemingly inborn reactivities, certainly within my own all-too-human self, of malice, aggression, hatefulness, resentment, and revenge. I've been told that hatred in the form of anger and rage are a normal response when we humans are threatened, thereby allowing us to cohere into a separate and well-defended self against a terrible fear of an unbearable fragmentation.

[08:09]

That cohering of a self, ironically, is exactly the fragmented distortion of reality that the Buddha awakened from. Reactivity in the face of fear is the working of our minds when they are cut off from our hearts, cut off from our common sense, our common decency, and our common cause. When we, the people, become me, the person, and boy, that person is really mad. You know, mad as a March hare. I found it very interesting and timely to note that the March hare is a common British-English phrase based on a popular belief about a hare's behavior at the beginning of the long breeding season, which lasts from February to September in Britain.

[09:15]

Early in the season, unreceptive females often use their forelegs to repel over enthusiastic males, which led to an incorrect belief that these bouts were between males fighting over breeding rights, rather than females simply protecting themselves. Anyway, back to the balancing scale. So what's a girl to do, as my therapist would often say in response to one of my current dilemmas at the time? And for many reasons, including discovering that fighting with my forearms wasn't enough, this girl decided to take a vow. The vow to live for the benefit of all beings, men, women, children, Rabbits, lettuce, chickens, all beans.

[10:22]

Because of that vow, I am committed to understand the waters in which all of us are now swimming through the lens of the Buddha's awakened insight. It's called the show of Ogenzo, the treasury of the true Dharma eye. So whether or not there was such a person who lived and walked around northern India a few thousand years ago, the ideas that he taught, the way he behaved toward everyone, his commitment to kindness and nonviolence are to me more inspiring and worthy of emulation than the urges within my own body and mind right now to speak or behave in an ill-considered way. Tempting as that is. Recently, here at Green Gulch, we invited Angel Kyoto Williams. Some of you may know.

[11:27]

She's an African-American Zen teacher. She came to speak here on behalf of our diversity and inclusivity initiatives. And also because she's our friend. She's an author of two much acclaimed books, the first Zen and the Art of Living with Fearlessness and Grace, and most recently Radical Dharma, Talking Race, Love, and Liberation. So during the question and answer period, at the end of her talk, one of the students who was there, who's also African American and identified as gay, asked her about the pain and anger that he felt when his friends didn't understand how it was to be subject to continuous, near-continuous microaggression. You know, particularly, obviously, in this society which presumes that normal means white, straight, middle class, and college educated, much as our Zen Center population appears to be.

[12:39]

Reverend Cotto gave an answer that seemed really important to me and to all of us who were working on these seemingly intractable forces of hatred of the other, meaning those that we deem to be different from ourselves. You are not like me. I don't like you. She said to the young man, don't make a martyr of yourself. Don't take on all the illness of this racist society. that will only make you sick and will exhaust you. Let those of us who have gained some immunity through years of hard work and Buddhist practice, let us hold these painful experiences and begin the long, slow work of showing white people how they are hurting themselves, as well as those they perceive as other. And then later that day, While we were having lunch, she told us a story of microaggression that had just taken place in our very dining room when someone had approached her and interrupted a conversation with a kind of veiled but blatantly racist comment.

[13:57]

After telling her story, one of our other very well-intentioned students defended the action by saying, well, they were probably just trying to be friendly. Angel Kyoto did not reply in anger or with hostility, but simply waited for a while, continued talking, and then later in the conversation pointed out to all of us how it is that white people will come to the rescue of each other whenever there are reports of microaggression based on race, thereby dismissing the validity of the impact with the all-too-familiar defense. Well, that's not what was intended, after all. or as we have recently heard in regards to aggression against women, that was just locker room talk. No big deal. So the first lesson I am wanting to learn is that my intention is not what matters.

[15:03]

What matters is the impact that my actions have on others. And what matters is that I am willing to hear about it, and I'm willing to consider carefully a compassionate and hate free response such as I'm sorry I'm sorry and I'll do my best to learn how that must feel to you this is called empathy empathy empathy is a willingness to have one foot in the another person's experience by developing a capacity to de-center from our own self-centered point of view. In Buddhism, this is called exchanging points of view or exchanging self and other. By exchanging self for other, we might actually begin to understand what is meant by the teaching that there is no self without the other.

[16:10]

that the other is, in fact, myself. And therefore, I must care for myself, educate myself, nurture myself, and bring good medicine to cure the sufferings of my illnesses, such as hatred, avarice, and ignorance. But also, there are times, such as now, when I must stop myself. before great harm is done to those who have yet to understand what is and isn't meant by truth, by telling the truth. In a very famous passage from the Vimalakirti Sutra, this teaching of shifting your perspective in order to arrive at an understanding of the truth of selflessness is given in an uncharacteristically humorous way, as sutras go. when a goddess transforms a male monk into a woman.

[17:17]

Imagine that. So I'm going to spend a little bit of time with this sutra because it is the kind of medicine I think that we need in order to face this troubling appearance of an other with the power to scare all of us to death. Just as Mara, the evil one, the master of illusion, attempted to do to the Buddha. For those of you who aren't familiar with this sutra, it has been held in very high esteem in East Asia, in China, in India, in Japan, also Southeast Asia, for many, many centuries, in particular by lay people, who were often left with the impression that the only people who could become liberated were the monks, in particular the male monks. So this story opens with a large gathering of monks in the city of Aishali who are surrounding the Buddha as he's offering some teachings.

[18:22]

And meanwhile, in another part of town, the layman, Vimalakirti, who the Buddha hears has taken ill, asks why no one has come to check on him. Vimalakirti lives with the deportment of a Buddha, but also has accumulated great wealth and social standing, which he uses to sustain the poor, the helpless, and the ignorant. So the Buddha then requests that his monks go and visit the layman and ask after his health. One by one, each of them tells the Buddha about a time that they met up with Vimalakirti and how he had embarrassed them. by pointing out the limitations of their practice and their understanding. Therefore, none of them wants to go to visit in fear of being embarrassed once again. Eventually, Manju Sri, who's considered to be the wisest of the Buddha's disciples, agrees to go and visit Vimalakirti, saying, although he cannot be withstood by someone of my feeble defenses, still, sustained by the grace of the Buddha,

[19:37]

I will go to him and will converse with him as well as I can. So off he goes, followed in short order by all of the other reluctant monks who think to themselves, surely the conversations of the young prince Manju Sri and that good man will result in a profound teaching of the Dharma. And it does for many chapters on end. And one of them is called the goddess. So I'm going to begin by reading to you a small sample of the style of Vimalakirti's teaching, which opens this chapter. Thereupon, Manjushri, the crown prince, is the figure that's seated on our altar here in the center of the room, addressed the Lachabi Vimalakirti, "'Good sir, how should a bodhisattva regard all living beings?' How should a bodhisattva regard all living beings?

[20:39]

Vimalakirti replies, Manjushri, a bodhisattva should regard all living beings as a wise person regards the reflection of the moon in the water, or as a magician regards a person created by magic. They should be regarded like a face in a mirror, like the water of a mirage, like the sound of an echo. like a mass of clouds in the sky, like the previous moment of a ball of foam, like the appearance and disappearance of a bubble of water, like a flash of lightning, like a sprout from a rotten seed, like a tortoise hair coat, like the fun of games for one who wishes to die, like the perception of color in one blind from birth, like the track of a bird in the sky. Manjushri then asks a follow-up question.

[21:42]

Noble sir, if a bodhisattva considers all living beings in such a way, then how do they generate the great love toward them? The layman replies, just as I have realized the Dharma, so should I teach it to living beings. Thereby, we generate the love that is truly a refuge for all living beings, the love that is peaceful because free of grasping, the love that is not feverish because it's free of passions, the love that accords with reality because it is equanimous in all three times, past, present, and future, the love that is without conflict, free from violence. The love that is non-dual because it is involved with neither the external object nor the internal self. The love that is imperturbable because totally ultimate. The love that is happiness because it introduces living beings to the happiness of a Buddha.

[22:50]

So while this conversation is going on, a goddess who had once lived in that very house overhears and is delighted by the teachings. So she proceeds to manifest in a material form, and being overjoyed, she showers the congregation with heavenly flowers. So those flowers that land on the bodhisattvas fall onto the ground. But the ones that landed on the great disciples, called the arhats, stick to their robes and do not fall off. The great disciples then shake the flowers, but still they won't come off. When the goddess asks them why they are doing that, Shariputra, who is usually depicted in Mahayana sutras as a bit too literal in his understanding of the teachings and also in his attachment to the monastic deportment, Shariputra says, goddess, these flowers are not proper for religious persons, and we are trying to shake them off.

[23:55]

The goddess then begins a lengthy engagement with Shariputra about the true nature of reality. Shariputra, she says, these flowers have neither discursive thought nor discrimination. But the elder, Shariputra, has both of those. One who is without such thoughts is always proper. This dialogue continues for a while until the monk becomes somewhat awed by the goddess and her teaching. And then he asks her what prevents her from transforming herself out of her female state. There being a long-standing belief in the early Buddhist tradition that women could not be enlightened until they somehow transformed into men. The goddess then responds, although I have sought my female state for many years, I have not yet found it.

[24:59]

Reverend Shariputra, if a magician were to incarnate a woman by magic, would you ask her, what prevents you from transforming yourself out of your female state? No, he says, such a woman would not really exist, so what would there be to transform? Just so, Reverend Shariputra, all things do not really exist. Thereupon, employing her magical power, she causes the elder Shariputra to appear in her form and herself to appear in his. The goddess, now appearing as the elder monk, says to Shariputra, What is preventing you from transforming yourself out of your female state? He doesn't have a very good response to her question. And so she continues, All women appear in the form of women in just the same way as the elder appears in the form of a woman.

[26:03]

While they are not women in reality, they appear in the form of women. With this in mind, the Buddha's head, In all things there is neither male nor female. So having then changed the monk back into his original form, she asks, Reverend, what have you done with your female form? He says, I neither made it nor did I change it. Just so. All things are neither made nor changed. That is the teaching of the Buddha. Truly impressed, finally he says to her, goddess, how soon will you attain the enlightenment of Buddhahood? She replies, it is impossible that I should attain the perfect enlightenment of Buddhahood. Why? Because perfect enlightenment stands upon the impossible. Because it is impossible, no one attains the perfect enlightenment of Buddhahood.

[27:11]

Well, now he's really confused. So he says, well, then why did the Buddha say that the Buddhas, who are as numerous as the sands of the Ganges, have attained perfect Buddhahood, they are attaining perfect Buddhahood, and they will go on attaining perfect Buddhahood? Why did he say that? And she says, Reverend Shariputra, the expression, the Buddhas of the past, present and future, is a conventional expression made up of a certain number of words. The Buddhas are neither past nor present nor future. Their enlightenment transcends time. But tell me, elder, have you attained sainthood? Shariputra replies, it is attained because there is no attainment. Just so, she says, with a warm smile.

[28:16]

There is perfect enlightenment because there is not attainment of perfect enlightenment. So there you have it. The highest teaching of the holy truths. Vast emptiness. Nothing holy. So who are you facing me? Don't know. And yet, still, it's important for all of us, I mean really and truly important, to find within ourselves and in our own actions, in this conventional world, this world of appearances, in which we all appear as if real, those indefensible traces of racial profiling, of sexism, of homophobia, and the resultant exclusionary behaviors that have allowed these persistent forms of tyranny to dominate our culture, despite all of the good intentions of our founding brothers.

[29:31]

All men are created equal. Did not mean slaves, and it did not mean women. Well, not yet, anyway. So what we're seeing in this national election is not something that begins and ends with the candidacy of he who shall not be named. This man is a symptom of the work that we are still needing to do. And the virtue of symptoms is that they let us know that we are ill and that we need to find the medicine that will bring us back to health again, perhaps for the very first time. As part of my own search for good medicine, I've certainly looked for many years into the sutras and the commentaries of the Buddhist tradition. And there is much there. There are training programs. I think many of you have heard about them. If you've ever come to a Buddhist lecture, we say them over and over again. There's the Noble Eightfold Path, right view, right intention, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, good effort.

[30:45]

deep concentration and mindfulness, all of which address our intentional actions, the actions of our bodies, of our speech, and of our minds. And they address the consequences of those actions, our karma, taking responsibility for ourselves. For the Bodhisattva training program, there are six perfections. generosity, ethical conduct, patience, effort, concentration, and wisdom. And although the Buddha awakened to the truth that there are no beings separate from himself, he also understood that most of those beings don't see it that way. They see each other as separate and they act in ways to protect themselves as they endeavor to acquire a disproportionate share of the goodies.

[31:54]

This we know. This we do. His first effort at awakening them to the truth, as is related in the Lotus Sutra, was to shock them into awakening by opening a special organ on his forehead. There's a circle of white hairs. kind of like a dream machine, imagination machine. And he showed them a projection of one quarter of the entire universe. And they were shocked and in awe, shock and awe. But no sooner had this vision ended than the humans wanted an explanation of what they had just seen. Who are we? Where are we? And how did we get here? Well, that's when the Buddha realized that unlike the wheelwright who could not convey his craft with words, that he would have to speak.

[33:03]

He would have to use words to try and explain the dream to the dreamers. Which reminded me of the story of the baby fish who asks this mother, what's an ocean? The mother shrugs. So these teachings are not easy to understand or to practice, and they say that too. And yet there isn't any other choice if we want to know the highest meaning of the holy truths, if we want to know what it means to be human, truly human. if we want to stop fearing one another, killing one another, and taking things from one another that don't belong to us. When the Buddha gave a prescription for decency that he called the precepts, he emphasized five of them that were most likely to lead us to violence.

[34:05]

Killing, stealing, lying, sexualizing, and intoxicating. His true mission on this earth was to bring an end to violence. How? By not hating. Hate is not conquered by hate. Hate is conquered by not hating. And by immunizing ourselves against the effects of aggression so that we can stand together in strength as we face this troubling world. I truly hope that all of you will vote on November 8th and that you will consider becoming members of the Zen Center so that we can do our best together to outsize the power that wealth and selfishness is having on our culture.

[35:07]

As Wang Bo said to the assembly, you people are all slurpers of dregs. If you travel like this, where will you have today? Do you know that in all of China, there are no teachers of Zen? At that point, a monk came forward and said, What about those who guide followers and lead groups in various places? Wang Bo said, I don't say there's no Zen, just that there are no teachers. that's where the story ends. Thank you very much. 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.

[36:10]

For more information, visit sfzc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

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