We've got some questions. No, I don't see.

[07:50]

Oh, yeah. Penetrating and perfect Dharma Literally met with Even in a hundred thousand million Kabbalists Having yet to see and listen to To remember and accept I doubt how much it takes The truth of the Lord to talk to His words

[09:49]

We are on our first day of the Sushmi that is the culmination of this eight-week, maybe long Baptist period. Welcome to those of you who are just joining us for the first time in this study that we've been doing for the Sushmi. We've been diligently taking up the open question of the 16 very silent precepts and studying how they manifest in our awakening to nature and in our awakening to nature, both. I'm going to start by just reading the passage from the Dalvada. What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow.

[11:03]

Our life is a creation in our mind. If one speaks or acts with an impure guide, suffering follows them, as the wheel of the cart follows the horse that draws the cart. What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow. Our life is the creation of our mind. If one speaks or acts with a pure mind, joy follows them as their own shadow. So in the study of bodhisattva precepts, We start with the question of what is a bodhisattva and what does bodhisattva have to do with us and our lives? Why would we want to take up these precepts?

[12:06]

What is it about this bodhisattva path of the precepts? Some of you may know that there are six practices of the bodhisattva called the paramitas and practices that than giving, generosity, ethical behavior, which is the subject of our precepts, patience, joyful effort, concentration, and wisdom. And I'd like to invite all of those qualities into our hearts and minds as we sit together in Sashin. As we know, Sashin is a time to Diligently collect body and mind. It's a time when we have put aside to set aside our in some ways to set aside our doing.

[13:10]

The doing that is the meat of our karmic consciousness. We give this time to ourselves as a gift. In this time where we're collecting our body and mind, it's a way to study very deeply the self. Studying the self in a non-intellectual way, we're not dissecting the self, we're opening our hearts and minds entering into each present moment, letting go of the past and letting go of thoughts of the future, finding the breath which is always in the present moment. Sashin is a time where we, it's a study of suchness, dustness, what's happening in this moment that's arising and passing.

[14:21]

moment after moment. What is this? Now, I also, I wanted to say that, just to begin, that sometimes we, in our daily lives, can get caught up in the doing. It's kind of a, maybe a survival trait to be able to go on autopilot, gets us through sometimes when stopping and really feeling deeply may seem to interfere in a list of tasks that we have to accomplish. So sometimes when we stop the doing, the activity of doing, and turn the light inward to illuminate what's stirring in this body and mind, sometimes when we do that, things come up that maybe we've been pushing down.

[15:36]

So that's our study, is to allow the things that we've maybe unconsciously or consciously been pushing down, to allow them to arise and in the warmth and compassion of our awareness, Buddha's awareness, which is our awareness. In the song of the Julmira Samani, it says, the teaching of thusness, suchness, has been intimately communicated by Buddhas and ancestors. Now you have it, so keep it well. This line is pointing to the starting point of where we are. The starting point of the ground of our being, which is pure awareness, which is Buddha.

[16:46]

And as we open ourselves to allowing everything that arises to arise, including the joys, the fears, any shakiness, grief, sadness, maybe despair, the things that we may not be as welcome when we're operating from that place of needing to get things done. I speak from experience. just sitting without our conscious manipulating of our story of who we are and what's happening when we just sit and drop away the conscious story making we start to notice things maybe in our bodies they show up in our bodies they show up as thoughts too but

[17:59]

thoughts we can allow to arise and cease. But when you feel something arising in the body, it's time for patience, diligent, and awareness. What does this have to do with precepts? The last class I brought in a quote from Rev Anderson, Pension Roshi, he said, when I apply myself to the study of precepts, a kind of integrity comes into my sitting, which helps it to be just sitting in its true sense. Without the precepts, I don't think I can understand what it means to just sit. So this is very, I found this quote very provocative. What does that mean? How do the precepts infuse our awakening?

[19:08]

What is it to just sit? And what does that have to do with taking up precepts? Oftentimes when we think about taking precepts or receiving precepts, practicing precepts, it's very much in the sense of doing and not doing, right? We have these, it's almost... I wouldn't say impossible, but it's very hard to think of the precepts in the expansive way of zazen, right? So oftentimes we think of precepts as being maybe not as strong as commandments, but definitely admonitions, things by which our judging mind can be elicited. Certainly our judging mind is very quick to jump in and make statements. about our behavior, about other people's behavior, probably more frequently, both of those. Dogen, when speaking on the blood vein of the ancestors, what is received in a precept ordination ceremony, says, it was revealed and affirmed to my teacher Myozen that the precept vein of the bodhisattva is...

[20:27]

the single great condition of the Zen gate. So in Zazen, we're coming back to ourself, to our true nature, unvarnished, untarnished. The precepts often are described as a map or a description of the Buddha's mind, the Buddha's life. And through studying them, we also are able to step into realizing ourselves as Buddha. So this path of the bodhisattva, the path of an awakened being, is one of turning towards what's happening now with gentle, kind attention, with wisdom and with compassion?

[21:33]

What is it that we're waking up to? Obviously, we're waking up to this moment. But when we bring in the study of the precepts as an underlayment, or maybe an overlayment, not sure which, The infusion of the precepts into our awareness of this moment is an invitation to become awake to the things that pull us away from what is true for us deeply. Not what we think is true. What we've been conditioned to think is true or not true. but to the very ground of our awareness and being. What we're awakening to is all the ways that we can inadvertently fall into greed, hate, and delusion.

[22:42]

to be kind to one to ourselves when we do because we do all the time fall into greed hate and delusion so when we find ourselves slipping grasping clinging craving pushing away clutching on to or just turning away not wanting to see clearly too much too hard overwhelming when we find ourselves over and over falling into pushing pulling or turning away to pause to feel our breath feel our body to forgive ourselves without judgment?

[23:56]

It's one of the hardest things. How do you acknowledge without judging? How do you know when you're judging? You can feel it in your body. The tightness. Maybe a flush of the skin. A catch in the breath. a stealing of our will. When we feel that judging happening, we don't push it away, but we feel it. We feel it's rippling through our body and mind with compassion, with forgiveness. So in taking up this path of the Bodhisattva through the 16 great precepts, take this practice up in order to be our true selves to be Buddha Tenshin Roshi says I propose that all sentient beings by their deepest nature wish to meet and be intimate with enlightenment

[25:24]

to be intimate with their true authentic nature. If they do not make a request for such a meeting, they are not asking for what they really want. Fascinating. Sometimes when you ask, what do you really want? You know, it may be something very, I don't want to say superficial, but a solve, a bomb. something to comfort? What do we truly want? Sometimes when we take up this practice of asking this question, we have to ask numerous times again and again to kind of shed the layers, the superficial layers of what do I want? What do I want? Well, I want a chocolate cake. Sure, that comes up. I want... a vacation. I want to awaken.

[26:31]

I want to find my true nature. As we keep asking this question, what do I want? What do I want? We find that more and more it's not, what do I want? what is wanted what is needed by the universe and that's where the bodhisattva vow expresses itself through the thousand arms and hands with eyes of Avalokiteshvara reaching out giving Then they may feel distress and alienation because they are not acting in accord with the deepest wish of their true nature.

[27:42]

It is our nature to be intimate with this pure Dharmakaya and all its transformations that are offered for the benefit of all beings because true enlightenment is our nature and If we don't cultivate an active practice relationship with it, we are likely to be miserable sentient beings. So is this true by our opening our hearts to what is the truest thing? What is the deepest true wish? Is it to be intimate with who you really are?

[28:48]

When you hear the words, who you really are, what does that elicit? Sometimes the first thing that comes when we ask that question or when we look at who we really are, the idea of who we really are, stories of things that have been told to us, things that we inherited, things that have been said about us, those come up. Those aren't who we really are. So when we sit zazen, we invite ourselves to sit upright in our seat, to take the backward step, turn the light inward, to illuminate what's underneath the thoughts, the thinking, the entanglements.

[29:58]

We study our physicality of our being underneath the thoughts and even aspirations. What's underneath all of those things that we think of as making up who we are, going deeper and deeper into the ground. Tonight, We will be, I guess in this afternoon, the last thing, the last period of zazen, we will be going up to the zendo at 300 page up the street. We'll go up and we'll do our bodhisattva full moon ceremony, which is a ceremony of chanting and bowing and many other things. I was going to talk a little bit about what the structure of the ceremony is and how we relate to it as an invitation.

[31:14]

So the 16 bodhisattva precepts are the three refuges, the three pure precepts, and the ten grave precepts. But before we can even receive those precepts, the 16 great bodhisattva precepts, we prepare the ground. This preparing the ground is maybe all we need to do to prepare the ground is sit zazen. Everything is included in our sitting of zazen. This study of the self, the mindful awareness and invitation to be aware, again, without judgment, But to be aware of our actions of body, actions of speech, actions of mind. Sometimes, you know, thinking about giving a talk during sushin, I always hesitate.

[32:22]

I think there's a part of me that hesitates speaking at all. So maybe I'll say that you don't have to listen to my words. You can just sit. if whatever I say doesn't resonate or feels unhelpful, then just let them go. So in preparing the ground for receiving the precepts, we start in the ceremony with the practice of what's called confession and repentance. Confession and repentance sometimes, I think, elicits this feeling of, again, this judgment. What have I done wrong?

[33:24]

How do I hold my wrongdoing without shame and judgment? However, the confession and repentance verses, when we chant them, to feel them in the way that they are bare awareness, bare acknowledging of all our actions. And because we, in Buddhist communities, we do this ceremony here at Zen Center, we do them every month. Traditionally they're done on the full moon and the new moon. So sometimes when we do the ceremony we're thinking back to the past month since the last time we spoke the words together. But confession is nothing but awareness.

[34:29]

It's essential. Start with awareness. This acknowledgement of all our actions. Just awareness. Yes, I did that. I said that. I thought that. Awareness of our deeds and the consequences, the ripples that go out. So the repentance is the... taking that acknowledgement of all these past actions, whether we know what they are or we don't know what they are, to open our hearts to all of them and say, I now fully avow. essentially the confession and repentance versus our, an expression of a, I would say a deep faith, a deep faith in our awakening, our ability to awaken.

[35:50]

We say all my ancient twisted karma from beginningless greed, hate and delusion born through body, speech and mind I now fully avow and then we bow. So just as we sit in Zazen and we are aware of the physicality of our being also in the ceremony studying our physicality studying bowing When we're bowing, we put our hands together. We bow, and then we raise our hands up above our heads. And in doing so, we are bowing to Buddha. We're bowing to our true nature. And then we get up and we say it again, and then we bow again.

[37:02]

There's a lot of bowing in the ceremony. And this bowing, you can think of it as a representation of how we fall down and we get up. We fall down and we get up. It's a phrase, fall down seven times, get up eight. So when we're bowing, it's an maybe you can think of it as a reenactment of all the times that we've fallen short of what our true nature asks of us. And in bowing, it's an expression of our humility, right? When we get up, it's like... saying like when you when you bow down it's like there it all is and you raise your hands above your head and then when you get up you say it's like uplifting you're like popping up after stumbling right I now fully about it's a representation of this cycle of cycle of transformation this path of practice that we step onto

[38:27]

So in this bowing, throughout the ceremony, it's opening our hearts to the transformation of this small, you could say, this small ego self, stepping out of our own way, this wish to meet our true nature. So opening our heart to the possibility of transformation. We call it purifying the mind. And sometimes when the word purify or purity comes up, it brings up its opposite, right? Impurity. In the sense of good and bad. But I think purity... In Buddhism, when we talk about purity, like the pure precepts, what it's talking about is the purity of non-duality, of leaping beyond, getting stuck in many in one, being stuck in judging good, bad, right, wrong.

[39:48]

So this purity is... is a transcendence of those dualities. Going beyond dualities does not mean ignoring dualities, however. So we do both. We confess. We repent. We go beyond. We purify. In this way, we enter something that is formless. But in entering this formlessness, the gate to entering formlessness is actually through form. It's through taking up forms without clinging to the forms. In this practice of confession and repentance, it's an ask for help. We can't do this alone.

[40:55]

We don't. We don't do this alone. And it's an acknowledgement that the strength of the three poisons of greed, hate, and delusion is very strong. And again, when we carve out time to sit in sushin for days, or for moments, for a period of zazen, We're carving out time in order to touch the ground. Through our body we can feel inwardly what is grasping. We feel the physicality of that. What is pushing away? What is aversion or hate? And then for delusion, what is just simply turning away, wanting to check out, ignore, maybe not pay attention.

[42:15]

So in zazen we have this gift of setting aside all the ways in which we cling or hate or turn away, and we allow ourselves to feel completely. We make this vow to stay awake, to stay present to all of it as it unfolds. It's very hard. It's very hard to do sometimes. Maybe all the time. We see it often when we just in terms of, I don't know, just take something very simple like having an itch. We make this commitment to ourselves to sit upright and not move and be awake and aware.

[43:21]

And then suddenly an itch comes. It's the most minor thing But noticing how it, you know, how it can really send us into a, if we actually are deciding not to scratch the itch, sometimes it gets really intense. That's just the most minor thing, just an itch. How common, how simple, how ordinary. So we stay present and aware, unmoving, And we notice the itch. We notice all the feelings that come up. The wish to scratch. The wish for things to be different. We allow all of that. We're present. We remain present. Maybe thoughts come up like, I need to get out of here. So with compassion and kindness,

[44:24]

we acknowledge there's that self again without judging it we can just hold it when we practice this way it's a practice of opening our hearts and opening our hearts to our deep desire to be free and to be free it's not a freedom from things as they are it's a freedom within things as they are as they unfold to whatever is happening now whatever situation pay attention be aware Be awake. Thankfully, we're here in a safe space where we can turn to what's happening.

[45:37]

So with this confession and repentance, when chanting these verses, to feel on the... to feel the... our entire lives listening our entire lives all our actions body speech and mind from beginning this time we acknowledge and accept and then when we bow we pour it all out we let go letting go, letting go, letting go standing back up I now fully avow This is the yes, I will when receiving the precepts and you're asked, will you receive these precepts? Yes, I will. Three times, yes, I will. Just saying yes, I think.

[46:47]

You can practice it. Just internally saying yes. What does that do in the body and mind? How does it ripple through? Does it feel opening? Accepting? Free? Yes. Yes. So after we chant the verses of repentance, the next... preparation that we undergo in preparing ourselves to receiving the precepts is that of paying homage. Paying homage is it's a it's an eliciting of respect admiration allegiance

[47:50]

And in paying homage, who or what are we paying homage to? We're taking up in the ceremony, we start with paying homage to the seven Buddhas before Buddha, and then we pay homage to Shakyamuni Buddha, Maitreya Buddha, and then the fabulous trio, Shakyamuni Buddha. of bodhisattvas, Manjushri, the bodhisattva of wisdom, Samantabhadra of action, Avalokiteshvara of compassion, and then all the ancestors, the succession of ancestors. So in this part of our ceremony, we are inviting and invoking our whole

[48:54]

of supporters on this path. So not only invoking as a way of inviting them into our lives, but paying homage in the way that we're asking for help, asking for witness, maybe asking for support but maybe more than anything we're inviting the recognition of these great beings and their qualities in ourselves. So the seven Buddhas before Buddha are the archetype of Buddhas representing enlightenment, representing precept practice.

[49:57]

Shakyamuni Buddha, representing the path of practice as taken by a human being, an awakened human being. Awakening itself, Shakyamuni Buddha, in this age. Maitreya Buddha is the future Buddha who it said can only appear After all practice of the Dharma is forgotten and gone, Maitreya just sits patiently, waiting for the right moment to appear. Manjushri Bodhisattva, the Bodhisattva of wisdom, usually sits on the altar in a space like this, but holds a sword. cutting through delusions. Manjushri symbolizes wisdom.

[51:02]

Samantabhadra, bodhisattva, is associated with activity. So taking up a practice, the active part of practicing, the active part of sitting down and to meditation. Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, all three often are on the altars. Buddha contains all of them. We contain all of them. And then the succession of ancestors, which represents our entire lineage of every teacher, student, stretching back all the way to Shakyamuni Buddha and the seven Buddhas before Buddha, we too will become ancestors.

[52:11]

So when we pay homage to all of these beings and the lineage itself, this ancestral line the blood vein. We're inviting all of these qualities into our hearts and minds, again, as preparing the ground to receiving these precepts. Tomorrow I will continue with talking a little bit about the next part of preparing the ground before immeasurable vows and then into the sixteen precepts themselves.

[53:20]

The invitation in Sashin, however, is to drop all thinking, to turn to being, not doing just being when the impulse comes to do or thoughts come we just open our awareness let it come let it go take it in on the inhalation and through the body and the body of exhaling completely letting go, allowing, and letting go. Thank you for being here and for taking up this practice. Thank you.

[54:35]

He is the heart of the system. [...] Let the other members say that it is the same secret as possible. All right, let the other members say that. And then you will have .

[58:07]

And the next period of . So we'll have a door watch right now. And there will be a door watch three times, because we're interested in numbers. We don't have a door watch all day long. So during breakfast and after the dorms are not too much. It will be a door watch. So if I had another time, just come and get the code from me. But those will be the times. Just after the dynamic serve, just after breakfast, after the development call, cannot be somewhat impersonated with your work. Thank you very much.

[58:51]

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