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, everyone. It's wonderful to see so many People here on our 4th of July weekend, it's nice of you to have wanted to spend some of the holiday weekend with us. And wonderful to see so many young people here as well. So I have a couple things I wanted to share with the younger folks. One is, well, I wanted to ask, how many of you celebrated 4th of July yesterday? Quite a few of you. And what did you do?

[01:02]

How did you celebrate? What? Tug of war? Yeah? Lemon pound cake? Yeah? You went to the fair? Fireworks. Yeah, I was expecting that answer. Yeah? You went on a Ferris wheel? It sounded like you all had wonderful ways to celebrate the holiday. And can someone tell me what the holiday was about? What you were celebrating? Yeah. America. You were celebrating America. Celebrating Independence Day. Anyone else want to say what they thought they were celebrating? Yeah. Celebrating the beach? Good thing to celebrate.

[02:02]

Yeah, well, I think those are all good answers. Definitely, Fourth of July is considered a celebration of America and the independence of our country, the founding of our countries. We associate the holidays sometimes with what we call the founding fathers, the folks who worked very hard to start America as a new country, a new enterprise in the world. And... So kind of in association, I just wanted to share with you a founding father of the Zen tradition. This is a little figure called a Daruma. It's a little statue of someone named Bodhidharma. And we have a bigger statue of him on the altar there, if you're looking this way to the left of the Manjushri. And Bodhidharma was considered the founding father of the Zen tradition that we're in, known for sitting meditation. He was very concerned... because he wanted to help all beings. And the way he felt it was best to do that was to sit in meditation. So he's known for sitting a very long time.

[03:07]

He sat for nine years, apparently, in a cave, facing the wall, really learning all about himself so that he could help other people. Anyway, so I wanted to share Bodhidharma with you. And I also had a story I wanted to share with you called, What Do You Do With An Idea? And this might have something to do with what I'm going to talk about later too and something to do with fourth of july i feel like the founding of our country had a lot to do with an idea an idea of creating a democratic society that had an ideal anyway of treating people as as equal and supporting them all to kind of realize happiness um sorry this is a story called what do you do with an idea One day, I had an idea. Where did it come from? Why is it here?

[04:09]

I wondered, what do you do with an idea? At first, I didn't think much of it. It seemed kind of strange and fragile. I didn't know what to do with it, so I just walked away from it. I acted like it didn't belong to me. But it followed me. I worried what others would think. What would people say about my idea? I kept it to myself. I hid it away and didn't talk about it. I tried to act like everything was the same as it was before my idea showed up. Can you all see the pictures? It's pretty clear what his idea is, right? But there was something magical about my idea.

[05:12]

I had to admit. I felt better and happier when it was around. It wanted food. It wanted to play. Actually, it wanted a lot of attention. It grew bigger. I'm sorry, you guys can't see there. And it became friend. And we became friends. I showed it to other people. And even though I was afraid of what they would say, I was afraid that if people saw it, they would laugh at it. I was afraid they would think it was silly. And many of them did. They said it was no good. They said it was too weird. They said it was a waste of time and that it would never become anything. And at first, I believed them.

[06:20]

I actually thought about giving up on my idea. I almost listened to them. But then I realized What do they know? This is my idea, I thought. No one knows it like I do. And it's okay if it's different and weird and maybe a little crazy. I decided to protect it, to care for it. I fed it good food. I worked with it. I played with it. But most of all, I gave it my attention. My idea grew and grew, and so did my love for it. I built it a new house, one with an open roof, where it could look up at the stars, a place where it could be safe to dream.

[07:25]

I liked being with my idea. It made me feel more alive, like I could do anything. It encouraged me to think big and then to think bigger. It shared its secrets with me. It showed me how to walk on my hands. Because, it said, it's good to have the ability to see things differently. I couldn't imagine my life without it. Then, one day, Something amazing happened. My idea changed right before my very eyes. It spread its wings, took flight, and burst into the sky. I don't know how to describe it, but it went from being here to being everywhere. It wasn't just a part of me anymore. It was now a part of everything. And then I realized what you do with an idea.

[08:39]

You change the world. Okay, that's my story. Thank you. So now I think all the young ones are going to go out and maybe work on making prayer flags today, kind of putting ideas into... Embodying ideas, putting them into material and then putting them out in the world. Celebration of the 4th of July here at Green Gulch yesterday, which we perennially call Interdependence Day. We celebrate Interdependence Day here at Green Gulch. Eschewing some idea of independence for the interconnected nature of all being. That's what we want to celebrate. And we had a one-car parade, one-car float that went down here, down to the farm.

[09:40]

And a number of people got on it. And then a little homemade ice cream truck that kind of followed behind. And then some old-fashioned fun. We had relay races, three-legged races, and egg races, and water balloon toss, and skit night. And I noticed in the parade someone had made a sign that said... celebrate Interdependence Day, resist American norms. And then there was like a long list of what on the sign was considered American norms. Sexism, racism, homophobism, capitalism, greed. Anyway, they kind of went on and on. And anyway, so I've been wondering, what were we celebrating yesterday? What were we celebrating? And although I'm a little nervous about it, I kind of want to talk about it. I kind of want to bring it up for us to kind of reflect on what is the meaning of the holiday that we just had for us and how do we respond to it.

[10:47]

As you all know, it's a celebration of the I guess the signing and the ratification of the Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson in the midst of our conflict with the British that declared American independence. And the document probably has one of the most famous sentences, one of the best known sentences of the English language ever written. We hold these truths to be self-evident. that all men are created equal, endowed by their creator with unalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, I see someone mouthing it along with me, and the pursuit of happiness. And so I wonder how we relate to that. I think that sentence became a kind of...

[11:50]

the aspirational ideal of our country and a moral standard which I think we've aspired to hold ourselves to, however obvious our failings, our gross failings. I think Abraham Lincoln considered that kind of the foundation of his political philosophy and felt that it was through that sentence that the entire Constitution should be should be interpreted. But I feel like maybe we feel much more like the person who made that sign, that American norms aren't about this ideal anymore. Anyway, I can feel my nervousness as I kind of tread into political water, and I'm trying to remind myself, where's the dharma? We have to remember to have the dharma in this, and there will be dharma. But But I wanted to raise the question, I guess because I think about, because I think we can hold that aspiration as dharma.

[12:55]

And I think for me, it was maybe partly because of the American obsession with freedom, you know, from a very young age that's such a strong value growing up in this country, the American obsession with freedom and happiness, that I ended up here. Because I think I ended up feeling like this was the way to most fully realize freedom and happiness, which, you know, kind of unusual, unusual result of kind of deeply inquiring into what was being aspired to there. But I also bring it up just because of what, because I feel like I can't escape it, and what a... astonishing and heartbreaking time it's been recently in our country. I'm thinking of, you know, all the attention being paid to the continuing horrible racial violence of our country, Ferguson, Baltimore, Charleston, of course, I mean, to name a few.

[14:06]

And this isn't new. This is, of course, the legacy of our country from its beginning. And, you know, and then also the astonishing nature of the Supreme Court decision, astonishing maybe for some, you know, a week or so ago, which found in the Constitution a right for gay marriage. So I feel like there are these national events also pressing on my consciousness kind of causing me to reflect on the state of the holiday and this aspiration. And, you know, those two things, the incredible violence and the obvious ways in which we are so very far from really realizing a kind of equality in our citizenship and the ways in which that does seem to be kind of freshly realized at times maybe poises me, poises some of us in some place between kind of hope and despair about our country.

[15:10]

And And I guess for me, there's been a growing question about what does this practice have to do with the wider world? I've mostly been content in my years at Zen Center to focus on the practice here, the formal practice here, the inner work and self-cultivation of Buddhist practice, self-cultivation. And more and more, I... feel kind of challenged in that, challenged by younger students coming and asking what the practice has to do with the wider world, with these issues of class and race and gender, economics, challenged by you know, other observers of American Western Buddhism who sometimes feel like it's narcissistic. I've heard that in a number of places kind of characterized American Western Buddhism as narcissistic.

[16:15]

And so it's kind of forced me to kind of ask in a deeper way, well, what is the relationship of our practice to the wide world? And what are we doing here? Are we just pursuing some private happiness? Or is this really manifesting the bodhisattva ideal of benefiting all? And I feel like it's easy to feel politically kind of alienated, like there's nothing we can do. Many of us may have a feeling of actually having given up in some ways on democratic, I mean, in a big sense, democracy and the workings of our government. And I guess I want to kind of question that. So in preparing for the talk or thinking about the talk, I read a book by, I read part of a book by an American philosopher named Richard Rorty that he wrote a while ago. It was actually based on some lectures that he gave, himself asking these questions about what would it take to have a politically active kind of progressive movement in the country.

[17:26]

And And one of the things he says, which is kind of what makes it apropos to the holiday today's talk, is that his feeling is that to have kind of a lively, engaged democratic process, a process of lively, imaginative, real debate about policy in the direction of the country, one has to have some real sense of emotional engagement in the country. And so easy, again, for us to adopt this kind of alienated spectator point of view, a kind of disgusted spectator, given the atrocities, really, that have gone on in our country and that our country has perpetrated. But probably without some degree of pride, to use that word, some degree of inspiration from this aspirational quality of the country, we won't be able to engage, you know, politically.

[18:29]

And so he's kind of bringing that point up and, you know, asking if it's possible. And in the course of the book, he actually quotes from James Baldwin, you know, African-American writer, wrote in the 1960s, Fire Next Time. And... again, Rorty's basically saying that, you know, kind of making an analogy between political life and personal development, you can say also in terms of spiritual practice, that on the one hand excessive pride in one's country can reproduce kind of imperialism and bellicosity, just as excessive self-pride can can result in arrogance. But similarly, too little self-respect makes it difficult for a person to engage in spiritual practice or to display a kind of moral courage.

[19:34]

And insufficient national pride, he says, makes energetic and effective debate about national policy unlikely. So anyway, how do we struggle with this? And again, he quotes Baldwin, who I just wanted to share with what he wrote, apropos of this question and, you know, apropos of current events. So early in the book, Fire Next Time, Baldwin says, this is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it. But even though he can't grant forgiveness to the country, he doesn't give up on America. And later in the book, he writes, I am not a ward of America. I am one of the first Americans to arrive on these shores.

[20:37]

And he further writes, in short, we, the black and white, deeply need each other here if we are really to become a nation, if we are really, that is, to achieve our identity. our maturity as men and women, and closes the book with a famous quotation, if we, and now I mean the relatively conscious whites and the relatively conscious blacks who must, like lovers, insist on or create the consciousness of the others, do not falter in our duty now, we may be able, handful that we are, to end the racial nightmare and achieve our country and change the history of the world. so um you can see baldwin struggling with what i'm kind of tempted to say the kind of koan of our country it's incredibly inspirational aspiration and its dark history and the declaration of independence also inspired you know hundreds of other declarations of independence around the world a kind of democratic movement around the world so something very inspirational there

[21:46]

But how do we articulate that? It seems like we haven't been able to offer ourselves an image of our country that, other than maybe a kind of chauvinistic patriotism, which rejoices in American might, that can inspire this engagement. And some of us may feel that the sin, you know, you could use the word sins, that the things that have happened, that we've done, importation of Africans to be slaves, the slaughter of the native people on the land, the decimation of the natural landscape, the forest, and contribution to global climate change, the Vietnamese, the Vietnam War, maybe dropping the bomb on Japan, Iraq, where these things prevent any possibility of some positive vision, positive engagement in our country. But Rory talks about earlier in the late 19th century, earlier 20th century, where there were people who still felt that it was possible to have an inspirational view of our country, a progressive inspirational view, citing in particular Walt Whitman and John Dewey, the pragmatic philosopher, and said...

[23:10]

even given these terrible things that we've done, it still must be possible for a constitutional democracy to be able to maintain or retain some self-respect. And kind of likens that, you know, drawing on Dewey, he kind of likens the situation to saying, you know, maybe the moral... determinant for any person is that there are some things in any given time and place which one feels like it would be better to die than to do. Some things that would be so terrible. And that's maybe the kind of defining moral dimension of that time in that person's life. And yet one may find that one has done one of these things or some of these things and still alive. And then what does one do?

[24:12]

You sort of have the choice of suicide, you know, living perpetually in some state of kind of self-loathing or self-disgust or basically vowing never to let that happen again, never to do that again. And Dewey basically says it's, you know, we should go for the third option. We don't have the luxury of... killing ourselves, we don't have the luxury of living an alienated life of self-disgust. We need to be agents. And this in some ways is similar to the Buddhist view, which doesn't have a lot of emphasis on guilt. There is wholesome shame in Buddhism, that it's appropriate to feel shame when we've done something that we recognize was unskillful, that was harmful. but the response is to vow never to do it again, to learn from the mistake.

[25:17]

So whether we feel we can do that in the case of our country, I guess, is a question, but a question I want to raise for us. How do we... Is it possible for us to engage this inspirational democratic ideal? And I was struck in... Kennedy's decision in the Obergefell versus Hodges case, the gay marriage case, his argument, or part of the rationale for finding this new right to marriage, He writes, the nature of injustice is that we may not always see it in our times. The generations that wrote and ratified the Bill of Rights and the 14th Amendment did not presume to know the extent of freedom in all of its dimensions. And so they entrusted to future generations a charter protecting the right of all persons to enjoy liberty as we learn its meaning.

[26:21]

And later, when talking about the 14th Amendment, and the relationship between the due process clause and equal protection clause, writes, the interrelation of the two principles furthers our understanding of freedom is and must become. So in both these statements, he's basically saying freedom or liberty isn't a fixed idea. We have no fixed understanding of what this is. And in fact, it's up to us to continue to investigate, to continue to inquire, what is the meaning of freedom? What is the meaning of liberty? and that new meanings, new dimensions may reveal themselves to us over time. So there's a kind of living, unfolding quality to living in freedom or liberty, which again I felt a strong kind of affinity with from a kind of Buddhist point of view. In Mahayana Buddhism, the kind of ultimate principle which... of allows for compassionate response to the world is understanding of emptiness understanding that no thing has um essential separate self we don't have essential separate self and no idea has a fixed reality to it there's no idea which is absolutely true about the world everything is a conventional understanding a provisional temporary understanding of the world and this is also very much like dewey's

[27:48]

the pragmatic philosophy that truth is our best way to solve human problems. And so this is essentially what Kennedy's saying about freedom. We have to continually explore and discover what freedom is. And I think that is what our practice is about, this continual exploration, not having any fixed idea, but continually discovering new dimensions of freedom. So I feel a little embarrassed for the long-winded and political nature of the opening comments of this talk, but I did want to... For me, it was an unavoidable frame of the talk, and I wanted to bring it in. But now I want to shift to more conventional Dharma teaching, but still in this response, because I feel like...

[28:48]

in addition to being able to have some vision and some alignment with the aspirational nature of our democracy, we also need to live in a way that makes it possible for us to experience freedom and to engage in a positive way. And I think one of the more challenging aspects of the way our country has articulated freedom has to do with the kind of right of freedom and the way we've often seen freedom as something meaning that we're free of any constraint. We're free to do what we want, that kind of individualist rhetoric of freedom to do without responsibility. And this may be a place where we've been kind of led astray about what freedom is. So I actually want to talk now about Bodhicitta.

[29:49]

Bodhicitta is a Mahayana Buddhist idea that's really at the heart, the center of the practice. Bodhicitta comes from the two words bodhi and chitta. Bodhi means awakening. It's the same root that's used for the word Buddha, the awakened one. And chitta means mind or idea, intention. spirit. So bodhicitta together means the kind of spirit of awakening, the intention to awaken. And it's considered a kind of, has different ways of understanding it, but ultimately it's considered a kind of transformational experience. When we realize bodhicitta, it's a transformational experience that completely alters our relationship to the world. and kind of puts us on a path of love and ultimate concern for all beings.

[30:56]

So it's that spirit of love to always live to be a benefit and service to others. And it's the opposite of self-concern, which... think we can realistically say is the way that we usually live and the way that we may even understand kind of American freedom. I'm free to pursue my self-concern. But I think we realize probably, I don't know, I would say most of you wouldn't be here if you didn't have some inkling that self-concern is a limited way to live. That maybe ultimately self-concern is a path of, it's kind of unfortunate path of unhappiness and suffering. Because in self-concern, we take ourselves to be this very small, separate self in the world and maybe have some idea that there's some limited amount of happiness to go around.

[32:02]

So we've got to kind of go out there and get ours. And we're in competition for others for that limited amount of happiness. And we have tremendous needs. This little self has tremendous needs, very vulnerable with lots of needs and wants and desires. And the world kind of has to be very accommodating to our, very cooperative with our needs or our desires if we're going to be happy living from a place of self-concern. And I think... Invariably, we realize that the world doesn't cut a wide swath for us. It's not at every turn satisfying our needs and our wants and our desires. But in fact, we experience the world from a place of self-concern as a stumbling block, as kind of resistant to the satisfaction of our wants and desires. So living from that place is inevitably kind of unhappy. So bodhicitta is a kind of radical reorientation.

[33:04]

excuse me, to the world, where we don't live from this place of self-concern. And where, even when we meet difficulty, even when we meet sorrowful experience, bad things happen, things that cause grief, those things will continually happen from the point of bodhicitta, which has a much broader perspective. vision of the world, much broader vision of what our life is about, we can metabolize them. We still feel sorrow and grief, but given this wider view of our life, there can still be joy and buoyancy there. So in the Mahayana tradition, a lot of emphasis is placed on giving rise to, cultivating, strengthening, developing, bodhicitta, this spirit, this way of being.

[34:07]

I wanted to talk about one of the classic texts that talks about bodhicitta. a text by Shantideva called The Way of the Bodhisattva. Shantideva was an 8th century Indian monk who wrote a manual for the Bodhisattva. Bodhisattva is someone who has dedicated their life to the well-being of all beings. And so the first chapter of this guide actually is a discussion of of bodhicitta." And he starts by saying that he pays homage to the Buddhas and bodhisattvas and prostrates them, those who have kind of realized awakening, and then says, I don't, and I really appreciate this because I feel much the same way, that I don't expect what I say to be of much

[35:22]

benefit because my understanding is very limited and I'm not very good with words and so I actually have little hope of helping others but I offer the teaching nonetheless and probably will be most of help to me and I feel this way too like that's how I feel about Dharma talks I have no idea how helpful they are to anyone else but by my own having to kind of immerse in the Dharma and offer it then I invariably deepen my understanding and appreciation for it and feel like oh that's that's really true. I should really live like that. Not only that, I'm saying it to people, so I've got to live like that. How am I going to feel if I'm saying it all the time and not living that way? I have that feeling about this talk. Shanti Davis says that. And then he starts to lay out how to engage in a... cultivation of bodhicitta I was all this time for the last couple of minutes I've been trying to remember something that I wanted to say and now I remember what it is which is you know I found this book kind of serendipitously and maybe only later realized that I wanted to talk about bodhicitta and then I realized that the way the children's book talks about this idea having an idea is a lot like bodhicitta that there's this idea in Buddhism that bodhicitta is this very kind of fragile delicate thing

[36:46]

It does run counter to the way of the world. If we share it with others, we might feel it would be laughed at. And we have to take very good care of it. We have to really kind of protect and develop and care for this spirit of awakening, this mind of awakening. So Shanti Davis starts by saying that we should really appreciate the position that we're in. And I can say this kind of unequivocally about all of us in this room today, the position of You know, Buddhism is considered very fortunate to just have a human life. But even putting that cosmology aside, given the human life that we have, that all of us have the freedom and the capacity to be here today, that we're not in a life where we're kind of crushed by unremitting labor, where we're just kind of, you know, all we have energy for is to work and then sleep and, you know, barely can get our meats net or our needs met, or maybe not even completely get them met, that we have a life that allows us the leisure, the freedom to come to Green Gulch on Sunday, to hear a Dharma talk, to reflect on life's purpose, you could say, the spiritual dimension of our life, that we even have the capacity to have the time to consider this is tremendously fortunate, you know, and to really appreciate that and realize what

[38:14]

a pity it would be if we didn't make something good of this incredible opportunity we have, this incredibly beneficial, fortunate situation we're in. So he kind of starts by that, by framing. Even being exposed to the teaching already shows what a fortunate situation we're in, and that we should really make good use of the opportunity. And then Bodhicitta, and Shantideva uses this metaphor, is often likened to like a flash of lightning in the middle of the night. So there's a kind of dark, dark sky, dark and cloudy sky, and Bodhicitta is like a flash of lightning, which kind of illuminates the sky, which had otherwise been dark. And so I think what's being suggested here, and it might be a little hard for us to accept it, is that it's also incredibly rare to have this intention, to have this kind of truly altruistic thought or vision for our life or for the world.

[39:20]

Even though we may think of ourselves as well, intentioned as good people, that honestly, most of the time, our thoughts are probably not these unequivocally virtuous thoughts about the world. They're not necessarily terrible thoughts, but largely trivial thoughts about how to care of our lives and how to do the next thing and and to have a kind of real vision of our life as being to benefit you know being wholly for benefit of you know of everyone is is rare and requires cultivation and and then once we see that once we see actually how rare that thought is we have maybe some insight into just the fragility of goodness in general, if it's only once a year or once a month or whatever it is for us that we really have this very clearly altruistic thought, vision for our life, then we can see how fragile it is to live in such a way.

[40:25]

Shantideva then goes on to, you know, suggest the bodhicitta having this vision, living in accord with this vow or this intention. And I think about bodhicitta in relation to the Declaration of Independence as kind of, you know, the personal aspect. We have this kind of national aspiration. And so it relates in practice to me also that we, in practice, we live by vow or I'm suggesting here bodhicitta. So this is kind of the personal version of this. and that it's only bodhicitta, it's only this vision, this intention, this practice, ultimately, which will give us the capacity to kind of withstand the great and overwhelming strength of negativity. It's not hard for us to see how much negativity there is in the world. It's just the given difficulties of life, the impermanence. natural kind of suffering and pain of life. And then beyond that, there's so much negativity in the world. And so many, even if we haven't experienced great suffering, great difficulty ourselves, even just the daily bumps and bruises that we endure, you know, living, we're exposed to tremendous kind of negativity.

[41:42]

And that the suggestion is only bodhicitta that can kind of withstand this. And... allow us to live in some positive way in response. Shantideva also suggests that Bodhicitta, unlike other virtues and unlike other practices, is maybe the only one that will continually kind of bear fruit and grow unceasingly. Maybe some virtues have some short-lived benefit and then fade away. But this fundamental intention can only grow in strength if we take care of it, that love will only beget more love. And not only will it be of service to us in benefiting others, but that bodhicitta itself has the capacity to, he says, kind of consume our own negativity. In Buddha's cosmology, there's

[42:43]

this vision of world-destroying fires, the world systems that are ultimately destroyed by fire. And he kind of uses that analogy to say that similarly, bodhicitta, like these kind of world-consuming fires, is a fire that will consume our own negativity, our own, Shantiva might say evil karma, but anyway, our unskillful actions, our harmful actions, our... harmful mental states, just our restlessness and confusion and nervousness, that this fundamental intention of altruism will consume those things, ultimately. Shantideva talks about bodhicitta as having two main aspects. One is an aspiring aspect, the aspiration to have to live in such a way and then the actual practicing of it. So the aspirational aspect is kind of like imagining going on a trip, planning going on a trip, and going to book passage and getting your guide to the country and thinking about the trip.

[43:51]

And there's some virtue, there's some benefit. We need to do that. There's some virtue and benefit to even aspiring to have it bodhicitta. But then we actually need to go on the trip. We actually need to engage in the practice of this way of being. And then the suggestion is that if we do this and ultimately, this is maybe a tall order, ultimately attain some irreversible attitude to live in this way, some irreversible attitude to live in accord with bodhicitta, accord with the benefit of all beings, then Shantideva says there'll be an unceasing stream of merit, boundless like the vastness of the sky. kind of amazing image. And we may have some funny feeling about the word merit, but I would say, you know, some unceasing support will come to us. And I have more and more confidence in this myself, as my own practice matures, that if we fully give ourselves to the practice, if we fully give ourselves to this intention, we will be supported.

[44:59]

Strength does come. We will get what we need. And so that's what Shantideva is suggesting. suggesting here. And that without bodhicitta, we generally go in the wrong direction. It's kind of like what I was talking about before, about self-concern being kind of a habitual way. So even though none of us wants unhappiness, we all want happiness, that often left to our own devices, you know, quite in contrast to what we most want, we will kind of We'll kind of avoid those things that will ultimately give us happiness and pursue those things that give us unhappiness. In Zen we talk about, you know, our life is upside down. You know, we often live an upside down, upside down life. And so we need bodhicitta because of this kind of habitual way of being. So anyway, I don't imagine, actually I don't imagine that many of you came today either to hear about politics

[46:05]

Or to hear about bodhicitta. I don't know what I thought you were coming for, but I somehow think neither of those were probably what you were coming to expect. And bodhicitta can seem very idealistic, but I actually do want to take a moment now just to have us meditate on bodhicitta. So if you can, just assume some posture of meditation, some upright posture where you feel... well grounded. You can feel yourself touching the earth, supported by the earth. And feel your head reaching up toward the sky. Feel your spine lengthen, your back lengthen and broaden. Just feel into your body and your breath. And that ultimately is our practice, being with our experience.

[47:10]

And now maybe ask yourself, how do I feel about bodhicitta? Maybe you've heard this teaching before. I know some of you have maybe heard this teaching a lot. For some, it's maybe the first time you've heard it. But how do you feel about this idea of bodhicitta? Are you... dubious, that it's possible to live a wholly altruistic life, kind of skeptical. What's this guy talking about? This sounds kind of crazy. Strange religion. Or perhaps there's some feeling like, yes, yes, I know about that. I don't know if it's possible, but I have some wish for that. It would be wonderful if it were so. I have.

[48:15]

There's some part of me that responds. And maybe you have already given rise to this aspiration or this practice. And if so, you can find that find this aspiration which already lives in you, this practice that already lives in you. How does it feel? Or maybe you feel like you've met someone who expresses this way of living, this way of being. And how did that feel? really taking a moment to consider, contemplate this spirit of awakening, what I might call the inner revolution.

[49:20]

coming out of the meditation or the contemplation. So again, as I was saying, I don't imagine that most of you came today thinking you were coming with the intention to, as quickly as possible, develop and realize, bodhicitta, maybe some of you did, but maybe many of you didn't. And I think that's realistic. I think most of us don't come to practice with this intention. Most of us find our way to meditation or Buddhism or Dharma or a community like this, out of our own needs, our own circumstances of our life, often our own suffering, either kind of great suffering that we've encountered or even just the kind of simple but pervasive kind of disease in our life, some feeling of anxiety or dissatisfaction or discomfort. And we think meditation might help with that. So realistically, that's how most of us do come to practice, and we should respect that.

[50:43]

And maybe there's someone who comes right away saying they're coming to practice for the benefit of all beings, and that may be so, but we also might be right to be skeptical. That might be a kind of fantasy, because I think most of us do come to meet some need of ours. But if we take up the practice and we continue in the practice, then it may be that at some point like a flash of lightning in the dark, in the night sky, this understanding of what we're doing dawns upon us. And our practice is no longer just for ourselves. It's for our family, for our parents, our children, our co-workers, our friends, or even those people who live very far away that we don't know at all, but nonetheless feel concerned for.

[51:45]

So this does happen if we stay with the practice, or this can happen, that we realize the practice isn't just for me, it's for all, all these beings. And I also want to say something more about this kind of altruistic and When we hear something like practicing for the benefit of all beings or practicing for others or purely altruistic intention, we might imagine that means kind of forgetting about ourselves and just taking care of others or denying the self to take care of others. But this is not what bodhicitta is. Because, again, bodhicitta is a spirit of awakening. And what are we awakening to? We're awakening to the, you know, we're all asleep. We're awakening to something. What are we asleep to? We're awakening from the dream of self and other. We're awakening from the dream of you and me and him and her.

[52:47]

And we all live in this dream, but it is a dream. And we come to realize that those words, me and you and him and her, these pronouns are merely designations. simply useful designations. They're not ultimately the way things are. So practicing for others also means practicing for ourself, loving ourself. And in fact, truly loving ourself is to love others. And truly loving others is to love ourself. Because they're interchangeable. And that self-concern that I talked about, which is maybe a habitual way of living, you know, from this point of view, we realize this isn't really self-love at all. This is actually a kind of form of self-hate to always go around trying to satisfy this very small self because it's kind of a guaranteed form of suffering. It's a guaranteed way to suffer, to make ourselves so small and so subject to our wants and our desires and our needs.

[53:57]

to only look for satisfaction of those things, that this really isn't self-love at all. So, as I was saying, I came to talk about Bodhicitta in the talk because it felt like the inner counterpart to the kind of political... expression of the Declaration of Independence, you know, this kind of central aspirational vision of our life to be in touch with. And also because, you know, in answering the question that I so often get, you know, about, well, how does our practice relate, you know, to all the suffering in the world? I feel like this is the place to start, you know, that we can't realize... the intention of the revolution of 200 plus years ago, unless we do have this kind of inner revolution, that we need this inner revolution to then engage, hopefully, in the wider world and in what is hopefully still a promising democratic process.

[55:18]

Well, I thought I might have more to say, but I think maybe I'll stop there. I want to close with a poem which may seem like a complete non-sequitur, other than the fact that perhaps you're a little bewildered by the talk. But the poem is in part a response to... Actually, someone made a request. So it's a response to a request. And I guess, again, to kind of... There's one of the things that I thought I might say more, and it was to actually read from this book called Not Always So by Suzuki Roshi, where he actually tells a story about Bodhidharma, the first ancestor, and his disciple, Vika, the second ancestor. And basically, Bodhidharma is encouraging Vika to kind of realize, he doesn't call it bodhicitta, but to realize this kind of continuous practice he tells him to make his mind like a brick or a wall.

[56:25]

which is very off-putting. That's why Zen has a hard time attracting followers. You get a square rock and they have you contemplate on loving kindness and watch your mind. You come to Zen Center and they say, make your mind like a brick or a wall. Doesn't sound like much fun. But anyway, that was the instruction that Bodhidharma gave to Wicca, not to get involved with outer things, not to cough or sigh in response to inner phenomena. And Wicca had a hard time with it, but eventually he came back to him and said... you know, I feel like I understand, I've realized continuous practice. You know, and we also might have the idea like, oh, we come to Kringolch and we sit in the Zendo and we're practicing and then we leave and we're not practicing anymore. So this is a kind of question for us too. How do we realize continuous practice? So when Vekka says he understands Bodhidharma, he says, well, who is the one who's doing continuous practice then? And Vekka says, I know myself so well now that it is difficult to say who I am.

[57:26]

Something like that. I know myself so well now, it is difficult to say who I am. So maybe you have some feeling for this. So this is kind of a Zen take on bodhicitta. Bodhicitta isn't often kind of presented front and center like this in Zen teachings, because we just, right from the start, want some kind of non-dual understanding. So maybe in that spirit of not knowing. Bodhidharma's great not knowing who he is. I'll offer this poem. It's called Lost by David Wagener. Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you are not lost. Wherever you are is called here and you must treat it as a powerful stranger, must ask permission to know it and be known.

[58:29]

The forest breathes. Listen. It answers, I have made this place around you. If you leave it, you may come back again, saying, here. No two trees are the same to raven. No two branches are the same to wren. If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you, you are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows where you are. You must let it find you. The trees ahead and bushes beside you are not lost. Wherever you are is called here, and you must treat it as a powerful stranger, must ask permission to know it and be known.

[59:36]

The forest breathes. Listen. It answers, I have made this place around you. If you leave it, you may come back again, saying, Here. No two trees are the same to raven. No two branches are the same to wren. If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you, you are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows where you are. You must let it find you. 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 sfzc.org and click Giving.

[60:42]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[60:45]

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