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. Good morning. I've written in large letters at the top of my... Oh, I didn't write it. I typed it. Is that so? So I have a true story to share starting this morning, to start with this morning. So I think yesterday I said something like, I don't know if I'm helpful or not. Which is true. I don't know. And then a student came to see me and said, I think you're helpful. And suddenly I fit my robes. Great. Well, great. Not too long after that, a student came and said, I don't think you're helpful.

[01:01]

And my ropes got very big. And I felt pretty small. So that's how it is, right? Praise and blame. Up and down. Good and bad. Right way, wrong way. So it reminded me of a story. You know, first I was kind of like, I like that other one better than this one. So I had to work that through. And then I thought, hey, that's a story about that that Reb used to tell. That he said there was a monk in a village in China who was practicing very hard. And then one day there was a loud knock on the door, and a farmer came and said, you rotten monk. You're the worst monk that ever lived. You got my daughter pregnant. And he hands him a baby and says, you take care of the baby. And the monk says, is that so? And then a while later, don't know how long, I hope not too long for the baby's sake, the farmer comes back and he says, I'm so sorry.

[02:12]

It was the boy next door who got my daughter pregnant. And you are the best monk that ever lived. Can I have the baby back? And the monk says, is that so? He gives him the baby. That's a good story, but what better part of the story was later on, Rib said, after many years of thinking of the answer of, is that so, is kind of sassy. Is that so? Oh, yeah? As he got older, he said, it got deeper, like, is that so? Am I the worst monk that ever lived? Am I the best monk? How do we know? Two sides of the same coin. So this is our practice, is to keep looking at both sides, you know, not falling into the pit of one or the other, which is what we tend to do, seeing ourselves as worst or best, but to keep turning the question, is that so? I should think about that.

[03:14]

I would like to be helpful, but I don't know. I don't even know how. So anyway, so I'll just give you a talk. That's what I can do. During a recent senior seminar, which I enjoyed very much, with Tenshin Roshi, my long, long teacher, many years. I knew him when he was a young man. We were talking about the 16 Bodhisattva precepts, and Paul Disko, another venerable senior teacher and master architect, builder, he built this Zen Dome in very short order, temporary building, now 40 years, I think. and the guest house at Green Gauch, many other wonderful buildings in the world. So anyway, Paul's part of that seminar, and we were talking about the precepts, and Paul said, the one thing I remember Suzuki Roshi said about the precepts is, the only precept is not to make two. So I think that's a good summary, not to make two, not to split.

[04:22]

So in this teaching that we're studying, in the seminar about the precepts. Reb's translating some quite wonderful text that he's translating with some help from a person at Stanford. It says that because self and other are not separate, are not two, when people steal from others, they are never satisfied. And then it says, if one penetrates the dharma of no self, one cannot kill. Killing is due to the selfish mind. If one thoroughly penetrates the dharma of no self, the precept of not stealing also appears. When one thoroughly penetrates the dharma of no self, the precept of not committing improper sexual acts appears. Bodhisattva precepts are about joyful communion based on the vow to be enlightened with all beings on earth. It is not about getting rid of defilements or purifying that

[05:22]

which is already pure. So today, as I'm talking about three pure precepts, in terms of the relative truth, I think it's important for us to keep in mind that in this school, this is a teaching by a person, a Soto Zen teaching master, in this school that the precepts are an expression of the ultimate truth, which is based on the non-dual nature of reality, the not making two. And that there is where I hope this talk ends up. Is it not making two? So to begin with, I want to say a few things about one of my very favorite Zen teachers, John Cage. Actually, it's very funny, but I was probably in my early 20s and just starting college, and I went with a friend to a concert at Mills College in East Bay. And this is back in the mid-60s.

[06:23]

And it turned out to be a performance by this young musician, John Cage. I knew nothing about John Cage. And he played a piece, kind of played a piece, called Water Walk, which I remember as mostly like, I don't believe this is happening. I was kind of awestruck by what he did. So basically, he had set up all kinds of gadgets all over the stage that made sounds using water. So there was a sink, a blender filled with ice cubes, a bathtub, a salad spinner, a garden sprinkler. And then he went from gadget to gadget, turning them off and on, while we all sat and stared and listened. Simply stared and simply listened. It was amazing. I will never forget. So many years later, I found out that he was quite famous for doing this kind of thing.

[07:28]

But more importantly, that he was a serious Zen student. And as he said, my music isn't a study of sound, it's a study of noise. So Mr. Cage describes what he does as a purposeless play which affirms life, not in an attempt to bring order out of chaos, nor to suggest improvements in creation. but simply as a way of waking up to the life that we are living right now. So then way back in 2014, I gave a lecture at Green Gauch and I played another of his famous pieces called Four Minutes and 33 Seconds. Do any of you know Four Minutes? You know it? Anyone else know it? Anyone not know it? Who doesn't know it? Okay, good. Well, I would play it, but we don't have four minutes and 33 seconds to spare, I'm afraid. So, anyway, this piece is in three parts, three-part composition, and it can be performed by any person, any instrument, or any combinations of persons and instruments at the same time.

[08:36]

It's what John Cage wrote in the, what do you call, the playbook, or, yeah, liner notes, yeah. in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians describes four minutes and 33 seconds as Cage's most famous and controversial creation. I should play it. I should, but I don't have a stopwatch. Anyway, I could play it. It's easy to play, actually. But what I wanted to do was invite you all to play it, maybe the last day of the practice period, after you've completed your 90 days of solitude and asceticism. And to find a comfortable place to sit down and then set your alarm for four minutes and 33 seconds and enjoy the purposeless play that is continuously coming forth and affirming your life. I've seen this piece played on YouTube where this

[09:41]

musician piano player comes out in a tuxedo and he opens up the keyboard and he puts the music in front of him and there's an orchestra and he sits down sets the timer closes the keyboard for four minutes and 33 seconds and you hear people going squirms squirms It's very long, 4 minutes and 33 seconds, as it turns out. Anyway, sheer delight. So here's some more words about affirming our life from Dogen Zenji. The one great matter is nothing other than Buddha's darsana. That is opening, displaying, realizing, and entering the reality of all beings. You must now believe that the Buddha's insight is nothing other than your own mind. the purposeless play of your own mind.

[10:44]

So on the other side of our one-sided universe, where purposeful play is given space and time to appear, I once took a number of Jukai students to a kind of like field trip to the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. And we went through, first we went to the Indian section, which is fantastic, these big stone carvings of Buddhas and inscriptions like When there's this, there's that. Not this, not that. Amazing. Thousands of years old. So from the Indian section, we then went into the Chinese section, Chinese Buddhist art. And right in the front were these three very large standing figures, quite beautifully carved. And the center one was Shakyamuni Buddha. And on his left side was Ananda, the guardian of the Dharma. And on the right side, Mahakashapa, the foremost in ascetic practices. So I think we all recognize these three from morning service.

[11:46]

They're the first three of our Zen ancestors. There's Shaka Munibutsu Dayosho, Makakasho Dayosho, Ananda Dayosho. So somewhat later I was reflecting on these figures and I thought, oh, they are absolutely perfect to represent the three pure precepts. So Mahakashapa, the great aesthetic, avoid evil. Ananda, do good. And Shaky Munibuda, purify the mind. And as a trio, save all beings. So the first thing I want to talk about this morning is this idea of avoiding evil through the practices of asceticism. You know, asceticism really basically just refers to kind of a wise and at times somewhat severe restraint regarding the actions of our body, of our speech, and of our thoughts. Mahakashapa, the figure to the Buddha's right, was known as the great ascetic. And I think I mentioned to you yesterday the story of Angulimala.

[12:47]

So I thought I would tell you the rest of this story. He's the mass murderer who tried to kill the Buddha for one of his fingers. So Angulimala, I think this, by the way, this is an example of avoiding evil or stopping whatever evil you've gotten yourself into. Angulimala, means a thousand fingers, began his life as a gentle boy. But very sadly, a soothsayer told his parents that he would end up as a serial killer. And to protect him from this horrible fate, his parents changed his name to Ahimsa, meaning not harming. As Ahimsa grew tall and strong, he was then sent to a kind and gentle yogi for training. And soon he was the very best student, and as a result, he was the teacher's favorite. However... The other students became so jealous they lied to the teacher saying that they had seen Ahimsa talking quietly with the teacher's wife. The teacher was sure they were lying, but over time his faith in Ahimsa eroded and he became blind with rage.

[13:56]

So he told Ahimsa that if he wanted final approval of his enlightenment, his certification, he would need to bring him a necklace of a thousand fingers to prove his dispassion toward the world and all of its inhabitants. Ahimsa fainted. Unfortunately, when he woke up, he decided to trust his teacher, and he set off into the forest to hunt for fingers. Many years later, at the height of his madness, Angulimala saw the Buddha who had come to the forest looking for him. The madman chased after the Buddha, hoping to get the thousandth finger that he needed to complete his trophy necklace. And although Angulimala ran as fast as he could, he wasn't able to get any closer to the Buddha, who just kept walking slowly down the trail. And then in desperation, he yelled to the Buddha, stop, stop. And the Buddha turned and faced him and said, you stop.

[14:59]

And so he did. So this was the beginning of Angulimala's practice of renouncing evil. And by virtue of his sincere practice, over time he recovered his sanity and was ordained as a novice monk. And then one day, while he was out on his begging rounds, the people of a village where he had done such great harm recognized him and stoned him to death. Knowing this was the result of his past evil actions, his mind, his karmic consciousness, at last, was at peace. So basically asceticism supports a practitioner in not getting carried away by their thoughts, beliefs, perceptions or feelings, what the Dalai Lama calls pathological emotions. There are the pathologies of attachment, called greed, you've got to have it. The pathologies of revulsion, hatred, you've got to get rid of it.

[16:02]

both of which are grounded in the pathology of delusion about the true nature of reality, which, as Suzuki Roshi said, is not true. The basic delusion which we all commonly see and therefore believe, such as seeing is believing, is that there is a self right here and that there are other things and persons out there which are either making me very happy or are clearly the cause of my problems. Is that so? It's been well documented throughout human history that extremely bad behavior flows from that mistaken belief that someone out there is doing me wrong. The pathology of delusion is known as the double barrier, which must be broken through in order to wake up. The first is the barrier of belief in a self. The second is the barrier in belief of the other.

[17:04]

So in English, this word asceticism comes from a Greek word having to do with training athletes for the Olympics. It's basically a form of strenuous exercise, asceticism. And there are a number of other words referring to this kind of effort that one makes to master traditions involving ritual or art or craft. John Cage was a highly trained musician. He was an excellent musician. excellent craftsman, who knew exactly what he was doing when he wrote down four minutes and 33 seconds in three movements on a sheet of paper used for musical composition. The words religion and yoga both mean to bind or to commit, and the word discipline means to learn or to train. And even the word study originally meant to apply oneself with painstaking zeal. So, you know, of course there are extreme versions of asceticism, as we've all heard. Many of them are familiar to us through the practices that the young prince underwent after he left the palace.

[18:11]

Siddhartha undertook the beginning of a quest for freedom by nearly starving himself to death. He lived outdoors in all seasons. He didn't bathe. He held his breath until he got terrible headaches. And he engaged in long hours of meditative trance. It was Sumedha, the yogi who became our Buddha, who had proclaimed, I am determined, at the beginning of his long bodhisattva pilgrimage, including all the Jataka tales that I told you about yesterday. Determined to break the hold that his mind had on his belief in a separate self, a self that was terribly estranged from the universe that surrounded him and that was giving him his life, until on that quite ordinary morning, he was not. estranged any longer. And yet it was through such severe and sincere practice that Siddhartha came to realize what he called the middle way, a path between the extremes of sensory deprivation asceticism on one hand and indulgence in sensory pleasure or decadence on the other hand.

[19:20]

So it's because of that insight, his darshana, that the Buddha declared in his first sermon, the middle way, avoiding the extremes, is the most beneficial path for the development of a truly mature human being, a being who in the Buddhist tradition is awakened moment after moment, both into and by this very life, a life filled with mystery and wonder and service to others. Self-receiving, self-employing samadhi. the true reality of all beings and all things. So although asceticism, as represented by Mahaka Shapa, remains a very important part of our Zen training program, the real question is, to what degree and to what end? This is a good question for us to be asking ourselves at this time and in this place. just as it has been throughout the history of not only the Buddhist tradition, but all religious traditions. You know, how far do we humans need to go?

[20:24]

And more importantly, go where? Ditsang asked Fayang, where are you going? Fayang said, around on pilgrimage. Ditsang said, what is the purpose of pilgrimage? Fayang said, I don't know. Ditsang said, not knowing is nearest. So for those who go too far in their ascetic zeal, there's Ananda standing on the other side of the Buddha. Ananda was the Buddha's cousin and lifelong attendant, his Anja, whose name means joy or bliss, and who is characterized in the earliest teachings as kindly, unselfish, generous, and thoughtful towards others. Ananda enjoyed playing with children and spending time with women. He's also portrayed as large-bodied, unlike Mahakashapa, who appears thin as a rail. Ananda, for the most part, was a happy man.

[21:25]

And he, too, is a perfect model for a spiritually satisfying life, as well as for the second pure precept, doing all good. Ananda became famous, among other things that he did that were kindly, for beseeching the Buddha to allow women... such as his aunt, his mother, and his sisters, to enter into the Sangha as fully ordained nuns, which the Buddha eventually allowed, however, not before imposing on them an extra set of regulations, which made them, the female monks, subservient to all male monks, regardless of their rank or their age. An aspect of the Buddha's tradition that, among a few other things, such as race and age and ability, has yet to be fully worked out. So following the Buddha's death, known as his Parinirvana, Ananda was severely criticized by his new teacher, Mahakashapa, for not only his advocacy of women, but for a number of other things related to playfulness.

[22:27]

For some in the Buddhist tradition to this very day, Ananda represents someone who didn't go far enough in his practice, a criticism that I have also heard about Zen at the San Francisco Zen Center. We don't go far enough. You just don't renounce pleasurable aspects of human life. And I'm not going to deny that that is not the case, especially given the kind of tea treats we've been offered during Sashin. So truly, among the many things I value about the practice at Zen Center is that almost everybody can play. either as hard or as gently as they like, provided that it's not at the expense of others. Others are not your business. Did you hear that? Mind your own business, please.

[23:30]

Bless my place. Close the curtain. Okay. Oh, yeah. Okay. Okay. So, for me, these two, Mahavishapa, representing asceticism, and Ananda, representing pleasure, are simply the guardrails on the pathway to awakening, each one personifying the extremes by which we navigate the middle way. First, we slide to one side, and then we slide back to the other side. It's a slippery road, the bodhisattva path, which reminds us that our practice is not a thing that we can do. It's a process. 10,000 long mile iron road down which we merrily roll along or not as the causes and conditions of our life may allow. In the Zen tradition, Mahagashapa's Dharma transmission from the Buddha is said to have occurred when the Buddha held up a flower and twirled it in his hand

[24:40]

The other disciples looked without knowing how to react, kind of like John Cage. But Mahagashapa smiled faintly, and that was it. That was Zen. Nothing to it. Dharma flower turns to Dharma flower, the name of one of Dogen's essays in the show of Genzo. So I've always thought it was kind of interesting that Zen storytellers picked Mahagashapa, as the first ancestor and Ananda as the second. I have a preference that would be the other way around. However, it occurred to me that it is important for this sequence, for all of us, to undergo some strenuous period of asceticism, avoiding evil, the first pure precept, in order to remove the habit body through a realization of selflessness. We are self-selfish. It's not our fault, but we are. That's how we came in, and we will die that way if we don't do something about it. As Pema Chodron, the much-loved Tibetan Buddhist teacher, once said that renunciation means to renounce that which doesn't work.

[25:46]

And then by doing all good, doing what does work, the second pure precept, coming to recognize and embody the joy and freedom that runs through all things. And then the third pure precept, to save all beings, is how bodhisattvas express their maturing by means of the first two precepts. Try doing good and avoiding evil. They are able to transform their bodies and their minds to whatever is needed for the liberation of all beings, just like Avalokitesvara with the thousand arms and a thousand hands going off to work at the Samsara cinema. One of our habits as human beings that may keep us from fulfilling the practice of the pure precepts is our effort to capture the joy that runs through all things, you know, like colored lights in a rainbow. We try with all our strength at times to hold on to things that we like, you know, to possess them, and in doing so to lose touch with their transient nature, to lose touch with the transience of the seasons, of the hours, of the minutes, without which there would be only silence and stillness, with nothing before and nothing after.

[27:01]

I think all of you may have heard before that the cause of human suffering is this futile effort of the illusory self to capture illusory things and the pursuit of the transient by the transient is the very core of human suffering it's basically a kind of madness and so we must practice together in order to reveal in fine detail the depth and the breadth of our insanity and then we must stop Suzuki Roshi once said, practicing together is like putting unpolished stones in a tumbler, and as they knock around, they take the rough edges off. This is a very courageous service that we offer to one another here, as we must. None of us here at the Zen Center is lacking the emotional and psychological conditions for becoming excessively angry, fussful, or confused. As my therapist often said to me when I was in the throes of some personal upset, with one of my comrades at Green Gulch Farm, human first.

[28:06]

And so for that reason, human first, I do believe that all of us have come to this practice in order to face the facts of our ancient twisted karma, our conditioning that leads us to an enactment of our pathological emotions. We have come to consider how we might alter the outcome of our habitual impulses towards self-defense, self-righteousness, and worst of all, self-loathing. So that is the whole of the third pure precept, to purify the mind and thereby save all the beings that we are. As Sojin Roshi, Mel Weissman, once wisely said, to save all the beings that we are. So I think it may not be surprising to you to know that along with the schedule of events, zendo attendance, food sensitivities, and new relationships, conflicts make up the bulk of what is discussed at the practice committee, at all three of the training centers.

[29:11]

And fortunately for us, the guidelines for working and living together are at the very core of the Buddhist practice itself. The 16 Bodhisattva precepts, which are clearly stated, in the mission statement of the San Francisco Zen Center. The precepts are a way of learning the truth about ourselves and about our relationships to the world and to other people, which is basically and ultimately that there is no separate self and therefore there are no other people. So as I said in the very first talk of this practice period, what the Buddha saw on the morning of his awakening, was a world that was not outside of himself. He knew he wasn't alone, that there was no thing and no one outside. And he was so happy. He was so happy, he almost stayed there under the tree for the rest of his days. But lucky for us, he changed his mind, which he said we also can do.

[30:12]

So to finish this morning, I'm going to begin talking about the 10 grave precepts. which as we've all chanted together, each full moon ceremony we've done, just as we did at the end of the last work day, you can remember that far back. Although the precepts, in particular, the ten great precepts, are often couched in negative terms, you know, don't do this and don't do that, Buddhist ethics, once they're fully incorporated into our lives, result in a natural embodiment of right action, right speech, right livelihood. You don't have to do it. You just are it. Given the primary intention of the precepts is to help us live in harmony with each other, it's extremely important not to take a rigid approach to compliance or to enforcement. God forbid. Precepts are not to be viewed as accomplishments in and of themselves, such as imagining, now I am good because I haven't broken any precepts. but rather as steps in the ongoing training process that leads us to awakening.

[31:18]

And then how will you know when you're awake? You'll know because that's the kind of person you've become, a person who lives a life of precepts. As Dogen says in his fascicle called shoku maku sa, when practice matures, evil is not done, like a mother with her baby. It is the only way to act. He also says, don't hate fire for burning when it's the nature of fire to burn, meaning don't hate yourself for your unskillful behavior which you have not as yet learned had occurred. That's why the precept recitations are preceded by confession and repentance. The Buddha's own name for the religion he founded was the Dharma Vinaya. Dharma, universal truth that brings relief from suffering, and Vinaya, the guidelines given in accordance with the needs of his disciples, which he gave one by one as they came to study the Dharma, bringing their untrained selves with him as they arrived, as do we all.

[32:29]

So interestingly, as I mentioned yesterday, the Buddha declined to lay out an entire set of regulations, such as the 16 Bodhisattva precepts, for his newly formed community. But instead, he told Shariputra, one of his chief disciples, that he would give guidance in response to specific difficulties that arose for a particular monk or within the community as a whole, case by case. So the original set of guidelines that he gave were not in any particular order, but they were in chronological order. One of the first guidelines had to do with sexuality. When one of the monks left the rainy season practice period in order to return home to have sex with his wife, his family having beseeched him to do so in order to produce an heir. The subject of sexuality and the regulations regarding it, given in the Buddha's lifetime, continue to be a source of controversy within the Buddhist community to this very day, like right here. A very long conversation, which we do not have time to get into, as often seems to be the case.

[33:36]

Maybe later. We'll talk about sex. There's a book that I found quite illuminating by Stanford Professor Bernard Fore called The Red Thread, which opens the topic of sex in the Buddhist monastic tradition as widely as I have ever seen it. The Red Thread is a thread that the elder monks would put on the young monks, the new monks, on their collars to make them look beautiful. How about that? Guess what was going on there? It's not surprising, but it's just rarely talked about. What was really not okay was having sex with women. And why not? What's the problem with that? Babies. And what do babies do? They take over your life. And they take your money. And they take you. So to have a sangha, you needed to have no babies. So no sex with women.

[34:40]

No women. So anyway, women came. Now we have babies. We are a really odd community for a lot of Buddhists in East Asia. What we're doing is very unusual, having families. But they're curious. I'm curious. I think it's great. It's wonderful. Anyway. So I'm not going to get into the topic of sexuality right now because it'll take a lot more time than we have. You know, we only have a few days left. But I do hope that all of you who are staying here will ask the teachers to please bring that up as they often have. I know they have. We have at Green Gulch year after year. When people are new, they don't know we have because they weren't here when we did. So please ask for that to happen if it hasn't happened during your stay so that you can talk together about how to work with that energy. which is so powerful and beautiful and terrifying, all at once. So as with this big issue of sexuality, during the course of his lifetime, the Buddha gave about 250 guidelines in response to either un-monkish behavior or behavior not conducive to living a communal life.

[35:54]

There's a written formula for how this was done. If the villagers gossiped about a monk, the Buddha would ask him or her, is it true? as is said, that you, for example, were seen eating after midday, which is one of the early regulations for monastic deportment and explains why we eat something called medicine bowl. It is not food. And thank you for making that clear. I mean, I didn't mean that. Thank you. Put it in the medicine bowl. If the offender corroborates the report, yes, it is true, Lord, that I ate after midday, the Lord would respond, this does not arouse faith in the faithless and harms some of the faithful. And then he would specify the consequences for that particular behavior. The earliest guidelines were memorized by another of the Buddha's chief disciples, Upali the barber, and then divided into categories in descending order of seriousness based on the gravity of the offense. So as I also said yesterday, the most serious categories contained offenses that required immediate expulsion from the Sangha, with no possibility of reinstatement at a later time.

[37:05]

Sexual intercourse, murder, theft, and lying about one's spiritual attainments. Be careful. Lesser offenses require lesser penalties. The important point here is that the monastic community has always been formed within an historical context. Specific regulations arising in response to specific conditions, just as they do here. You know, there is no prohibition in the ancient texts for a mid-practice period skid night or for a watch or for an internet connection, of course. So responses are to the conditions that appear in the life of the present-day monastic community like this one. In considering rules or regulations of any kind, it's very important to reflect on the Buddha's primary insight that our life is a creation of our mind.

[38:13]

Not just one person's mind, but all of our minds. and not just within our own lifetimes, but over many generations of lifetimes, lifetimes of devoted practitioners to the Buddha's teaching. So truth is always relative, meaning relational, until at last we see with the eyes of a Buddha. And then we know that truth is relational and that there isn't any other kind of truth. The ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth. And the primary relationship for human beings is the one between what I call myself and what I call you. You know, hey you, is anybody awake? Do you hear me? Do you see me? Or are we each truly as alone as we fear? The relationship between me and you is the precise location where the ten prohibitory precepts are doing their work. And so tomorrow, which will be the last talk of the practice period, it seems fitting that we'll end with what's considered to be the one great condition for entering the Zen gate, the 16 bodhisattva precepts.

[39:26]

Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, Visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[39:47]

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