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... It's wonderful to see you all here this morning, to see the zendo so full. I don't know if all of you know, but today we're celebrating Buddha's birthday. So it's an especially kind of joyous day to be at Green Gulch. It's one of the major holidays in our liturgical calendar. We celebrated it earlier around April 8th, which is the traditional date in Japan to celebrate. but we often hold a big public pageant kind of after the practice period, end of April, early May, which we're unfortunately not able to do this year because of our big construction project, but are still doing a celebration for the children.

[01:05]

So that's kind of the context for the morning, and I'm excited to see so many young people here. And so I brought something to share with them, and it would be great if... all the young people could really get as close up here as they can. And it's fine if you want to come sit on the floor. I brought a book, a homemade book, which tells the story of the life of the Buddha with really beautiful watercolor drawings. This was done by someone in our community many years ago. And so I want to kind of read it and share it with everyone. So please just come right on up. Get a good view. is wonderful. It's like all these baby Buddhas. So as I was saying, this is a homemade book made by someone in our community.

[02:17]

This was made, I don't know, made about 25 years or so ago by Wendy Johnson. So she was taking a class here, being taught by someone else in the community on the life of the Buddha. I think Lou Richmond was teaching the class. And so as part of her kind of homework for the class, she actually made this storybook of the life of the Buddha. So it kind of feels like a treasured object in our community. So I want to, in honor of Buddha's birthday, use it to tell the story of the life of the Buddha. Life of the Buddha. So it says,

[03:19]

with the baby Buddha. You all see the elephant. Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm sorry. There you go. I may have to abbreviate, I was hoping to tell the whole story, but I may have to abbreviate some of the story to get through in a timely way. On a full moon day, in the heart of spring, The baby Buddha was born in the peaceful Lambini Grove in the forest. The queen took hold of the branches of a giant solitary, and the baby was born out of her right side. All of the trees and animals, stones and waters in the Lambini Grove celebrated the birth of the baby Buddha. And in some accounts of the story... just as it says, the animals and the plants all responded to the birth. And there was kind of this moment of kind of profound kind of stillness.

[04:21]

I mean, there was some vibration and some drumming maybe, but incredible stillness among the kind of sentient life as the Buddha was born. And then in this, this story doesn't have actually one of my favorite parts of the story, which hopefully later this morning I'll talk a little bit more about with the adults, which is apparently after the baby Buddha was born, he took seven steps and then pointed one finger up into the sky and one finger down on the ground and said, I alone am the world-honored one. So as Linda said, that's a baby with a lot of chutzpah. But I'm kind of curious the meaning of that, so maybe we'll talk about that later. Not far from the Lambini Grove lived the wise hermit sage, Asita. The king and queen invited the old hermit to bless their newborn son. When Asita met the baby, he immediately saw the path of the young prince's life.

[05:24]

This child will be a powerful and kind king, said the hermit, or a Buddha born for the wheel of the world. As they heard the hermit's prophecy, the king and queen vowed to encourage their son to become a ruling king. So here's Asita with the Buddha's parents giving his prophecy. So two powerful options where this life is going to go. King Suridhana ordered his son to stay inside the palace. inside the palace gates. So the king and queen were set on him becoming a king and not a Buddha. He wanted to protect the prince from the sorrow and suffering in the wider world. The prince lived a safe and sheltered life. He had everything he wanted. He married his cousin, Yasodhara, and they had a baby son.

[06:25]

But Prince Siddhartha was curious and the world was calling him. The prince asked his faithful charioteer, Chana, to take him beyond the palace gates On the journey, the prince saw a very old person for the first time in his life. Everyone who lives for a long time must grow old, Chana told the prince. And Siddhartha looked at old age without turning away. So this is him going out in the charioteer with Chana, going out with a chariot in the chariot with Chana, his charioteer, where he first encounters some difficulty, some suffering. On their next journey, Chana and the prince passed a woman who was very sick, crying out in pain. No matter how wealthy or kind you are, sickness may still come, Chana told the prince. Without turning away, the prince looked at sickness.

[07:29]

Prince is learning the realities of human life, that we grow old, that we get sick. It's unavoidable. And then on their next journey out, the prince and Chana met a group of grieving people carrying the body of a dead person. Everyone dies at the end of life, Chana sadly told the prince. Without turning away, Siddhartha's eyes were open to suffering. So, here they are again in the chariot, looking at the procession of people carrying a dead person. Returning to the palace, the prince was deep in thought. Why does life bring old age, sickness, and death to the world? Is there an end to the chain of suffering?

[08:42]

What can I do to help relieve this suffering? Looking up, the young prince saw a sage sitting alone, calm and alert, fully awake. Instantly, he knew what to do. So Siddhartha saw someone who was doing some religious practice, who seemed particularly alert. And this was a well-established kind of way of being in Siddhartha's time, that there were people who devoted themselves to understanding the mysteries of the world and how to be free. Late that very same night, without telling anyone, Prince Siddhartha, the future Buddha, said goodbye to his family. He knew that they would always be in his heart and that he had to join... the wandering life, and searched for the end to the suffering he had seen in the world. So he makes his sorrowful goodbye to his wife and son, keeping them with him in his heart, but pursuing this deeper calling that he has.

[09:58]

Prince traded his life of comfort for the way of a wanderer. He asked everyone he met about ending suffering, but none of their plans worked for the future Buddha. After six long years of this hard life, Siddhartha was weakened and closer to the end of suffering. He decided to be kinder to his body and mind and to listen to what his heart was telling him to do. He was very strict and severe. in his practice, but still did not come to the understanding he was seeking. The tired Siddhartha went to the Naranjara River to bathe. There he met a lovely milkmaid who offered him some rice milk so he would be nourished and brave. Next, he met a young oxherder boy who gave him a newly cut pile of sweet grass for a meditation cushion.

[11:12]

Grateful to his helpers, the Buddha-to-be took a seat at the roots of a huge bodhi tree, promising himself that he would not get up from meditation until he was awake to how to end suffering in the world. And he's sitting under the tree, and he has all kinds of intense experiences as he's trying to understand. He experiences ghosts and goblins, storms and wars, violence. He experiences extreme beauty and delight, candies and cakes and things drawing him, but he's steadfast in his sitting. And when he had some doubt about what he was doing, whether it was the right thing to do or whether it was appropriate for him to do it, he put his hand on the earth to get support from the earth, which kind of testified to his right to his quest.

[12:30]

And then the Buddha sat quietly at ease beneath the immense dark sky. Just before dawn, the morning star rose in the east. How wonderful, how marvelous, thought the Buddha, looking at the morning star. All beings have this awakened nature, and we all know how to live. Only sometimes we get confused and forget everything. who we are. So after putting his hand on the earth and being supported, he kind of woke up to who he was and then realized that everyone has this awakened nature. Buddha was a human being, just like you and me. What made him a Buddha was that he was awake and ready to help stop confusion and suffering. Girls can be Buddhas and boys can be Buddhas, so can animals and even plants. And sometimes falling rain and the morning star will help us all wake up together like Prince Siddhartha in this story.

[13:55]

So there he is, sitting under the Bodhi tree after woken up with a vast dark sky around. So that's our story. And I think that children this morning are going to go out and decorate a pagoda. We have a pagoda that every year we decorate with flowers. And then in the middle of the pagoda, we put a little statue of the baby Buddha in this pose that I talked about. Above heaven and below heaven, I alone in the world's honored one, standing there in a kind of basin of sweet tea. And all the children have the opportunity to bathe. the Buddha in sweet tea. And then after the talk, all of you, too, will have that opportunity. And this is a traditional practice that goes back, actually, to the fifth century in China, this practice of bathing the baby Buddha on the Buddha's birthday.

[15:00]

So I think the kids can all go. I'm not sure. Are you going out that door? There's more room if anyone wants to come closer, you're welcome to.

[16:27]

So I thought today, in honor of Buddha's birthday, I would talk about the Buddha's birthday story and maybe just pick out a few pieces of the story to kind of explicate or think about or just try and understand with you the meaning of. And I talked with Linda about this a few days ago. So the... Parts of the story that kind of emerged for me were the miraculous nature of the bird. You know, there are these other kind of religious stories. And also I want to talk a little bit about Buddha's birthday in the context of other kind of spring religious holidays and what that might mean. So just say something about that, the miraculous birth of coming out of his mother's side and being impregnated by the elephant or... or not pregnant by the elephant, but having the elephant visit in the dream. And then to talk about the prophecy that Asita makes about the son being destined to be either a king or a Buddha or a sage, and the parents' response to that.

[17:42]

And again, all these questions are, for me, what do these questions mean for us? I feel like it's a story that's hopefully will speak to us in some way, to our path, our life. So how do we understand these questions for ourselves? And then, in fact, I did want to talk about this quite unusual part of the story where the baby takes the seven steps and, again, makes this gesture, I alone am the world-honored one. And anyway, it's quite a strong event in the story. unless it's just kind of like age-appropriate narcissism of the baby. I'm kind of wondering what other meaning it might have for us. So those are the kind of main elements of the stories that I'm hoping to talk about, and then maybe just say something about the holiday, the holiday in general. So my thoughts about the miraculous birth is that it's telling us something about that we...

[18:48]

It's miraculous precisely for the reason that it's encouraging us to leave behind our literal thinking, our literal mind. So it's not that we're being told some miraculous story that then we should be expected to believe that literally, but it's precisely that we're being encouraged to enter some realm of myth or legend or metaphor and maybe telling us that this is actually deep human need, that we won't find our freedom, we won't find meaning, we won't find release in our life if we only live in the realm of our literal mind, that we need this realm of kind of mythos, of metaphor. And there's kind of an interesting Wallace Stevens poem about this called Crude Foyer, which I think, just given time, I won't read the whole poem, but he basically talks about the false happiness of thinking, of only thinking, and thinking that by thinking alone, you can kind of penetrate to the truth of things, and basically likens that to kind of being in the foyer of the spirit.

[20:06]

You don't ever quite really enter the spirit if you're convinced that thinking alone will get you there. And he talks about the kind of consequence of that, of being kind of ignorant men. He does this phrase, ignorant men, incapable of the least vital metaphor. So we need vital metaphors in our life. We need this other way of engaging reality. It's kind of how I take the starting of the story with the miraculous birth, that we need something that's outside of our normal way of thinking. to get us on the path. And maybe I'll just leave that there. The second, as I said, kind of interesting moment for me in the story, or among the interesting moments, is the prophecy of Asita, who, you know, in the story I read, was kind of invited by the king and queen and other versions of the story.

[21:08]

He, just through his own intuitive powers, through his signs and his own kind of senses, you know, can tell that there's been this miraculous birth and comes to see what it is. But this kind of choice, this kind of choice that he lays out between either the boy will be a king or a sage. And, I mean, some things that I think are interesting, I mean, the story is set up with those categories kind of firmly... in place, that Siddhartha is the son of a king. He is a prince who is born into nobility. And I think that is an important part of who he is, even as he becomes the Buddha, that the meaning of being nobility kind of carries through. But that there also was this understood category of being a sage, of being a religious seeker, as part of Buddha's path too, that he recognizes that there's someone doing this.

[22:08]

And I mean, I sometimes wonder if there was a modern kind of retelling of the story, whether that second category would even show up so clearly for us. Do we see that as a kind of equally valid way of life, someone who's a religious seeker? I guess maybe most people here would, but I feel like in the culture at large, there's probably a different feeling about that now than there was at the time, you know, in India. And the king too, you know, again, the the images of king and sovereignty has a lot of meaning for us. Again, kind of metaphorical meaning. But I wonder too, in a modern retelling, would it be a king or would it be like a world conquering CEO? Those are the choices. Is Buddha going to be a world conquering CEO or what? A seeker or a scientist? What do we think is the way that we get at truth? And I think this speaks to all of us maybe in the pressures part that we all feel to kind of to live in a worldly way, let's say, to make our place in the world, to find our place in the sun.

[23:31]

And some feeling like it's kind of up to us to do that. And... We kind of have to seek our self-interest in certain ways to do that. And just as the king keeps Buddha in the palace to kind of prevent him from seeing the full world or seeing the wider world, I feel there are kind of palaces of our own that we're kind of trapped in that are kind of like Siddhartha. So... with this idea of maybe in a modern retelling, the choice would be kind of world-conquering CEO versus the religious seeker. And I feel like just as Buddha was growing up in a kingdom where it made sense that that was the choice, was to be the king of the kingdom, I think we're growing up in a society that has a kind of an overarching kind of story, a kind of economic story about the way the world is. And that we live largely within that story, sometimes unquestioningly.

[24:33]

And that story in some ways kind of tells us who we are or what human nature is or what the possibilities are. I'm actually reading a book called Monoculture, which is about this by an author named F.S. Michaels, who basically says there's this kind of economic story of reality, which is just the dominant story of our time. And it influences all aspects of our life, even things that we wouldn't think would be primarily economic, including spiritual life and education and all these things. And he says, basically, in this economic theory, there is a theory of human nature, which, again, we largely adopt just because it's kind of the water that we're swimming in that says that basically we're all kind of atomized individuals who fundamentally kind of exist apart from others and not as group members. or with group obligations and responsibilities. It says that we're primarily rational, or should be rational, that that's the best way to navigate the world, and that our best choice is always the most efficient choice.

[25:38]

Everything's cost-benefit analysis, how do we get the most for the least. this economic story says that we're self-interested, not necessarily in a negative way, not selfish, but self-interested. In other words, we're always looking for how the situation can profit. It doesn't mean just profiting us, profiting conditions around us, but basically that's the fundamental drive, this kind of self-interest, that we're always trying to get what we want, and that's kind of always the motivation for our action, is that we're trying to get what we want, and that Others, by kind of seeing how we act, can kind of tell what we want. It's just that relationship between behavior and motivation. And also in this economic story, and this in some ways kind of coincides with Buddhism from a certain point of view, our wants are unlimited. Our desires are unlimited. So in fact, there's no end to seeking these desires or seeking... satisfaction. And in this story, that is our prime motivation.

[26:41]

It's driven by one thing, the kind of desire for satisfaction, satisfying our wants and desires. And then since we all have this desire, we're all trying to satisfy unlimited desires, then naturally, what the story tells us, well, then there isn't enough to go around. Resources are scarce. And therefore, one of our primary relationships with one another is that of competition, because we're competing for scarce resources. So anyway, what I'm saying is probably not a surprise to hear this description. And I think we all probably wouldn't necessarily accept this as the ultimate truth of the way things are. But I just want to kind of share how impressed I am with how kind of deeply embedded, what a deeply embedded story this is of the way things are, of who we are. of how we relate to each other and the world. And to kind of liken that to Siddhartha being in the palace, that's kind of all we see.

[27:44]

And how do we, if we do think there's some other reality beyond that, if we are more than just what that story says we are and are motivated by more than just what that story, how do we see that and how do we kind of transform the story or transform the world? Another way to think about these choices, maybe between being king, being a sage, is just in the basic kind of modalities or ways of orienting toward the world in terms of, let's say, having and being. So there's one basic orientation toward the world, which kind of feels like what's important is to have, and we find happiness and security and what we want through having things. And then the other is through being, that our ultimate happiness is simply in our capacity to be and to be with others. And so I think that's another way to kind of think about this choice.

[28:45]

And then Buddha's life, you know, of starting in the palace and then seeking out and becoming the Buddha, it becomes kind of a paradigm of how do we make what may be this kind of necessary kind of human shift, transition from relating primarily through the mode of having to relating through the mode of being. So in the beginning of the story, Buddha has everything he wants, and his father is trying to give him everything he wants, so he won't seek anything else. And then at the end of the story, I don't know how clear it was in the version that I just told, but basically he has his enlightenment experience after getting this bowl of rice porridge, rice milk, which, and having this kind of memory of childhood, of the kind of pleasure of just kind of sitting out on a pleasant day under the rose tree, and it's some quality of being, actually, that kind of awakens him.

[29:49]

So, anyway, to think about that choice and his life as that transition, how do we change the way we relate from primarily having to Stephen Batchelor talks a little bit about this in a book, which I haven't looked at in a very long time, called Alone with Others, and talks about these two modalities and having basically being a kind of horizontal expanse with precipitating toward endlessly receding horizon. So in fact, in some ways, it does match well with some versions of being a king, where one of the main things a king is up to is how do they continually expand their territory, or at least keep others from encroaching on their territory.

[30:50]

And so that's kind of the motive of having. And again, it fits very much with the kind of economic story. We have endless desires and wants, and we're just constantly... moving out, trying to satisfy them, and no matter how many we satisfy, there's still more to satisfy. So that's the kind of mode of having. And one thought about that is that way of living actually creates a widening gulf in our awareness of who and what we really are. We can't even really see who we are when we're just constantly moving in that horizontal plane of acquisition. While Well-being, Stephen Batchelor says, is more a kind of vertical horizon or vertical stance in the world. So it has depth. It's a kind of vertical way of being with depth where life is experienced instead of kind of an endlessly receding horizon as kind of profound.

[31:51]

It itself has depth, awesome, foreboding, mysterious. So there's another way of being that has a kind of depth to it, and mystery to it, and maybe kind of endless richness of its own kind, but the point isn't to get it, it's maybe to appreciate it, to kind of be with it. So I think this is a, you know, obviously was, you know, and probably in some ways this question just speaks to our human nature, right? That this question was relevant. 2,500 years ago and relevant today, these ways of being in the world. So I'm going to suggest that the Buddha taking the seven steps and then taking this posture, you know, I above heaven and below heaven, I alone in the world, honored one, is in some ways a kind of response to this.

[32:54]

I mean, this is the... the harbinger of him becoming the Buddha. So I think it speaks to him ultimately adopting this mode of being, which has depth to it. So, you know, as I say, as I was joking before, so it's not just simply his own kind of narcissism, you know, I'm the one, you know. But the kind of aloneness in that phrase I think, speaks to the aloneness of being. That in this mode of being, and again, I'm just kind of borrowing from Stephen Bapsola here, there are kind of two main aspects to being. So one is that we're inescapably alone, that we're always in our being in some way alone. And we're inescapably in a world together with others. So these are the two kind of modes of being, being alone and being with others.

[33:59]

And then again, even in these modes, there are ways that we could say are authentic or inauthentic or liberating or non-liberating about ways of engaging these modes. So one might say kind of inauthentic or unauthentic. unliberated way of engaging with the mode of being alone, it's very close to kind of the having or the economic story, is that we just kind of distract ourselves with the things of the world. I mean, it's kind of our incapacity, really, to be alone, our need to kind of constantly distract and entertain ourselves, which feels to me just so prevalent in our world, you know, how hard it is to, even culturally, how unsupported it is even to be unplugged, as we say, you know, or have some solitude or downtime. And then even how, in some ways, that's even looked kind of askance upon, well, why aren't you busy? You're not important enough that you're not busy. So, but anyway, so one might think that, yeah, that by constantly busy in ourself, we aren't truly realizing, you know, what

[35:14]

what it is to be alone. And then in terms of being with, the way we avoid being with is not by recognizing our responsibilities to others, but indulging, overly indulging in self-concern. So I think these modes can be transformed. And one suggestion is that the Buddhist path is actually a way of transforming these two modes. That being alone, in our maybe inauthentic way of doing that by kind of seeking satisfaction in the things of the world, kind of distracting ourselves, absorbing ourselves with all the various particular entities of the world, is transformed by kind of seeing the truth of what in Buddhism is called the three remarks. That things are, everything is impermanent, you know, all entities, all... compounded things are kind of impermanent, are unsatisfactory.

[36:18]

We see them as permanent, but they're really impermanent. We see them as satisfactory or think we're going to get satisfaction from them, but in fact they're unsatisfactory. And I think if we look closely at our experience, we often find that's the truth, that the things we think are going to make us happy and satisfy us, ultimately don't. And that they also don't exist the way we think they do. We think... not only that we exist kind of separately and independently, but that these things, these entities of the world also exist separately and, you know, independently, and therefore could be kind of, we could have them, or they could be under our control or under our power, but in fact they don't exist like that. They're selfless, you know, or empty. So there's a suggestion that seeing these truths kind of can release us from this kind of inauthentic way of being alone because it's through these kind of delusions that we can't truly meet our aloneness.

[37:20]

And then in terms of being with suggestion is the Buddhist practices of compassion essentially orienting ourselves toward meeting others, helping others, engaging others through generosity. So instead of being caught in some centripetal force of self-concern, that instead we turn ourselves into centrifugal, going outward, force of generosity and ethics and patience and enthusiasm, concentration, that these are the ways to transform how we are with others. so that we can kind of be with them, let's say, and borrow this language in an authentic or liberating way. I think there's also... So again, in the I alone and the world-honored one, in taking the seven steps, I think has these dimensions of...

[38:39]

you could say, kind of aloneness and with others, that he is alone, I alone, but it's also in being the world-honored one, there's the quality of being kind of recognized or met by the world, or maybe him meeting the world. One way I also had thought about that is... well, I alone am the world honored one because there is no separation between me and the rest of the world. This is his kind of insight that there is no boundary where I end and the rest of the world starts. I simply am the rest of the world. So, of course, I alone am the world honored one because I am the entirety of the universe, you know, that kind of understanding what the universe is me. Maybe a better way to say it. I think... I think also that, you know, kind of embedded in that moment is these kind of related, are these other kind of two aspects of dharma. Dharma is often talked about having the aspect of the profound and the quality of being profound and the quality of being vast.

[39:46]

So I feel like the kind of, that moment is also speaking to that when Buddha says, I alone and the world honored one. But again, the kind of aloneness speaks to the profundity, as you were saying before, of what What does it mean to really be alone, to really fully meet oneself, be intimate with oneself? And there's a kind of vastness in it, too. I think mythologically, the seven steps, I mean, seven itself, I think, is a mythological number which I think has kind of universal kind of resonances to it. I've also heard that it stood for basically the five... planets and the sun and the moon, which were kind of the celestial orbs that they knew about at the time that were visible at the time. So seven stood for basically all the universe, all the celestial bodies that were kind of known about. I've also heard seven stands for seven directions, the four cardinal directions that we think of north, south, east, and west, and then up and down, and here also being a direction.

[40:51]

So again, so the seven steps is kind of he's traversing the universe. So there's this kind of vastness of that moment with the kind of aloneness. And so then, again, following that, there's another way to kind of think about what's the meaning of this or what's happening in this moment, which also maybe we get by his finger pointing. So he's pointing to the heavens and he's pointing to the earth. So I think there's something of this moment which is about how do we unite the transcendental with the mundane or the everyday or in Buddhist language the kind of ultimate with the relative or the universal with the personal so I think he's saying this is what I'm about this is what I'm doing is I'm uniting these domains and but But how do we do that? How does he do it?

[41:52]

So I don't have the ultimate answer to that question. But I was actually thinking that I could start talking about another favorite prince of mine as a way of maybe understanding this a little bit about these aspects of the profound and the vast. the ultimate and the relative. And I may have to go through this a little quicker than I planned, but there's actually a passage from Hamlet, toward the beginning of Hamlet, that I think kind of speaks to this a little bit. And so I want to kind of read the exchange and then talk about it a little bit. So the scene I'm thinking about is the second scene in Hamlet. So it's after, the first scene is when the guards and Hamlet himself sees the ghost of his father and hears his father's account of having been murdered by his uncle and asks Hamlet to seek revenge.

[42:57]

And then in the second scene, and the stage directions are kind of important, Hamlet's kind of standing off to the side of the stage while the main action, I mean Hamlet soon becomes the main action, but at the start the main action is this wedding celebration for Claudius. his uncle, and Gertrude, his mother, who now married. I'm sure you all know the story. And so Claudius is, you know, saying various congratulatory and positive things about the state of the kingdom and the marriage and whatnot, and Hamlet's kind of off to the side actually making kind of asides. And I think this actually speaks to a kind of feeling state that we all can probably relate to or recognize, you know, maybe being at some kind of party where we don't feel like we're the center of the action, you know, where we feel a little bit off to the side or kind of marginalized in some way. And Hamlet himself is almost kind of ghost-like at this point, not completely in the scene or out of the scene, and making these asides, which, again, I think has a kind of feeling quality to it when we kind of feel to the side, the quality of being excluded.

[44:08]

And so it's kind of observed that Hamlet's, you know, in this way. Claudius first seeks to address him, and Hamlet makes this aside when Claudius addresses him as his son, saying, little more than kin and less than kind. And so not feeling met by Claudius, obviously. And then Gertrude, his mother, comes over to him, and she says, Good Hamlet, cast thy knighted color off, and let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark. Do not forever with thy veiled lives seek for thy noble father in the dust. Thou knowest, tis common. All that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity. It's kind of like an annoying Dharma teaching, right? Jesus is like, why are you so gloomy? What's the matter? You know everything that is born must die. It's kind of like what I just told you, right? That's the truth we need to see. We need to see the truth of...

[45:10]

impermanence is what Shana told Siddhartha so in some ways her words are kind of a Dharma teaching but there's no loving feeling there so it's kind of a lesson in my also how Dharma can be used to not really meet someone she's not really respecting or taking into account Hamlet's feeling state himself she's just giving him these words of teaching you know but actually trying to manipulate him trying to get him into some other desired state of hers. So she says, Thou knowest tis common, all that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity. And Hamlet says, I'm Adam, it is common. And then Bertrand says, If it be, why seems it so particular with thee? So in other words, what's your problem? This is a universal truth. Why are you different? Why are you making something special of this? So she says, If it be, Why seems it so particular with thee?

[46:12]

Hamlet says, Seems, madam. Nay, it is. I know not seems. Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, nor customary suits of solemn black, nor windy suspiration of forced breath, nor the fruitful river in the eye, nor the dejected haviour of the visage, together with all forms, Moods, shapes of grief that can denote me truly. These indeed seem, for they are actions that a man might play. But I have that within which passeth show. These but the trappings and the suits of woe. So what Hamlet does in that speech, you know, so seems, madam... Nay, it is. So it's not that I seem... He says, it's not that I seem sad.

[47:14]

Anything that you can see about me that indicates that I'm sad is not the sadness itself. It's not who I really am. I know not seems. He's saying, I can't pretend. I'm not someone who can pretend. You know, I can only kind of be and be with. And so this is where I'm kind of using this as kind of example of kind of... kind of mode of being or being alone, you know, that Hamlet's willing to kind of be outside of the party and be kind of alone, you know, with himself and with his true feeling. And I'm suggesting, too, that this is a kind of suggestion of how we do reach the depth and the profundity of our experience, which then can open into vastness. And that's in some ways precisely what Hamlet kind of unfolds in the speech when he says, it's not my... black robe, it's not my black clothes, it's not that I'm breathing as if I'm crying, it's not the actual tears from my eyes, or that I look sad.

[48:15]

Together with everything you can see, the forms, moods, the shapes of my grief, that can denote me truly. These aren't who I am. These are merely seemings, appearances, because anyone can imitate them. But I have that within which passeth shows. So he's taking us immediately to the kind of profundity of his experience, that there's something that he's in contact with which isn't seeming. And so on the one hand, he says, I know not seems. So this is also a way that this passage is kind of maybe navigating, you know, Buddhism, what we call the kind of middle way between existence and non-existence or realism and nihilism or exaggeration and denial. So on one hand, he says, I know not seen. So he's saying it's not, this isn't just an appearance. This isn't not true. He's not denying the state of his experience.

[49:15]

He's saying it is, which might sound like existence, although I'm suggesting it's really kind of middle way, that he's just with his experience as it is, no more, no less. He doesn't say it is something. In fact, he says, my experience is precisely that which passeth show, which can't be denoted truly, which you can't put a word. or a name to. So he takes us immediately to this kind of profound, profound place. And one of the things that I particularly appreciate about the passage is it also points up the difference between the inexpressible and the unsayable. So the inexpressible is that which Hamill was speaking to, his own pure, kind of raw experience. is beyond words. The kind of truth of who he is is beyond words. And it's not because it's brief. That happens to be the experience he's having now is brief, but it could be some other experience. But his contact, his immediate contact with that experience, the truth of that experience is kind of the profundity of what he's speaking to.

[50:25]

That's the inexpressible. Any words aren't it. But it's different than the unsayable. The unsayable is what we feel forbidden to say. Because we don't allow ourselves or don't give permission to ourselves or feel pressured by others or don't feel permission from others to recognize or speak to. That's the unsayable as opposed to the inexpressible. And Hamlet cuts right through that because he is saying precisely what's the truth for him. essentially saying, I'm sad. In fact, I'm so sad, I can't tell you how sad I am. Which is not what Gertrude wants to hear. So he's not caught in the unsayable. He is able to express, but he's relating at this place of the inexpressible, that who he truly is can't be expressed.

[51:25]

And I think that teaches us something ourselves about the power of our meditation or the power of our practice, because I feel like that's the place that we're often aiming at in zazen or in our practice, is the inexpressible. How are we in touch with the inexpressible? Again, there's a way that we can support ourselves to be in the world in this mode of being. How are we nourished by that, and how do we make contact with it? And I think Hamlet's giving us a clue here, which is by being in touch with our feeling state. So again, in this case, it happens to be grief, but it could be some other feeling. But it's through contact with his feeling state that he reaches the inexpressible. Anyway, there's probably a lot more I could say about this.

[52:27]

realizing I'm short of time. So maybe I just leave that as just a little sketch of how we think about this kind of mode, these modes of kind of being, being alone. But I guess I do want to say that in terms of our practice, in terms of how we do that ourselves, that it's not always clear to us what we're feeling. I mean, I think there's some basic feelings we're all aware of, mad, sad, glad, you know, afraid, which I think in Tibetan Buddhism have, relate to the four elements that mad is related to fire, sad to earth, kind of sinking feeling, glad to water, like a quality of buoyancy, being floated up, and afraid or fear, wind, like the winds of anxiety. But I think in that Tibetan system, there's also, there's a fifth, which is also kind of like space. which is not knowing, which we don't know actually what we're feeling. We look inside and we're not, either there's nothing or we're not sure.

[53:29]

And it's not, I think, something to be discouraged by. It's just not clear yet, you know. So as we do this work of kind of being in touch with these feeling states, it's important to do for ourselves what Gertrude didn't do for Hamlet, which is to kind of offer ourselves a kind of genuine kind of warmth and kind of loving, kind of inquiry, kind of welcome, loving inquiry into what's happening with me that really then allows the feeling states to kind of open and emerge. There's just one more thing I wanted to say about that. So just briefly moving back to Buddha's birthday. When I was first a resident at Green Gulch, 1998, 99, One of those years, I was enlisted to direct the Buddha's Birthday pageant. It was, I think, his first interaction with the pageant, actually, which I was happy to do.

[54:31]

And there's one point in the pageant where the Buddha is escorted by his attendants. Maybe it's as he's taking the seven steps. And they come with these bright, traditionally, they come with these kind of bright parasols to kind of escort him. It's a very colorful, kind of joyful pageant. The whole holiday in Buddhism, Buddha's Birthday, is just It's kind of like unequivocally kind of just joyful, kind of celebratory holiday. But I had just come from Tassajara, and I was a very happy monk at Tassajara, where many people had these big black kind of Amish umbrellas that I was just very fond of. They were just taking these big black umbrellas. So I thought it would be great to have the attendants escort the Buddha with these big black umbrellas. umbrellas. And there was a kind of artistic director that I was working with, Annie Hallett, the woman who's made the masks all these years. And as soon as I kind of started to do that, you know, to kind of direct that in, she kind of like leaped up and just said, no, no, no, you can't have big black umbrellas. This is a joyful, colorful, you know, pageant. So this is all by way of saying I hope my little interlude into the kind of grief and sadness of Hamlet isn't a big black umbrella in the midst of Buddha's birthday.

[55:39]

Um, And I kind of want to get back to just the joyous aspect of the holiday. You know, I do see it in the kind of framework of other religious holidays of this, you know, this kind of holiday of renewal. It is a spring holiday. I was watching all morning to see if the sun was going to break through the clouds, hoping that it would, because that's the feeling of the holiday. It's about children and flowers and light and color. And as I said, in Japan, it's traditionally kind of celebrated April 8th, which is often very close to the dates that in the West, Easter and Passover are celebrated. And so I was thinking about the holidays, and I was thinking in some ways how similar Passover and Easter are, in that there is renewal in those holidays. There's a kind of freedom or... transcendence, some kind of liberation, you know, that they speak to, but, you know, only after the most, you know, kind of horrendous ordeal.

[56:42]

You know, in Passover, it's in the case of the kind of Jewish people who go through this tremendous ordeal, you know, before finding, you know, liberation and, you know, Christ, of course, you know, being crucified. It's a tremendous, painful, violent, sad ordeal. So, in some ways, they're almost the same holiday. Just in one case, they're talking about a group of people In the other case, it's been kind of individualized to the person. It's a similar thing of there's some terrible thing that we have to get through, and then on the other side, there's some uplift or some freedom or release. But there's nothing like that ordeal in Buddha's birthday. It's just like pure joy celebrating Buddha's birth. So I was kind of like wondering, is there suffering in Buddha's birthday in the part of the holiday? Is there some pathos? And... The only thing I could come to was that this renewal that the holiday speaks to is, from the Buddha's point of view, his whole life is happening every moment.

[57:43]

So every moment there's meeting suffering and turning it, renewing it. So rather than one big ordeal that you get through, it's each moment. How do we meet the suffering of each moment and turn it, make some joyful, positive effort to meet suffering? the suffering of each moment, which Buddhism tells us there is. There is suffering in each moment, the impermanence, the unsatisfactory nature of existence. There's some dissatisfaction every moment. So how do we recognize that and turn that, you know? And I think the holiday also says to us that there's always this possibility for renewal. As I'm saying, every moment there's this possibility for renewal. So no matter what stage of life we're in or what's already happened to us or what we think about ourselves, At this moment, there's always the possibility to renew. And similarly with the world, no matter how dire and difficult the situation seems, that there is the possibility of renewing the world. And that that starts with this body and mind.

[58:45]

I think that's another way of understanding I alone. It's up to me. It's up to me with others. But I make effort with this body and mind. So how, through our kind of powerful and joyful intention, can we engage this project of renewal, both individually and for our world. So I kind of invite you all maybe just to take a moment and think about, is there something in your life that you want to renew? Some way of being, some practice, some activity, some relationship, something you want to renew. in your life. And as I was saying, after the talk, you too are invited to bathe the baby Buddha, this centuries-old practice, which I think the Buddha will be in the pagoda in the tea area somewhere.

[59:53]

And I guess I encourage you, if you... did come up with something that you wanted to renew to actually make the bathing of the Buddha in enactment of that renewal. Not just even kind of a symbol of renewal, but actually this is beginning to enact that renewal in your life as you bathe the baby Buddha. It's an invitation. Thank you all for... your kind attention this morning. I really enjoyed speaking with all of 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.

[60:58]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[61:01]

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