This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning, everybody. Have you noticed that spring is rioting in the courtyard? If you have a chance, go outside and check out the wisteria. It's mind-blowing. So is the scent. So if you have allergies, I'm sorry. It's a bit strong. Well, welcome and welcome to Beginner's Mind Temple. My name is David Zimmerman, Tenzin David Zimmerman, and I am a student and resident here. I've also, just in the last month, was invited to step into a new role, which is that of abiding abbot. And so there is a big ceremony at the beginning of March, and lots of celebration and support came forward.

[01:04]

And here I am now, I feel like a baby abbot, trying to wobbly find my feet and find my way. So I greatly appreciate everyone's support and patience and kindness and generosity as I step into this role. So thank you again. I imagine that some of you are new here for the first time. And I also imagine that some of you have been here maybe a hundred or more times. So regardless of how many times that you have been here, I'd like you to just take a moment and come into this present experience. And then if you are comfortable doing so, take a look around the room. Observe who else is here with you. How are we here together? And if you're comfortable doing so, maybe even making eye contact with a few people and just silently doing so.

[02:10]

And if you're not comfortable, that's also fine. It's not required. It's just an invitation. And noticing the feeling of connecting with another person. We have a tradition here of often when you come for a Dharma talk, just be in silence together when we initially arrive. And that might be a little awkward, a little strange for some. So here's an opportunity to connect and realize that we are all this one being, one body together here in this moment. So thank you for your presence and being aware presence with each other. So today is a special day. or at least we're calling it a special day, and that is because we have the opportunity to celebrate the birthday of Shakyamuni Buddha, the founder of this particular practice, if you will, founder or discover, if you will, of this particular practice. And so the first part of our celebration today is going to be me giving this Dharma talk, saying a little bit about Buddha's birthday and talking a little bit about what

[03:23]

Buddha might mean for us as we take up this occasion of celebration. And then afterwards, we're going to process to Koshlan Park, that beautiful park across the street there, and we're going to have a ceremony. And what we've done is set up an altar with lots of flowers around it and also some sweet tea and a little baby Buddha inside. And we're going to take turns bathing this the baby Buddha, I read recently that this particular tradition stems all the way back to 5th century China. So apparently it's been happening for quite some time. It's a beautiful ceremony. And while we chant the Heart Sutra together, we're going to circumambulate the baby Buddha pagoda and then take turns pouring sweet water onto the baby Buddha. And... Apparently, this is to enact this moment at the Buddha's birth when flowers from heaven rain down, stream down on the baby Buddha in celebration of his birth.

[04:36]

So we'll be reenacting that in this beautiful ceremony. And then we get to come back, partake of lunch, and Buddha's birthday cake. So, and I... Probably they didn't have birthday cake in Buddhist time, but you never know. So I wonder how many people, is this the first time that you've ever been to a Buddhist birthday celebration here at Zen Center? Great. Wonderful. Well, I hope you discover something meaningful for yourself. And if you're able to, stay and enjoy the celebration afterwards. In the Soto Zen tradition, we celebrate three important occasions in Buddhist life. The first is his birth. There is his death. And then between those two events, his enlightenment or awakening. And here at City Center, we celebrate Buddha's birthday. Traditionally, it's kind of marked April 8th.

[05:38]

We try to find the Saturday that's closest to April 8th and do it on that day. And in Japan, they also celebrate something, Buddha's birth, called Hana Matsui. or Flower Festival, and that's also at the beginning of April. And then many other Asian cultures and traditions celebrate what's called Vasek or Waisak, and I just found out that it's actually a relatively new tradition that was created in the 1950s, and that commemorates altogether the Buddha's birth, his enlightenment, and death, all on the same day, and usually that's observed on the kind of first full moon of May. So, scholars basically agree that there was a person that we could call the historical Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha, and who was born approximately 2,500 years ago.

[06:39]

There's a little bit, what's the word, argument... about his exact birth date. It varies anywhere from a few years to a few centuries. We here at City Center have chosen a date in which basically I think this is the 2,580th birthday of Buddha, give or take a few hundred. So as the story goes, Buddha was born in a garden in Lubini, which is a town near the Nepalese-Indian border. to a prominent family of the Gautama clan in the Republic of Shakya. And his given name was Siddhartha. And Siddhartha means in Sanskrit, he who achieves his aim. He who achieves his aim. And the name Shakya Muni was given to Siddhartha Gautama later, after his enlightenment.

[07:40]

And... Shakyamuni means sage of the shakyas. And the word Buddha itself is comprised of two syllables, bud, which is to awaken, and da, one who. So Buddha means the awakened one. Now, in some ways, one way to understand the Buddha's birth is in a historical context, as this is a real human being who had a real journey, and in a particular time and place, and his life had a particular impact on others around him and the world. But for many of us who are practitioners of the Buddha's way, what interests us even more is actually the concern of how it is to live this life and what it is that the Buddha told us or shared with us about his discovery of about how we could live an awaken, compassionate life to truly understand who are we, what is the nature of reality, and how is it that we relate to each other from that understanding.

[08:57]

So our practice, realization, and path all focus on the cultivation and development of what we call wisdom, this deep understanding how things are and how to live in peace and accord with the nature of how things are. So when viewed in this way, the story of the Buddha's birth becomes a teaching story. It's an inner story, an inner story of a personal journey for each of us and an archetypal story. And in this way, it may resonate with us in different ways at different times in our own journey, our own path. So as we study and come across this story again and again, and some of us here have heard this story 20, 30 years or more, and it may have lost a certain magic to it.

[10:02]

Oh, that again? Right? That story, I've heard that a thousand times. But each time we hear it, how do we relate to that story of searching for our true nature, discovering who we truly are in a way that's new and fresh and meaningful to where we are right here, right now, in this very life and moment. Stephen Batchelor, in his book Alone with Others, says that the archetypal trajectory of our spiritual life is the story of Shakyamuni's life and refers to the deep currents of our own inner spirit and life. So, for those of you who might not have heard it before, I'd like to share the basic narrative of the Buddha's birth story. And as it is, legend has it that the Buddha's parents, King Suddhodana and Queen Maya, wanted very much to have children.

[11:06]

And one night, Queen Maya dreamed that a white elephant with six tusks entered into her right side while she was sleeping. And this was interpreted to mean that she had conceived a child who would become either a world ruler or a wise sage. And after 10 lunar months, feeling that the time of birth was near, Queen Maya chose to go home to her family, which was the tradition of the time, to have the first child at home with the family. So she set out with her attendants. But on the way, she realized that the child was coming, and so they stopped. They stopped at the Lubini Grove, where she... went over to a tree, and sometimes some of the stories say the tree actually bent down to her, a limb of the tree bent down to her, and she held onto the tree, onto this blossoming solid tree, and gave birth.

[12:12]

However, she gave birth to the baby Buddha from her right side. So a very unusual birth. And the baby was a healthy boy. Now it's interesting to note that the Buddha was born under a tree. He had his enlightenment, or awakening, under a tree. It's often called the ficus religiosus of the Bodhi tree, tree of awakening. And he died between two trees, two sala trees. So trees have a very strong history and presence and meaning for the Buddha's life in many ways. Now it's a bit miraculous to describe Queen Maya's pregnancy as resulting from the dream of a six-tusk white elephant and that the Buddha, Gautama Siddhartha, was peaceably born out of his mother's right side.

[13:16]

Usually when a baby comes out of anywhere else but the birth canal, it's not a peaceful event. So this is pretty amazing. But an even more... curious event happen after that. So the Buddha comes out and then stands up, immediately stands up, takes seven short steps, and out of each footprint where he stepped, a flower bloomed, a lotus bloomed. And then on the seventh step, he pointed to the sky and pointed to the earth and said, He's only been born, you know, a minute or so, right? He's already speaking, right? Above the heavens, below the earth, I alone and the world honored one. I'm dashes at that, right? Pretty audacious, right? Above the heavens, below the earth, I alone and the world honored one.

[14:20]

So we'll come back to that phrase a little later. It's quite peculiar, you know, and some might think it's a Although little babies have a tendency to think the world is about them, understandably so. But alas, as is the case of all human life, suffering and sorrow soon followed in a very short time. So Queen Maya, the Buddha's mother, died seven days after his birth, leaving him to be raised by his aunt, who was also married to his father. So at the time, Buddha's father had multiple wives. And her name was Mahapajapati. So she became the Buddha's foster mother and raised the Buddha. And much later, what happened is that she also became a disciple of the Buddha and was the first female ancestor of the Buddha. So aside from the initial trauma of

[15:28]

of losing his mother, and that's actually not something that's talked about much. How did that trauma of Queen Maya's death affect the Buddha, his family, and those around him? There's an amazing book I really enjoy called The Trauma in Everyday Life by Mark Epstein. If you have a chance to read that, it talks about the Buddha's life and an understanding of trauma from a Buddhist perspective. So I encourage you to read it if you're interested in that. So aside from that first trauma, the Buddha grew up with a relatively sheltered life in the palace of his father. And at the age of 29, however, he was compelled to leave the comfort and ease of the palace to seek the end of suffering. And there's much more story behind his search and what propelled him onto that. But he ended up studying for six years, taking on an arduous... of meditation and study and other aesthetic practices until he was able to discover for himself ultimate liberation, which is what he sought.

[16:39]

Now, he basically tried everything and in the end he gave up and decided to go back and sit under a tree. And recalling the moment as a child when he just sat peacefully quietly, in stillness, at one with the tree, at one with nature, at one with himself. So he did that. He did that all night long. And many things happened in the night, which I won't go into. But in the morning, upon seeing the morning star, he awoke. And that means he awoke to who he truly was, his true nature. And simultaneously, he awoke to the true nature of reality. how it is that this world and universe is. And shortly after his awakening, he agreed to teach and share his own discovery with others, which we are still taking up, practicing, and celebrating to this day.

[17:46]

So if you're ever interested in reading more about the Buddhist life story, I would highly encourage that. regardless of whatever you think about the mythological elements of the story of Buddha's birth, the point of Buddha's birthday is to take a day out to celebrate a Buddha being born. However, to really do that, we have to think about and understand what a Buddha really is. And understanding what a Buddha really is, how do we relate to others and the world around us from that understanding. So in preparation for this talk, I decided to do a kind of person in the street interview. So I approached a number of residents in the temple and solicited their brief responses on the following question.

[18:48]

Who and or what is Buddha to you? Who and And or what is Buddha to you? And I had a lot of fun doing these interviews, although I have to say a number of people were a bit startled and maybe stymied for a moment to have the abbot come up to them in the hallway or in the dining room and ask outright, who or what is Buddha to you? You could see a brief moment of in their eyes. Anyhow, I thought I'd share some of the responses with you because I found them engaging, insightful, and inspiring. Who and or what is Buddha to you? And I'm not going to name names, so. He's a guy that was born and raised and then took off to the woods and sat [...] some more and just kept on sitting. And then finally, he realized something.

[19:52]

he realized the whole connectedness of the universe. Then he went out and found ways and means to teach about what he discovered so that other people could discover the same thing for themselves. Another one. Buddha is a great yogi, a greatly realized being. Buddha is free awareness. Buddha is Siddhartha, the historical being, also our great original teacher, Shakyamuni, and our hero. Buddha is an archetypal, aspirational figure of unexcelled helpfulness and kindness. Sometimes when I offer incense at the altar, I see myself taking refuge in Buddha as awareness, in Dharma as truth, and in Sangha as community. We are Buddha. The awakened heart-mind space from which we all relate to each other with open availability.

[20:54]

My cat is Buddha in some ways. He's present in the infinite now, although not probably self-conscious of being so. On one level, Buddha is a teacher we learn from. On another level, Buddha is awareness ourselves and something we can trust in. It's the clarity below all the junk in our minds. Buddha is the universe as it is, the ultimate truth. Dharma is the realization of that truth, and Sangha is all of us working within that truth. Buddha is a manifestation of wisdom and compassion together. Buddha is just this, just you and me. Buddha is the limitless potential that connects us. It's the field of connectivity. Now, I think we can try to get clever with a response rather than dig deep into the question of what Buddha really means.

[22:04]

I don't go past the awakened mind, which is just this. Another, Buddha is my essential nature, that of interdependency, goodness, wisdom, intelligence. Love, generosity, perfect wisdom, and everyone else. Buddha is love. But Buddha can't just be love, so it's everything. Well, everything and everyone is Buddha to me. Buddha is suchness. What is Buddha? That moment when I am walking down the street and I see a person who is completely helpless lying there. My habitual energy is to pass them without helping. Buddha is being concerned and aware enough to see that they are Buddha, to see our interconnectedness, the presence of a living being, to see the other as myself, that we are none other than each other.

[23:12]

I think Buddhas are people who exemplify kindness, patience, and friendliness. When Buddha reveals itself to me, I use the term ordinary magic. It is a very subtle revelation of connection. I like to wave to people as I cross the street, and I like the simple connection of my wave and the resulting interaction with the person in their car. It's a simple, everyday expression of connection. Two more. Buddha is the luminous knowing of all experience. It is that which is experiencing the experience that is being experienced. That wasn't Paul's believing. As such, Buddha is the totality of all experience, whether or not we are conscious of it. And the last response I'll share, what is Buddha? I don't know. Can I get back to you later?

[24:16]

Well, that was fun, right? Lots of wonderful responses. And I think I really appreciate the way that we can rely on our collective mind to bring forth the Dharma, which is the reality of the way it is. And I wonder if any of these responses might particularly resonate for you in any way, if any of them kind of had a little flavor and taste of truth in it from your own experience. And also, was there anything that was missing? Any of your own understanding of what is Buddha that maybe you want to say right now? Anything you want to add to that? Hi? Well, we heard compassionate wisdom. I would say compassion. Compassion. Anyone else? I was surprised not to hear anything about pre-patriot or delusion. So Buddha also includes greed, hate, and delusion.

[25:26]

Free of greed, hate, and delusion. Great. Thank you. Yes? I see Buddha as someone who intuitively understood how the human mind works and develop ways so we can retrain our mind. So we're more compassionate cause ourselves less suffering. We truly understand how the human mind works and train ourselves to be compassionate and therefore create less suffering for ourself and others. Thank you. Tova. I think of trees, rivers, mountains as Buddha as well. Everything in nature has Buddha nature. Everything in nature has Buddha nature. Trees, mountains, rivers, and so on. Lauren. Buddha aggressively... to achieve his aim. He's single-minded.

[26:29]

He's going to get that. He's not going to get distracted. Buddha with a single-minded, non-distracted aim. Thank you, everyone. Thank you for those additional thoughts. And continue turning this over as you think about it. And each person's expression of Buddha, their understanding of Buddha, is true for them in this moment and has its own merits. right here and now. And it reflects their particular relationship to Buddha and how it is then that they engage with others and the world. And yet, language by itself is always inadequate. It never fully expresses or really reaches or defines what is Buddha. And therefore, we're always reaching in some way, and we say this in the teaching of the Dharma, we're always reaching to express the inexpressible, to define that which is undefinable. And I might even suggest that the most honest response when asked that question is that moment of brief pause before the conceptual mind kicks in.

[27:37]

Of course, everything that follows, too, is Buddha. But there's something unique about that momentary pause where everything stops and there's just aware presence. Can you feel that yourself? So the question of what is Buddha is a very familiar one in Zen literature. And many teachers and students have been bowing it about over the years. And there is one particular example in case 30 of the Muman Khan, the gateless gate. in which a Zen monk named Damai went to his teacher Mazu one day and asked, what is Buddha? And Mazu responds, this very mind is Buddha. This very mind is Buddha. So now, naturally, Damai was not asking about the historical Buddha. He wasn't interested in a specific person or a specific form.

[28:45]

He was asking about the fundamental truth. what we might call the formless, but the very nature of the universe. And our understanding in the Dharma is that everything is in permanence. Everything is empty of own being. And therefore nothing has a fixed form. Life doesn't have a fixed form. This moment doesn't have a fixed form. And our true nature doesn't have a fixed form. And yet there are forms that we interact with. Now, how is that? If nothing has a fixed form, what is it? What is this form that we're interacting with? And therefore, what is true? So Damai is asking about what is true. What is real at all times, in all conditions, in all situations? And what is it that we can fundamentally rely on and trust?

[29:48]

Mazur replies, this very mind is Buddha. Or simply, you could say, mind is Buddha. Mind alone, which in the Mahayana Buddhist tradition is described as all-pervading, boundless, and without edges. Even luminous. This is the truth of the way things are. Bodhidharma, the first ancestor of Zen, said the following, everything that appears in the three realms comes from mine. Hence the Buddhas of the past and the future teach mind to mind without bothering about definitions. A student then asked them, if they don't define it, what do they mean by mine? And Bodhidharma answered, you ask, that's your mind. I answer, that's my mind. If I had no mind, how could I answer?

[30:52]

If you had no mind, how could you ask? That which asks is your mind. Through endless kaphas, without beginning, whatever you do, wherever you are, that's your real mind. That's your real Buddha. So that's to say this very mind is Buddha. It's saying the same thing. Bodhidharma continues, beyond this mind, you will never find another Buddha. To search for enlightenment or nirvana beyond this mind is impossible. The reality of your own self-nature, the absence of cause and effect, is what is meant by mind. Your mind is nirvana. You might think you can find a Buddha enlightenment somewhere beyond the mind, but such a place doesn't exist. So in other words, you don't need to search for your mind or for Buddha.

[31:54]

Just be aware of being aware. That's enough. Buddha is no place else, no time else. There is no beginning or end to Buddha. Just this present awareness. So when asked, how do you define mind without defining it, Bodhidharma responds, You ask, that's your mind. Now, what does that mean? We're asking questions all the time of each other, and we're responding all the time. How is that simple activity Buddha mind? If you remember what I was sharing with you, the different responses from the students, one of the students said, Buddha was the ordinary magic of waving to people in their cars as he crossed the street and having them wave back. how is this spontaneous activity or responsiveness mind? How is it Buddha activity?

[32:59]

Bodhidharma also stated that Buddha means miraculous awareness. So you could say that every question we ask is the universe asking. And every response is the universe responding. Every wave is the universe waving. And every wave back is the universe responding. That is miraculous awareness. And this miraculous awareness is both the mind and the body of the universe. Miraculous awareness as the mind and body of the universe. So this great body fills heavens and earth. And when it does so, where is there a separate self to be found? Where can you find a separate self if everything, the whole universe, is Buddha?

[34:04]

So we all partake of this Buddha body, this awakened body, this one body of awakening. All of us had said, have Buddha nature, awake nature. We are the whole universe manifesting in its completeness. And I am that. So the meaning of the baby Buddha's statement, after he takes seven steps and points to the heaven and points to the earth, you know, above the heavens and below the earth, I am the world honored one. It's not a statement that's made out of arrogance, but one of deep insight, one of truth. one of humility and recognition of his profound interdependency, our profound interdependency. Being the world, all beings are world-honored. The Chinese character for mind shows the mind giving birth.

[35:18]

So if you watch your mind closely, this might become fairly apparent to you how much your mind is constantly giving birth to something. Sense impressions, thoughts, feelings, all kinds of experiences are being born in each moment. And Buddhist psychology teaches that the mind is the source of all phenomenon, all experience. But we're talking here about big mind. We're not talking about the small egoic mind. The only thing the small egoic mind gives birth to is suffering, if you ask me, right? And yet, you know, that suffering is still arising within the vast womb of Buddha mind. It's not separate from. In Mahayana Buddhism, the Sanskrit term for Buddha nature is Tathakaragarbha. And the first compound of this word, tatakada, means the one thus gone and thus come.

[36:22]

And this refers to the Buddha. The Buddha is the one thus gone from samsara or suffering into nirvana, into liberation. And also he is thus come from nirvana, nirvana, into samsara in order to work for the salvation of all beings. And said that all the Buddhas came into the world solely out of compassion for suffering beings in order to support them to be free. The second part of Tathakadagarbha, the word garbha, means womb, embryo, center, and essence. So Tathakadagarbha can be understood as Tathakadha's or the Buddha's womb. That is the womb of reality. Another way to understand this is that each living being is a womb containing the embryo of a Buddha.

[37:29]

Each living being is an embryo containing a Buddha. It's a womb containing the embryo of a Buddha. So the Buddha mind the nature of Buddha mind is to give birth to Buddhas, to loving, compassionate minds that see the nature of reality and suffering and then are born into the world in order to support all beings to also see the nature of reality, to see what they truly are, and to work to liberate themselves and liberate all beings. And this is the miraculous, that we are celebrating when we celebrate Buddha's birthday. We're celebrating the miraculous birth of our own being, our own mind, our own awake, compassionate nature. And we are celebrating that someone handed this down to us.

[38:38]

There have been many Buddhists and ancestors who have been so compassionate to share this path, this discovery, with us so that we can take it up, turn over the inquiry for ourselves, and in doing so, meet ourselves and meet our life and express it as completely as possible. And we don't need to celebrate Buddha's birthday one time of year. We can do so every time we meditate. Every time we sit down, we can remind ourselves that we are newly born into this very moment, into being, being as a verb. So whenever we do zazen, whenever we do any engaged activity wholeheartedly with miraculous awareness, we are giving birth to the universe. This is a very simple practice. And it's just a matter of being present.

[39:40]

Presencing your very life here and now as a universe. But it's not easy to do. We get tripped up so often by our own enclosed, tight, small room of ego itself and habitual habit patterns. That rather than seeing the world as ourselves, see the world as something separate. And that's very painful. So how fortunate it is that we have this opportunity today to celebrate the way of love and truth, the way of compassion and wisdom that Shakyamuni opened so many centuries ago for us, and that we can freely and joyfully offer this to others by practicing together. So... hope that you'll join us today in the celebration of Buddha's birthday and help us to bathe the baby Buddha, bathe your own body and mind with streams of flowers and crystal clear water and sweet tea and each other practicing together.

[41:06]

So thank you very much for your attention. Thank you for being here. 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, please visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[41:40]

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