We'll be right back. Good morning, everyone. How's the audio? Pretty good? Why, it seems like I'm seeing a lot of new faces here this morning. Just curious, how many of you are here for the first time? Wonderful. Well, welcome to Beginner's Mind Temple. By its name, you can infer it's good to be a beginner here. We all are beginners, so you're in good company.

[01:01]

The new year has started. Wonderful. Beautiful day. So today, we're going to have a special ceremony at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. It's called Lay Bodhisattva Initiation Ceremony. And it's where students, and there will be five of them, take the 16 bodhisattva precepts and are initiated into the world of being a bodhisattva. So it's a very special ceremony and I'm very much looking forward to doing it. And I thought I would say a few words about that today for those who, well, because I'm very happy they're doing it and was thinking about it and thought it would be a good thing to talk about. So it's both a personal and a public commitment to aspire to lead the life of a bodhisattva and keep the 16 precepts that form the basis of our Soto practice.

[02:07]

And precepts, if you're not quite familiar with that term, are like rules or rules of conduct or principles of conduct. And bodhisattvas are beings who are dedicated to the well-being of all people or the awakening of all people. This ceremony is sometimes called Jukai, which means receiving the precepts. Jukai is the Japanese word. It may be also called Zaikei Tokudo, a Japanese term which means staying home and accomplishing the way. Staying home and accomplishing the way. That's because it's given to people that are lay people, who are householders, who are living out in the world and living a life, a family. It's also given to... new students that are here that may eventually go on and go out into the world or they may eventually go on to be a priest. It's sort of the first step in that path. I like it particularly because I've always liked the idea that a householder, a layperson, can achieve the way or accomplish the way or practice the way just as well as a priest can.

[03:21]

for someone who's a monastic. So it's very nice about this ceremony that it's exactly the same precepts that are given to priests when they do a priest ordination, and their translation is zaikei tokudu, which means, no, not zaikei tokudu, but shukei tokudu, leaving home and accomplishing the way, the idea that priests leave the family life and come and live a different life. Of course, in America, priests have families too, so it all gets confusing. But anyway, you get the general idea. And an early group I formed maybe 16 or 17 years ago in Mill Valley was called Vimal Asanga, and it was named after Vimal Akirti, who was a householder. and a disciple of Buddha and considered maybe the wisest disciple of Buddha. There's an entire sutra called the Vimalakirti Sutra, which describes how a householder, a lay person, a person who's a businessman who lives in the world, can be just as wise and just as accomplished as the many other priest disciples of the Buddha.

[04:35]

So the ceremony begins with invoking the presence and compassion of our ancestors in faith that we are Buddha, we enter Buddha's way. So they're making a commitment to follow Buddha's way. And Buddha's way is also the Bodhisattva way in our tradition. And what a wonderful thing to commit to. I was listening to a talk on NPR, source of much great information. on my drive in a couple of weeks ago, and the speaker said, I think her name was Zadie Smith, I only got part of it, said, you are what you commit to. What you commit to is what defines your life. This was in opposition to what you're born to, what rights you have, or what your talents are, what your talents are. It's really what you commit to. It's the act of committing to something that creates and defines a life. Of course, when I was a young student, a lecturer says, what would it be like if you aligned your life with your deepest intention?

[05:49]

What if you committed to doing what your deepest intention was? I thought, wow, that would feel like a life worth living, a life that made sense. The course raises two questions. What is your deepest intention? for your human life, this incredible gift that you've been given. Don't even really know what it is, actually, much less what should I do with it? What is my deepest intention? And once you've discovered what your deepest intention is, then how do you do it? So I thought it was a good question. It's a question that stayed with me and sort of influenced my whole life. And I thought it was interesting that we're... These people are making this commitment on January 4, which is the beginning of a new year, and many of us make New Year's resolutions, which is a kind of commitment, a commitment to live a better life, maybe exercise more, eat better, sit more zazen, whatever it is that you came up with.

[06:53]

Sometimes deeper questions come up around this time of year because you go to holiday celebrations maybe with friends, and maybe some of the friends that you used to celebrate with are no longer with us. It certainly is the case for me. Some of them have died and gone away, and so it sort of emphasizes again that life moves quickly, and one should make sure that one's heading in the right direction. So this talk is fundamentally about what does it mean to make a commitment, and commitment in the Buddhist sense of the word is a term we use as vow. The usual definition of vow is a solemn promise or a pledge or a personal commitment. But in Buddhism, it's much wider than that. Part of a definition of a bodhisattva is a person who lives by vow instead of karma.

[07:55]

A person who lives by vow instead of karma. Shoako Kimura, in this wonderful book, Living by Vow, put it this way. Ordinary people are those who are being pulled by their karma. Bodhisattvas are those who live by their vows. I mean, you all know what karma is. Karma is our conditioning, our desires, our needs, our values that are left over from our early childhood, shaped by our culture, the sort of rushing stream, torrent of stuff that presses on us and runs our life, our karma. Most of it, most of it, Basically, it's a set of beliefs that, in many cases, have caused us great suffering. So the question is, what would it mean to make a shift from living your life just sort of following the karma of your childhood and culture to living a life of vow? And what's tricky here is you can't abandon karma.

[09:03]

Karma is always with you. But the question is, where do you place your bet? Do you place your bet on karma and just say, well, this is the way I've always been, this is the way it's going to be? Or do you say, I'm going to bet on a vow to make my life a better life? And what would that vow be? I would say that vow should be aligning your life and activities around your deepest intention. So I thought I would mention the four Bodhisattva vows. These are very famous for those who have been around Zen very long or Buddhism at all very long. These are the four vows the Bodhisattva takes. Beings are numberless. I vow to save them.

[10:03]

Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to become it. And this is chanted quite often in this temple. In fact, I believe it'll be chanted at the end of the lecture here. And we do full-moon ceremonies where we do the bodhisattva vows. And they're wonderful. Beings are numberless. I vow to save them. I'm going to help everybody. This is the initial sort of definition of a bodhisattva. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. all these stupid thinking that's going on in your head that is causing you and other people trouble and suffering. We're just going to take care of all that. Gone. Dharma gates are boundless, I vow to enter them. A Dharma gate is an opportunity to practice. And in this definition, every moment is an opportunity to practice.

[11:09]

I'm going to enter each moment... and take that as an opportunity to practice. Even painful moments, even moments when people are mistreating me, I'm going to take that as an opportunity to practice. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. I'm going to practice with every opportunity that comes along. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to become it. I will become Buddha's way. Wow, so what does vow mean in this sense? I vow to save them, I vow to end them. There's a contradiction inherent in these vows. We vow to do something that's impossible, right? These are impossible things to do, right? I mean, just 30 minutes on a cushion will let you know that you're never going to get rid of your delusions. This is an endless project. So, I was listening to a self-help. a lecture recently very smart guy I was quite impressed by I don't remember his name right now but you know set you know set goals that are achievable you know achieve those goals reward you it all made a lot of sense to me which of course isn't exactly what's going on here so I'm just going to point out that country it doesn't mean that we don't set very reasonable goals you know we set a goal you know like I sign up for a dish shift I'll show up for a dish shift here in the in the in the

[12:35]

kempel and if you if you have dishes at home i'm sure you set a goal i'll wash the dishes when i finished eating the meal so so there's not a contradiction between setting short-term achievable goals and rewarding yourself for that and and as a way of changing your life but what's the advantage of having impossible goals it's like a vision it's like a killer in your life, something that's always there for you. And it means your practice is endless. It will go on forever. That's such an important part of what we do in Zen practice. Practice is continuous, ongoing, never-ending. So what kind of attitude does one need for this kind of practice?

[13:41]

I mean, obviously you need dedication and determination, willpower, but also I think you need a certain kind of softness because if you're going to take on something that's going to be a lifetime practice, you need to have a kind of gentleness with yourself and a kind of relaxed attitude. Otherwise, it would be like sprinting out of the gate on a marathon. You can't just do it with willpower. You need to pace yourself, right? And this vow is kind of a compass for your life. It gives you direction. The other side of having an endless vow is... Well, I think I'll go on to that later. So I'm going to sort of explore some other aspects of vow.

[14:43]

In our tradition, vow is understood as being identical with zazen. Zazen is not meditation practice. Zazen is a way of practicing with vow. And I thought I would read this wonderful description by Katagiri Roshi. Shohako Kumara took over leading the Minnesota Zen Center. after Kategori Roshi died. Kategori Roshi was an early teacher here at Zen Center, marvelous man. So Kategori Roshi often spoke about living by vow. In his book, Each Moment is the Universe, he says that the wholehearted practice of zazen is itself living by vow. In zazen, many things come up, thoughts, emotions, sometimes anger and hatred, But all you have to do is take care of zazen in eternal possibility. It is completely beyond good or bad, right or wrong.

[15:47]

So put aside all kinds of imagination fabricated by your consciousness. I love that. Put away all those ideas fabricated by your consciousness. Don't attach to thoughts and emotions. Just let them return to emptiness. Just be present here and swim in Buddha nature. Buddha nature is our innermost desire to be a bodhisattva. This is living the bodhisattva vow to help all beings. Then the great energy of the universe supports you and you take one step onward toward the future with all beings. So our zazen practice is our practice of vowing. The way we sit, this beautiful description by Katagiri Roshi, is to vow. Vow is sitting. We follow a tradition from Dogen, which Suzuki Roshi so eloquently brought to us, and the foundation of what he brought to us was sitting practice.

[16:54]

And when I think about Shohaku, who wrote this book, or Suzuki Roshi, I'm reminded of the fundamental stance on this vow is humility. Suzuki Roshi was, obviously, for me, the wisest, most awake, most present person I'd ever met. As Trungpa said, who was a famous Tibetan teacher back in those days, he was the only sane man he'd met in America. And yet Suzuki Roshi was incredibly humble. Because if you take on a vow of this scale to help everybody, Suzuki Roshi once said, you don't know how hard it is to love some people. What, you mean you try to love everybody? I don't have a hard enough time loving one or two or three people. Five would be a... Yeah, so if you take on a big goal and the bodhisattva vows are...

[18:04]

I mean, the beauty of them is they're so noble. What a noble aspiration. I'm going to live my human life in this noble, wonderful way. I know it will be impossible, but that's what I'm going to set as the standard for measuring my life. Not measuring it, but what I'm going to try to do. And of course, in Buddhism, we would say that is the most rewarding way to live a life. That is a life of wisdom and kindness. And that will give you the most satisfaction too. So I just wanted to comment that humility, I think, and if you knew Shohako Kimura or Suki Roshi, you saw what humbleness brings to their life. Also the advantage of having a goal so high... is you can't get too discouraged by it right and you and it's not something you compare yourself to other people because you know if you got a goal that's impossible and out there in infinity the fact that you've gone one percent of the way and or one tenth of one tenth of one percent of the way and someone else has gone one point one one tenth of one you've both gone the same amount of way you know nowhere

[19:27]

So everybody's in the same boat. We're all trying to do something impossible together. And we don't have to be discouraged because we know it's impossible, so we're just going to take one step at a time. There's another aspect of vow that I want to talk about. It's called repentance. And Shohaka brings up repentance is intimately connected to vow. Vow and repentance are two sides of one practice. Because our vow is endless, our practice is never complete. This awareness of incompleteness is repentance. Repentance is a part of the Bodhisattva ceremony. In fact, we have a formal repentance we do every morning. here at City Center.

[20:33]

All my ancient twisted karma from beginningless greed, hate and delusion I now fully avow." It's a kind of a formal statement. I know I'm messing up all the time. My messing up goes back forever. I inherited it from, you know, generations back and I am going to repent and do better. It's a good thing to do. And it's the other side of having a huge goal. When you have such a huge goal, you know you're failing all the way along, so you might as well repent your mistakes and, you know, admit to them. I think about this sometimes, of course, we all have obvious mistakes that we, you know, say, oh, well, I really goofed up there. But other times, sometimes we do something really well, and then, well, I did really good there. And then you find out, you know, A few weeks, months, hours, years later, what a mess that flowed from it.

[21:35]

And you never know the consequences of these things. There was a marvelous lecture Suik Rishi gave about picking up one speck of dust. You know, do you do something or not? If you try to help people and do something, he said, maybe one or 10 or 20 bad things will happen. This is the nature of when you do things. It doesn't mean that you don't do them, but you admit that they're... And he was talking about founding Tassahara, which has turned out to be obviously a wonderful thing to have done, but even still, many things happen. So repentance is the other side of vowing. Our vowing is related to repenting. So, of course, we're not very surprised by our mistakes. We're used to famous Zen saying, one continuous mistake. That's what our life is.

[22:36]

One continuous mistake on the road to our impossible vows. I remember... I was trying to find this quote because I loved it so much. It's at the end of one of his lectures. He said something like, people may say we're a little crazy trying to follow this bodhisattva path, building this monastery in the mountains and everything, which, of course, it is pretty crazy to take on these vows. But then he said, which I thought was assuring, but soon enough we'll find out who's crazy here. I think the crazy people, I think the people that are following the bodhisattva path, there's something to be said for them. As part of the... I'll just mention some of the vows that go on in the ceremony this afternoon.

[23:42]

They're called the three pure precepts. And one of them is, I vow not to harm. The second one is, I vow to do all good. And the third is, I vow to live and be lived for the benefit of all beings. What could be better than that? Who wants to harm anybody? Well, let's put it this way. No one in this room wants to harm anybody. And I think deeply inside, nobody wants to harm anybody. And we all want to do good as best we can. and we want to live for the benefit of other people. More impossible vows, but it sets a course, it sets a direction for your life. We also have 10 grave precepts in the ceremony, which are things like, I vow not to kill, I vow not to lie.

[24:43]

So you get the sense of the direction of this wonderful commitment people are making this afternoon. So I want to talk a little bit about what is your deepest desire? How do you find your deepest desire? And is there a deepest desire? So this is a story, an old story from China. Guishan was a tenzo in a monastery. And he was chief cook, where he practiced with his teacher Bai Zhang. And Bai Zhang, very well-known, famous Tang Dynasty Zen master. Huge temple, many, many students there. So one day Guishan was standing near Baishan's room and Baishan asked Guishan, who is it? And Guishan replied, it's Guishan. And Baishan said, would you dig in the fireplace and see if there's fire or not? Kind of a standard thing to ask somebody. So Guishan went in, poked around with his poker. Couldn't find anything.

[25:46]

So he said, there's no fire. Baishan got up. came over and dug deep into the ashes and found a tiny ember. He showed it to Guishan and he said, what is this? Isn't this a fire? And Guishan was enlightened. Isn't that nice? I love that story, you know. He missed the ember. When the teacher finds the ember, he doesn't... He sort of asked him, isn't this an embryo? But somehow he did it in a way that the guy woke up to something. And what did he wake up to? In this case, the fire is a story that refers to Buddha nature. Buddha nature is that innermost desire we have to awaken. And Guishan hadn't found it, wasn't in touch with that innermost desire to awaken. And...

[26:48]

So Buddha nature is the energy that motivates our practice. It's the fire of our life force that enables us to aspire to be a better person, to be helpful, to live a productive life and practice the way. This is sort of a story just about the question I started the lecture with. Do you have a deep innermost desire? Do you have a fire inside of you to live a really beautiful human life. And this story tells us that everybody does have such an ember, such a fire inside them. You just have to find it. You just have to trust that you have it. We are alive, so we have this force that drives us to wake up to reality, that inspires us to live a life of wisdom and compassion. To live by vow is to align yourself with that ember, to align yourself with that fire in you.

[27:56]

Sometimes we talk about, we look at our life and, you know, your life is going on. I mean, you don't have to do anything about it. It's moving along. Just, in some sense, we'd say it's just doing fine. But I don't know if you've noticed, but you may notice every once in a while you get lost in your... self-concern in your thoughts, in your worries, and all of a sudden you're completely disconnected to your actual life. You don't know what's going on around you. You don't know what other people are doing. So our practice and the practice of vow is to notice when that happens and return to the reality of your present moment. Wake up to what's actually happening in your body, what's actually happening to you. And this is a continuous activity. of being awake and present in the moment and then losing it, forgetting that you're alive, getting completely consumed by your problems, the various aspects that consume our mind, dealing with the other out there, forgetting about our connection to everything.

[29:09]

So vow, in this sense, is that deep intention in our life to return to living in the present. So the return to a practice of being in the moment and awake to the life that is flowing out of you. I think that's actually sort of the most important part of what I wanted to say about vow. Wanted to say a little bit more about this story. Guishan turned out to be the founder of one of the five sects of Zen Buddhism in China. And so the story goes on. After he'd, you know, woke up to his ember, he finished his training and was still in the monastery with Bai Zhang. And then a monastic came by Bai Zhang's temple and said, you know, I found this marvelous mountain, Mount Gui, over here, which is just a perfect place for a temple.

[30:12]

If a temple was built there, there would be thousands of students. And is there anybody that you could... recommend to go there. Bajan said, well, maybe I could go. And the ascetic said, no, no, you're right for this place. That place requires a different kind of person. So Bajan brought up his head monk and the ascetic said, nah, he's not the guy. And then he brought up Guishan and the ascetic said, he's the guy. And that was a little story about a little sort of contest between the head monk and Guishan because the head monk wanted to be the guy that went, but Guishan won that contest. So he went off, and for years, I think, three or four or five or many years, he just lived by himself, you know, eating roots and whatever was growing in the forest, living a very, very simple life, but still following the Bodhisattva way. And eventually... people started coming to the mountain and practicing with him and eventually there was like 1,500 monks living with him and it became this enormous temple and was the foundation for this sect of Zen in China.

[31:23]

And the point of that part of the story is that the other part of Bao is Bao is practicing with other people. Bao is Sangha. Bao is living with other people. One ember... does okay. I don't know many of you. I was a boy scout. I used to build fires. It's okay if you have a little ember, but you've got to have a few more things built around it and get a bunch of embers going to get a fire going. So it's only if we practice together the vow to practice with other people that our bodhisattva practice really becomes the bonfire that it needs to be. Suki Roshi used to say, Group practice is the shortcut to awakening. Practicing with a bunch of other people. It's not the easiest way necessarily. People can be irritating. I don't know if you've noticed that, but occasionally they can be.

[32:27]

And they're also wonderful. But in any event, you cannot do it alone. It's impossible to begin with, but you can't go very far unless you have other people that you're practicing with. We practice as a whole body. I don't know if I have time to get into this. Maybe I'll just sort of wave my hand a little bit. I think we sometimes keep our deepest intentions as a secret from ourselves. I don't know if you've ever noticed this. You might say, well, I really would like to be a great something or other. but I won't even like allow myself to say that in my head because I'm afraid to fail or just seems like too big an idea. Oh, I could never date that person because she just, you know, so we hide these things. And in Buddhism, there's a term called self-secret.

[33:29]

It means there aren't actually any secrets. It's all completely open to us now. The problem is we create the secret through our attachment, through our inability to see through things. our hesitation to open up. So practically speaking, the Dharma appears to be a secret. Our innermost desire, our Buddha nature appears to be a secret. But it's not that way. It's not that way because it's really secret. It's a secret because we make it a secret. So we say self-secret. This is a very interesting term, a phrase, a very accurate term to describe what's going on in our life. Are you keeping your deepest desire a secret from yourself? Are you, well, probably, because it's pretty scary to admit that that's really what you want to do with your life. But it's not really a secret, because you know what it is.

[34:34]

It's right in front of you. So the key point to remember is that in the end, practice really isn't about getting something we didn't already have from the very first. We might say to ourselves, this will be different once something big happens to me. I'll be better, I'll be happier, okay. Well, once I'm enlightened, then I'll be able to do this impossible bodhisattva stuff. I mean, this is not necessarily wrong, but it's a little narrow. It's not the understanding we're talking about. the secret you're still not admitting to. Oh, I forgot about this entire paragraph. Apparently, there's a childhood game that you play where they put a bag over their head and they walk around and say, you can't see me.

[35:38]

Anybody familiar with this childhood game? I've seen it where they'll hide behind... They'll... Anyway, take my word for it. So we actually can see them, even though they have a bag over their head. And a self-secret is something like that. We walk around with a bag on our head and we think there's some secret we have to discover so that we can see. Sometimes we're desperate to find out that secret. And all that's required is to take the bag off our head and we realize what our... true nature is, what our Buddha nature is, what our practice is, and what our deepest desire is. I think maybe that's all I want to say. I'm very pleased to be spending today doing such a wonderful thing, initiating some people into this Bodhisattva

[36:45]

The ceremony ends in this beautiful statement. We live like a cloud in an endless sky, a lotus in muddy water, one with the pure mind of Buddha. So, you know, may you have the freedom of a cloud in an endless sky. May you, your life, have the beauty of a lotus flower in the midst of the delusion and craziness of the world we live in. And may you find your ember, your fire, your deepest desire, and align your life with it. That would be my New Year's wish for you. And thank you all for coming on this beautiful day, spending some time with us. May our attention equally extend

[37:46]

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