I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good evening. Well, the last few days, I've found myself very occupied. And you could say I was occupied preparing for this talk, or you could say I was not occupied, occupied other than preparing for this talk. I'm going to speak tonight on the ceremony which we're having on Saturday afternoon. And mostly I have been doing the preparations that are required in order to do the ceremony. So what I'm going to talk about tonight is

[01:01]

something about the form of the ceremony and each of the elements of it. Jukai, as you know, means receiving precepts. It is the dragon gate, maybe. They say in Chinese tradition they have what's called the dragon gate in the river. The fish swims up river and swims through the dragon gate and comes out the other side of the dragon. So this is a gate, this Jukai. We step through and we are changed by it. Some friends of mine who did Jukai a number of years ago took me out to lunch the other day

[02:03]

and they were talking about, you should put a warning on the Jukai ceremony, like the Surgeon General's warning. This ceremony could change your life. This ceremony can have a deep effect on your life. Trungpa Rinpoche says of taking refuge, which in his tradition is the ceremony, which is parallel to this, in the Buddhist tradition the purpose of taking refuge is to awaken us from confusion and moreover to allow us to associate ourselves with wakefulness. Taking refuge is a matter of commitment and acceptance and at the same time of openness and freedom. What we do by taking the refuge vow

[03:06]

is to commit ourselves to freedom. He says it's not so much that there's something wrong with the traditions that exist around us, the difficulty is more our own personal conflict arising from wanting to have and to be the best and taking refuge we have to give up some sense of seeing ourselves as a good citizen or the hero of a success story. We might have to give up our past, we might have to give up our future, our potential future. By taking this particular vow we will end our being shoppers in the spiritual supermarket. Now we are deciding to stick to a certain particular brand the rest of our lives. We are choosing to stick to a certain particular staple diet and flourish on it. Suzuki Roshi used to say it's all right to shop around, shop around as long as you want to

[04:07]

but sometime in your life instead of digging dozens of shallow holes you need to dig one deep hole until you come to the heart of your life. So this taking refuge, this receiving precepts is our commitment to sit right where we are and dig one deep hole and open up our heart and let the vitality of our life flow out and cover the earth. So the ceremony, as the ceremony begins, actually before the ceremony we sit sansen together

[05:10]

and then the initiates will take a period and go and take a bath and put on all clean clothing. I was talking about this in the sewing class the other night and I said even if you have a chance maybe get new underwear. Start like a brand new newborn baby fresh from, well, from the skin out from the very heart of our being out we would be fresh new baby Buddhas and we symbolize this by bathing and putting on fresh clothing and we come, we go around, we do a jundo which means going around the whole temple offering incense at various altars with the sense of

[06:17]

making a circle of protection around the temple. Then we come in to the Buddha hall and offer incense here and bow to the Buddha and bow to the preceptors and then we will invite all of the Buddhas and ancestors to come and be with us and sustain our practice. We evoke or invoke the presence of the Buddhas and ancestors to be here with us and rejoice with us at the birth of these new baby Buddhas. And then we will receive a new name

[07:22]

as a new baby should and Buddhist clothing a rakasu a field far beyond form and emptiness we say in the chant or the Zen Center of Los Angeles translation of that line which I love the line in they say a bountiful field of benefaction this robe is made in the form of rice fields which in Asian tradition is the source of all sustenance and so it's referred to as a great field of benefaction

[08:22]

so with the new robe of liberation we then begin we then purify our mind with the confession and repentance in the in the actual official book of Soto ceremonies which I asked Reb to check out for me even before receiving the robe there is a gesture of head shaving the razor is laid on the head and the verse which is normally chanted in the priest ceremony of the head shaving verse now I'm being shaved I vow with all beings

[09:27]

or I may I with all beings be free from selfish attachments forever so this is our this is a renunciation and so this gesture of renunciation happens not only in the priest ceremony but in the in the lay initiation renunciation of self clinging in the priest ceremony there is a second head shaving and the chant is shaving the head and again shaving the head all the bonds of attachment are hard to cut we find that this self clinging is difficult to renounce and so moment after moment we try to be aware of self clinging this is our practice

[10:28]

but the avowal and repentance is in fact to avow that all of our actions with body, speech and mind are we own them we acknowledge them we take full responsibility for them and we acknowledge that greed, hate and delusion are arising all the time and therefore we have to again and again repent or turn again toward our vows feel our our regret at actions which may have caused hurt or harm

[11:37]

and return to awakening and awareness with renewed effort and vigor having purified our mind with avowal and repentance then the preceptor will purify our bodies with wisdom water and having thus been purified then it's time to receive the precepts the precepts begin as you know the sixteen bodhisattva precepts begin with the three refuges with taking refuge or returning to the Buddha or the teacher our own true nature the spirit of the universe

[12:40]

returning to the teaching the truth of things as it is the teaching of the universe and return to or take refuge in the Sangha or the community of all who are making the same effort to live in awakening so these three treasures of our tradition we once again return to and appreciate the tremendous richness of this tradition which is the which has provided us with this refuge

[13:44]

so we call them the three jewels or the three treasures because they are treasures because they support our life they support our intention to live according to the deepest intention of our heart to have someone with whom we can meet one on one face to face like a mirror and meet ourselves in another to have a teaching which encourages us to fully express our life in every activity of body, speech and mind with our whole heart and have a community which supports and encourages us and helps us to go through the dragon gate again and again

[14:52]

and following the three refuges the next three precepts are to give up action that creates attachment to or to embrace the conduct of a Buddha the vow to do all that is good so the first is to avoid action which creates harm and the second is to do action which is helpful, which is good which creates good result and the third is to vow to live to benefit all beings recognizing that we are one with all beings

[16:03]

so these are the three pure precepts and then we turn to the ten specific precepts or they're called the grave or heavy precepts the precepts about those actions which we need to be very careful about those areas of life where human beings on observing and studying and attending to how we want to live together in the world those aspects of life that need particular care the grave precepts are generally speaking presented in statements of things to avoid I vow not to kill

[17:10]

not to take what is not given not to misuse sexuality not to lie not to intoxicate mind or body of self or others not to slander not to praise self at the expense of others not to be spiritually or materially avaricious or stingy not to harbor ill will not to abuse the three treasures our refuges, our support in our life and we have been throughout this practice period discussing one by one each of these areas of our life and what it's actually like to observe to observe our moment by moment daily life through the lens of one of these precepts one at a time

[18:11]

we've been trying to examine the precept and examine our life and find out what it means in our ordinary activity to maintain a constant awareness of these warning signs these be careful here signs and we've barely scratched the surface I don't know about you and your discussion group but we in our discussion group feel like we could examine these for a long time and indeed these precepts are in the Rinzai tradition which studies koans studies in a particular studies the Buddhist teachings as

[19:15]

questions to sit with in a very precise manner at the end of all of the traditional Zen stories that are used as koans the precepts are studied as koans and I think this is the way we really have to take the precepts each one what does it mean in my life what does it mean in my life what does it mean not to take what is not given for me where does this come up for me in my daily activity what does it mean not to harbor ill will what do I discover about what it's like to harbor ill will if I'm paying attention what can I how can I let go of it when I'm holding on to it

[20:19]

we can each one of these can be the source of a lot of study and questioning and it's most rich I think for us if we hold them in this way just being aware that these are areas of life where we often find self clinging leading us into actions that we later regret or that we may regret this much just a moment later and Suzuki Roshi says when you find yourself feeling regretful it just means you need to be more conscientious next time you need to be a little more alert a little quicker to notice just before instead of just after you said it or did it

[21:23]

oh this doesn't feel like what I want to do so after after receiving the precepts then we are ready to receive the lineage of the buddhas and ancestors this lineage which we receive is the blood vein the precepts are called the blood vein of our lineage the one great cause of the zen gate the one great cause of the zen gate is to find out how to live our life in harmony with our deepest intention

[22:31]

the intention of our buddha heart the buddha heart which is in each one of us how do we allow that buddha heart to express itself in the daily activity of this particular being and this blood vein flows from all of the buddhas and ancestors from Shakyamuni Buddha through each one in our lineage through Suzuki Roshi through your particular teacher through you and back to emptiness and to Shakyamuni Buddha your activity your life

[23:32]

your practice is the beating heart that keeps these precepts alive that keeps this lineage alive that keeps the practice of the bodhisattva way alive each one of us is the living continuation of this lineage and this is the this is the meaning of the lineage paper and this is the the form in which it's designed so then after having received

[24:44]

Buddha's name robe, precepts and lineage we all go celebrate it is said that all the buddhas in the ten directions in all the buddha lands and all the bodhisattvas celebrate and rejoice that these new bodhisattvas have taken these precepts so this is the form of the ceremony that we will be doing on Saturday and it has been for me

[25:50]

as it always is, wonderfully exciting to sew Buddha's robe with all of the new bodhisattvas who are preparing to receive precepts you know my teacher Joshin-san once said every Buddha's robe is the whole body of Buddha and this was her conviction this was her life was sewing Buddha's robe and every robe to her was the whole body of Buddha and I think that each of us who have been sewing recognizes how much our own robe how much of ourselves

[26:55]

is in this rock suit that we have sewn each one is made exactly the same and each one is completely different each one has refuge in Buddha in each stitch and you can see the moments at which you were really concentrated and you can see the moments at which you got carried away you can see the moments at which you got exhausted you got excited I remember when she first came back from Japan after having studied with Joshin-san Ginny Baker was teaching us how to sew and she said, you see that robe there? it was a little bit wavy

[27:57]

and she said, that robe there was when Joshin-san said, it was a very hot day in August and she said, time for Biru and so they had a beer and she said, that robe wasn't very straight after that so you can see everything that happens while you're sewing you can see the times that you got impatient and the times you were concentrated and it's actually very helpful it's another kind of mirror all of our practice with each other is to see ourselves Dogen Senji says, to study the Buddha way is to study the self and everyone is a mirror

[28:59]

and every rakasu that we make is a mirror for us almost every stitch we can see our state of mind as we took it so the sewing of Buddha's robe has become really I think a very helpful practice for us to study our self as well as a very intimate way to work together with one another and sometimes great kindness and generosity comes out in the course of sewing and sometimes great impatience comes out in the course of sewing sometimes great anxiety comes out in the course of sewing sometimes we see what a perfectionist we are we want to take out every other stitch because it's not quite right

[30:01]

we just get to be more familiar with ourselves in the course of making this Buddha's robe so this whole process of preparing for Jukai is as important as the ceremony itself it's all swimming up the river to enter the dragon gate it's all developing intimacy with ourselves and with each other and this work of developing intimacy with ourselves and with each other is just beginning this is how we really

[31:01]

develop and grow in this Bodhisattva way becoming more and more intimate with ourselves and with the help of one another until we see ourselves wherever we look and I have to say that because I've been doing all this preparation this is as much preparation for talking as I've done but I will be glad to enter into discussion with you if you want to bring up some questions yes when I was sewing my Rasa I think somebody said to me that for every stitch that I

[32:05]

took out Buddha shed a tear hmm no but I like it hmm it's sort of like rejecting a bit of yourself isn't it yeah well gosh I mean if you undo it that's pretty rejecting so I can see how Buddha would shed a tear if he would reject anything of yourself you're completely a child of Buddha and so it would be very sad if you reject any part of yourself thank you

[33:07]

yes well if we see it as a rejection my projection is that it's a tear of sadness I would hope that none of us reject any part of this being which is Buddha but maybe that's just my projection hmm oh hi excuse me excuse me for being late I just came from seeing my son he said to tell everybody please stop worrying about him

[34:12]

laughing because he can't be laughing you take all the cards oh good laughing [...] He said, sorry, you couldn't come to the ceremony, but it has to be possible for another media. He just said, it's best we should step down and dance, dance, work, work, work. Good. Thank you. Yes.

[35:16]

The precepts are a call to wake up. The precepts are a statement of waking up. The precepts are a reminder to stay awake. What do you think? I mean, I think they're all of that. The precepts are maybe also a way of saying what waking up is like. I mean, it's coming full circle. Human wisdom is shared by many different traditions in many different parts of the world.

[36:40]

The precept not to kill is in probably every religious tradition in the world. And I think it comes from people who want to attend to how they want to live their life. And as they look at the way human beings live together, they see this is something that I need to be careful about. And this is something. And this is something. I mean, if you look at these precepts and you look at precepts of other traditions, you see a great deal of similarity. And I think that's not an accident. I think this is just one distillation of human wisdom. One way of stating in words what is really beyond words, and that is just our deep intention to live in peace and harmony.

[37:52]

And as Suzuki Roshi said, really the precepts are all about zazen, about just sitting still in the middle of your life and paying attention. And that the precepts grow out of the one precept which is before words, which we sometimes try to talk about when we talk about Buddha as the spirit of the universe. Or, you know, we try to get some very, very, very, very big image that includes everything. And this is, you know, the one precept before words.

[39:00]

So when we try to look for a word, we take sort of the biggest word we can find. And the particular precepts just grow out of our effort to live in the light of that vast and unnameable precept of the complete interpenetration of everything with everything. Yes. I have read some of his writing, yes. I heard about the ways of the great yet, like the essence of the Buddhism, but I haven't read it yet. Do you know anything about it?

[40:10]

I think that is one way of talking about the essence of Buddhism. I think it's very hard to talk about the essence of Buddhism. It's not something that can be really, really captured in words. You know, I think the essence of Buddhism is just returning to silence, returning to our inmost request, as Suzuki Roshi used to talk about it. How do we want to live? How do we want to live? And that does require dropping self-clinging, which I think is another way of talking about the great death.

[41:19]

I think you could use the simile of the Dragon Gate to talk about, to refer to the great death as well. I'm using it in a little different way here. I'm using it here as the moment of vow or refuge to follow this path, to choose this path as a way of living our life. And to explore it fully and deeply. Yes. I usually like when you do stuff and you don't do anything wrong.

[42:28]

It's no big deal if you don't get praised for it. There's no particular extra merit or anything like that. But I think it's as I was saying, if you don't do bad things, you don't feel it, you don't know why. And there's this actual positive, great positive merit in just not doing it. Well, there's, I don't know, you know, we talk about no merit in this tradition, right? So, I don't want to fall into that trap, you know. But I think it, what we come to understand as we practice is that all actions of body, speech and mind have consequences.

[43:31]

And so part of the taking care in these areas that the precepts point out to us as areas where harm can occur or where bad results can occur is that we don't perhaps cause ourself a lot of unfortunate results. You know. But I hesitate to get into the area of accumulating merit, you know, in service when we chant a sutra.

[44:36]

You know, it used to be thought that you could accumulate great merit by chanting sutras. So we're very careful in our services, as you know, since you're Kokyo very often. Just in case we accumulated some merit from chanting the sutra, we give it away with the echo, you know. So we're not trying to gain anything by following the precepts. We're just trying to live more closely how we want to live. Without a gaining idea, but more just to feel more whole or to feel more connected with everything. Because since we're already Buddha, we want to live like Buddha. Yes. Anything else?

[45:53]

You know, we've come to the end of the tape. Maybe that's good enough. May our intention...

[46:05]

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