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 evening, everyone. Lovely to see some old friends and some new faces that hopefully will become new friends. Welcome to the Dharma Talk tonight. As Kodo said, we're in the second week of our fall City Center practice period with the theme of Fierce Compassion, Enacting Bodhisattva Principles in a Troubled World. So welcome to those in the practice period and also welcome to those who are just people that come to the Wednesday night talk. Normally I would ask to see who's new, but I... wouldn't probably be able to see all of you. So I'll just sort of say welcome to anybody that's come to City Center for the first time tonight.

[01:03]

So each week during this practice period, we're going to be talking about a different bodhisattva archetype. These are featured in the book, we're studying faces of compassion, classic bodhisattva archetypes, and their modern expression by Taigen Dan Layton. Tonight I will be talking about Shakyamuni as the bodhisattva archetype. Just to remind you, an archetype is a perfect or ideal example. And for Buddhists, Shakyamuni, which is the original Buddha, is an ideal example of a human being for all practitioners. Tonight I will tell the story of Prince Siddhartha Gautama, who became Shakyamuni Buddha, and give six elements from his life that in a sense established the basic archetype for all Bodhisattva practice. I'll start with Buddha's life story. You'll note, as we go along, similarity to his life quest to your life quest. This story really is a metaphor for our own search.

[02:09]

So according to tradition, Buddha lived from 563 to 483 BC. He was born to the rulers of the Shakya clan, hence his name, Shakyamuni, which means sage of the Shakya clan. After his birth, he was presented to a wandering sage, a sita, who predicted that he would become either a great king or a great religious teacher. And he was given the name Siddhartha, he who achieves his goal. His father, evidently thinking that any contact with unpleasantness might prompt Siddhartha to seek a life of renunciation as a religious teacher and not wanting to lose his son to such a future, protected him. from the realities of life. The ravages of poverty, disease, and even old age were therefore unknown to Siddhartha who grew up surrounded by every comfort in a sumptuous palace.

[03:12]

This part of his life presents the first element of his archetype, the choice between spiritual or worldly pursuits. to become a king or a great religious leader. The basic choice between worldly and spiritual endeavor confronts us all. We may make this choice at some critical juncture in our lives, determining our future paths or careers. For me, my first career was as a mathematician, but I gave that up in my late 20s to go live at Zen Center for 10 years, essentially as a monk. But then I decided I was more a layman and went to work for 20 years in the high-tech industry, got married, bought a house, et cetera. And then after that, I returned to full-time practice. So one's career can wander back and forth. Of course, I am very privileged to have had an education so that I had the freedom to make these choices.

[04:22]

Many people don't. And I don't think among us we are deciding whether to be a king or a Buddha. But we also face this basic choice again and again every day in the middle of our ordinary activities of whatever life we are already leading, just as it is, we can choose to direct our energies toward accumulations of worldly power and material wealth or turn ourselves towards beneficial considerations of all concern. aimed at a more spiritual life. At Zen Center we try to live a relatively simple life which is modeled after most Buddhist traditions, living in community which is efficient and eating good food but not excessive. So I sort of raise this as a question to all of you, I'm sure you've all struggled with thinking through

[05:24]

how much time to spend on taking care of the material side of your life, and how much time and energy to spend on taking care of the spiritual side of your life. And this question was raised in this particular case, very powerfully by Buddha's choice. The second archetypal element of Gautama's bodhisattva career is this subsequent awakening to the truth of suffering and to the possibility of leading a spiritual life. At age 29, he made three successive chariot rides outside the palace grounds and saw an old person, a sick person, and a corpse, all for the first time. These experiences awakened in Siddhartha deep, unquestionable concern for the problem of human suffering. This awakening to the reality of suffering and to the desire for awakening, known as bodhicitta in Sanskrit, is fundamental to all bodhisattva practice.

[06:29]

This initial caring impulse is said to contain all the qualities of awakening, although long years or lifetimes of cultivation may be required for their fulfillment. The rise of bodhicitta, literally enlightening mind, is considered mysterious and auspicious. This heartfelt care for suffering beings and fundamental questioning into the meaning of our lives arises unaccountably amid the multitude of psychological conditionings in our experience, known and unknown. So I was thinking about it for me, questioning the meaning of my life and i'll ask you questioning the meaning of your life when did that first become a deep and defining event in your life did it change the course of your life and in what ways did it do that sooner or later life provides us with the opportunity to experience loss suffering anguish and pain of anxiety over our destiny and that of our loved ones

[07:49]

Such opportunities force the basic choice upon us often again and again. We cannot avoid old age, sickness and death. The third archetypal element in the Siddhartha story is his home leaving. Siddhartha saw a wandering holy man whose asceticism inspired him to follow a similar path in search of freedom from the suffering caused by the infinite cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. Because he knew his father would try to stop him, Siddhartha secretly left the palace in the middle of the night and sent all of his belongings and jewelry back with his servant and horse, completely abandoning his luxurious existence. Siddhartha's dramatic departure from the palace is so fundamental a motif in Buddhist practice that all Buddhist monks are referred to formally as home leavers.

[08:59]

In fact, in the priest bodhisattva initiation at the Zen center, it's called Shuke Tokudo, quote, translation is, leaving home and accomplishing the way. So... traveling the path of Buddha, one must be in a state of renunciation. This renunciation for itself is, this is not for renunciation itself, but for the sake of really realizing the way. So renunciation is the big part of the priest ordination. And as part of that, many priests, at least during the ordination, cut their hair as a sign of cutting off the root of clinging. and a demonstration of their renunciation, of their leaving home. Of course, in our tradition, a priest can get married, raise a family, and have a lifestyle very similar to laymen.

[10:01]

So it's not so much the outward appearance of a leaving home that is in American Buddhism, what's going on. It's more that this... act of renunciation is an inner transformation with a deeper psychological meaning. We're abandoning the home of conditional psychic patterns inherent through family dynamics and also from society. So in our upbringing, we had many beliefs that we've developed from our family, from our society. I call them pathogenic beliefs, because they almost always cause us suffering, because the view of ourselves and the world that we were raised with doesn't exactly fit the world we live in as an adult. And so we're forced to face that early upbringing and decide whether we're going to change it, make an effort to awaken and grow out of that.

[11:07]

That's true home leaving, is to start to set aside our early childhood training and learn a new way. And Siddhartha's determination exemplifies this concern and the aspect of liberation that requires wrenching free from our unconscious deep conditioning. So those are the first three archetypical models that we've learned from Siddhartha. The fourth basic archetypical element in the story of Siddhartha as Bodhisattva is his six years of arduous practice before his great awakening. He spent six years as an ascetic, attempting to conquer the innate appetites for food, sex and comfort by engaging in various yogic disciplines. Apparently, he was quite good at it.

[12:08]

He was so good that all the teachers that he learned from asked him to become their teacher. Eventually, near death from his vigilant fasting, he accepted a bowl of rice from a young girl. Once he had eaten, he had realized that physical austerities were not the means to achieving spiritual liberation and embraced the middle way between excessive asceticism and materialistic hedonism. The middle way enacted by Shakyamuni before his enlightenment has been a prime motif accepted in all subsequent Buddhist practice. However, here we have a great variety of interpretations of where this middle lies. For a Theravadan monk, the middle way lies in obedience to hundreds of strict precepts and regulations. For priests in Mahayana tradition, as they developed in Japan,

[13:13]

The middle way may include marriage and some degree of material comfort. The point is not to be caught by worldly material pleasures and pressures, but also not to be caught by the extreme acts of denial of the material. So asceticism is not the way. It has flourished at various times among current students at Zen Center. I remember in the early days there were great food trips. One student ate only red peppers for a month. Another student decided that seven-day sashins that Zen Center were leading were not sufficient, so he went out and sat a hundred-day sashin in the mountains. And I remember when... I asked him, what did Suzuki Roshi say about that? He said, Suzuki Roshi thought that was a little too selfish.

[14:16]

But I also suspect Suzuki Roshi thought, you know, group practice was a little better way than that kind of asceticism. And in the early days, I think, when we sat sashims, we sat through maybe too much pain. There was a kind of... My old Zendo down at Tasar by the creek, which when it burned down was rebuilt and put up on a hill, which was warmer. It was so cold, but we never wore socks in those days. It was kind of asceticism that didn't make much sense. So for us modern practitioners, the middle way, I think, lies somewhere between a certain generosity towards our practice and a certain kind of discipline. So we, of course, are always thinking about that in the way we live our life, the way we practice now. Are we too hard on ourselves or are we too easy on ourselves? Do we notice when we actually need to be a little bit more strict and do we notice when we needed to be more generous ourselves and relax?

[15:27]

So this middle way is a very important aspect of... Buddha's practice, which is very much a part of the practice that we try to live here. So after this very ascetic life and turning to the middle way, Buddha Shakyamuni sat upright under the Bodhi tree, vowing not to move until he could solve the problem of suffering. This can be designated as the fifth element in the archetypical story of Siddhartha. Some accounts say he sat there for seven days, some for seven weeks. This is still commemorated in the Zen tradition with seven-day intensive sittings. In fact, at the end of this practice period, we will commemorate this by ending

[16:27]

with a sitting for seven days from November 29 to December 5. It's called the Rohatsu Sashin. Rohatsu literally means the eighth day of the 12th month. That means December 8th, and that's the day in Japan they celebrate Buddha's enlightenment. And at the end, and Buddha's enlightenment is usually celebrated in Japan with a wonderful ceremony, and we'll have a ceremony celebrating Buddha's enlightenment at the end of our seven-day seshin, even though it'll be on December 5th because we have to line up with our normal week, we'll be, in a sense, celebrating his enlightenment. And sometimes it's traditional to sit up all night, the last night of a seshin, kind of mimicking or copying Buddha's all-night stand before his enlightenment, all-night sitting before his enlightenment. And maybe we will actually think that we'll get enlightened that night that we stay up all night.

[17:32]

Anyway, he did sit all night long beneath the tree and was, of course, attacked by the forces of demon Mara, bringing forth all of his delusions. But Siddhartha defeated demon Mara and eventually reached enlightenment and became the enlightened one at age 35. And his comment after seeing the morning star and attaining enlightenment was, I and all beings on earth get together attain enlightenment at the same time. A wonderful statement. Not I alone am enlightened and I wish you guys could join me, but no. You're all enlightened with me at the same time. This makes it clear in our Zen tradition that enlightenment is not some solo pursuit. All enlightenment stories in Zen literature occur in relationship to someone, some words or action or something, a pebble hitting bamboo, a connection to a mountain stream or autumn leaves.

[18:43]

This connection is where enlightenment comes from and verifies the fact that we, in our tradition, say all beings have Buddha nature and all beings are fundamentally enlightened. There's one aspect of Buddha's siddhartha's defeating the forces of demon Mara that I thought I would explore a little now, and I'm actually going to read directly from the text that Taigan gave, because I think it was well written and really sets that out well. As Siddhartha sat under the tree, clarifying his realization, he was faced with the temptations of Mara, the personified spirit of obstructive delusion. Mara attempted to unseat Siddhartha with worldly power, with fierce, intimidating demons, and then with enticing women.

[19:52]

Through it all, the prince remained unshaken and unmoved, aware of the temptations, but intent on his meditation, thus modeling the determination to awaken and dissolve the suffering of all beings. Siddhartha's unshaken resolution is emblematic of the dedication of all bodhisattvas. For his last-ditch effort, Mara challenged Siddhartha by demanding to know how the prince could claim to be an awakened Buddha. Siddhartha responded by calmly touching the ground before him, calling the earth itself as his witness. This gesture, known as the Earth-Touching Mudra, is memorialized in many images of Shakyamuni Buddha, sitting cross-legged in meditation with his right hand outstretched and fingertips lightly touching the ground. The image of Shakyamuni touching the ground revealed the quality of Buddhism as an earth religion.

[21:07]

This is a central fact of bodhisattva practice. Everything we need for awakening is present in the very ground upon which we sit. Enlightenment is not a matter of achieving some brand new state of being or consciousness, or of traveling to some distant realm, or of becoming some different person. Rather, the transformation embodied in Shakyamuni's awakening is simply about fully settling into the deep, wide self we already are, totally interconnected with the whole universe, but expressed uniquely in this individual. So I thought that was well put by Taigen. So the last arc. typical aspect of Shakyamuni's life is especially central to the Zen branch of Mahayana is the legendary story of his mind-to-mind transmission of the true Dharma eye to his disciple Mahakashapa.

[22:17]

In the Zen tradition, this tale is considered the first transmission of The teaching and Mahakashapa is considered the first ancestor in the lineage and is the model of transmission in our school to this day. You know, as part of our idea of this transmission, there's 91 successive ancestors that have passed this transmission down to our present day. And this original transmission is described in case six of the gateless barrier. The world honored one twirls a flower. The world honored one is, of course, Buddha. So this is case six of the gateless barrier. Buddha twirls a flower. So here is the case. Once in an ancient time, When the World-Honored One was on Vulture Peak, he twirled a flower before his assembled disciples.

[23:25]

All were silent. Only Maha-Kashapa broke into a smile. The World-Honored One said, I have the eye-treasury of right dharma, the subtle mind of nirvana, the true form of no form, and the flawless gate of the teaching. It is not established upon words and phrases. It is a special transmission outside tradition. I now entrust this to Maha-Kashapa. Maha-Kashapa, of course, had been a long time practitioner with Buddha and was sort of the one rightly chosen to have this transmission. And to explain this transmission a little bit more, I'm going to bring forward an important saying of the Lotus Sutra, one that is crucial for understanding of the story. And it is that true reality is revealed by a Buddha and a Buddha.

[24:32]

A Buddha cannot realize it alone. Only a Buddha and a Buddha can realize true reality. This famous saying from the Lotus Sutra is... It's an appreciation of the true reality can be awakened within us only in a radical encounter. Only in encountering another Buddha can one realize awakening or true reality. Only a Buddha and a Buddha means there are no separate Buddhas. There are only points of meeting moment after moment. It is in the meeting another person that we can get a feeling for and sense true reality. with an awakened mind. A commentary to this case says that Mahakashapa and Buddha smiled, one smile between them. There was one smile. They had a perfect accord, perfect harmony, perfect relationship, perfect trust.

[25:35]

Essentially, there were not two of them. This is compassion. So what is this story about? I bring forward this question. On what authority do we live our lives? We are always seeking legitimacy with our diplomas and titles. We cede our authority as individuals to our parents, to our friends, to society's institutions, universities, churches, the state. This may be a fundamental source of our unhappiness. We do not feel ourselves to be the authors of our lives. And we need to be our own authors, our own authorities. We need to be authentic. We can get a lot of honor and wealth and so on, but it won't mean much if we don't feel the depth of authority we desperately seek.

[26:48]

In this story, we have an instance of conferring of real authority, not by Buddha to Mahakashapa, but between Buddha and Mahakashapa, reality conferring authority on itself. Between them, there is trust, the kind of trust that begins and ends with each of us recognizing the true reality of our existence, and standing on that ground coming out to meet another. So to repeat that again, between them there is trust, the kind of trust that begins and ends with each of them recognizing the true reality of their existence and standing on that ground and coming out and meeting each other.

[27:50]

So just to review, if I can quickly, the six elements of Buddha's life that inspired so many ways in which we practice today. The choice between the spiritual or worldly pursuits. The bodhicitta awakening to our own suffering and the suffering of those we love. and asking the fundamental question, what is the meaning of our life? And having some deep insight that maybe we actually should devote our attention to finding the meaning of our life and living our life following that intention, following and finding out what our deep meaning is in our life. And then the other element was the home leaving, the idea that we eventually do have to leave our early childhood home, both psychologically and typically physically, to find our new way.

[29:06]

And this home leaving is usually quite a painful and difficult process. And then of course, Buddha's way was to take up ascetic practices first, almost starving himself to death until he realized there was a middle way, a way of moderation that could lead to the most likely outcome of waking up. And that middle way eventually led to his enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, where he overcame the Mara, the demonic one. personifying the spirit of obstructive delusion and realize that we're all awakened and all have our own Buddha nature. And then I brought forward that last famous element of the Buddha where he transmitted to Maha-Kashapa the way, the true understanding of practice.

[30:19]

And that has become, in our tradition, the established way that we do transmission in our particular tradition. So I think his wonderful spiritual journey is a great example of many of the bodhisattva journeys that we carry on in our life currently. And I came up with this, saw this wonderful quote from Joanna Macy that I thought I would just share with you in ending this talk. She said, in every tradition, the spiritual journey seems to be presented in two ways. One is like a journey out of this messy, broken, imperfect world of suffering into the realm of eternal light. And at the same time, within the same tradition, the spiritual journey is also experienced and expressed as going right into the heart of the world, into this world of suffering and brokenness and imperfection to discover the sacred.

[31:22]

And I think that really is the Bodhisattva journey, to go into the heart of the world, in the world of the suffering, and discover the sacred. And that really was Buddha's journey too. 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.

[32:05]

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