Good evening everybody. My name is Robert and I have two stories tonight to tell. One is a very old story and one is a fairly new and evolving story. One is a story about a disciple of the Buddha, and one is a story about myself, my own practice. So at the time of the Buddha, there was a woman named Kisa Gotami who suffered a great deal.

[01:15]

She suffered because she was extremely poor. She was frail and actually her name... Kisa means haggard. So she was thin haggard. Not the kind of person who had any kind of personal light or just she suffered greatly. And she was quite unhappy in her life. She was worried about her prospects. until a very wealthy merchant saw her gifts, married her, and that brought a host of other problems with it. But it brought her out of poverty and brought her into a different sphere in the world.

[02:26]

And then they had a child. And soon after the child was born, the child died. Kisa Gotami went into a state of extreme despair. She was beside herself with grief. She was shunned by the other people in her group. She left her husband and with her dead baby at her breast, she went out into the world.

[03:28]

asking people if they could help her, asking people if they had any medicine for her baby, who is dead, who she refused to believe was dead, and told people it was just sick, her baby boy. It was just sick. Do you have some medicine? She went from person to person, and they tried to tell her in so many ways, Kisa, there is no medicine for your baby. But she wouldn't see it. She wouldn't see it. She couldn't see it. So she went from person to person. Finally somebody said, I know of somebody who can give you some medicine. And they directed her to the Buddha. was very happy about that so she was still traveling with this baby on her chest her dead baby and she went to the Buddha and she says can you help my sick child and the Buddha said after everybody else had said there is no medicine no you have to uh

[04:59]

There's nothing we can do for you, Kesa. The Buddha said, yes. I have some medicine for you. And so everybody around the Buddha in the crowd there knew that the Buddha knew that the baby was not sick. That the baby was actually dead. So they... Kisa said, what is the medicine, Buddha? And the Buddha said mustard seeds. So Kisa was very happy to hear this. the Buddha then told her to go to a nearby village and find some mustard seeds from a house in which nobody has died.

[06:12]

So Kisa left to go to the nearby village and she knocked on the door, the first door of the village house and she says, has anybody died in this house? And the person said, well, of course, my grandmother died here, and my cousin died, and my wife died. And that was the case in house after house after house. It was a husband, a daughter, a baby, a cousin, a wife. So by the time Kisa got to the end of each knocking on the door of each house in the village, she started to understand that there would be no house in which somebody hadn't died.

[07:26]

That her weren't unique and that it is the nature of our existence for things to come and go for things to be here and then not be here and that others too had suffered like she was suffering. Kisa went on to become a disciple of the Buddha.

[08:32]

She buried her son and recovered and became a disciple of the Buddha. And we chant her name in the woman's lineage. 15 years ago to this very week, the memory is so vivid. I was in front of the building and I was here in San Francisco. I had just completed my first practice period at Tassajara. And I was up here doing my laundry and staying here and I was, I remember I had a copy of Zen Mind Beginner's Mind in my back pocket and I was walking down the steps and one of the senior students stopped me and said, Robert, what is your practice?

[09:55]

And And I had absolutely no answer. I had no idea what my practice was. And I felt, I was like, I fumbled. I said, I don't really know. I don't know what my practice is. I'm just practicing. I said something like that. I don't know what I said. But I was a bit, you know, I was very shy. I was a new student. And... I couldn't get away from this person fast enough, actually. It was kind of like asking Kisa what her practice was. Her practice, when she came to the Buddha, her practice was bringing her baby back to life. And that's all she could see. That's all she could have been able to see. How can you help me do what I need to do?

[11:02]

And that was basically my practice. How was I going to find... How was I going to get what I needed to get? I didn't realize that at the time. But looking back, it was pretty clear to me. So... I escaped that situation. I went back down to Tassajara and that was my first summer there at Tassajara and I had a great time. I ended up staying longer and about maybe two years later. Maybe three years later. I still didn't know what my practice was. But I went in and I asked my teacher. At that point, I was establishing a relationship with who would eventually become my teacher.

[12:04]

And I was really struggling with this question. Actually, what is my practice? And I said, it must have something to do with Buddha. It must. Buddhism, you know? My practice, Zen Buddhism. Okay. So I went in, I asked my teacher, I said... am I practicing to become a Buddha? And he smiled. And he said, in our lineage, we, we say, Buddhas and ancestors, And I was like, okay. I didn't, okay.

[13:07]

And I said, we say Buddhas and ancestors? And he said, yes. We don't say Buddhas. We say Buddhas and ancestors. And there's a reason why we say Buddhas and ancestors. We say Buddhas and ancestors because... We're in a lineage of real people. These are real people. People who walked on the ground, who suffered, who engaged with the activity of their lives just like we do. Just like exactly like we do. No different. Buddhas and ancestors. We don't say Buddhas, we say Buddhas and ancestors.

[14:10]

So this was the point where actually I felt like this was like giving me my koan, right? This was like, what is that all about? So I walked out of there, but at least it gave me some path, some traction. Okay, okay. Okay, Buddhas and ancestors. What is it to be in the lineage of Buddhas and ancestors? What is it to be in the lineage of real people who were practicing? What is that? So I came to eventually, well, quite soon understand When we say ancestors, in the Mahayana tradition, in the tradition of Zen, we mean bodhisattvas.

[15:15]

Buddhas and bodhisattvas is Buddhas and ancestors. So that became my reference point. Okay. What is it... to be a bodhisattva? And that worked pretty well for quite a while. I got a lot of mileage out of that. That question, what is it to be a bodhisattva? Bodhi, awaken you. awakened, realizing the truth. Sattva can mean being, it can mean effort, even courageous effort of a being.

[16:24]

Bodhi, awakened being, awakened presence, awakened activity. awakening activity what was it to see myself in the lineage of bodhisattvas bodhisattvas are marked by their vow their vow to live their life for the benefit of others To save others before they save themselves. To help others before they help themselves. To help others to the other shore before they themselves go to the other shore. In that context, eventually I found my practice.

[17:46]

And that practice manifests itself something like this. And this is the first... It feels very strange to say this. I've never said, I've never even told my teacher that this is my practice. I've never actually said this out loud, but I was thinking about that time out here in front of the building and somebody asking me what my practice was. And I thought that I would answer that. Of course, this is only my practice right now. but it has been my practice for some time, and I thought I would share it with you. My practice, understanding myself in the lineage of a bodhisattva.

[18:57]

The bodhisattva comes forward into the world, stays in the world to help others. One foot, one foot coming forward seeing the world as it is all things as interconnected not separate empty of any permanent separate being the other foot stepping with compassion for those who are separate and one foot after the other Bodhisattva steps in the world and helps others. We shouldn't understand that dualistically. It's not helping others actually before helping ourselves, but in helping others, we help ourselves.

[20:04]

In helping ourselves, we help others. is extending themself in this way studying the self and extending their self themselves in this way seeing that they are no different than others others are no different than them the true human body is the entire universe they step into each moment ready to help. So in that context, my practice became asking the question, what is helpful? And that's still my practice. And I would actually recommend it to anybody in this room.

[21:09]

What? Well, it's something that you can do all the time. All the time. 24 hours a day. You can ask yourself, what is helpful? And the answers are always interesting. Even if there's no answer, that's interesting too. The important thing about that practice is to stick around for the answers.

[22:17]

You could have another question, but I found that question to be a good question. What is helpful now? And to stick around, open, let go, And open up to the next moment and be ready for the answer. This is a practice that anybody can do. I'm certainly not the smartest person in the world. I'm pretty simple. I like really simple things. And this is about as simple as it gets. What is helpful now? And then sometimes people tell you what's helpful. And then you get to respond. Sometimes it comes from inside of myself.

[23:30]

Sometimes I act based on that and most of the times I don't. I just let it come. The answer that is. So that's my only practice right now, is to ask what is helpful. And I do that all day long. And the answers come all day long in many, many different kinds of ways. Today is Earth Day. I don't know if you knew that. Simon, do you know how many Earth Days we've had?

[24:30]

Is it the 25th annual? 20th. I think it's pretty clear to everybody that we don't... We need an Earth Day anymore. We need a... Earth every moment, you know? It's kind of like... It's kind of like... thinking earlier, it's kind of like Kisa with her infant child at her chest. I mean, we are, we are beyond the point, basically.

[25:35]

If we're not there already, we are, we are close and we are, we don't have a clue, I don't think. The world doesn't have a clue about how to get us out of this mess. So Earth Days are good, maybe, but what is really going to help, I think, is a good question. I think that actually we should take up Kitha's practice of going door to door, moment to moment, knocking on each other, knocking on each present moment.

[26:47]

Asking ourselves, what is helpful? If we don't do that, if we don't make that practice, make that our practice every single moment, all of us, the answers are not going to come. So this is our practice. Continuous. Asking the question. And then listening for the answer. And we have to do that in a big way now. We have to ask the question every moment. What is helpful? This is reorienting our lives completely.

[28:09]

And this is the bodhisattva vow. To reorient our lives to be helpful. Instead of orienting our lives so that it can line up, so that the world can... us be happy. Help us in our own limited way get what we think we need to get. If we do not reorient our lives in the way in which we ask moment to moment what is helpful now? How can I help How can I help the situation? We will just stay on the same path.

[29:16]

So I recently did a ceremony with my teacher and I was struck by the fact that a huge problem part of this ceremony in which I received this brown robe was writing out the names of every single ancestor. Day after day I was writing out these names. Ink on silk. I hope that wasn't a secret latch. Nobody told me that's what I was going to be doing, but that's what I was doing. I was thinking, these ancestors, and these are like real people here. I was 93rd on this various shapes of napes. I was 93rd. And...

[30:28]

In one of the documents that I was drawing, it says, it said, bodhisattvas need a land. And I thought, wow, that's odd. It was just kind of in there. Bodhisattvas need a land. Do you remember that, Inga? And I asked my teacher, no, I said, Bodhisattvas need a land. He says, yes, they're real people. They need to be somewhere. I said, it doesn't mean anything more than that. He said, no, these are people, they need a land. They need a place to help. You don't have a land, you don't have a place, you don't have a room, you don't have a... a work situation, you don't have a, you're trying to do something, you don't have a way to be helpful.

[31:31]

You don't have the conditions of your life, then you don't have a way to help. And it starts with land. You know, then everything gets built up from there. So I thought, well, that's, that's interesting. So we take care of the land. We take care of ourselves. We take care of ourselves to take care of the land. We take care of each other. We take care of the land. We extend our notion of ourself out. It's not me and you. This land we take care of. This land we don't take care of. This person we take care of. This person we don't take care of.

[32:32]

The practice of the Bodhisattva is just to ask the question, how now to take care of this situation? How the hell? And then, listen. Because people will tell you how you can help. People will tell you. The situation will tell you. You don't have to even have your own idea. In fact, less idea the better. And that can go on pretty much endlessly. there's no special way to help. That's what Suzuki Roshi said. There's no special way. There is no special way. There's no special way to help the earth right now either.

[33:46]

Anyways, I very much appreciated your attention tonight and the efforts that you made to come here tonight. I appreciate you all as members of the Sangha here helping each other. Thank you very much.

[34:23]

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