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. So I see the winter rains do not discourage everybody from coming here. Spring rains, I guess, we're having. So is there anyone here? Welcome to Beginner's Mind Temple. Is there anyone here for the first time that would be willing to raise their hands? Anybody over on this side of the room? So did you know that you came to a birthday party? You didn't know that. Cake being served at this birthday party. Um...

[01:01]

So my name is Ed, and today is a special day because we have two ceremonies going on. First, we're going to celebrate Buddha's birthday, and I'm going to talk about what that's about here. And we're also today launching our Spring Zen-a-thon. You may wonder what a Zenathon is. I wondered what a Zenathon was when they told me that's what we were going to do. It's our spring fundraising event. It's kind of like a triathlon. You know, we're going to have biking. Did you see all the people biking away this morning in the rain? They're biking all the way to Green Gulch. And then they're going to bike all the way back. So we've got biking and hiking, which is our version of running. But instead of swimming, they're going to be sitting zazen. So that's our Zen-a-thon.

[02:04]

And I think people are sponsored, so you can contribute money. Feel free to contribute some more money because we're at 90%, so we just need a little push to get over the edge. So that's our spring Zen-a-thon. I mean, we've had, what, three weeks of gorgeous... sunny weather. And here is our spring zenithon and Bruta's birthday. We were going to process across to the park and circle a nice pagoda with baby Buddha in it and carry parasols and everything like that. But I think it's too rainy. Even though my jisha, who I had assigned this job to, assured me there would be no rain after the lecture. Still, the Hino persuaded me that we would do the procession inside. So that's what we're going to do.

[03:05]

So, of course, the downside is we're not going all the way over to the park today, but the good for me is I get to spend a lot of time talking to the Eno this morning about where we're going to do this ceremony inside and how we're going to do it. Thank you very much, Eno. I wanted to do it outside. We all wanted to do it outside. One of the students who was cycling over there named the Zenathon Wetathon, because he had already cycled all the way over from Green Gulch and was soaking wet, and he's cycling back again. I enjoyed their enthusiasm. Kind of reminded me of, there's a famous saying about Soto Zen, which is Soto Zen training. You know, it feels like nothing happening. You just get up in the morning, you sit zazen, you eat breakfast, you work, you sit some more zazen, you go to bed, nothing happening.

[04:09]

So one of the famous sayings, it's like walking in the mist. You walk in the mist, you don't think you're getting wet at all, but you come indoors and you're soaked through to the bone. So that's our practice. But I think our cyclists today are taking the fast route to enlightenment, getting soaked through to the bone. on their bicycles. So there are three important days in Buddha's life that we commemorate. Buddha's birthday, which we celebrate in the springtime. Buddha's element, which is celebrated on December 8th in Japan. And we get pretty close to that. We usually celebrate it by having a seven-day sashing called rohatsu, which is sort of a... emulation of Buddha sitting for seven days before he was enlightened, and then at the end of that seven days we're all enlightened and celebrate Buddha's enlightenment together. So that's in December, and then Buddha's death, which is usually on February 15th.

[05:16]

Of those three ceremonies, by almost unanimous vote, the favorite is Buddha's birthday, because it's about birth and renewal of and springtime, and who doesn't like renewal and springtime? Sometimes we get weighted down by the enormous karmic baggage we're carrying from our youth and the enormous number of difficulties that we face just getting through, doing all the things we need to do, and we forget that we can renew our life, that every moment is a chance for us to wake up to a new us, wake up to a new moment in life and renew it. So today's ceremony is a chance for you to actually try to renew your life a little bit.

[06:20]

Think about what you would like to change, what freshness you'd like to bring to your life, and there'll be a moment in the ceremony where I'll recommend that you do that. And this is pretty traditional in many religious practices. In the springtime, there's a kind of renewal that happens in the Jewish tradition and the Christian tradition. I think Christ was reborn in the springtime, a complete renewal, a rebirth of your life. And, of course, it's going on all around us with all the spring wildflowers and beautiful oak trees in Marin that are coming out with their new fresh leaves. But still, in the midst of a world filled with war and violence and oppression and natural disasters, how can we celebrate? How can we celebrate?

[07:22]

We celebrate because that is our human life, to find joy in the midst of our difficulties, to touch joy in the midst of our difficulties. and to celebrate our lives together, even though we have these difficulties. That is our Buddhist practice, and that is our human practice. So today we're really going to celebrate, because in addition to renewing ourselves, we're going to have cake, which I think I mentioned earlier. I actually had a discussion with Atenzo this morning about the kinds of cake we're going to have, For those who like chocolate cake, rest assured, we'll have chocolate cake. For those of you who like Victoria sponge cake with strawberries and whipped cream, we'll have that too. This is in the dining room after lunch.

[08:23]

You're all invited to have lunch with us in the dining room and decide which kind of cake you're going to have. So the name Buddha means awakened one. It comes from the root word Buddha, Bud, B-U-D-H, to awake. So Buddhism is the practice of being awake and fully present in our life no matter what our circumstances are. So this is a practice of trying to be present and live in your life no matter what the circumstances are. When Buddha attained enlightenment under the bow tree, which was 2,500 years ago, he said, I and all beings on earth together attain enlightenment at the same time. It's a very nice statement to make.

[09:24]

Not I, the really hot one, have made it, and you guys, good luck. No. You're all enlightened too. You're all awake too. That is the nature of your human life, is to be awake. So then he spent the next 49 years teaching, never staying in seclusion. He taught at over 360 assemblies. I don't think he took any vacations to Hawaii. I think he just was teaching for 49 years. And then he entrusted, as the... languages, the treasury of the eye of truth to his disciple, Maha Kashapa. And this transmission has continued to the present from India to China, to Southeast Asia, Tibet, through Korea, to Japan, to Europe, and to us here in America. And I was thinking about, so today we're celebrating a teacher

[10:31]

who taught us how to be awake, lived an awake life, and has transmitted that teaching all the way to us here. Each one of us has this nature of an awakened life. We may not feel that or understand that or always be in touch with it or believe it, but it is true. and it is our birthright. And through our practice, we can express and fulfill this awakened life. So in some sense, this is our birthday too. It's quite common to say, happy birthday to everybody on Buddha's birthday. So it's your birthday too. So this ceremony is a chance for us to honor our true awakened nature. In Japan, Buddha's birthday is celebrated on April 8, which was yesterday.

[11:40]

I don't know, actually, Japan, when April 8 was. That's confusing. But anyway, we celebrated on the nearest Saturday to April 8. That's today, April 9. It's called Hana Matsuri in Japan. Flower festival. I was talking to somebody last night who spent 11 years living in Japan. He was a practicing Buddhist for 11 years. And I said, Buddha's birthday. Did you ever celebrate Buddha's birthday in Japan? He said, no, I don't remember anything like that. I said, Hana Matsuri. And he said, oh, yeah, huge thing, flower festival. I didn't even know it was Buddha's celebration of Buddha's birthday. I don't know what. All the temples open, people pour sweet water, tea over the baby Buddha. It's a huge, huge event. I haven't been there. I'm going to want to go there sometime. Quite a party. So we're going to do our version of a party here today. At Green Gulch, they celebrate Buddha's birthday in May.

[12:40]

I think they like it to be a little sunnier there. And at Green Gulch, they used to do a huge pageant and reenact Buddha's birth with puppets, life-size puppets, stuff like that. I don't think they're doing that this year. And I was looking back at the early... What about the early celebrations of Buddha's birthday in America? And I found out in 1965, on April 8th, in the California Bay Area, the first circumambulation of Mount Tamalpais to celebrate Brotherhood's birthday was conducted. Hundreds of individuals participated, some sleeping overnight in your woods to enable an early start at the Dipsy Trail. The session was led by Gary Schneider. He was 38 years old. Someone's nodding, have you done that circumambulation? Alan Gidsberg was there, and Philip Wayland, who became a priest at Zen Center. and lived out his life here. And it involved chanting different mantras at every station of the clockwise circumambulation of 15 miles of Mount Tam.

[13:47]

And a neighbor of mine in Mill Valley, Matthew Davis, is still leading that circumambulation, and it happens every year. It's been done 140 times. He wrote a marvelous book... called Opening the Mountains, Circumambulating Mount Tamalpais, a Ritual Walk. So I was thinking about circumambulation when I was remembering this early start of this particular ceremony. We'll do a circumambulation too. We were going to circulate up to that high peak over there in the park, but we're going to circumambulate around the hallways here to a nice pagoda over there. So circumambulation... was a practice found in India in the early times and assimilated from Vedic tradition by the Buddhists who, before speaking to Buddha, walked around him three times with their right side always toward him as a sign of veneration. So when we go on our circumambulation, we're going to go past a pagoda that has a baby Buddha in it, and it'll be on our right side.

[14:52]

And I think we're going to walk around it three times. I think that's right, three times. Wow. We're following a very ancient tradition here. And apparently in the stupas in India where relics of Buddha were buried, people would circumambulate it three times. In time and through the influence of pantheistic folk traditions, mountains became the focus of similar practices. This is how we get to Mount Tam. Circumambulating or climbing mountains, a personal religious symbol in almost every culture, came to be seen as a metaphorical recreating of the spiritual quest of the firm resolve and tireless effort necessary to achieve liberation and bring its fruits back into the world for the benefit of all beings. When I was young, I used to hike deep into the mountains, or I came from New Mexico, many times the deserts, in some sort of spiritual quest.

[15:55]

I don't know how many of you have walked into the mountains looking for some deep meaning in your life. So we're recreating that spiritual quest, that firm resolve and tireless effort necessary to achieve liberation by walking down the hall, through the dining room, around the baby Buddha and back again. Okay? Excellent. It's extremely traditional at such a morning to talk about the legend of Buddha's birth. And I say legend because it's a mythic recreation. It's a sort of parable. But I thought it was beautifully written in 200 A.D.

[16:57]

by a famous Indian poet named Asvagosa, I mean, there's many versions of Buddha's birth, but this is the earliest one, and it was translated in 1936 by E.H. Johnson. And this was, of course, written 500 years after Buddha's death, so what resemblance to Buddha's birth, what resemblance to his birth, who knows. And it was written on palm leaves. which of course have not survived the 1900 years since then very well. But fortunately the poem was translated into Chinese and Tibetan, so Mr. Johnson was able to sort of fill in the parts of the palm leaves that had deteriorated and been lost with re-translating the Tibetan versions and the Chinese versions, and so now we have it. So I'm gonna just read a little bit of it here. There was a king of unconquerable shakyas.

[18:06]

Shakyas was the tribe. Sudhananda, Suddana, Suddana by name. Pure he was in conduct and beloved of his people as the moon in autumn. It's appropriate that Buddha would have such an honorable father. The counterpart, his queen, whose splendor corresponded to his might. We have a beautiful, splendid queen. Her name is Mahamaya. And they had wanted to have a child, preferably a son, to take over the kingdom. And one night, the queen had a dream. And in the dream, a white lord of the elephants with six tusks entered the side of her body. And she felt thereby no pain during this dream, and in the morning she consulted various wise people, and it was determined that she had now conceived a child.

[19:17]

There's marvelous pictures of this white, large elephant. Elephants are very important creatures in Buddhist tradition and in India, coming and visiting her in the middle of the night. So anyway, nine months later, she felt like it was time to have the baby, and she set off from where she was living, which is Kapalavastu, to her parents' home, where it was traditional to have the child born. But on the way, it became clear that the baby was coming, and they were in this beautiful forest park called Lumbini, which was, you know... gorgeous with trees of every kind. She stopped the procession, all kinds of servants were there, walked into the beautiful garden, held on to a saul tree, which is one of the big trees in the garden, and had her baby Buddha was born through the side of her with no pain.

[20:23]

These parables are marvelous. Lots of babies are born. magically these ways out of different parts of people's bodies, always painless. And it says here, the son was born for the wheel of the world without her suffering either pain or illness. It was kind of a miraculous birth. He was born not ignorant but fully conscious. A handy trick for a baby. Also goes on to say, as you might suspect, with his luster and steadfastness, he appeared like the young sun come down to earth. And despite this, his dazzling brilliance when gazed at, he held all eyes like the moon. I don't know.

[21:28]

I've looked at babies sometimes. They do hold all eyes like the moon, don't they? Just like looking at the moon, you just like to look at them. For with the glowing radiance of his limbs he eclipsed like the sun the radiance of the lamps and the beauteous with the hue of precious gold he illumined all the quarters of space. So he looked his brown golden skin. Marvelous. He was like the constellation of the seven seers. Now, here's the tick. He got up, walked seven steps with such firmness that the feet were lifted up unwavering and straight, and the strides were long and set down firmly. Then he looked in the four directions. With the bearing of a line, he uttered a speech proclaiming the truth. I am born for enlightenment for the good of the world. I am born for enlightenment for the good of the world.

[22:33]

An auspicious start for a child, I think. Another translation says, worlds above... Another translation has him say, worlds above, worlds below... there is no one in the whole world like me. And apparently he stuck his hand up like that and said, worlds above, worlds below, there is no one in the world like me. I think that's pretty good. DT Suzuki in commenting on that said, I think when a baby cries when they first come out of the womb, they're saying, worlds above, worlds below, there was no one in the world like me. And that's true of you too, right? There's no one in the world like you. No one. Totally unique person. Another translation, this is one of those famous phrases in the legend that gets lots of different translations and interpretation.

[23:42]

And this is the one that I'm going to take some time later to explain in more detail. He said, when he held up his hands and pointed to the earth, I alone am the world-honored one. Now we're getting to a little bit of a stretch here, right? I alone am the world-honored one. So if we're thinking about that vis-a-vis ourself, the birth of our own awakened nature, what would it mean, I alone am the world-honored one? Some common interpretation is that he's recognizing the oneness of everything. He is one with everything. and honoring that connection to everything. But I'm gonna take a slightly different tack later on when we get into a further elaboration of that. Okay, so the Buddha is born. He's walked seven steps. He's announced his arrival in this bold fashion. And of course, two streams of water, clear as the rays of the moon and having the virtue one of heat and one of cold, nice to have hot and cold running water.

[24:49]

poured forth from the sky and fell on his gracious head to give his body refreshment by the contact. There's another paragraph, of course, where flowers are falling from all the trees, even though it was off-season. The flowers are falling from the trees on him. So when we, in the ceremony, which of course the eno will explain in much more detail, we're going to go out and there's a pagoda And the roof of the pagoda is all flowers. And under the roof of the pagoda is a baby Buddha with his hands. Actually, I can't remember. Is it the right hand or the left hand up? Anyway, one of his hands is up in the air pointing to heaven and the other one is down at the earth. And he's standing above a bowl of sweet tea. And there's ladles in the sweet tea. And so you can... take ladles of sweet tea. In fact, you will do that. We'll all circumambulate around, and we'll take a ladle of sweet tea and pour it over baby Buddha, just like the water that was pouring from the skies.

[25:56]

And this is one of those moments where you will say, with this fresh water, I'm renewing my life. And I'm thinking about what in my life I want to renew, and I'm renewing it with this actual act at that time. you're going to be honoring your own true awakened nature. Not just honoring a baby Buddha's awakened nature, but your own awakened nature when you're putting the sweet tea over his head. I was thinking about that a little bit just as I was walking in here today and I offered some flower petals here at the altar, and then I went back and did three bows. What are we doing when we're offering flower petals to this beautiful statue of Buddha, when we're making three bows to him?

[27:03]

Are we bowing to something other than our own self? No, we're bowing to our own Buddha in us, to our awakened nature. And we've got this... Buddha out there to remind us that what we're bowing to is something awake. Isn't that a beautiful statue, by the way? We are very fortunate to have that statue that's, I don't know how many, many, at least a thousand years old. It comes from Afghanistan. It's called the Gandharan Buddha. There's not many of them in the world. There's one in the Asian Art Museum. I think ours is, I like ours. We have two of them. There may not be more than 10 or 12 in the whole world. A very special statue. And represents the kind of way we'd like to be. He's pretty calm looking, don't you think? She. Pretty calm. Kind of happy. Fairly composed. That's a together upright person there.

[28:05]

I think he's not going to cause any trouble for anybody. So we, when we... offer an offering to Buddha, statue out there. We're just encouraging ourselves to let our awakened nature come forth in our life and be honorable. So, continuing on. Buddha's all refreshed from all this wonderful water and... flowers that had fallen on him and it's of course there's a dramatic moment not just for buddha but for everything there's a paragraph had his birth the earth nailed down as it was with the king of mountains trembled like a ship struck by the wind and from the cloudless sky there fell a shower of perfumed a shower perfumed with sandalwood and bringing blue and pink lotuses sandalwood perfumed showers

[29:10]

Does that smell like that today? Is it sandalwood? Smells pretty good. Might be. Anyway, there's another paragraph here. On seeing the miraculous birth of his son, the king, steadfast though he was, was much disturbed, and from his affection a double stream of tears flowed, born of delight and apprehension. interesting isn't it in life you know people that you really love there's just such joy in it but a little bit of apprehension because you know because of the impermanence of life things are changing kind of interesting that that was put forward anyway just to quickly there's many more pages on this birth there naturally with such a wonderful event there's a special seer who perceives that this event has happened and his name was Asita and he heard of the birth.

[30:19]

It's kind of like the three wise men and he came to the palace and of course was honored when he arrived and they wanted to show him the baby and the baby Buddha. According to one, he inspected the baby Buddha, had special things like wheels on his feet and various symbols, and apparently the baby Buddha put his feet on the seer's head. Kind of cute idea, right? Anyway, the seer was quite moved, and he actually started to cry, and the king was worried that this meant that something bad was gonna happen to his son, but the seer said that that wasn't the problem. First of all, he said, that wasn't the problem. The problem was that he was an old man and he was going to die and he would not be around to see what this sun brings to the world. And he said, for he will give up the kingdom in his indifference to worldly pleasures and through bitter struggles, grasping the final truth, he will shine forth as a sun of knowledge in the world to dispel the darkness of delusion.

[31:35]

So that was a prediction from Buddha's early birth of what his life would be like. So I wanted to return to this statement, I alone am the world honored one. And I was reminded when I was thinking about that of a lecture that Suzuki Roshi, our founder, the founder of this temple, gave called The Teaching is Just for You. This teaching of Buddhism is just for you. He starts off, we have this idea that our practice will improve day by day and it will help our health and mental condition. We do have that idea, don't we? That our practice will improve day by day and it will help our health and mental condition. He says, that is true.

[32:36]

but it is not a complete understanding. It is true. If you practice your health, you'll feel better, your mental suffering will reduce, and you'll make less trouble for people. That will happen. But, what Sukarashi says, he goes on to say, we also do zazen with the understanding that the goal is not reached in one or two years, but is right here. So if you have this idea, well, I'm practicing for some future great relief in my life or, God forbid, some enlightenment experience that's going to change everything, that's not our understanding of practice. Our understanding of practice that is in every moment, right there, your awakened life can come to fruition, is coming to fruition. Here is the goal of practice. When you practice with this understanding, you take care of many things and you remain concentrated, completely involved in the practice you have right now.

[33:45]

And we have all these various forms in our center, you know, bowing in front of altars, bowing to each other at Tassar, you go into the bathrooms, you bow to the bathroom. We have these ways of focusing our attention and reminding us that in this very little act, the act of passing another person, the act of entering a bathroom, the act of washing a dish. In each one of these acts, all of life can happen. And why wouldn't we want that to be the case? We're just living our lives from the big peak moments that happen every 12 hours at best, or every three weeks at best. We want to make every moment of our life alive, meaningful, because life is short enough without wasting any of it. To approach perfect practice, there is no other way than to accept yourself. To say your practice is bad does not help your practice.

[34:53]

To say your practice is excellent does not help your practice. Your practice is your practice. You are talking about it in various ways, good or bad, that is all. I mean, we can all notice that, the constant conversation in our head about how our life is going, how things are going. It's not helping your practice, basically. It's just talk. Your practice is to accept yourself, even when it's difficult, even when it's painful, even when it's ecstasy. Accept it all. And don't worry about all the talk that's going on. So we should know this point, first of all. So we say, even though your practice is not so good, it is perfect practice. Just sit. Even if your practice is not so good, it's perfect practice. What does that mean?

[35:55]

Sir Gershaw used to say, you're perfect just as you are, and you could use a little improvement. So we're just going to ride with the word perfect just as we are for a while. But he says, but just to say so when you're not actually practicing the truth, it's like a painted cake or a picture of a cake you can't eat. Various ancestors and great sages of Buddhism have said, Buddha left this teaching just for me, not for anyone else. Various ancestors Wise ancestors of the past in our tradition have said, Buddha left this teaching just for me, not for anyone else. If that side is forgotten, the Buddha's teaching is nothing but waste paper. That's what Jesus Christ says. If you forget that, that this teaching is for you, each one of you, then it's just waste paper.

[37:01]

Just for me is not arrogance. It means you have the full appreciation of the teaching as your own. That is the spirit we need in our zazen practice. Because I practice zazen, there is Buddhist teaching. If you're not practicing zazen, if you're not practicing Buddhism, there is no Buddhism. There's just a bunch of written pages in a book someplace. You realize that you're the only being in this world and that no one can take over your position. You realize that you're the only being in this world. No one can run your life. It's true. I mean, you can consult all kinds of people, but in the end, your life is your responsibility. Your practice is your responsibility, and no one can take over your position.

[38:02]

You are the only one. that can manifest your awakened life. You cannot escape because the whole world is yours. This is beyond the truth we can talk about. This is ultimate truth. That's what Zikharishi had to say. So when you're pouring water over the baby Buddha as we're circulating past him, you can say to yourself, now I'm renewing my life. How do I want to renew my life? This is a moment in which I am renewing my life, turning around the suffering and moving towards happiness and joy. That's enough.

[39:14]

You can go do the ceremony and have some cake and coffee. Thank you very much for coming for Buddha's birthday. I hope you can stay for the ceremony, which will start right afterwards, basically. Caitlin will give you all the instructions. 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.

[40:02]

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