I vow to taste the truth of the thought. Good morning. Well, today is a very auspicious day. It's both the full moon and the summer solstice. So this last night was the shortest night and today is the longest day of the year. Can you hear me all right? So we have the good fortune to spend the longest day of the year, midsummer.

[01:01]

This is midsummer right today. Sitting together quietly, practicing and exploring our lives. I always find when I get ready for a talk, begin to prepare for a talk, the first thing I want to do is dust my desk and dust the bookshelves. And somehow I always feel like I can't start preparing for a talk unless the space is tidied up. So there was something I wanted to have for this lecture, a tape that I wanted to play for you, and in my tidying up I couldn't find this.

[02:05]

I looked all over for it. For the last couple of days I actually called around, did I lend this to somebody? And just before lecture I found it underneath, way underneath a chair. So I'm sorry you had to wait a little bit for the lecture to begin. I hadn't dusted under that chair. So this morning we had the full moon ceremony, or the bodhisattva ceremony, which we have every month. And this particular one-day sitting includes both the full moon ceremony, which we've done, and then we'll have a solstice ceremony at noon. And for those of you who aren't residents, it seemed a little too much to call everybody to let them know these ceremonies were happening. So it may have been a surprise for many of you to participate in the ceremony this morning.

[03:13]

And it may have also been, there may have been some confusion about it, or whether you should be doing this, or what am I doing. It's a very energetic ceremony, as you may have noticed. Lots and lots of bows, frustrations, and lots of chanting. And taking refuge, and taking the bodhisattva vows, and repeating them three times, has a rather strong effect to actually have a vow in your mind, and then actually verbalize it, and then verbalize it with the group, and then verbalize it many times. This has, we can feel this. And I often remember at Tassajara in the summer, I would really suggest to people if they weren't ready to do the ceremony,

[04:17]

maybe it would be better not to participate, rather than go and feel like you've gotten into something more than you wanted to. So if this happened to some of you this morning, I'm sorry. Although, just going through the motions of it, whether or not you understood exactly its effects, I think it's not harmful. So don't worry. And I want to talk some more about a vow, and the bodhisattva vow, in a minute. But I just, one of the, what the vows address is our suffering. And when it arises in us, almost without any design, or without any forethought, often what will happen will be a vow will arise in our own body and mind of itself.

[05:17]

And in the last week or so, two people have come to talk with me, and as they were speaking separately, they came to talk with me, it was obvious to me that they were voicing a vow that they had come to through their own intention and their own heart. And they wanted to say this to someone, but they hadn't realized it was a vow yet. But when it came out of their mouth, it was a vow. So this will happen, and the bodhisattva vow, the arising in one's consciousness of the vow to save all beings before oneself, is the arising of bodhicitta, or the thought of enlightenment. It's very particular, it's a thought that is born of compassion, and it wishes for all beings to be free and realize enlightenment before yourself.

[06:26]

It's for the benefit of others. And this bodhicitta arises... Now, there's two kinds of bodhicitta. There's aspiring bodhicitta and engaged bodhicitta. And the aspiring bodhicitta is when this arises in your consciousness, this vow, but you haven't yet formally taken this vow with witnesses or with a teacher. So this is called aspiring, and it's likened to wanting to go on a trip, arising in you the thought, I want to go to Italy, that thought comes up. And then when you actually receive the vow, we say both take and receive. Take a vow, receive a vow. Take the precepts, receive the precepts. It's funny that it's opposite words used for kind of the same action.

[07:27]

But when you actually take this vow with a witness or with witnesses in a ceremony, then it becomes engaged bodhicitta, where you've actually set out on the trip to Italy, set out on your way. So these vows born of compassion meet our suffering. Through our experience of suffering and feeling the suffering of others, this arises in us to want to help others and ourself. And how do you help people? You help them to awaken. One of the most, well, there's many kinds of suffering, but one in particular is the suffering of being separated from those we love. And everyone experiences this in different ways, being separated from those we love through death, through abandonment, through just the course of our life.

[08:43]

We move here, they move there, we never see our best friend anymore. But this separation from those we love is a very deep suffering. And I just wanted to mention that my daughter, Sarah, who's 16 years old, left for Ecuador last Sunday night. She flew at midnight with a group of young people in a program called the Amigos de las Americas, which is like a teenage Peace Corps. And they go to South America, Central and South America, and do health care work in villages. And she's been preparing with these other students, young people from the Marin Chapter, all year to go. They have very thorough training, and it finally came time for her to go.

[09:45]

And there won't be very much communication, the phone calls, they're really advised not to phone, plus there isn't phones, aren't phones available. And also the letters take a long time, so basically she's off and away, she's launched. And I was not exactly dreading it, but I didn't know how it was going to be for me to see her off at the airport, knowing this is the longest she's been away. And when she used to go to overnight camp, even for two weeks, as the bus pulled away I would cry. So how's this going to be at the airport? And what happened was, I found that I didn't have a lot of emotional, sad, attachment-type feelings. I was very happy for her. She was ready to go. I was very proud of how she had trained and prepared herself and took this on with full energy.

[10:52]

And when the time came, we hugged goodbye and we did a kind of Thich Nhat Hanh mindfulness hugging practice. Some of you may be familiar with it, which we had done at a children's retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh, where you hug someone and you breathe mindfully together. And as you breathe, you think to yourself, this person is real. Breathing in, this person is real. Breathing out and breathing in, I know that they are alive. Breathing in, breathing out. Try it sometime with someone you're intimate with, or not so intimate with. It's a very deep experience of this being and their life, and also non-attachment, just realizing they're alive and then let them go.

[11:55]

So that's what we did, unplanned. That's what happened. She went wearing her Blue Amigo shirt with the rest of the kids, waving goodbye, and she was off. I didn't shed a tear. I was just so happy for her. So this is kind of the flip side of the suffering of being separated from those you love. There is pain there, but because of, I think, my own work and preparing also for this to happen for the whole year, when it finally came, I was ready too. So I didn't feel I had to hold on to her. And hopefully that's how it will be as she grows older and older, this ability to just let her go. Actually, Rev talked about this too on Father's Day, about letting his daughter go.

[12:57]

But often it's not that easy to let someone go because we haven't understood why they're going, maybe, through death or them leaving us, or we're leaving them but we don't want to. It's very painful, and this pain is extremely intense, being separated from those we love. And I wanted to play this song, which I heard and taped off of the radio. Maybe some of you heard this. It was on Fresh Air last week, Fresh Air's interview program. And the person being interviewed was a rock and roll historian, and he has a huge collection, like 100,000 albums and things he hasn't even heard yet. But he talked about this song as being the most soulful song he'd ever heard, ever, out of all, and he has this huge collection.

[14:07]

And her name is Lorraine Ellison, and it happened to be kind of a serendipitous situation where a full band, a full orchestra, was ready to play for Frank Sinatra at some studio and he didn't show up. And so she sang, backed up by this full orchestra, and she sang this song which is about not wanting someone to leave, not wanting to be separated from those you love. So it's about three and a half minutes, and I thought we could all listen to this. Do you want this sung? Let's see, if this is loud enough, it might be just fine, but if it's a little weak, maybe I can help you here. Okay, okay. I'm not sure how it works.

[15:08]

Where did you go when things were going their way? Who did you run into and find a shoulder to lay your head on? Baby, you know I'm not there. Didn't I tell you it would happen to you? No, I can't believe it, baby. Baby, you know I'm not there. Didn't I tell you it would happen to you? No, I can't believe it, baby.

[16:44]

Baby, you know I'm not there. Didn't I tell you it would happen to you? No, I can't believe it, baby. Baby, you know I'm not there. Didn't I tell you it would happen to you? No, I can't believe it, baby. Baby, you know I'm not there. Didn't I tell you it would happen to you?

[18:12]

No, I can't believe it, baby. Baby, you know I'm not there. Didn't I tell you it would happen to you? No, I can't believe it, baby. Baby, you know I'm not there. No, I can't believe it, baby. She starts out, and you think she can't quite get better than that, and then she gets deeper and deeper. So this pain, you know, I'm begging you, stay with me.

[19:14]

I can't believe you're leaving, you know, stay with me. That anguish and pain is there for each one of us in all different ways, with all different people. So in some ways this kind of pain is what turns us towards practice, I would say. And when we understand, you know, the pain of craving or grasping is, it's not bound up in the actual things of the senses.

[20:16]

We don't have to cut off our sense doors, and then we're going to not have this pain. It's in understanding impermanence, lack of self, interdependence or emptiness, those three things. When you understand that all things change, all things are impermanent, when you thoroughly understand that, then you don't grab and try to hold on. And when you understand that all things are connected, then there isn't the necessity to push things away and grab things. The three poisons of greed, hate and delusion, the greed and hate disappear when the delusion is taken care of. So working with an ignorance is like, it's likened to an infection, and the delusion is like the symptoms of the infection.

[21:16]

So when you get rid of the infection or the ignorance, then this grasping and pushing away falls away as well. So we take these vows and we begin our practice to meet this pain, this unfathomable pain, often. And to not take these vows lightly is, I think, very important. I recently found that I had broken, there's something called the 42 downfalls, secondary downfalls and the 8 root downfalls. And these are ways in which we actually break our vows, or the secondary downfalls are, we crack the vows, we don't actually break them, it's like hitting them so they get a crack in them.

[22:28]

And the root downfalls are breaking our vows. So I wanted to confess to you and just talk about it a little bit. So this morning in the ceremony we started out with all my ancient twisted karma, which is confession. Basically we all say, I have done unwholesome things in the past through body, speech, and mind. I acknowledge this and I avow it. With witnesses I say, yes, this is what I've done. And within that is also a wish to not do it anymore. That's part of why you're doing that confession. And then the next thing we do is the homages to the Buddhas. We call all the Buddhas and the Bodhisattvas to witness because they're very helpful energies to have there when we take refuge, which we do later, and take our Bodhisattva vows, which comes next.

[23:42]

So this very melodic part about homages to the Buddhas and the Bodhisattvas to bring them, kind of invoke their presence so they're right here, which is very helpful for us. And then we take our Bodhisattva vows and the three refuges, and then the three pure precepts and the ten graves. And at the final thing we dedicate all this to the benefit of everyone in the ten directions. So that was the ceremony this morning. So to help us with our vows, it's very useful to study the way that we can give a knock or crack the vows or these downfalls. So I wanted to tell you what happened. We were at the airport taking Sarah to the Amigos. And when we got there, we were sitting around with some other families before the plane left, and they were saying, Did you bring your mosquito netting? No, we decided not to. How about, got your passport, got this net.

[24:48]

And they said, Do you have your toilet paper? And we looked at each other and we said, Oh no. They were supposed to bring about five rolls of toilet paper, or how much they would need for the eight weeks, because they don't have toilet paper in the villages where she'll be staying or at the home she'll be living in. It was really an essential thing to bring, and we didn't have it. And there wasn't time to kind of race out to Safeway and back to the airport. The plane was going to leave. What are we going to do? So I said, Well, they've got to have some in the airport. We'll just go into the bathroom and take a roll or two. So we set off. My husband went to the men's, and I went to the women's. We got in there, and they had the kind of dispenser that you need a key to open. It's got two rolls. You have to open it with a key and get out. In most of the stalls, except in one stall, they had regular kind. So I got one, stuffed it into my pocket.

[25:51]

And my son, Davey, was another one. He got another. So we had two. So then we thought, Well, can we manage with two? Well, it's not going to be enough, really. Let's go back. So, you know, with full mindfulness and intention to steal, to take what is not given, we set back out to these other bathrooms to case the joint and see. And we were able to confiscate, steal, excuse me, we were able to take five rolls. We actually got them, and we were stuffing them into her bag. And I felt so, it was like, it was a very new experience. Somehow, in high school, I never did shoplifting, although some of my friends did. But I kind of skipped that acting out. So I had never really, with full intention, and we were looking around, Are there any attendants, you know, who are coming to clean up? And we got the five rolls and stuffed them into her bag.

[26:52]

And when we got back, she was putting some in. Steve and I came, my husband and I came and got the last. And she was telling this other family what we were doing. And I'm getting red just at the thought of it. Now, get this. This is like the real. This other family is the one family in Amigos who have been guests at Tassajara and come to the Nores. Their daughter, they've been invited to the Nores for years, and they're kind of Tassajara people. And there we were arriving with our booty, you know, our stolen goods and stuffing it in. And they were sort of nodding. So I actually have no idea how they, what they thought. But I know that I thought, of all people, you know. So there it was. But I felt like my choice was to let her go without this essential item

[27:56]

or to do this. And then how are we going to pay back? Can we pay back the airport, you know? Who do you go to, you know, to give your donation? And it was like, maybe I'll bring some toilet paper and just put it in these different, you know, I'll go back to the... Anyway, I'm trying to think about how I can make amends for this. But I wanted to, then I was reading about these downfalls, so I thought I'd read to you what downfalls those were. So one of the downfalls was not acting in ways that cause others to generate faith. And this is basically to help others effectively. It is necessary to conduct ourselves in a way that causes them to develop confidence in us. If we fail to do this but retain bad habits that are likely to attract criticism, such as drinking or smoking,

[28:58]

we incur a secondary downfall. Somehow I thought petty theft would come in under that. Not avoiding it. Now this is interesting. The downfall is not avoiding a bad reputation. So if we unnecessarily engage in actions that cause us to receive criticism or a bad reputation, we incur a secondary downfall. However, and this is the proof, whether or not... this is for me to know. You can have your own opinion, but however, if our actions benefit many beings, cause the pure Buddha Dharma to flourish, or are necessary to preserve the integrity of our moral discipline, it does not matter if a few people criticize us. Well, I don't know. So if you do something that people will criticize you for, but in doing that action, you feel your actions will benefit beings

[30:00]

or cause the Buddha Dharma to flourish. I don't think so. Anyway, so those are some of the things that happen there. Now, one of the root... Let's see. I just want to read a couple more of these downfalls, secondary downfalls, because they're so interesting. For example, one is called not accepting invitations. If someone with a good motivation invites us to dinner, to a party, or for an outing, and without good reason we decline, merely out of pride, laziness, or anger, we incur a secondary downfall. So I find that quite interesting. So the valid reasons for declining invitations are we're sick, we do not have the free time, it would make others unhappy, there would be danger or an obstacle to our Dharma practice. So there are reasons.

[31:01]

You don't have to go to every barbecue that you're invited to, but if you're not going because of these reasons of not having time or it would be an obstacle to the Dharma practice, if you're just not going because you're lazy or out of pride, like, well, I don't associate with that group or whatever, that's a secondary downfall too. It's a secondary downfall of vows to benefit beings. Here's another one that I found interesting. Not replying to others. If someone greets us in a friendly and courteous manner, and without a good reason we give no reply, we incur a secondary downfall. You might say it's like Emily Post or something, but the commitment to make others happy means that you are friendly and if they say something, you have a suitable reply. This book, by the way, is called The Bodhisattva Vow.

[32:02]

The other thing is that in the root downfalls, these are like really breaking your vows, and one of them is stealing the property of the three jewels. So how are we doing for time? It's 10.36. 10.36, okay. So, stealing the property of the three jewels, which means anything that's been given to the Sangha or given to a practice place which is dedicated to Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. If you take something that's been dedicated to the three jewels, it's a very serious offense. One of the most serious kinds of stealing is taking something that's been offered to the three jewels. So I wanted to make another confession, and this one, I actually felt the seriousness

[33:08]

of this particular breaking of the vows or taking what is not given, the most serious part of it, I felt, was that I was able to fool myself into thinking this is probably okay. And when I realized that, then I was very ashamed. So I hope you don't mind me doing this. You're the unwitting receiver of my confessions. Anyway, I'll tell you what happened. Those of us who have families are able to shop in the walk-in for meals that we don't take in the dining room. And I was looking, and there's shelves that have red lines on them, and the red-lined shelves mean this food is not available, this is going to be used for a meal coming up, so don't take that, but food on the other shelves is okay. So I saw these red peppers, and what I...

[34:17]

I didn't realize at the time, but what I said to myself, what I was able to do to fool myself was, oh, they probably fell down from the non-red-lined shelf. They rolled over there, probably, because there were just two of them by themselves. It wasn't a whole box or anything. So I took those, and I called up to ask if I knew anything about these red peppers. laughter And I remember thinking, this was like a couple days later, and I thought, red peppers, red peppers. No, I didn't take any red peppers on the red-lined shelf. I did take some, but they were not on the red... I had, you know, in my inimitable fashion, found some way to kind of

[35:17]

make it okay somehow, and then it kind of hit me, like a ton of peppers, like a pack of peppers, that they had been on the red-lined shelf, and I had fooled myself into thinking that they had rolled or something. And so I was deeply, deeply ashamed, and made apologies and confessed to my teacher and bought more red peppers, and so I took care of it. But the main point for me, it wasn't that, in fact, the Tanzan said, oh, forget it, you know, I don't want your peppers, but it was very important that, you know, and believed it. I was just, I was really devastated. The ability to do that kind of fooling around,

[36:19]

that, you know, that I could still do that. Oh, it just... And not only that, it was food that had been bought for, the money for that food came from donations and self-support activity for the Three Treasures, you know. And then we'd buy food for the practitioners who then turned that into Zazen energy, and, you know, so anyway, it was a grave, I mean, I really felt the gravity of it. Now, there's four necessary things for having these downfalls or actual downfalls. One is that you do the action without any thought that it's wrong. You know, so that this lack of awareness, that you have no thing in mind

[37:22]

that you won't want to do this in the future. And the third is you take joy in doing the action. And the fourth is there's no shame that, you know, others will know about or something, that's not present. All four things have to be present for these downfalls to be actual downfalls. If you do something and right away have some regret or sense that this was, you know, unwholesome to do, then you right away, you know, make amends or do something about it. But all four, I think with the peppers, I actually said I knew I wasn't taking joy in taking this, and I knew that I didn't want to do this in the future, and still I was going to do it, you know. So all those four weren't present, but with the peppers it was present because of this fooling myself. So anyway, these vows are, you know,

[38:31]

to actually receive the precepts in the bodhisattva ceremony. The full moon ceremony is a kind of ceremony, and there's also the bodhisattva initiation ceremony where you receive the precepts and receive Buddha's clothes and lineage and become part of the Buddha's family. So once you've actually taken those vows, then it's very important to actually know what you're getting into and study what these downfalls are and study what the precepts are so that you don't find yourself, through ignorance, you know, doing things against what your intention is. But this is very, I use the word tricky, but I don't mean tricky as much as this is not black and white, you know, stealing the peppers to give to a homeless person

[39:34]

or a starving person. The precepts are within the context of the actual situation and your state of mind is whether the precept is broken or not. You can't say necessarily from the outside what's happening for the person. And that's actually one of the other downfalls, to think, this is interesting, not believing that bodhisattva's compassion ensures that all their actions are pure. So sometimes you may do something motivated by compassion, such as stealing and so forth. This is killing, stealing and so forth. And those actions are free of negativity. Now this is a very wide understanding of the bodhisattva precepts. And if you're not sure that you're motivated by compassion, if you're motivated by greed and hate and confusion,

[40:38]

don't kid yourself that this is out of your bodhisattva compassion when you're taking something that's not given. But I wanted to read or tell a story actually from Suzuki Roshi. I found this, in terms of compassion, the expression of compassion, very, very moving. This is from a windbill of 1973, and Suzuki Roshi gave a lecture and then there were questions and answers. This took place at Tassajara. And a student asks, well, they say that they were hitting the mokugyo. The mokugyo is our drum. Which is a small drum. The drum they're talking about was a great big wooden drum. It's carved like a fish. You had to be in choki, like that position we were in for the ceremony this morning, up on your knees. And it had a great big mallet that you had to hold with two hands to hit this mokugyo. Boom, boom, boom.

[41:40]

And it perished in the fire and a small spider crawled across the top of it. I went a little bit off to the side, but he went right into it. There was nothing I could do. It was too powerful for him to escape. And Suzuki Roshi says, you didn't kill it? This has a question mark, but I think really he says, you didn't kill it. And the student says, something did. And Suzuki Roshi said, yes, but I couldn't stop and he went right into it. Suzuki Roshi. It couldn't be helped. Buddha killed him. He may be very happy. To live in this world is not so easy. And then he goes on to say, when you see children playing by a stream or by a bridge,

[42:42]

you will feel very scared. When I'm on a freeway, I always think, oh, how is it possible to survive without having an accident? But if something happens, that's all. If you stop and think about it, if you stop and see and think, you will be terrified. I'm going to skip a little bit here. If you think about our practice, you may be scared because it can be very strict. You should be ready to kill something, even if you are a Buddhist. Whether it is good or bad, you should do it. It is impossible to survive without killing anything. We cannot survive by some feeling. We must be involved in a deeper practice than emotional practice. That is the strict side of our practice. And if it is absolutely necessary, you should stop hitting the mokugyo, because somehow,

[43:43]

that student being upset that they are hitting the mokugyo, boom, boom, boom, and they see the spider, and it's coming, and they can't help, and they are moving the mallet, and it goes right under, smash! How painful that would be. And Suzuki Roshi, with the student trying not to, and yet they didn't go so far but for them, at the time, they didn't respond that way, they just kept playing. And for him to say, you didn't kill it, Buddha killed it. The vow to understand what that means, to thoroughly understand in the deepest way what that means, Buddha killed it. You didn't do it. That is what our practice is all about. So, One Day Sitting is a wonderful opportunity

[44:59]

to practice all the vows, all the, you know, what vows do you break while you are sitting there, mindfully aware of posture, breath, and your mind, unifying them, even if a slanderous thought comes through your mind, to be aware of it, note it, and not believe in it, to see its impermanence, to see how it was conditioned by other factors, its interdependence, and that it has no inherent existence of its own. So you can't call it slander. Practicing in this way, all the precepts are upheld. So, I hope we have a calm and strong sitting today. Thank you very much.

[45:56]

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