I vow to taste the truth and not to fight those words. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. Well, it's such a lucky thing that we could all just take the day off and find time to just sit here all day, letting go of all our concerns and all our accomplishments and all our identities, and just sit here together in the rain.

[01:04]

What a relief. And our zazen practice reminds me of the rain, just like the rain. It's steady and slow and nourishing, and little by little it soaks everything in our lives until there isn't a dry spot left. And it moistens seeds that may have been buried dormant inside us for a long, long time. And with the moisture, the seeds naturally, slowly begin to exert themselves, and eventually

[02:17]

they sprout. Although both zazen and rain can sometimes be very stormy and troublesome, they are necessary. Rain just falls because that is the nature of rain. Rain doesn't decide to fall or struggle or question itself. It doesn't doubt. It doesn't complain. It simply falls completely, all the way to the very end. And I think our zazen practice is like this also.

[03:19]

When we sit, we can see many, many things within the circle of our awareness. Now, we can see our breath coming and going. We can see various sensations in the body of pain or pleasure or neutral. We can be aware of thoughts arising and passing away, of emotions coming and going. So, as Dogen says, we can see within the circle of our awareness as far as our eye

[04:32]

of practice can reach. But what we can see and know with our sensory apparatus, which includes mind also, is not the whole of what our life actually is. And this is our problem. This is our challenge. Really, I think that the disease of all human beings is a little bit of arrogance because we think that we know ourselves and our world. And seeing the world and ourselves as far as we know them, we find that the world and ourselves are unsatisfactory somehow. And we feel a need to change ourself or other people or the world because as far as we can

[05:42]

see, they're not satisfactory. And we suffer for all this desire and lack, for all of our craving and confusion based on this view in a very limited sphere of awareness. But this assessment of the situation which we somehow arrogantly believe to be the whole story is simply too limited to be accurate. We completely believe it through and through, but it's not really so. Or I should say a little bit more precisely, it's not only so. The world that we experience, that we can see within our circle of awareness is certainly real and certainly true, but we are not seeing it in its full dimension.

[06:45]

And we can't really see it in its full dimension. But with our sitting practice, with a strong avow and a commitment to returning to the present moment, to just putting everything aside, not by rejecting it, but by bringing it right here to the present moment without any gap or distance, we can appreciate and have a real feeling for the vastness that is contained in this little circle of awareness. Our thoughts are not just our thoughts. Our emotions are not merely our emotions.

[07:50]

Our seeing and hearing isn't just some limited seeing and hearing. Everything is here, moment by moment. Worlds on worlds are created and destroyed with each breath. As our appreciation of this reality grows, we will be less stuck on our individual view, our individual limited problems. Then we'll be able to work with our problems, of course, to make choices and act on our choices as any normal person does. But we'll see it more fully and we'll relate to it with a greater sense of peace and confidence,

[09:00]

less, much less desperation, much more space. This morning we participated in the full moon ceremony, as we do each month, and we chanted the sixteen Bodhisattva precepts. And the precepts are like this too. They are full of vast dimension. We can think of them as rules and regulations or restrictions, but actually they are meditation practices and there is almost no end to the possibilities of understanding our life through a meditation on the precepts.

[10:02]

The sixteen Bodhisattva precepts begin with taking the triple refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. These three are the first of the sixteen precepts. I take refuge in Buddha, I take refuge in Dharma, I take refuge in Sangha. These are the most fundamental of the precepts and contain all the precepts within them. Take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, Sangha is to come back to Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. To admit that one's own body and mind is nothing but Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. When we know this, our problems, our issues remain, but we don't see them in the same light anymore. I was in Tassajara and Leslie James and I were talking about the Tassajara has been

[11:09]

doing some silent sushins, no dharma talk, no doksan, no service, just sitting all day long. She said that she noticed that after many years of being used to a dharma talk at this time of day, when that time of day shows up she says she's ready for entertainment. It's a little bit of relief from the relentlessness of sitting. So I do feel that I have a responsibility to entertain and educate you a little bit. That's why I'm going to tell you about this, I like to bring in some useful information since most of what I say is pretty useless, which is as it should be. Still I think that a little bit of useful information is necessary. I try to put a little like that in my poems also, a little bit something that you could use. So, I'll tell you about this book, I read a book review here, it's a science lesson,

[12:19]

a little science lesson. This book is called The Fabric of Reality, I thought that would be an appropriate title for a book to talk about today. The Fabric of Reality, The Science of Parallel Universes, interesting, huh? So this is a book review of this book by a physicist, David Deutsch, and the book review goes like this, a standard set piece in almost any layperson's introduction to modern physics is the musty old two-slit experiment. You all know the famous two-slit experiment, right? I never heard of it myself, but he says we're all supposed to know this. The good old two-slit experiment, you know, right, I never heard of it, but everybody knows except me. So, here's what the two-slit experiment is, in case you didn't know, he tells you that

[13:27]

first you aim a beam of photons at a photographic film, you got that, photons? Then you put a piece of cardboard with two holes punched in it in the way of these photons that are going to the photographic paper. Now, if you close one of the holes, right, what happens is the photons will travel through the other hole, makes sense, right, and will leave a single spot on the photographic screen. Logical, right? That's what you would imagine. However, if you uncover the second hole and you have two holes, you would think, of course, that you'd see two spots on the photographic paper, right? That would be logical, but it doesn't work that way. If you uncover the second hole, you do not find two spots side-by-side on the photographic

[14:36]

paper. Instead, you find a complicated interference pattern, an alternating configuration of light and dark bands representing the presence and absence of photons. So, something happens in both holes to block sometimes, but not always, some of the photons from going through, even though both of the holes are open. And then the reviewer says, opening both holes somehow prevents a particle from landing in places where it was previously free to go. The physicist John Bell said of this puzzling and now oddly familiar situation that it is as though the mere possibility of passing through the other hole affects the particle's motion and prevents it from going in certain directions.

[15:40]

The mere possibility of passing through the other hole, which now exists, actually affects the particle's motion and prevents it from going in certain directions. Strange, huh? So, quantum theory can explain this. However, it's perfectly explainable in quantum theory, however, only mathematically. When you try to explain it in words and in concepts, it confounds our ability to appreciate it. So much so that Niels Bohr once said, we must be clear that when it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. This is true, not only of physical matter, but also of our inner life.

[16:45]

It doesn't really, we can't really explain it, because language explains things in this limited sphere of awareness quite well. But when it comes to all the dimensions of our experience, language, only treated as in poetry, can indicate. So physicists, the reviewer says, have gotten tired of trying to explain this, and they just talk about it in mathematics, because language doesn't work. But this book, The Fabric of Reality, is making yet another attempt to explain, in language, quantum mechanics. If we are to take, quoting again from the review, if we are to take quantum theory at face value, David Deutsch argues in his book, we are led to conclude that our universe is

[17:52]

one of many in an ensemble of parallel universes that physicists have come to call the multiverse. Have you heard about that, the multiverse? Instead of the universe, the multiverse. This is the only conclusion that you can come to if you actually study the mathematics and results of experiments in quantum physics, that we live in not a universe, but a multiverse. Deutsch believes that the photons, in a two-slit experiment, are prevented from landing on certain parts of the film, because they are interfered with by the invisible shadow photons from a parallel universe. That's why there's this interference pattern. Other photons in other universes actually interact with those photons and prevent them from landing, where we would expect them to land in this small circle of awareness that

[18:56]

we call the world that we know about. This many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics was first put forward decades ago by the physicist Hugh Everett as a way of making sense of quantum mechanics. Suppose you want to measure a subatomic particle's position. According to quantum theory, the undisturbed particle is in a peculiar state of limbo in which all the possible positions that it might assume actually exist in a way, simultaneously. Only when the particle is measured does it snap into a precise location. And there is no reason why the particle chooses one place and not another.

[19:57]

It's random. Everett proposed another, even more counter-intuitive way to think about the situation. When the particle is measured, the universe splits into multiple copies. In each of these universes, the electron takes on a different position. We just happen to be stuck in one and only one of those worlds. So this is, you know, science. It's very true. Thanks. I just thought you'd be interested so that it wouldn't be a total loss that I would tell you. Maybe you'll read this book, The Fabric of the Universe, by David Deutsch. The Fabric of Reality, that is. So this is part of our practice, to see the wider fabric of reality,

[21:12]

instead of being totally stuck in our own little world. And in Buddhism, seeing this wider fabric of reality, we call the practice of seeing the empty nature of all phenomena, or seeing the essential nature, or the true nature of all things. Or sometimes we call it suchness. Or sometimes we just say, using very ordinary language, seeing things as they are, instead of seeing things in this limited way. And I was thinking that, you know, the one who practices this practice of seeing things as they are, is Manjushri Bodhisattva, sitting on the altar. Manjushri Bodhisattva is a very steady practitioner.

[22:20]

He's been sitting there without moving for over 20 years, 25 years or so. And I would encourage all of you, in the breaks or sometime, to take a good look at Manjushri Bodhisattva. Of course, this image of Manjushri Bodhisattva on the altar is a depiction of the Manjushri Bodhisattva that is sitting in your seat right now, all day long today, making an effortless effort to let go of limited views and just allow the rain to fall. This Manjushri Bodhisattva is very handsome, very beautiful. The reason why Manjushri Bodhisattva is depicted as handsome or beautiful

[23:25]

is because it is these limited views and our believing in these limited views as the whole story that actually makes us ugly. Once we let go of our limited views, we are all beautiful, like Manjushri Bodhisattva. Also, maybe you noticed that Manjushri Bodhisattva is really dressed up nice. If you noticed, he has a really gorgeous brocade robe. It's not a monk's robe, you know, it's very colorful. The statue is not painted now, but if you look closely, you'll see the wonderful brocade of his or her robe. So Manjushri Bodhisattva is really all dolled up with all kinds of ornaments. My wife sometimes does beading.

[24:35]

I don't know if you know about beading, but there's a lot of beading stores. You can buy beads from all over the world, you know, antique beads and exotic beads of all sorts, and then you put them together and you make special strings of beads. It's very popular now to do this. And she's made some pretty amazing beads, different colors and really elaborate, strung together things. But none of them is equal to the amazing beads that Manjushri is wearing. Maybe you didn't know that Manjushri is wearing incredible beads in tiers and layers on his chest, beautiful beads. Also, Manjushri does not have a haircut like me. Manjushri actually has tremendous long hair down to his shoulders, or her shoulders, which is tied up. It must have taken him a really long time to arrange and fix his hair

[25:41]

in beautiful tiers on top of his head. With different ornaments holding the hair up. When I think of Manjushri all dolled up like that, it reminds me of Anne Waldman's famous poem, Putting Makeup on Empty Space. Do you know this poem, Putting Makeup on Empty Space? Because Manjushri is empty space, and we are empty space. It's literally the truth that we are empty space. It's not a metaphor. In our little circle of awareness, we are aware of ourselves as objects. But really, all of us know from even a little bit of high school

[26:45]

or even grade school physics, that between every atom of our body, it's literally the case that there is space. A vast amount of space between us and among us and inside of us. Endless space, actually. And that this space, we now know, contains worlds, universes, all of which somehow is decorated quite nicely. The Manjushri that we see on our altar is holding a teaching scepter, teaching stick. And the teaching stick represents the practice of seeing all things

[27:47]

as they really are. And if you would look, when you have a chance, to see the way in which Manjushri is holding this teaching scepter, it's really wonderful. It's a beautiful thing to see how he holds it. He's not clutching it, or waving it around, or holding it aloft. He's actually holding it with the utmost delicacy and kindness. Almost as if he's not holding it at all, but just sort of supporting it so that it won't fall down and disappear. Supporting it in his fingers. Almost like he didn't really think that it was his. Some other depictions of Manjushri Bodhisattva show him

[28:54]

holding a sword instead of that little teaching scepter. And this is the sword that we, in our study of the Blue Cliff Record, have heard about so often. The sword that gives life, the sword that takes life. The sword that cuts through cleanly our limited views of you and me, life and death, right and wrong. And often that Manjushri is holding up the sword, you know, like this. But in this zendo, this Manjushri is holding a delicately curved teaching scepter. And at the end of the scepter is a little flower of some sort. It's also interesting about Manjushri that Manjushri is very young.

[30:01]

Manjushri is always depicted as young. Classically they say that Manjushri is 16 years old. That's old, if you want to know. Somebody asked you, how old is Manjushri Bodhisattva? The answer is 16. 16 years old. Although I feel that this Manjushri on our altar is older than that. 25 maybe, or 26. He looks older than 16 or she looks older than 16. But also, but clearly young, young person. And there's a reason why Manjushri is depicted as a young person. This is because the wisdom of Manjushri is not an acquired wisdom. The wisdom that comes with long experience. It's not that kind of wisdom. Being older and wiser may have its place. But Manjushri is not older and wiser.

[31:06]

Manjushri is just wiser. His wisdom is like the wisdom of the rain falling. It just comes fresh, moment after moment, in a surprising way always. The wisdom of Manjushri is not the result of hard effort and long study. It's not an accumulation. It's not a trial and error kind of wisdom. Suzuki Roshi, in a phrase that now is part of our language, called the wisdom of Manjushri, which is not an accumulated wisdom. The wisdom of beginner's mind. The ability to just see things fresh as they are, without prejudice,

[32:07]

in a way without experience, seeing them in their full dimension. Usually little children see the world this way, quite naturally. Children can see the magic and the endless possibility, the endless connection and dimension in each and everything that they confront. So Manjushri is young enough to still have that taste of things, but also he's old enough to be able to act on his vision with energy and passion and effectiveness. The word Manjushri means the noble, gentle one. The noble, gentle one.

[33:08]

And Manjushri's youth and wisdom cause him to be like that, noble and gentle. And you can see in the statue the nobility and gentleness of this Manjushri. And the Manjushri that is sitting in your seat is also this way, basically noble and gentle. The word noble, of course, has this social and political meaning. Noble men or something, noble women, like the aristocracy. But that comes from, the idea of aristocracy, it comes from an older sense of nobility as coming from the word, the root no, G-N-O, meaning to know. Noble ones are ones who know, who understand, who see,

[34:14]

who notice, who recognize. And what the noble Manjushri knows and notices and recognizes is that her body and mind is truly non-different from everything. And is truly unlimited and full of emptiness, of empty space. And this knowing, this surprising, fresh knowing, gives Manjushri a great dignity of forbearance and a wonderful gentleness and ease.

[35:15]

He has, as it says in the Prajna Paramita Sutra in 8,000 lines, an enormous patience with dharmas that fail to be produced. That's this world, full of dharmas that fail to be produced. There's a sutra called The Prediction of Manjushri's Attainment of Buddhahood. And in that sutra, Manjushri, someone asks Manjushri about enlightenment. And he gives a wonderfully noble and gentle answer in the sutra. He says, He says, I do not urge any sentient being to progress toward enlightenment.

[36:26]

Because sentient beings are already non-existent and devoid of fixed self. In actual fact, enlightenment and sentient beings are already exactly the same, non-different from each other. This non-difference is called emptiness. And in emptiness, there is nothing to seek. So whatever you think your experience on the cushion is, the Manjushri that is sitting in your seat in parallel worlds, beyond and within space and time,

[37:31]

is sitting beautifully and peacefully, secure in her noble understanding of nothing at all. In order to appreciate this Manjushri, we have to do something very, very simple. It's not complicated. It's not a big effort. It's something really, really simple. Just to take a step into our lives, into this moment of our lives, completely and totally and utterly into this moment of our lives. Shedding all of the confusion that comes from thinking. That this little circle of awareness is everything.

[38:37]

And when we can do that, Manjushri can come forward and do his work, just like the rain. And so I am hoping and urging all of you today to use the rest of this day thoroughly and for those of you participating in the practice period, the rest of the practice period, and really the rest of our lives and even beyond that,

[39:48]

to use this time to make a strong vow, a heartfelt, serious vow, that you will continue, whatever that means for you, this necessary practice of Manjushri Bodhisattva, to see things as they really are. Beyond our limited views. And we have a wonderful method for doing this, just sitting up straight, with awareness of posture and awareness of breathing, greeting each thought and sensation as it arises,

[40:55]

greeting it clearly and fully, and then returning to posture and breathing without getting lost. So this is very simple. Whatever happens in our sitting practice, and in our lives, beyond the cushion, whatever arises in our sitting practice and in our life, whatever it is, is fundamentally alright. It's part of our path. There are no mistakes. There are no problems. Each and every moment, no matter what it may bring, is a new, even an endless possibility.

[42:05]

Thank you. Please, remember my words. Thank you.

[42:55]

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