Good morning. This afternoon in this very room, in this very Buddha hall, we will have a priest ordination. And I would like to talk about ordination. And I'd like to start by telling you what's a well-known story in Buddhism. And here's the story. There was a woman in a village, and she had a baby. She had a baby boy. which was prestigious to have a boy rather than a girl.

[01:01]

So this was a great, you know, good news, a wonderful occurrence. And then after several months, the baby boy died, and she was utterly distressed and distraught and grief-stricken. She went to Shaktiwani Buddha and asked him to kind of alleviate her suffering, bring her baby back to life. Helped her get out from under this grief and distress. And asked him, well, what can he do to help? Is there any way to do this? And he said, yes, there is. you need some mustard seeds to do this. And she said, okay, I have mustard seeds.

[02:07]

And he said, no, no, no. A special kind of mustard seed. You need, mustard seed has to come from a family, from a household, from a person who has never lost anything or experienced distress or grief. So, carrying her now dead child, maybe, she went from house to house in the village, asking at each house, you know, have you never experienced grief or loss? And she couldn't find a single household that could say, yes, we never experienced distress or loss or grief. And in the process of going from heist to heist, in the process of engaging and meeting person after person and asking them this powerful question about the nature of human life, something shifted, some realization that she was not alone in her suffering.

[03:26]

that this was a common condition. The baby did not come back to life. But something was shifted in how she was relating to life, what was needed to make her life liveable. In early Buddhism, this is a famous story. And so I'd like to contrast this. It reminds me of a line from a poem by Kapka Kasabova. It says, you waited for something that came and wasn't what you were waiting for. You waited for something that came. that came and wasn't what you were waiting for.

[04:29]

We come to practice. We come searching the truths, searching compassion, searching for whatever it is we're searching for. Peace, tranquility, wisdom, self-improvement, Whatever it is, we come, something happens, it's powerful, it's transformative, and it wasn't exactly what we were waiting for, what we were expecting. So this is significant part of the path of life. You have an idea of what it is to get ordained, and then you got ordained, and then you find out where it's like, what it is to be ordained.

[05:33]

But in a way, this is our life all the time. You decide to move from Boston to San Francisco. You have some idea of why this is a good thing to do, what it's going to be like. what the benefits, what's going to shift in your life. But really you don't know until you're in San Francisco, living in San Francisco. You know, you start a relationship, you end a relationship. You start a job, you end a job. You take up this activity, you stop doing that activity. And this is the nature of conditioned existence. And this is the nature of our human relationship to conditioned existence. We have some idea.

[06:39]

We have some purposefulness about what we're doing. And then the intriguing thing is that it's only by Committing. It's only by thoroughly and completely doing it that we can discover what it's about. You know, you can say, oh, I'm going to move to Boston. You know, sometimes. When I get a ride to it. You never know what it is to move to Boston until you give yourself. to the activity. This is the fundamental working of Zen practice. You don't know what Zazen is if you just sit down and give yourself to Zazen.

[07:40]

You put your body in it. You put your breath in it. Put what you are in the activity. put what you are in Boston, in your job, in the relationship. And sometimes the troubling part is when you start to realize that this isn't necessarily going to turn out the way I thought it was, then is it okay? Is this an okay thing to do? How will I know what guides me? And it's this question that the tradition, the wisdom of the practice tries to answer.

[08:50]

And it answers it in two ways. In one way, it answers it that part of this process initiates a realization beyond our understanding. Even when you come to live in San Francisco and fully live in San Francisco, There's something that's more than what you think is happening. Something more than the judgments and opinions you have about it. Or to put it another way, we take in more than just the ideas in our head or the likes and dislikes that we conjure up. It affects our body. It affects our fundamental being. So similarly with our practice.

[10:00]

We give ourselves to it and something transformative happens. And in the doing it, something is actualized. Because practice is fundamentally an experiential process rather than a theoretical process. You learn how to synthesize them by experiencing what happens in Siddhisattva. So in the spirit of our tradition, when we do an ordination, there's something very particular, very unique.

[11:06]

This is our version of Soto Zen ordination. And Soto Zen is a version of Zen. And Zen is a version of what? The perennial wisdom and compassion. all being. But we can only live, we can only be within a particular way of being. And that's what we can commit to. And in committing to that, we learn something about all being. can only be a grief-stricken mother wandering from house to house in her village. But in doing that, in committing to that, even though she's committing to it from the desperate desire to bring her own baby back to life, even though that's the motivation for giving herself to the activity,

[12:26]

universal is experienced. This is the process of practice. So this is how the ceremony is initiated. Acknowledging, invoking this kind of play between the universal and the particular. So we acknowledge the universal wisdom and compassion, and we do it through the particulars of our own lineage, from Shakyamuni Buddha down to Suzuki Roshi. And then from that place, from that guidance, from that inspiration, from that initiation,

[13:33]

The next step is renunciation. You can't move to San Francisco without leaving Boston. You can't start this job without leaving that job. You can't arrive until You've departed from wherever you were. Something has to be let go for something else to come into being. And these two edges are very close. And it's the energy between them, you know?

[14:35]

Is this about receiving or is this about letting go? And it's both. So Kisa Gautami receives a teaching that gives enormous help in the suffering of her life. And she has to let go of the deep desire to have her baby come back to life. You waited for something and it came and it wasn't what you were waiting for. This is the mind of practice. The attitude. Commit fully to our life.

[15:42]

And then our life teaches us what we're committing to. You start a relationship and you have all sorts of wonderful, joyous notions and hopes and appreciations and expectations. And depending upon your imagination, you can be floating on a cloud. then you discover what the relationship's really going to be. And yet, it's our sense of delight, our sense of promise that supports us to give ourselves fully. And yet, then we're asked to let that go and discover This is my dream of this person.

[16:47]

But who is this person? And can I meet them completely? This is my dream of my life. But can I let that go and meet this my life completely? So this is renunciation. Renunciation and initiation. So it's the key. It's the kernel of ordination, initiation. It's also every way we look in our life. It's asking us to commit to it. It's asking us to be part of it. It's asking us to give over to it. In the wisdom of Buddhism, this is a key step that we need to take with a grounded intentionality.

[18:05]

Will you do this? Yes, I will. Will you do this? Yes, I will. Will you do this? Yes, I will. And what do we discover when we initiate? We discover what it is we're holding on to. As you enter more fully into the relationship, you start to discover all the projections, all the assumptions that you're making about the other person. When you enter more fully into the process of being with yourself, what do you discover? All the projections, all the assumptions you have about yourself. And some of them are a bit of a shock.

[19:13]

Maybe a lot of them. So the next step in the process is a willingness to meet who you are. To meet what you are. Practice of radical honesty. Okay, this is who I am. These are the thoughts, the feelings that influence and guide and confuse and overwhelm me. And inspire and encourage and open and promote my generosity and courage. Tenderness and love. And our resentments, our selfishness, our confusions, and our tenderness and courage and our love are mixed together.

[20:24]

I much would like to separate the distasteful part and get rid of it. They're interwoven. They come from the same roots. The same imagination that can engender all sorts of negative things can give rise to all sorts of positive aspirations, commitments. our life. So we hold them all. And we hold them all as personal and we hold them all as transpersonal. This is me and this is the human condition. This is the uniqueness of Kisugutami.

[21:29]

The story is set in India. In a village in India. This is every mother who's lost her baby soon after childbirth. This is every person who has lost something that's precious to them. This is everyone who has grieved, who has felt, I can't go on without something. It's personal. And it's transpersonal. And the very interesting thing is that the more deeply we experience it, the more deeply we experience its universal quality. The more deeply we experience grief and loss, the more deeply we touch something that's common to the human condition.

[22:37]

the more deeply we experience gratitude and courage, similarly, the human condition. And this is initiated through this radical honesty, this willingness to give the self to the self, to be the person you are, to meet and feel who you are and what you are. This is our allow. And then we shave the head. It's our acknowledgement of a heritage. In India, as in Asia, other parts of Asia, shaving the head. was the sign of becoming a renunciate, leaving the worldly life, the household life, and becoming a mendigant.

[23:50]

We carry that thread through to the present day. We acknowledge the wisdom of our teachers and ancestors. Of course, we have to find it completely in our own lives. We have to actualize it and realize it. How else can we trust it enough to give ourselves to it? But still, it's there, available as a teaching, as a guide. These noble persons, cultivated wisdom and compassion behaved in such a way. Particular to their time and place. And now the challenge for us is make it particular to our time and place.

[25:00]

But the root, the essence doesn't change the current manifestation, the current expression is what changes. So we shave the head holding both worlds. The original source and the current manifestation. And something shifts. And that shift is expressed in a ceremony by taking on a new name, taking on a Buddha's name. How we think of ourselves, how we identify ourselves, how we name ourselves is very powerful. To allow for the transpersonal.

[26:10]

Something about the personal. I am this person born to this family in this place. Something about that has to be loosened up or let go of. And so our new name is really our way of identifying with all being. In some ways, we shift from being singularly a separate individual to being part of humanity. And when put on Buddha's robe, it's almost the reverse of how we usually clothes ourselves. It's its own form of nakedness in that Instead of separating us, instead of keeping us secure and separate from other, it exposes us, it opens us to the stuff of life.

[27:29]

It's part of the manifestation of our engagement with all life and all being. Now we will engage the same world but with a different attitude. We shift from I want to get what I want and I want to avoid what I don't want. To I enter this world to discover what is it to be part of this world that I have always been part of. both individually and as interbeing, intrinsically interconnected. And I wear this robe that expresses the heritage and expresses the wisdom that goes beyond any particular person's experience.

[28:44]

the realization that goes beyond any particular person's experience. And I do that right here, right now, in this way. And in our ceremony we say, and don't be fooled by any other way. And in a way, what we're saying is, and don't be fooled by this way. See, right now, the way we're doing it, don't be fooled by it. It's completely particular. And it's unique. And it's our version of Suzuki Roshi's way, which was his version of his teacher's way the whole way back. To what?

[29:46]

Shakyamuni? The seven Buddhas before Shakyamuni? Existence before this universe came into being? All of that. Where else can we live except right here? Where else can we practice except right here? Don't be fooled by it. And then we take on the inspiration, the aspiration, and the guidelines of practice. The Buddha, the process of awakening. the Dharma, the teachings that teach us how to awaken. The teachings that are realized when we drop small, self-centered thinking and connect with something larger.

[30:59]

And the Sangha, the interconnectedness of all being. Everyone is on this journey from birth to death. Everyone who ever lived Every being that has come into existence. We are in this together. And we commit to that. We take refuge in it. We don't try to stay separate from it, pursuing a single agenda. Of course we do. And we say, yes I will, yes I will, yes I will.

[32:03]

Because yes I will includes no I won't. That's why I need to say yes I will. We sit down inside and to be in the moment, fully present. And why do we do that? Because we won't. Because we'll get distracted, we'll get caught up and caught up in this and caught up in that. And we will discover that moment of awakening where we renew our vow. Okay. Come back to body, come back to breath. So no I won't sets the stage for yes I will. Yes I will exposes no I won't. We're contrary creatures. We check out all possibilities.

[33:10]

We earn our own trust. By discovering how yes I will works and how no I won't creates new barriers, obstacles. We discover it in the intimate workings of our own being. Of our life. of our relationships. Of what we choose to do each day. Each moment. This is to take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. And then the next step is the three pure precepts. It's like a basic attitude about life.

[34:17]

Try not to arm, try to do good and include everyone. And of course life is complex and each situation has many nuances to it and it isn't that simple to say exactly what should happen. But even so, a basic attitude don't do it while I'm doing good. Even if you're not infallible, still you can bring a certain attitude to it all. And include everyone. And then the ten prohibitory precepts, as we call them, or the ten grave precepts. And again, holding and the granting. The dropping this so this can thrive.

[35:26]

Don't kill. Support the abundance of life. Don't steal. Discover the generosity of life. Don't confuse and intoxicate your mind. Discover clarity. Don't lie. Discover truth-telling. Don't lie to yourself. Don't lie to others. So these are the some fundamental guidelines. And then in a way, As we practice with them, as we try to live with them, they keep showing us how to live. Again, we can have an abstract notion of what truth-telling is, but it's only in putting yourself into truth-telling that you discover what truth-telling is.

[36:37]

You discover the nuances of it, but you can also discover the power of that commitment. So, that's my version this morning of Shukai Tokudo. Leaving home, entering the way. So we leave a singular home. We leave a singular biological origin. And whether we want to ask it in terms of the famous Zen koan, what were you before your parents were born?

[37:42]

Or whether you want to hold it in the idea Through the individual, through the personal, we discover the transpersonal. Some way of initiating greater being, interconnected being. Some way of discovering what makes a human being happy. Not the happiness of getting what you want. But the happiness of being engaged in life in a way that's resonant with some deep wish to be alive. So in the spirit of Zen, priest ordination,

[38:47]

and all other forms. It's interesting because in all of our ceremonies, we use the same core details. Our funerals. We used to use it in our weddings too, but we've altered a little bit. Classically, that's there too. So something completely unique And in accord with the tradition. And in something completely universal that applies to every day of our life. That's the spirit of this tradition. So that'll happen this afternoon at 3 o'clock. And you're welcome to attend. And thank you.

[39:41]

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