Good morning, everybody. Is the sun out over the hill? It is? Yeah. Well, welcome to the fog. Any birders in the audience or congregation? There's quite a few, I think. We live on the Pacific Flyway. Lots of birds come through here. and some unusual ones. And it reminds me, and I wanted to start out with this story, of a Zen master from the Tang Dynasty called Bird's Nest Roshi. Have you ever heard of Bird's Nest Roshi? Chow Fu was his name, which means nest, actually. And he's called that because he built a nest, or a little house or nest, up in a tree, just like a bird, and he lived there.

[01:11]

And the tree hung out over a cliff, so that if the Roshi failed to be mindful, he would fall to his death. He did this to develop his skills of meditation and concentration. I assume he tried other practices first, but I guess he just decided, no more Mr. Nice Guy. We're going to go all the way. We all have little difficulties in our meditation. We need to devise methods. of sticking to it. So let's leave a bird nest up there for a while and go on. Today I'd like to talk about the Buddhist precepts, which are arguably the center of our practice.

[02:13]

I think, I don't know, all the Buddhist ceremonies, maybe all the Buddha ceremonies, have as their heart and their center receiving, chanting, the precepts. A little bit of a surprise to me. When I first came to Zen, I was interested in meditation. But no, although there is a lot of that, central is the precepts. When you get married, you say the precepts together. When you die, the precepts are said for you at the ceremony. If you're going to be ordained as a priest or a layperson, you can't hear me? The PA has been shut off.

[03:24]

Can people hear me back there? Are you okay? You want to come up here? Okay. Yeah, so a lay ordination called Jukai, receiving the precepts. Yeah, if I trail, my wife says I have a tendency to trail off, so if I do, just raise your hand. I'll try to do better. Okay. Naming ceremonies, the new baby, say the precept. Once a month, we have the full moon ceremony, on the day of the full moon, usually, in this room, but all over the world. And back thousands of years, members of the community would get together once a month and contemplate

[04:27]

and view their life reflected in the precepts and renew their intention to keep doing that once a month. Now I'll read them to you. This is actually a Jukai ceremony here, a precept ceremony, and part of it is chanting the precepts. Now, there are 16 Bodhisattva precepts. Bodhisattva means enlightening being. 16 Bodhisattva precepts. The first three are called refuges. I take refuge in Buddha, my own true nature. I take refuge in Dharma, the teaching of the reality of all existence. And I take refuge in Sangha, the community, that's us, of intention and awakening.

[05:29]

And the next group basically are, I vow to embrace and sustain right conduct. I vow to embrace and sustain all good. And I vow to embrace and sustain all beings. So that's do good, avoid evil, help people. The three pure precepts, what those are called. Now, the last ten, the Ten Commandments, these are not the Ten Commandments, and they're not commandments. They're guidelines. They're really a description of the enlightened life. I vowed not to kill, but to cultivate and encourage life. I'm reminded that at San Quentin, we have a sangha there. And we're going to have a Jukai ceremony, receiving a precept ceremony. So we've been studying the precepts.

[06:34]

And I've asked them to lecture, pick a precept and lecture. So they're quite interested, of course, in these precepts. I vow not to take what is not given, but to cultivate and encourage generosity. I vow to not to misuse sexuality, but to cultivate and encourage open and honest relationships. I vow not to lie, but to cultivate and encourage truthful communication. I vow not to indulge in intoxicants, but to cultivate and encourage clarity. That would be overindulged, I think. I vow not to slander, but to cultivate and encourage respectful speech. I vow not to praise myself at the expense of others. I vow not to be possessive of anything, but to cultivate and encourage mutual support.

[07:38]

I vow not to harbor ill will. This is kind of an important one, isn't it? They're all important. Maybe it's for me that it's important. But to cultivate and encourage loving kindness and understanding. I vow not to disparage Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, but to encourage awakening, faith, and community. So there they are, the 16 Bodhisattva precepts. They're very deep. There is nothing left out. We study these precepts. All of life is there. There's a million questions one might ask about any precept. And you just go deeper and deeper into that precept. So this is what we're asking of the guys over there to take a couple of weeks and really study themselves in relationship to a precept.

[08:40]

So anyway, today we'll start with the three refuges. This is the first three, right? I take refuge. And they're called the triple treasure, three jewels, Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. And they're really the foundation, the ground from which the precepts flower. And you could say that the three jewels, Buddha is awakening. Dharma is the teaching of awakening. And Sangha is the practice of awakening. Really need to have all three, don't you? I mean, Sangha is where it really comes, where the rubber hits the road. I would think that Hans said that the future Buddha would be Sangha.

[09:47]

that the Sangha itself would be Buddha, would be awakening. Of course, this is our goal. Now, the precepts are not a moral code that we are judged against by some external figure, some authority. The precepts are the spirit of the universe, and we call it Buddha nature. And in this sense, Buddha is the universe. Dharma is the teaching from the universe, and Sangha are those who make that teaching manifest in everyday life. Now, the purpose of taking it to refuge is to awaken us from confusion and to allow us to associate ourselves with awakening.

[10:50]

It is a matter of commitment and of openness and freedom. And we commit ourselves to freedom. That's what we commit ourselves to. Are you ready for freedom? You know, it's tough. You don't know what's going to happen. See, we all want to know what's going to happen. Something to rely on. But true freedom is to let go of that. We have to give up everything like that. The sense of seeing ourselves as a good citizen and feel that we can take refuge there. Or see ourselves as the hero of our own success story. And you may have to give up your past story, your future story. In some sense, we become homeless

[11:56]

We're not helpless. We don't hand over our problems to somebody to solve. We're still active. Still maybe doing exactly the same thing that we're doing right now. But there's a difference. Everything's different. Yet nothing's changed. When we give up our attachment to basic security, we give up the idea of a solid home ground. I'm sorry to hear that. I went back to Greenwich Village in New York to the house where I grew up after many, many years. There it was. Tear is coming to my eye right now.

[12:57]

And I actually got in there, New York University took it over, and it's the Irish Cultural Center or something. I'm one-eighth Irish, so that worked out. And I did get to go in there and go to my old bedroom, which is now an office with computers in it. Fundamentally, the Buddha teaches us there's no solid basis for security in life. This is the teaching of emptiness. Nothing stands alone. Nothing has inherent existence. There's no refuge in the sense of that. And commitment to that is the path of liberation, path of freedom. It takes courage. And we're not there yet. And maybe we're not ready.

[14:00]

We are alone, but we are alone together. We need each other. We need each other. As Dharma friends, holding hands and walking into emptiness. Well, especially in the practice of letting go, of awakening, there's nothing to hold on to and there will never be anything to hold on to. Of course, when you hold on to something, you're missing a lot of other things.

[15:04]

You get the whole world if you let go. What was it said? Jesus said, I think, all that I ask of you is that you die to me and wake up to full liberation and freedom. I added that last part. Take refuge in awakening. Now, how do we do it? We need to make some room for it, some space for awakening to manifest. Our minds are so busy in the service of security, beset by afflictive emotions. There's no room for the mind of enlightenment to pop up its little head. It is so innocent, so uncomplicated.

[16:16]

It gets rolled over right away by the onslaught of greed, fear, anger, and delusion. It does show itself. It shows itself every now and then, right? But then, bam. It's like it's just rolled over by the army. So how do we open up to it? Now, we can pause. This is Buddhist practice. Take a break. Pause. Purposely pause. Mindfulness practice. Come back to your breath. Just for a moment, every now and then. And let go of the action, the inner dialogue. The action. Let it go. Come back to the present.

[17:20]

And then little old enlightened mind gets a chance to pop its head up. Creates spaciousness. And what happens when we do that, we get the whole world. The other strategy is very narrow, very dark, very intense, very limited. Now this is the great precept called taking refuge in awakening. And this is mindfulness and meditation. It's hard to remember to practice, right? It's hard to remember. just all day long, even for once, just once in the whole day, come back to your breath.

[18:29]

Ah, what a wonderful thing that would be. It's hard to remember. That's why Bird Ness Roshi is up in that tree. He understood the stakes. It required some effort to develop practice. Meditation and concentration was what he was working on, making a space for awakening to happen. Now this reminds me of, in sort of a reverse way, St. Teresa de Avila, she lived back in the 1500s in Spain, and she was a great meditator and a supervisor of novices.

[19:30]

The nuns would come to her seeking advice, and they were very intense, and the practice was very... complicated, continuous, difficult, these nuns would really bear down. And St. Teresa would compliment them on their devotion to practice. It's admirable. But she said, you know, you ought to leave a little room, just a little room, a space in there for God to enter. They're so involved with grinding away that it was all them and no universe. Filled up all the space. We need to pause and leave a little room for the mind of enlightenment.

[20:36]

It's called Bodhi Chita. Bodhi means enlightenment and Chita means mind. to manifest. But it's not leaving room, but it's almost like taking room or making room. Practice. Do it. Find some way to remind yourself, to recollect every now and then. I'm sure if we found out what everybody in this room was doing and how they did it, it would be real interesting. Really interesting. This is the Zen though. And there's a path over to the kitchen.

[21:38]

And there's a snack area over there. So you're in here sitting Zazen. We have a meditation schedule. Every day people are sitting Zazen. And then after Zazen you can go over and you go down that path and you can go and have a snack. Which really surprised me when I first came here. So it's almost like the bell rings. You get up. you leave, and unfortunately, you have to waste your time walking from here to where the snack is. And you wonder, well, wouldn't it be better if I could just simply wish to be over there? Anyway, people devise various practices to be awake. Generally, That desire, that pull by the snack area in life keeps you going, keeps you going.

[22:45]

You have to devise some sort of mechanism to stop yourself just for a second. Sometimes people would do various things, but there's a little, the walk goes like this. So when you get to that, part of the walk, you say, I'm just going to stop and breathe. Now three times, breathing three times, that's a lot under those circumstances. But then you really see who you are and what's really happening at really deep levels and how you're kidding yourself. I think that Han came and might have taught us for a while, and he brought the mindfulness bell. Mindfulness bell is a bell which is run randomly throughout the day.

[23:50]

And when you hear the bell, you stop it. You stop the action. Because you're just reminded of it. You've taken on this practice. You've created this idea. And I can remember being in the kitchen, and it's intense in the kitchen. I mean, you're grinding those meals out. There's a lot at stake in the kitchen. Chopping away. And it's so great when that bell goes up. And then you put your knife down, and you take a step back, and you just come back to life. Where have you been? Not that you can't be there and, you know, chop carrots. You can. But we lose ourselves because we just begin. We need a little help.

[24:52]

The bell goes off. Now, Katagiri Roshi, who used to be Abbott here years ago, I don't know whether you knew that, but for a little while, after Suzuki Roshi passed away, he actually helped Suzuki Roshi create Zen Center as a helper. And this question of how do you make a space He wrote a couple of books and Kategori Roshi talked about this issue. And he said, how can we touch this spirit of taking refuge that turns into energy in our daily life?

[25:57]

The spiritual communion between the Buddha and the practitioner. The Buddha and you. is the interacting communion of appeal and response. This is the Buddha as the universe. How do you do this in a concrete way? You look up into the space. You look up. It's helping you out here. Now you're wondering, well, how do I do this? Okay, you want to know how? This is that. You look up into space. Why look up? We don't know. The sky or space is called akusha in Sanskrit.

[27:00]

Akusha is characterized by no obstruction, no interruption, allowing all beings to function in peace and harmony. Then the response comes from the whole universe, from space, from akasha, it comes. If we feel this spirit of the universe completely and appeal for help or appeal that we may come alive in our life, Very naturally, we can be one with the universe. This response, in other words, if we reach out our hand to the universe, the universe sticks out its hand to us. But you have to stick out your hand. You have to do it. You have to practice.

[28:00]

You have to make the effort. You have to open your heart. And you will. Because the universe is also reaching out its hand to you. Then the path of your life and the path of the universe cross each other and become one, interconnected. You are the universe. When we feel peaceful because our presence and the presence of the universe are exactly in the same place. That is what we call wholeheartedness. I remember here at Green Gulch, and I think generally speaking in such places, a work meeting every day. Well, the whole congregation gets together, the whole community gets together in a big circle and makes announcements, asks for lost items and so on.

[29:06]

One year I was work leader, so it came to me to offer incense, because you always offered incense before the work meeting. Everybody would turn to the altar out on the deck, and I would offer incense. And we would bow. What are we bowing to? But I was there, and I just, you know, everybody was there. But I stepped forward with this, and I stuck it in there, and there was the altar. There was Buddha. And some days, I was not doing very well. A little besieged, distraught, by confidence, confused. I would secretly, as I did that, ask for help.

[30:10]

I would appeal. It must be my old Catholic upbringing coming forward there. But I would appeal. As this points out, you're not asking for anything in particular. You're just opening your heart. asking for, I guess, help. And every time I did that, I can say to you that I got help. I don't know what kind of help it was, but somehow things worked out better for me. When I reached out my hand and made an appeal, Well, so I look back there at the statue of Buddha, sitting cross-legged, and we take refuge in Buddha.

[31:35]

And you know, we take refuge in his posture. of meditation, of uprightness, balance. I don't know, how would you describe it? His countenance of nobility, of calm, centeredness. One gets a feeling that he can hear you and he sees you. He knows you without judging you. He knows it. He knows you. It's fine. We take refuge in Buddha. Buddha's making room, making space for all beings without exception.

[32:41]

The practice of radical inclusiveness. As the Buddha taking refuge in the Buddha. The Buddha taking refuge in the universe. We're the universe. And we're the Buddha. Now there's taking refuge in Sangha. Community of practitioners. As a refuge in Buddha, refuge in Dharma, refuge in Sangha. Refuge in awakening, the teaching of awakening, and the practice of awakening. What is that practice? Well, you tell me. Ananda said to Buddha, Ananda was Buddha's assistant. He carried Buddha's extra robe. And I was always with Buddha. And he said to Buddha, it seems to me half of the holy life is association with groups, with good and noble people.

[33:55]

The Buddha replied, no, not so, Ananda. The whole, the entirety of the holy life is association with good and noble friends. Find refuge in the community. This is what it's all about. The community. Each other. Relationships. Suzuki Roshi was asked by a student, he said, do you watch the other students to see whether they're following the precepts? Are you watching them? And he said, no. I watch to see how they treat each other. The Dalai Lama famously said, kindness is my religion.

[35:00]

That's what it boils down to. Awakening, teaching of awakening. all boils down to how we treat each other, how we treat ourself. And we need each other, too, on this path. Support the Sangha. Support your Dharma friend. If there's one, or as a group, a community, do your best to encourage The practice. It needs to be encouraged. It needs support. Because there's nothing there. I've been talking for 40 minutes. I haven't said anything. That you can hang on to, I hope. Because that would be doing evil. And that's not my intention.

[36:06]

My intention is to avoid evil. Pretty hard to do when you open your mouth. And talk about the whole thing. The devil quotes the Bible, right? You've heard that. We need spiritual friends. We need each other to hold hands because there's nothing. We're just walking together in the mist. Hearing the birds, hopefully. Oh. Okay, so what's Burt Nasroshi been doing all this time? He's up there, been up there for a thousand years. He probably hasn't left. Now, one day an official came to see him. They heard about him. He was famous. And China at this time was a Buddhist empire.

[37:09]

The emperor was Buddhist. They built monasteries everywhere. All the literature and the paintings, everything was all the Dharma. So there were great masters and people would come and ask some questions. And so the officials, he knew that Burdines Roshi was there and he was in town anyway. So he went over to the tree and he looked up and he said, what are you doing up there sitting like that? It looks dangerous to me. Bert Ness Roshi looks down and he says, what you are doing looks dangerous for me. In the world, doing what you're doing, that looks real dangerous. So okay, so the official says, all right, what is the essence of the teaching? Let's get down to facts here. And Bert Ness Roshi says,

[38:12]

Do good, avoid evil, help people. And the official said, even a child of three knows that. Bird Nasroshi said, yes, even a child of three knows that. But not even a great Zen master can do it. So these are the three pure precepts, right? Do good, avoid evil. and help people. It's kind of interesting. Remember, Bert Ness Roshi was up there working on his meditation and concentration practice, right? Earlier on, we found that out. That's why he was up there. And then, but when asked, and queried this way, he said, well, the essence of the teaching of the precepts. So he's grinding away at his meditation and concentration, but the essence of the teaching is increasing.

[39:19]

Dogen, our wonderful ancestor who brought the Dharma from China to Japan back in 1230, and was all about meditation and concentration. When he died, when he was dying, He was revising his writing on the refuges, and he wrote the precepts on a pillar in the middle of his room, his death room, and walked around it chanting the precepts. And students find out pretty quick when they start to meditate that If they've done things or if I've done things which I'm not feeling good about in myself, when I enter the meditation hall and sit there, follow my breath, those things come up into awareness.

[40:28]

You are dogged by those, the karma. You cannot get away. Well, you can sort of get away from it if you watch television for a while, you know, or whatever else, you know. But even that gets old. However, the Zen student isn't watching television. The Zen student is watching their mind. And there it is, the karma, the response to the precepts. Precepts are like a mirror. You look in that mirror and you see yourself. Those are the three pure precepts, and then there's the ten particular precepts that you're remembering on no killing, stealing, and so on. We sort of lay it out more, a little bit arbitrarily, but quite helpfully. Now, a few months ago...

[41:38]

I wanted to tell you that I was mentioning before that at San Quentin we're going to have a jukai ceremony, receiving the precepts, and six inmates and actually one free person is going to be ordained. The community has been together for eight years, studying and meditating, practicing, discussing the Dharma. And they're joined each week by people from the outside. Today's Sunday, and today I'll be going over there. Now, for obvious reasons, these precepts are very interesting, the inmates of San Quentin. And we decided to ask each of them, I mentioned, to pick a precept, think about it, look at their life, and lecture on it. And two weeks ago was the first one

[42:40]

And the inmate had taken the precepts of slander. Seva Buddha does not slander. But cultivates and encourages respectful speech. So it was an interesting talk. These guys are very interesting. And then there's a question and answer period, and they kind of start talking about it. He said, you know, I thought it was going to be easy slander, because I don't slander. I'm a nice guy, and he is. He's a real nice guy. I never saw him go in that direction. But he said, well, so he would take it. And then he started watching his mind. And he realized, well, he was judging people all the time.

[43:41]

He was slandering people in his mind all the time. So maybe we don't slander with our mouth, but in our mind, do we judge people? Do we judge people? You see, when you take on the practice of the precepts, you begin to see things that you didn't normally see. You get to know yourself. You bring awareness to parts of your life that turn the light on there. And with light, with awareness, comes liberation. Turn that light on. So we took a week and he said, I'm going to watch my mind and I'm going to see and notice every time I do that. And he did that. And he was really surprised at how much he was doing. Because his self-image, as I say, was not that.

[44:43]

So he started asking himself the question, why am I doing this? I mean, he's not going around slandering, but his mind is doing it. And it turned out that the Tassajara, the fire was going on. You know, California has been on fire, right? And that fire, you know, was all around Tassajara, you may have read. And some Zen students were there and some went down there, including the abbot, Myogen Stuckey, was down there. And... The reporters were down there. And they were evacuated. Guests got evacuated right away. There's a dirt road. It's like an 11-mile dirt road through the mountain. Fires. You want to get out of there. But it's beautiful there. The buildings are beautiful. There's a lot of history.

[45:47]

It's wonderful there. You want to save the place somehow. Well, they ended up wrapping things in tinfoil. I don't know. It's odd what they do nowadays. Cut down a lot of trees. But the fire got closer and closer and closer. And everybody was told to leave. So Myogen and four or five other Zen students were the last to leave. And they got up to the crest of the hill and they decided to turn around and go back. And they did, and they fought the fire and saved us. Now, it's great to have heroes. Now, the reporter asked the abbot, well, what was it like fighting the fire?

[46:53]

The fire is coming, and you're fighting the fire. And Steve said, Mjogan said, Well, we weren't fighting the fire. We were... And this is being told to me by one of the inmates who read it in the Chronicle. What did he say? This is not a direct quote. But rather, they were inviting the fire to calm down. They were calming the fire. It wasn't like Us and them. Us against the fire. We're all in it together. Let's see how we can make this work. So this is pointed out as a kind of illustration of the precept about slander. Not slandering the fire.

[47:54]

Not judging the fire as bad as the enemy or something to do. destroy, but work with the fire. And Emila was there from here. She pointed out that the five heroes had broken the rules. They were supposed to evacuate. They talk about the precept, following the precept. This is a very good example. of how deep the precepts are and how we shouldn't get too concrete about the whole thing, they decided to turn around and go back. They made a judgment that they could do it. And they broke the rule. And it just points out how deep these precepts are.

[48:56]

You know, ultimately, You have to come from some place. I don't know whether it's inside, but you relax and make space. Zika Roshi said you should know what you're doing. A student said to him, well, what do I do if I don't know what I'm doing? And he said, well, don't move. Which would say, sit down. Make a space. So, make a space. I don't know. We all have to make a space. Support the Sangha. Nice seeing everybody. Thank you for coming. But...

[50:02]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_94.91