This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. My name is Kaidu Leanne Schutt. I want to thank Rosalie for the invitation to speak today, of course, to Abbott Ed and the new and improved David, the new Tonto, at the City Center, of course. Of course, I also want to thank my teacher, Blanche, who's not in the room, but is with me always, and Vicky, my practice teacher. So are there any first-timers to City Center? Raise your hands. Okay. Special welcome to you all. Did any of you also come to Zazen Instruction, or anyone here came for Zazen Instruction this morning? All right. Worked out well? You all learn how to meditate now and enlighten.

[01:02]

Most people's entry to what we call practice in the West is meditation. And it's a fine place to start. That's what I thought how to practice was I also came to meditation. And really for most of the Buddhist world, practice starts at what's called the precepts, right? Sila is the Pali word, and shila is the Sanskrit word. So, a while back, I was at a Theravadan convert retreat, and this young man who had practiced at... Achan Semedo's place in England. It's a Thai forest style lineage, the Achan Cha. And he had been there a year, and he once had this conversation with a Thai monk who had come to practice there.

[02:13]

And this young man was American, Caucasian. And the monk said to him, hmm, I've really observed that you Westerners have a really hard time with meditation. Is that true? And he said, oh, well, I certainly had a hard time, and it seems like it. And the monk said, I know why. And so, of course, the guy's like, tell me why. Tell me why, I want to know. And the Thai monk says, well, it's like this. Now, remember, this is a Thai force tradition. So he says, it's like this. If you're going to make a chair, first you would walk into the forest to look for the perfect tree that you want your chair to be, say like a hardwood. So first you find a tree that works. Then you have to cut it down. You have to plane it into planks.

[03:16]

Then you have to cut into pieces for a chair, legs, seat, back. And then you would nail it together or, you know, put it together as a chair. And then the last step, the last step to make a chair is you would take sandpaper to smooth out the green, right? So you don't get splinters when you sit down. And so he says, it's hard for you all because you come to practice and you want to learn meditation, right? Bravana, mind or heart training. And it's like you take a... It's the sandpaper. Meditation is like the sandpaper. So in essence, what you guys are doing is you take a piece of sandpaper, you go into a forest, you find a tree, and you start sanding to make a chair. And no wonder then it's so difficult. So the reason that's mostly given, I think it certainly has played out for many of us, myself,

[04:18]

is that precepts, right? So precepts are, they're in different tradition. There's prescribed sets, and I'll talk about ours today. And precepts in general, or sila, is usually translated as morality, or ethical conduct, or virtuous conduct, or compassionate conduct, or I like to say, non-harming intentions, right? So if you're Follow the precepts first, and most of them, again, I will go into it more in a few minutes, but like not killing, not stealing, right? If you have those kinds of practices before, if that's your intention and you've practiced living your life both with yourself and with others in that way first, then of course it's easier when you sit down to learn the craft of meditation. If you just lied before you walked in to meditate, then maybe your mind would be like, oh, are they going to find out?

[05:27]

Or how am I going to apologize? Or whatever. So of course your mind is churning, so it's difficult then to practice the craft of meditation. So this is why sila is considered. Making it easier for practice. So here's from the Thiravan teacher, Bhikkhu Bodhi. from a talk called Going for Refuge and Taking the Precepts. The Buddhist texts explain that sila has the characteristic of harmonizing our actions of body and speech. Sila harmonizes our actions by bringing them into accord with our own true interests, with the well-beings of others, and with universal laws. Actions contrary to sila lead to a state of self-division. marked by guilt, anxiety, and remorse. But the observance of the principles of sila heals this division, bringing our inner faculties together into a balanced and center state of unity.

[06:37]

So today is an auspicious day because several people from my sitting group, Access to Zen, are taking the precepts this afternoon. It's a public event, so you're welcome to come, any of you. So the group started because a good portion of the people taking the precepts today came here January of last year to take meditation training. We call it the beginning meditation course here. And they came to meditate, and it's on the craft of meditation. And then there was a series of classes, and then after they're like, well, what else? And, you know, I talked about what else they could do here, but they wanted to sit, you know, together. So that's how the sitting group started. So they, too, came for meditation. And the first thing we did when we started the group was to talk about the Four Noble Truths.

[07:40]

And then also... the 16 bodhisattva precepts, because this is a very important part of practice, and it's something I firmly believe in. And today, they're going to participate in a ceremony called jukai. That's what we call it here, where they take the precepts, the lei precepts. Now, I tend to hang out with people who go to the web a lot, and someone said to me, I Google jukai. the official Sotozen, the Sotoshu website, and it did not come up. So what is Jukai? So I went there too and looked it up, and I know that Jukai here is also sometimes called Zaikei Tokudo. And so I didn't find Jukai in the search box, but when I put in Zaikei Tokudo, it came up Zaikei.

[08:43]

and zaikei is defined on the Sotoshu website as householder. Zai, the character zai, means residing, and kei means home or family. So it's defined as a Buddhist layperson on the website. Now, tokudo is defined as ordination. Toku literally means enabled. Do, this do, means to cross over or to be saved. This is on the website. Ordination rites always involve taking precepts, parenthesis, chukai, which enables one to successfully follow the Buddhist path. So it turns out that... We interchange the word chukai and zaikei tokudo here. And in speech, we mostly say chukai.

[09:44]

More documents, we say zaikei tokudo, right? And so chukai means receiving the precepts, right? So in Japan, traditionally, if you take the lay precepts and you take the main five, which is the main ones in all the Buddhist traditions, the first five, they're called the five original precepts, then you would get a little strap that you wear, and it's called a wagesa. When I practiced in Japan with Sake Harada Roshi, there were pictures of sashims, and people had green ones, if I remember correctly, on the strap. Now, if you take the 16 bodhisattva precepts, then you get the bit, a blue one in our tradition, the rakasu. commonly called the bib. And that means you took the full 16 bodhisattva precepts. Now, zaikei tokudo literally means staying home to accomplish the way, to practice the way.

[10:49]

And it's sometimes referred to as lay ordination. This is according to Nonin, who's a... Dharma heir of Katagiri Roshi and is now the head priest or abbot of Nebraska Zen Center. He says as Zaikei Tokudo, the ceremony is no longer recognized by the Soto Zen hierarchy in Japan, but is performed in the West. However, Chukai and Zaikei Tokudo are sometimes confused, and the same ceremony is called by one term or another, depending on where it is performed. Neither ceremony, however, confers any clergy standing to those completing them. So, that's what the ceremony is. And the other thing is, people often ask me, well, what does taking the precepts mean? Usually with big eyes and a little shakiness. So, Suzuki Roshi, in his talk at Tasahara and

[11:57]

August of 1971, in a talk called Freedom, says, I want to explain why we become Buddhists, he laughs, and why I myself became a Buddhist. I think he laughs because somehow here in the West, I just finished teaching a year-long course with Paul, and people always go, well, does this make me a Buddhist then? Some people seem very concerned about that. And I will tell you five that taking the precepts means you become a Buddhist, technically. We don't give you a card, though, so no one can card you about it. So I think this is why Suzuki Roshi laughs. I don't know, right? So again, I want to explain why we become Buddhists, he laughs, or why I myself became a Buddhist. Perhaps you're in America because you have some wish, you know, hope in your future life, future life of a future personality, of your own future life, and sociologically, you're concerned about your future society.

[13:05]

To tell the truth, we Buddhists do not have any hope, he laughs. We do not have any hope for our human life because we understand this life is originally full of suffering. That is, you know, how we understand our society. From the beginning, We understand that our world is a world of suffering. And we understand why we suffer, you know. It's because we expect too much. We always expect something more than you will obtain or acquire. Things are always changing, so nothing can be yours. So whatever you want, you want to be or you want to have, nothing can be possible for you to obtain or to have it. That is actually how a human world is. Actually, it is so. But still, we want to be fooled by, and he laughs, something. That is maybe why we say human beings do not like something real.

[14:10]

But human beings like something unreal. That is very true. We don't like anything real. So after you know, give up all the hopes you have in the mundane world, we become Buddhists. then what will become of you if you become Buddhist? If you resign from this world, what will become of you is maybe next question. Why you become Buddhist is to resign from this, you know, the world of suffering. So, he talks about becoming a Buddhist, practicing, and to follow the teachings laid out by the Buddha. in Buddhism, and in that we give up hope. And by this I think he means that we renounce or relinquish our mundane or habitual deluded mind of grasping for what we want or what our ideas of things are as opposed to what is.

[15:15]

We don't get what we think something is going to be. We don't get who we think will be when we practice it. enough somewhere out there. So by renouncing our conditioned thinking of grasping either to be somewhere else or for it to be different or for it to be more unrealistic expectation is I think what he means by resign from this, you know, the world of suffering. So I would say that you have to resign from this world of suffering, to do that we have to know what that is first. So we begin, of course, with the first noble truth, which is our practice of investigating what it is that is suffering. We renounce our hope.

[16:16]

So we make a commitment to being with things just the way they are, right? That's how we practice. This is why sitting still is so important in our practice, pausing and sitting still, right? And so we have to stay there to know what happens there. So in a way, we make a commitment to seeing that and being with ourselves. Just remind me, and... I did warn you that I might use some of your stories. So one of the Ornis today gave up a lot to come to practice here. And someone he knew said to him, and he's going to be here quite a while, and he came from a long way, a different country, and gave up everything, pretty much. And... someone said to him, oh, how lucky for you, how lucky for you, because you could just go and live that nice zen life, you know, that calm, serene zen life.

[17:32]

I sure wish I could do that, right? And they spoke for a while, and my understanding of the conversation is that part of what was spoken about is that this person is making a commitment, right, to... look at and be with suffering, right? Not only his own, but other people, and in fact, all beings. And then the person is like, oh, I get now the depth of your commitment. So, this is what we're committing to, really, if we stick with practice at all. So by relinquishing hope, you know, that's the other thing that most people get very upset about when they hear, oh, letting go of hope. And by hope here, I think it's the expectation of how things will be. Not so much the quality of hope, but the content of hope.

[18:37]

Because mostly when we hope, you know, we always have something we want often. So letting go of our thoughts, our ideas, and our concepts. And really, it's not even the concepts and the ideas themselves, but it's the grasping or the belief that we think it's going to happen just that way. So letting go of hope is to letting go of our belief that our ideas is the truth. and realizing that our idea is just one of many possibilities. We don't have to let go of what we want. That's not what I'm saying. And we want to be able to say, well, this is what I'd like, and there might be other factors. There might be other ways that it could happen. So you like the grasping of your ideas, like the complete truth of things.

[19:46]

So the precepts are a good container to see how it is that where we place our ideas about how things should be, should happen, right? So the precepts, in this tradition, we take the 16 bodhisattva precepts. The first three are the refuges. Take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. And then the three pure precepts, right? Abstaining from doing harm. Making a vow to do good and to live for the benefit of all beings. Then the ten grave precepts. Again, remember the first five are true across all traditions. So not killing. not stealing, not misusing sexuality, not telling lies, not intoxicating mind or body of self or other. When I talk about these first five, I'm always trying to look for ways to remember them, because memorizing them is good.

[20:54]

So I would say no killing, no stealing, no peeling, no spilling, and no dealing, right? Does that work for you all? Because sometimes intoxicant is not literally, the wording sometimes is not selling alcohol to others too, right? Not ingesting and selling alcohol or drugs to others. I haven't come up with anything for the last five. Sorry, so if anyone comes up with something, let me know. So the last five are not talking about others' errors or faults or slandering others. not elevating oneself and blaming others, not being avaricious of the teachings, not being angry, and not disparaging the triple treasures. Suzuki Roshi, in a talk right here, a city center in 1971, called Real Precepts Are Beyond Words. He says, when I say precepts, the first thing you will think of

[21:59]

is something like 10 commandments or 10 grave precepts. But Zen precepts is not like that. The Zen precepts is to study Zen precept means to understand Zazen. So it is another interpretation of Zazen as precepts. Using word, word precepts, we explain what Zen actually is. The purpose of receiving precepts observing precepts is not just to remember what we should do or what we shouldn't do. And how we observe precepts is to practice then or to extend our practice into our everyday life. So the idea of precepts is completely different from the usual understanding of precepts. Of course, you know, precepts are practiced in in different ways, as he says. And I like to talk about them in kind of three ways that you can approach the precepts, right?

[23:06]

The first is kind of what may seem like, you know, Ten Commandments-ish, not to kill. So what would it be if you live a life of, like, really just abstaining from killing or pausing to see how you don't have to kill? in each moment, right? So in that, one way to practice is just not do it at all. Bring it on wholeheartedly and just trying to do that, right? So the purpose of that is what I would call restraint, right? And really, this is a way of helping you to see how our tendency of harm happens, right? A story I have of that is today, an abbess from a nunnery outside of Sacramento's coming, and I practiced with her in Vietnam at a Zen nunnery. So Nisa Tui is her name.

[24:09]

So when I was practicing there, there were about 80 nuns in this nunnery, and they had a garden where they had a lot of flowers growing. And at one point, as I was walking by this huge pink rose, so I leaned over and I smelled the rose. And a nun, a teacher, walking by, a different teacher, walking by said to me, don't smell the roses. And I was like, okay. And she didn't really speak. She actually spoke in Vietnamese and I understood it. My Vietnamese is like this much. But being there, I picked it up a lot when I was in the midst of it. And I could get it, but since I didn't really speak Vietnamese and she didn't speak English, I didn't ask her, hey, how come, man? Right? But working with Nisutwe, I could ask her.

[25:13]

And so I told her the thing and I said, what's up with that? You know, because in America, we actually have the saying, stop and smell the roses. You know, appropriately, it was a rose. I'm not making up the story to fit this expression, right? And so, you know, and I think it's a good saying because it just means, you know, be aware of your surrounding, which seems very much like practice, wouldn't you say? And she said, oh, yeah. She said, well, it's like this. So a lot of practice is about cutting down on input into your sensory organs. This is why when you go on retreats, you go to a quiet place, less noise. You eat what's given. You don't listen to music. You're trying to minimize input into your senses, your sense doors. Remember, in Buddhism, thinking is a thought is a sense story, or the mind.

[26:16]

So, of course, this is why I wish you to keep your eyes down in retreats and sashims and stuff. So, in strict practice, or in a container that's full, by the way, in this non-ray, they have no days off. It's continuous, right? They don't have sashim, because it's continuous practice, right? So it's just the nun was telling me, don't smell the flowers because I'm putting input into a scent store. Because the problem is when we put input into a scent store, our activation of grasping or rejecting or delusion tend to happen more. I like it, I don't like it. In fact, the rose was big and pink, but when I smelled it, it didn't have much smell. So I had a little aversion like that. It should be more smelly, you know? The poor rose is just being a rose, but I think it should smell more, right? So in this way, precept is restraining, or as she put it, which I thought was really appropriate.

[27:24]

She said, it's as if we're standing at the edge of a cliff, and the precepts are like a fence to help us from falling over, right? So... I think that works well for that. Now, another way to look at the precept is as a cultivation practice or a mindfulness practice. A way that Kara Wilson, insight teacher, talks about sila, is she calls it conscious conduct. And I think that fits a little bit in this... way of looking at the precepts. So it's a way of focusing the mind and the mental activity when we are engaged and applying the precepts, when we use the precepts as a container. So the purpose then is to see the consequences or the repercussions of that engagement. So Achan Cha, the root teacher of Achan Semedo and

[28:28]

many of the other teachers in the convert and sight Buddhist world. Here's from a talk called The Five Precepts. In short, keeping sila means watching over yourself, watching over your actions and speech. So who will do the watching? Who will take responsibility for your actions? Who is the one who knows before you lie, swear, or say something frivolous? Contemplate this. Whoever it is who knows who is the one who has to take responsibility for the sila, bring that awareness to watch over your actions and speech. That knowing, that awareness, is what you use to watch over your practice. To keep sila, you use that part of the mind which directs your actions and which leads you to do good and bad. You watch the villain and transform him into a sheriff or mayor.

[29:32]

Take hold of the wayward mind and bring it to serve and take responsibility for your actions and speech. Look at this and contemplate it. The Buddha taught us to take care with our actions. Who is it who does the taking care? The practice involves establishing sati. mindfulness, within this one who knows. The one who knows is that intention of mind which previously motivated us to kill living beings, steal other people's property, indulge in illicit sex, lie, slander, save frivolous and foolish things, and engage in all kinds of unrestrained behavior. The one who knows leads us to speak. It exists within the mind. Focus your mindfulness, sati, that constant recollectedness on this one who knows.

[30:33]

Let the knowing look after your practice. Use sati or awareness to keep the mind recollecting in the present moment and maintain mental composure in this way. Make the mind look after itself. Do it well. Does anybody have a watch? I should probably watch the time. Ten till. So I have ten minutes. Oh, okay, I'm doing all right. All right. So then I'll go ahead and tell you my example. So the way I think about this example is when I first went to Tassajara to practice, if any of you have been... Well, I think they've been spoofed up a... spooched up a bit more than maybe I was there. But, you know, I was in a cabin that had slat on the floors, Redwood 5 before they put in the floor and had more slats, right?

[31:37]

And so, of course, we had a lot of spiders, right? And... I don't like creepy, crawly things. But I was engaged in this practice of not killing. So I made this commitment in which I would capture the spider and put it outside, right? Outside. Sometimes after you're like, which is inside and which is outside, right? And so I noticed, and luckily I had a lid on the box that had... glass part of it, or plastic, but clear. So I would put that on it, slide a piece of paper right under, and then carry and put it outside. But I noticed that often, often when I was watching what I was doing, right, not just my intention of not killing, but watching what I was doing, often because it's going, seems to be going extra fast. My spiders always went really fast, right?

[32:40]

And you know, I'm trying to catch it, so I have anxiety. In my putting that lid down, often I would catch one of the legs, right? Or when you're putting that paper under, right? And so often I would either harm it or even at times kill it, right? So mindfulness... is the ability to keep watching, be aware, have the quality of awareness to, not just, you know, like, oh, the precept isn't just like, oh, I have the intention. So being aware of what you're doing and the consequences, right, of what happens, right? So another way to work with the precepts is what I would call innate perception. awakening. Innate awakening to our individual self, to the sangha and the community of all beings.

[33:47]

Trudy Goodman, who started out in the Zen tradition, I can't remember her Zen teacher, she was one of my teachers at one of the insight retreats I was at. She calls precepts, now she does insight, teacher of insight, she calls the precept goodness of the heart. And I think this is a good way to reflect this aspect of the precepts. So the focus and the purpose are the same in this one. Not separate, but the same. And that is that our humanness and our interconnectedness. Or a way that Upendita put that, a Burmese teacher, again, of many of these convert and sight teachers, is acting from the precepts is the expression of the understanding of the oneness of being. Or, from our very own category, Roshi, in a chapter from You Have to Say Something, the chapter's entitled, Buddha Mind.

[34:50]

The Buddha's precepts are not commandments. They are not moralistic rules that deluded people are expected to obey. Actually, the Buddhist precepts are not rules at all. They should not be seen from a deluded point of view. Rather than see them as more dictates to be followed, we should regard them as indicators of the practice of enlightenment. they should be taken as the Buddha's mind. If you do this, you can behave as a Buddha. At the beginning of practice, you might believe the precepts are moral rules, but you must learn to take them as expressions of the Buddha's activity. In doing so, you will study your everyday life, and before you are conscious of it, these teachings will penetrate your life.

[35:55]

In this way, you can live naturally the life of a Buddha. So precepts are not to be used to beat ourselves up or other people up. Precepts are containers, I think, to help or guide us to see how we are in the world. First the inner world, you could say, and then the outer world, and then the interactive world, and then the complete world. to the whole of life. Or perhaps more correctly, we could say, to seeing my life or our life as whole. So using the Buddha, a sense of Buddha mind, we can also look at the actual Buddha as a encouragement, right, as an example.

[36:58]

In fact, Suzuki Roshi, in the same talk I quoted earlier, talked about, he says, the 16 bodhisattva precepts, he says, so the first precepts of the 16 precepts we observe, right, taking refuge in the Buddha, how can I, and he laughs, put into English word one reality which is not... which cannot be divided into three or sixteen. One reality, precept of one reality. You may call it emptiness, or you may call it the absolute. That is one reality, you know. That is the first precept we receive, we observe. So as you may know, this is the most important, maybe the most. I cannot say the most important in glass, but this is... the most important. Anyway, all the precepts start from this precept.

[38:00]

Without understanding this precept, our precepts doesn't make any sense. One reality which we cannot divide by three or six or sixteen. It can be understood in great scale. Whatever there is in this world, in this universe, or what kind of rule we have, or what kind of truth we can observe in various way our moral codes or rules or theory we scientists observe. Are all those rules is included in this one big scale of the precepts? I want to propose to you that perhaps the enlightenment of the historical Buddha, right, is an awakening to the fact that we are an integrated whole.

[39:02]

That ourselves, for first, is a complete and whole being. And then, of course, ourselves in relation to other is a complete and whole. By complete and whole, I don't mean that pretty Zen... garden thing, right? It has pebbles, but some don't match. Some are bigger than others. Some hurt your feet when you walk on them, right? So everything is included, right? Interestingly, so the definition for integrity, right, is adherence to moral and ethical principles, soundness of moral character, honesty. The state of being whole, entire, or undiminished. A sound, unimpaired, or perfect condition. And then the origin of the word integrity from the French, old French, is wholeness, complete condition.

[40:14]

And from the Latin, soundness, or wholeness. So I think that we need to remember that we can feel whole and complete, right? Most of us come to practice when things just feel like they're falling apart, and whatever you've done to try to cope isn't quite working, right? So we come in a way, you could say, hurt and wounded, and hopefully practice will remind us that hurt and wounded is part of whole, right? And what else is there besides hurt and wounded? What else is there? Healing, wholeness, completeness. So this is from Charlotte Joko Beck in Everyday Zen, practicing this very moment. She says, the Buddha...

[41:16]

is nothing but exactly what you are right now. Hearing the cars, feeling the pain in your legs, hearing my voice, that's the Buddha. You can't catch hold of it. The minute you try to catch it, it's changed. Being what we are at each moment means, for example, fully being our anger when we are angry. That kind of anger never hurts anybody because it's total, complete. We really feel this anger, this knot in our stomach, and we're not going to hurt anybody with it. That kind of anger that hurts people is when we smile sweetly and underneath we're seething, perhaps plotting revenge. That was my line. When you sit, you don't expect to be noble. When we give up the spinning mind, even for a few minutes, and just sit with what is, then this presence that we are is like a mirror.

[42:24]

We see everything. We see what we are. Our efforts to look good, to be first, or to be last. We see our anger, our anxiety, our pomposity, our so-called spirituality. Real spirituality is just being with all that. If we can really be with Buddha, who we are, then it transforms. Shibayama Roshi said once in Sashin Retreat, quote, this Buddha that you all want to see, this Buddha is very shy. It's hard to get him to come out and show himself, end quote. And that's Charlotte. Why is that? Because the Buddha is ourselves. And we'll never see the Buddha until we're no longer attached to all this extra stuff. We've got to be willing to go into ourselves honestly.

[43:30]

When we can be totally honest with what's happening right now, then we'll see it. We can't have just a piece of the Buddha. Buddhas come whole. A practice has nothing to do with, oh, I should be good, I should be nice, I should this or that. I am who I am right now, and that very state of being is the Buddha. I know Blanche really wanted to be here today, and... Today is the first time that I will be giving the precepts.

[44:53]

And I've never... It's hard letting go of some concepts. I never thought I'd do this without Voyage. Many years ago, I was learning how to give zazen instruction. Of course, you had to follow some teachers. And this is when zazen instruction included what now we call form instruction, right? And so I shadowed Blanche, of course. And I remember that down in the Gaitan, before going in, she was talking about our mudra, the gasho, right? when you put your two hands together.

[45:56]

And she says, when we put our two hands together, it's the uniting of our sense of our mind, our condition of being in duality. Right and wrong, good and bad. So we bring them together into one. So perhaps we came to practice wanting to be calmer, which means I'm not calm enough, right? Wanting that sereneness, which means I don't feel serene enough, right? And we unite those two, what we think are separate things, and you can only have one or the other. When in fact our world, our life in the world, is that they're both together all the time. And it's the ability... To know that one can happen without the other.

[46:59]

Or to be when you're stuck in one, to remember the other. But the other is also always there. I couldn't have done this without Blanche, so any mistakes are mine, and any merit that could be accrued, I dedicate to Blanche. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving.

[48:04]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[48:07]

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