This podcast is offered by San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning, everyone. It's wonderful to see all of you in your particular place in the Dharma field of this virtual Zendo together. Please let me know if you have any difficulty hearing me. And it's a joy. It's a joy and honor to be here. And as Kodo just mentioned, many of us at Beginner's Mind Temple and here in the online Zendo are kind of wrapping up a seven-day sushin. And this is bringing... to close our fall practice period. So I want to just take a moment to offer a special welcome to all of you who are here just for this morning's Dharma Talk. You're joining in to this wonderful container of holding presents with each other for this last week.

[01:05]

And Vahatsu Sushim is held each year in Zen monasteries throughout the world to commemorate the enlightenment of Shakyamuni Buddha. I think... we can think of Rahatsu Sushin as commemorating the awakening of the whole universe through Buddha's awakening. And of course, it's also through our awakening. And the Sushin culminates in a ceremony marking the occasion of Shakyamuni Buddha's enlightenment, which we celebrated this morning online. Even though it was all done over Zoom with each person at home in their own little panel, and me holding the ceremonial space in the Buddha Hall, it was, you know, I really felt it was such a beautiful connecting and joyous event. You could just feel the joy and celebration just kind of manifesting throughout time and space over many different continents that all of us are zooming in from. So I just want to thank everyone who participated in all the effort that Eno and others put in to making it possible.

[02:11]

So the The theme of the Fall Practice Spirit has been fierce compassion, enacting Bodhisattva principles in a troubled world. And over the last 10 weeks, we've taken up the study of Bodhisattva practice, the practice of an awakening being who is selflessly dedicated to freeing others from the suffering caused by fear and ignorance, and helping them recognize and manifest their own awake nature. As archetypes of wisdom and compassion, the bodhisattvas of Mahayana Buddhism are powerful and compelling images of awakening, of courage, of fierce love in action. And each week, we focused on one of the seven classic bodhisattva archetypes. And we explored their development, the iconography associated with them, the particular qualities and principles they represent, as well as how we might aspire to enact their way of being as ourselves.

[03:26]

Ourselves being bodhisattvas, being, you could say, Buddhas in training for the benefit of the world. And the bodhisattva ideal can help us focus. our own vision for how we want to live and deepen our courage as we move our practice off our cushions and into the world to engage with the various forms of suffering and injustice we encounter. So today, given the occasion, I want to revisit the first of the seven Bodhisattva archetypes that we studied, that of Shakyamuni Buddha, and speak particularly to some of the elements and the narratives surrounding his awakening. And I'll attempt to weave together some thoughts on how we might identify and relate to our own, what I call, libertive narratives.

[04:31]

and consider ways in which we might use these liberative narratives as templates for our bodhisattva engagement in the world. Now, I imagine many of you are familiar with the basic story of Siddhartha Gautama's journey to becoming the Buddha, the awakened one, is what the Buddha means. It's a transformation that, you know, set in place a spiritual revolution that continues to this day, 2,600 years later. And all the same, even though you might be familiar with it, like all transformational and archetypal journeys, it bears some repeating. For it reminds us that we too are capable of embarking on a similar journey of transformation. And while there are, of course, elements of folk history and even fable at work in the telling of Shakyamuni's story, we have enough details to provide a powerful, a fairly powerful narrative of a human being seeking liberation.

[05:46]

So the person we know as the historical Buddha was born Siddhartha Gautama, as I said, roughly 2,600 years ago, in the town of Lumbini, which is near the the current Nepalese-Indian border. And he was an Indian prince among a clan of warriors who led a life of luxury, protected and sheltered from life's difficulties by his family until he was 29 years old. And around that time, having snuck outside the curated realm of the palace, he encountered what's traditionally known as the four messengers. The first messenger was that of seeing someone very old. Now, it's kind of hard to imagine that Shakyamuni Buddha never saw an old person before, but this is part of the story. And the second was seeing someone stricken with illness. Again, really? He never saw someone who was ill?

[06:49]

And the third was seeing a corpse. Katama was deeply disturbed by what he saw, these messengers, and confronted by the realization that all beings are subject to these realities, old age, sickness, and death. The fourth site, the fourth messenger, was that of a wandering monk or a seeker of truth and spiritual freedom. And seeing this last messenger inspired him to leave his comfortable existence in search of a a resolution for the human suffering that he had become aware of at that point. So that night, Siddhartha left his family, including his wife and young child. He left his life of comfort and protection in order to seek an end to suffering and become an aesthetic. The story goes that for six years he wandered in the wilderness,

[07:55]

practicing and instilling at various meditation techniques of his time, studied with various yogis. And he even spent a number of years practicing extreme forms of asceticism in order to be free of clinging to the body, as the body was deemed a hindrance to liberation. However, having eventually become severely emaciated, exhausted, And on the verge of death from these practices, he realized his strenuous efforts were futile and that these extremes of self-mortification were not the way to freedom. He came to consider that there was a middle way between the extremes of unbridled pleasure, which he experienced in the palace, and the the radical self-denial that he was practicing for the last six years.

[08:57]

So he decided to care for his body instead of deny it and change the way that he was approaching seeking enlightenment. And it's said that at that point, he accepted nourishment in the form of a bowl of milk rice porridge generously offered to him by a young milkmaid, Sujata. Revitalized after taking the porridge, Siddhartha remembered a time when he was just a boy sitting under a rose apple tree, absorbed in a pleasant and serene state of mind, just open and at ease. And Siddhartha thought that this focused state that he experienced then as a child might be helpful. to him to realize the freedom that he sought now as an adult. Therefore, he found a peepal tree, a peepal tree, it's a sacred fig tree, and vowed to sit steadfast and unmoving under it until he realized liberation.

[10:12]

Now, there are various accounts about how long Shakyamuni sat under the tree until he realized enlightenment. Anywhere from one night to to 45 days. And it's said that during that time, at one point, as he sat with great concentration and determination, the demon Mara appeared and tried to break Siddhartha's resolve using various temptations, illusions, and doubts. Despite Mara's efforts to distract and unseat him, Katama remained unmoved, And at one point, touching and calling on the earth itself as his witness to his right to liberation. And at that point, Mar fled as the earth roared in recognition and agreement with Siddhartha. And Siddhartha continued sitting then throughout the night, gaining numerous insights as he meditated.

[11:21]

When his mind was purified by concentration, it said he acquired the three knowledges. The first knowledge was that of his past lives and the past lives of all beings. The second knowledge was of the laws of karma. The third knowledge was that he was free of all obstacles and released from attachments. Finally, As the Buddha looked up and saw the morning star appear, it said, as if for the first time, he broke through the agony of his years of struggle and seeking and realized the nature of self and his true original nature. At that moment, he woke up and became the Buddha. the awakened one.

[12:24]

Afterwards, while he was initially hesitant to speak of his realization with others for fear they would not understand, the Buddha eventually decided to compassionately share his understanding with others. So he formulated what's known as the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. so that people could find the way to realization themselves. Then the Buddha went forth to teach for another 45 years about the path of ultimate liberation. According to reports, Shakyamuni Buddha died and passed into Paranirvana when he was 80 years old. His profound gift of the Buddha Dharma, the teachings of awakening, continues to resonate and serve as liberative medicine to this day. I want to return to the moment in the narrative of Siddhartha's awakening and his puzzling exclamation and unpack it a little bit.

[13:50]

The moment of what happened the night of Buddha's enlightenment is not told exactly the same way in all schools of Buddhism. In fact, there are actually several versions in the Pali Canon, which is the early Buddhist texts, that are said to contain the lifetime of the Buddhist teachings. An example of this is how the early Theravada and the later Mahayana Buddhist traditions render Shakyamuni's exclamation at the moment of his awakening. Now, the Mamayana version has the Buddha saying, how wonderful, how wonderful. I and all beings have awakened together. Now, our Zen ancestor, Ehi Dogen, rephrases this a little bit, as Dogen tends to do. He says, when the morning star appeared, I and the sentient beings of Earth simultaneously attain enlightenment. So Buddha... fully awoke simultaneously, it's said, with the entire universe, realizing that mountains, rivers, the great earth, and all living beings are now and for all eternity residing in the awake heart-mind of Buddha, which is each of us here and now.

[15:12]

Further commenting on this, the Vietnamese Zen master Thich Thien Han, explains, when we attain the actualization of the Supreme Way, we come to realize that all beings are perfect just as they are. Now, the Theravadan version of Buddhism-like exclamation, as it's recounted in the Dhammapada, is quite different. In this version, upon realizing release from samsara or the the suffering-laden cycle of existence. Shakyamuni is reported to have declared, house builder, you're seen through. You will never again build another house. Your rafters are broken. The ridge pole knocked down. All has returned to the unformed. The mind has come to an end of craving.

[16:19]

It's not so easily initially to see how these two versions of exclamations even relate. Whereas the Mahayana version points to the nature of Buddha's transformative insight of oneness, that all beings are fundamentally interconnected and are an expression of the same awake mind. The Theravada version points to what facilitates this insight. The turnkey practice of finally seeing through and letting go of the components that give rise to a sense of a separate self. A traditional way to interpret the term house builder is as representing the 12-fold sequence or chain of dependent origination, a very key and yet not so easily understood teaching in Buddhism, sometimes relegated to the more difficult aspects of Buddhism.

[17:33]

And the Buddha recounted that on the night of his enlightenment, he awoke to the profound nature of the 12 links of dependent origination, clearly seeing how beings trap themselves in in an endless cycle of self-perpetuating confusion and misery. The 12-part process of dependent arising shows how karma, meaning actions that are underlain by ignorance, propels us, it's said, from one rebirth to another, keeping us trapped in suffering, and how through understanding correctly, we can break this cycle. You could call this 12-fold chain of causation the structure that gives rise to the entirety of conditioned existence.

[18:40]

Believe it or not, the original meaning of both the Sanskrit and And Pali words for karma mean to build. So the house builder is that which creates the entire structure of karmic or conditioned human existence. Another way... we can interpret the term house builder is in a more contemporary sense of it as the manifestation of ego. The house that the ego builds is the mental structure or process which you could say shelters and perpetuates the phantom sense of a separate self. And Buddha is claiming that in his awakening, he finally saw the way in which the egoic self continues to build and maintain its house of cards.

[19:53]

House builder, he says, you're seen through. The Buddha came to clearly understand the nature of the conditioned mind. It's self-building or self-reaffirmating things. activities and tools, and the entangled infrastructure, you could say, of karmic wiring and plumbing that extend throughout the whole body and the entire realm of human experience. The Buddha says, you will never again build another house. Your rafters are broken. The ridge pole, knocked down. So the Ridgepole belief in a separate self and its rafters of reinforcing habit patterns have been shattered.

[20:57]

And with that, the entire edifice collapses. All has returned to the unformed, the Buddha says. The mind has come. to an end of craving. So the conditions in which the separate self depends have been dismantled. And not only have they been dismantled, but the raw materials, the seed impulse of craving, grasping, clinging, has been overcome and done away with as well. All that remains is an open, luminous field of boundless awareness. Sometimes people misunderstand the teachings of Buddhism by saying there isn't a self.

[22:03]

But the Buddha didn't say there wasn't a self. He just said our self is a collection of material elements and mental factors, aggregates. And as such, it's a fabrication, a narrative, a conditioned manifestation. Shakyamuni also understood that humans are narrative animals. And as such, we need words and stories and narratives in order to navigate and make sense of our world. the stories themselves aren't the fundamental problem according to Buddhism. It's whether we choose to make and believe either stories that limit and imprison us and others, or cultivate stories that are designed to free us to be our own true selves. So the Bodhisattva archetypal story of Shakyamuni

[23:11]

illustrates the path we might take to letting go of our old, restrictive, limiting stories and discover new narratives, ones we might think of as liberative narratives. Not only did the Buddha offer us an outline of a potential liberative narrative, but he also offered a new structure through which can engage the world in a compassionate, you could say, a mutually beneficial way. Instead of the shaky, ungrounded, unreliable structure built by the ego self, the Buddha offered us a liberative structure, perhaps more like a liberative structureless structure. known as the Eightfold Path, which he elucidates in his unpacking of the Fourth Noble Truth, which states that there is a path to the end of suffering.

[24:25]

So there is suffering, causes for suffering, and conditions for how suffering arises, and there is an end to suffering. So he deliberately chose the path metaphor, to evoke a forest path, leading us out of an overgrown jungle full of mental and emotional obstacles and entanglements, to eventually a clearing where we'll find our true home, open, boundless, unconditioned awareness. For anyone unfamiliar with the Eightfold Path to Liberation, It consists of eight interrelated practices. Those of said right or proper or skillful, understanding, thought, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and concentration.

[25:33]

And these eight are in turn grouped into three essential elements of Buddhist practice. moral conduct, ethics, mental discipline, concentration, and wisdom. Essentially, the entirety of the Buddha's discourse over his five years of teaching deals in some way or other with this Eightfold Path. Because both the path and the obstacles, obscuring the path, are found within us, the Buddha's path requires us to take responsibility for our thoughts, attitudes, and actions. It builds on the principle that we can move towards liberation by disengaging from perspectives or behaviors that weigh us down and by replacing them with behaviors that lighten us.

[26:39]

and support us as we proceed forward in our lives. The structureless structure of the Eightfold Path gives us guidelines for how we might all proceed in the direction of mutual awakening, while at the same time providing us ways to enact our inherent awakening, and liberation right here, right now. We don't have to wait to some other day. Our inherent awakening is manifesting in this very moment. Can we recognize it and live from that place? In the end, we need to recognize the story of Shakyamuni's life and his awakening as just that, another story.

[27:51]

Just as our own personal and cultural narratives are also nothing more than curated fictions. Everything you say about yourself, you've curated in some way. You've selected in some way. Every time you tell a story about yourself or about the world, You're not able to express the entirety. It's a select, limited, curated fiction that we keep changing at our own convenience, you would say. In fact, all the descriptions and narratives of the various bodhisattva archetypes, which we studied as part of the practice period, are also just stories, as is everything one can possibly say about any aspect of experience. Language never reaches it. What Zazen and Zen practice point us to is the realm beyond the stories, the direct, immediate experience of just this, of Buddha mind, being aware of Buddha mind.

[29:09]

Payim Leighton, in his book on the Bodhisattva Archetypes, titled Faces of Compassion, writes that, as Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of wisdom and insight, teaches us, the aim of awakening practice is to go beyond our stories and to not get caught by our stories. We get fooled by our stories ourselves and our world, of ourselves and our world, thereby losing the true openness and wonder of our lives. and our intimate connection to all beings. Experience of openness that's described by all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas that arises when letting go of all the narratives, letting the narratives drop away, relaxing and letting go of all the identifications and graspings that arise as a response to our cherished stories about the world. It's through Zaza in the practice that we can become familiar and intimate with the space, you could say beyond seeking, to imbide in the realm of no story.

[30:24]

But we need to be careful, as that too could become just another story, a story about a person who's enlightened or around with no story. And once we get off of our meditation seats and return to our everyday activities, the truth is we find ourselves re-entering life with all its various problems, including other sentient beings. Palms and joys, I should say. And as we reconnect with our own humanity in this process, we find stories re-emerging. We've let go of the story, we've gone off the cushion, and we find ourselves kind of taking up the stories again. However, when we return to our narratives, all too often we just resume our old conditioned way of trying to control or manipulate the world of objects.

[31:34]

We return to all kind of the perspectives and stories that we have about other people, about what's happening in the world. And oftentimes, that includes a story of ourselves being somehow victimized by others, by the forces out there. I know I fall into that trap. And I imagine you might experience that as well. The point is, if we are aware of We can choose our myths, choose our narratives with care. As Leighton also reminds us, Buddhist liberation is about knowing our stories and not being trapped by them. Stories have their own power, he says. We cannot ignore them. To paraphrase what women, we are vast and we each contain multitudes of stories. including stories about bodhisattvas and about awakening from stories.

[32:40]

So while we can't avoid narratives as humans, some stories are more conducive to awakening and universal well-being than other stories. Our charge as dharma practitioners is to see through the fictional story of self and its limitations. and instead embrace a narrative of liberation. And not just for ourselves, but for all of us collectively. One of the ways we're encouraged to work with bodhisattva archetypes is to try them on for ourselves, to put ourselves into the template that they provide to discover their liberative and transformative aspects. And if helpful, we can adapt and update the bodhisattva narrative aspects and the various exemplars of the archetypes to make them more relevant to us in these particular times and circumstances in which we find ourselves.

[33:56]

Abhinad and I am encouraged... the participants in our class during the practice period, you know, to do this each week with a particular bodhisattva we were studying and starting with Shakyamuni Buddha. Now, a simple internet search will make it quickly apparent that many of the ways that Buddha's enlightenment is told is either through texts from Asian cultures or here in the West through white scholars. and dharma teachers who filter the narrative through their own cultural lens and identity, whether consciously or not. Pamela Ayo Yutunde, a community dharma leader in the insight meditation community who identifies as black, wrote an article that appeared in Tricycle magazine recently, in which she also speaks of the value of updating the traditional narrative of the Buddhist life to better speak to the realities of suffering in this time of Black Lives Matter.

[34:59]

She says that if the Buddhist suttas overall were taught so that African Americans could hear the story of the Buddha's communal trek to spiritual freedom, they would speak to them in a way that is culturally relevant. So for example, in a contemporary retelling, of the story of Buddha's awakening, she asked, what noble truths might arise when Siddhartha finally sees the suffering of racism? She then goes on to offer six updated noble truths, including, there is racism, I am impacted by racism, and since the suffering is shared, the suffering of racism is shared, the transformation of the suffering will also be shared. And she concludes her article by saying that a culturally competent dharma can inspire those who are marginalized in our societies to become relationally resilient in the face of their suffering, while also addressing the systemic structures of

[36:24]

and narratives that oppress rather than liberate people. And I witnessed Yutunde's invitation in action recently when I participated in a program through Naropa University. It was titled Between Me and Freedom, Addressing Conscious and Unconscious Racism. And the program was led by three black teachers at the university who creatively integrated into the presentation a reframing of the Buddhist enlightenment story through a black liberative lens. In their retelling, Siddhartha Gautama, a man of color, finally recognizes the realities and harmful impact of racism on him and others around him. So he chooses to abandon the oppressive narratives about who he is supposed to be. or become, that had been fostered upon him by his parents, his society, others, and the various spiritual and governing institutions of his time.

[37:36]

He literally steps out of the social constructs and mental conditioning that limits and defines him, and walks into the wilderness, where he only has himself to rely on. The teachers, the three teachers, offered another powerful twist to the original narrative when recounting Mara's confrontation with the Buddha as he sat under the Bodhi tree. In their version, Mara represents an authority figure in a white supremacist society, a society where whiteness is considered superior. And this authority figure, for example, a police officer, confronts this man of color, sitting quietly on the sidewalk, just minding his own business. And so, these authority figures question him as to why he thinks he can be free of the institutional power systems that are trying to keep everyone, everyone else safe.

[38:49]

In response to this authority, Mara, the black Buddha touches his body, but not his oppressed, beaten, and enslaved body, but the body of the earth itself, which he calls upon to bear witness to his undeniable right to exist and be free. After enduring much struggle and hardship, in the end, the Buddha awakes to the truth. That true human liberation is only possible when there is collective liberation. When we have studied our minds and freed ourselves of condition, enslaving thought patterns and social systems. and learn to compassionately and skillfully center all people's awakening body and being.

[40:03]

I found their reframing of Shakyamuni's archetypal story through a Black cultural lens refreshing and thought-provoking. And I appreciated their emphasis on the value of intentional collective liberation narrative. our world. And underline for me again, the Mahayana version of Shakyamuni's proclamation, how wonderful, how wonderful, I and all beings awaken together. Bodhisattva's imagination envisions a world in which the conditions are manifest for all beings to be liberated. Bodhisattvas recognize that working on oneself as well as in the world are not separate endeavors.

[41:11]

Given this, what might our efforts toward collective liberation look like? How do we imagine and work toward a future in which all people's awakening being and embodied reality is centered rather than just a select, privileged few? How might we craft cultural and collective narratives that both celebrate difference in our particular karmic realities? while also acknowledging and celebrating the collective weave of our lives. Just as we can choose liberty narratives for ourselves, I think we can choose to craft institutions, structures, and policies that serve collective liberation, that can manifest

[42:24]

and operate as liberative structures rather than oppressive institutions stuck in centuries-old paradigms and approaches that fail to equally benefit all of humanity. What would it look like if all of our societal business and governmental bodies and institutions, organized themselves in such a way to manifest the Buddha's Eightfold Path? It's a question that has been more recently forefront in my mind as I reflect on the state of our world and the myriad challenges we face. There's so much trouble in the world. It's important that we find ways of working together to sustain our deepest intentions, our deepest wish, which is to be free, which is none other than to experience and manifest love itself.

[43:37]

The crucial vow of bodhisattva practice is just to continue to awaken and care for all beings as ourselves. May we earnestly endeavor to realize this. And finally, at some point, we must go beyond the models and examples that inspire us, beyond all the archetypes and all the narratives and stories, and just fully be ourselves, which is what practice is about. zuki roshi said when you are you zen is zen reality fully manifest when you are you yourself fully the whole world can be its true self now i think that's a story worth embracing

[44:51]

So thank you all for your kind attention. Enjoy your awakening. Together. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma Talks are offered free of charge and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please visit sfcc.org. and click giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[45:28]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_97.92