This podcast is offered by San Francisco's Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. And welcome to Beginner's Mind Temple. This afternoon we're having a ceremony that we call priest ordination. Japanese name of it is Shukai Tokudo, leaving home and entering away. So I'd like to talk some about that this morning. Can you hear me okay over there? Yeah, good. I was reflecting on the nature of this ceremony. And in many ways it represents the evolution of the archetype of Buddhist practice.

[01:07]

Its early roots are in India, where Shakyamuni Buddha lived. And then it's strongly influenced by China, where Chan practice was initiated, and then strongly influenced, in our case, by Japan. where Art to Dark Finder came from. And when you look at the ceremony with a certain perspective, you can see the influence of each of those countries, how it's shaped and what happens within it. And then this afternoon at three o'clock, right here, someone will go through this ceremony. Kim. And I was reflecting on Kim's journey. She's born in South Africa, moved to England, went from England to Italy, lived in Venice, and then came to California, the San Francisco Zen Center.

[02:26]

in how this projectory of the evolution of one of the world's major religions arrives here, and then this person, on her own projectory, across the continents, through different life experiences, arrives here. And at the center of the ceremony, There's different pieces of the ceremony, which I'll talk about in a moment, but really the thread that runs through it is the person who's being ordained bold statement, yes, I will. Both of which are powerful statements. Yes, I will. I was thinking of Kim's life, you know, and I was thinking, well, in a way, this is the culmination of many factors in her life.

[03:42]

She will arrive, but where that Zepho is, maybe a foot or so behind it, and she will say, yes, I will. That way in our lives there are momentous occasions. Some by design, some by disaster, some by coincidence. But there they are. They have a certain culmination of cause and effect. And as I say, they happen in a variety of ways, and yet each one of them, when they happen, they've happened. Here we are in the middle of this circumstance, in the middle of this event, in the middle of this set of causes and conditions.

[04:50]

How could we say anything other than yes? Yes, this jackhammer is... is doing whatever it's doing. We can assume that someone out there thinks this is a really good thing to be doing. And from our place, yes, this is part of the auditory environment in which I now am, whether I like it or not. whether I understand its genesis or I don't. And it speaks to the interesting mix of our life. There's something mysterious about it.

[05:57]

What are they doing? What was that? There is that too, right? And we can't know. We can't know everything. Our life can't be, maybe we think it can, but our life can't be simply the purposeful, well-crafted consequence of that we would hope for, that we would intend. And yet, should we not intend, should we not bring to our life the consequence of what we think is appropriate? So it's interesting, in this, yes, I will,

[07:02]

It's not, yes, I will, because through my glorious Zen practice, through my glorious personal accomplishments, I know what is and what should be. It's a different kind of proposition. And to me, this poem, It's by William Stafford. To me, this poem speaks of his musing over this. He calls the poem, the way it is. There's a thread you follow. It goes among things that change, but it doesn't change. People wonder about what you're pursuing. You have to explain about the thread. but it's hard for others to see.

[08:07]

While you hold it, you can't get lost. Nothing you can do can stop times unfolding. Don't let go of the thread. Something of this inevitable continuity of a human life. We are on a journey. We are in the arc of a human life from birth to death. We live in all sorts of circumstances, maybe countries, all kinds of different relatedness. And what is it that guides a life like that? Don't let go of the thread. Is that possible?

[09:10]

Do we know the thread? Can we explain it? In a way, this questioning, this offering a question rather than a conclusion, is part of the demeanor of the Zen school. It's not so much We take the heritage of Buddhism and now we're fully conversant in what is and how to live with it and how to move it forward. No, it's more that we are... Each of us is in a momentous occasion, you know? Every day. Every situation.

[10:13]

Every set of circumstances that's in our life. And then when we hold each day like that, then there also just another day. And this wonderful paradox. Everything's momentous. And everything's just what it is. Today there's a jackhammer, tomorrow, next week, who knows what it'll be, or won't be. And so Zen practice, and I would say Buddhist practice, is to help us maybe we could put it this way, to savor the human condition rather than to struggle with it.

[11:18]

This is an interesting proposition because deep within us, we could say on a cellular life-up, we want to survive, we want to thrive. And we are instinctively involved in that agenda. We're instinctively taking each circumstance, each interaction, and responding to it in a way. And then in some ways this becomes stylized. I want this. I don't want that. And how can that be related to in a way that illuminates the human condition, that sheds light, literally, on this path that we're walking?

[12:25]

What kind of admonitions, what kind of lifestyle You know, it seems to me this, you know, the historic story of Shakyamuni is that he left the innocence of his privileged life and saw the rawness of the existential dilemma of life, old age, sickness and death and set forth courageously, determinedly to discover but who isn't part of the human condition? How does each one of us set forth? How does each one of us continue to meet the world with beginner's mind, to learn from it?

[13:30]

In Buddhism, may be considered to be the fundamental teaching, the Four Noble Truths. It's interesting, in scholarship of the last decade we've more or less concluded that the Four Noble Truths were a formulation that came about three hundred years, two to three hundred years after Shakyamuni's death. The core teachings were there, but that formulation. And essentially they say, in relating to this human life, with our agenda of survival that generates like and dislike, that generates all the emotional surround that like and dislike evokes, there's a deep-seated tendency to struggle, you know,

[14:39]

I want the jackhammer to stop. It will be a better environment. And maybe it has. But when we're in sight... And the capacity within our consciousness to both have a preference, to see it, and not be limited. Okay, if it doesn't stop, it's going to be a terrible day. We can struggle with it, or we can see

[15:40]

And that's the first noble truth, the inclination, the impulse to struggle. And then the second one, what's going on? How does that come into being? The personal experience, the subjective experience, becomes definitive. I want this to be different. My response to this is, no, this is not okay. No, the way it is, it's not what I want, and I want something else. To start to see that happening. And then the third noble truth is that that seeing, that shift is possible. You know?

[16:43]

Just the same way we can acknowledge the interruption and the sound, acknowledge, ah, and then acknowledge, ah, when it starts up. You know? We can be disappointed, resentful, upset or let the very same experience turn. The very same experience turns and shows us something about what we are, who we are, and even more important, it shows us something about liberation. That within our human capacity, we can grasp or we cannot grasp.

[17:51]

And that grasping or not grasping can guide our life. We can, as the word tokuru means, we can enter into the way. We can enter into the way of liberation. And this is a fundamental proposition about the human condition. The ceremony is about vow. Yes, I will. This will be the life I live. And of course, that's a very interesting notion. If I was nothing but intentionality, if I had the full capacity to always do what I intend to do, then the vow would be

[19:17]

But I meet it with my own limitation. I can live with the sign to the jackhammer, but then you add the screeching of a truck's brakes, that's too much. This is not fair. Why me? And then what is the inner workings that meets the contraction, the resistance, the hesitancy with yes? Like what if you sat down and thought, what do I consider the difficulties, the limitations in my life?

[20:20]

And you just quietly said to each one, Yes. Not an action of giving up, going beyond some sense of aliveness that has purpose, that has intention, but a kind of acceptance. And then the evolution of a vow in Buddhism happened something like this. So the Four Noble Truths, two or three hundred years after Shakyamuni, and then a statement of vow. And the vow was, for each of these Noble Truths, a vow to enable it. A vow to enable seeing itself.

[21:22]

causes of suffering the expression of suffering the vow to see the causes of suffering this way we grasp at subjective being this way that the impulse to not like those car horns can generate something we grasp at my preference. And then to discover something else is possible and to follow that something else. And in early Buddhism, those were the four vows to enable each one of those steps. And then as Buddhism continued,

[22:26]

particularly in the Mahayana, the vow shifted. And we'll chant them at the end of the talk. And each one of them took on the paradox of practice. The vows became inclusive. I do this on behalf of everybody. It's not simply me. In the Mahayana, you get ordained not simply for your own benefit. You get ordained for everybody's benefit. There's endless human beings and I'm practicing to benefit them all. So there's a built-in paradox. I know where we can even say, I'm practicing to save them all.

[23:28]

Delusions are inexhaustible. I'm practicing to see through them all. There's endless Dharma gates. There's endless ways we can spark awakening. Even the sign of a jackhammer is a Dharma gate. I vow to enter them all. And the Buddha's way is exquisitely and immeasurably profound. I vow in my limited human being to become it. And in one way we could say, okay, so if I'm going to do something that's impossible, the way to do that is to not get hung up on accomplishment. Okay, I'll do it, and when it's all done, I can relax.

[24:34]

Everything is now taken care of. That isn't going to happen, but still I'm going to do it. A friend of mine asked a Native American shaman, he said, well, here we are, in the jeopardy of destroying our ecology. How do we know we're going to be okay? And the shaman said, it doesn't matter. Every spring we plant corn. Everything, we just continue with our life, with our best effort, with appropriate response. How it's all going to work out? We don't know.

[25:42]

So this vow, this vow that accepts the nature of our life and still brings forth, yes, I will. fierce world we live in. I read a couple of days ago that 2.7 million Syrian refugees now live in Turkey. We're working up to accepting 10,000. I think we're at about 3,500. how fierce the world is, how many people are suffering, how profound the difficulties that contribute to that suffering.

[26:48]

Yes, that's how it is. And each of us in our own life, dealing with what we're dealing with, Yes, that's how it is. And I vow to engage it. Not because I'm going to fix it all, not because with the virtue and efficacy of my practice, it will all work out beautifully and we'll all be happy. Maybe we will. the human condition, the bias of our own perspectives. How long it's taken us collectively to come to some agreement about our environment.

[27:56]

Because each country was saying, yeah, but I've got my own agenda. In our country, it's like this. Why don't you do that, and we'll just do what we want. Slowly, you know. And we could turn the world upside down and say, well, maybe our environmental crisis is the very thing we need to become one people, to have a common agenda. And there's some wisdom in this because as each of us looks at who we are, how we are, how we see the world, the patterns of our own thoughts and our own thinking, we can see the uniqueness of our subjective experience. We can see the limitations.

[29:04]

And the paradox is, as we see it, we start to see through it. So with a person who's being ordained, yes, they're standing there, actually kneeling there, in a momentous occasion, shimmering in the light that this moment of being creates. And they say, yes, I will. But there's still a limited human being. And who isn't? Who doesn't bring that to their practice? And what isn't a Dharma gate? What aspect of your life doesn't have a teaching?

[30:09]

And so the Mahayana vow holds this paradox. And I'd like to read you, someone gave me this little list. Actually, it was the person who was getting ordained to count. I have no home. I make awareness my home. I have no life or death. I make the tides of breath my life and death. I have no means. I make understanding my means. I have no magic. I make character my magic. I have no strategy. I make unshadowed by thought my strategy. I have no miracles. I make right action my miracle. I have no enemy. I make carelessness my enemy. I have no sword. I make absence of self my sword. So one aspect of entering in is, you could call it negation.

[31:30]

It's letting go of the ways I construct life. The ways I construct the self. The ways I construct reality. Reality is like this. Momentarily, that could be so. Subjectively, that could be so. But absolutely? No. But there's something in our process of waking up, where we need to let go of fixed ideas, of fixed identities. And so in this ceremony, in the process of practice, of awakening, leaving home, leaving the fixed identities. I'm from

[32:34]

this place. And I am this person. And I have this way of seeing the world. And that's the right way. In Zazen, each time we notice the mind is caught up in a fixed expression of existence. We notice, we release. And the extension of our practice. Each time we notice I'm separate from you and I'm right and you're wrong by marvelous coincidence. To see it and to see through it.

[33:34]

This letting go, this undoing, this non-grasping. And then the complement to this, and in many ways a crucial complement to this, because this letting go by itself, it sort of makes our life insipid. makes our life lose its vitality. The other side is every moment is a momentous occasion. Every person is a miracle of creation. You know, this day hasn't happened before and won't happen again. the roar of that jackhammer.

[34:45]

The anonymous industry and purposefulness of our society. It opens a Dharma gate. We can see within it our own purposefulness. We can see within it the chatter of our own doing. The sound of the clock illustrating audibly the notion of linear time. Can all these notions, can they reinforce now? can they make now something to be savored? Not some insipid emptiness that is draining our life.

[35:54]

In some ways, this is a subtle but significant challenge of being aware. It's something in the practice of awareness is profoundly yes. Yes, that sound is happening. Yes, this body is breathing. Yes, this is who I am, what I am, and how I am. And the yoga of Zazen is to sit in the middle and let it be fully experienced. This afternoon, Kim will sit there and will ask for all these things.

[37:09]

Even after attaining Buddhahood, will you continuously observe this? And the plan is, she will say, yes, I will. But I guess we'll see on the occasion. In fact, for good measure, each time, we don't ask her once, we ask her three times. It's the nature of learning, you know? Lessons will be repeated until learned. Yes, I will. Yes, I will. Yes, I will. Okay, now how about this? Will you continuously observe this? Yes. So maybe this is what Stafford is trying to get at. There's a thread you follow.

[38:11]

It goes among things that change, but it doesn't change. It's hard for others to see, but if you hold it, you can't get lost. So I'd leave you with that question. What is your thread? What is it to hold it in a way that opens rather than closes? What is it to relate to that thread in a way that shines a light on who you are and how you are rather than seduces you into a kind of sleep that somehow this is not enough.

[39:12]

it would be more advantageous to muse on a different reality. How can this now hold everything that comes up? What is it to say? Yes, I will. Thank you. For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[40:05]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_97.07