This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Well, good morning, everyone, and welcome to Green Dragon Temple. And I first want to... express my immense gratitude to GDU, Green Gulch's head of practice for inviting me to speak with you this morning. I feel really delighted to be able to share this time and space with you all right here at the change into winter season and just before the turn of the new year. It's actually one of my very favorite times of year, even though it's kind of a strange time of year. But I think that the darkness And the possibility and hope that light will slowly return, as well as the sort of shaky, vulnerable feeling of everything that happens at this time of year, makes it a very inviting and powerful time for me.

[01:12]

And it's a really wonderful time, I think, to come home and let the Dharma, come back to the Dharma, let the Dharma soak in. So thank you so much for coming. So my name is Erin, and before I actually introduce myself a little bit more, I would love to find out just a little bit about the folks in the room today. And this is something that we often do at City Center, so just bear with me. So I'd love to know how many of you have been coming to the Zendo to practice for 20 years or more. And I see, one, two, three, four, five. In case the recording's working, I see maybe like five or six people. How about 15 to 19 years? No takers. 10 to 14. Oh, a few. Okay, five to nine. One person. Excellent. How about two to four?

[02:12]

A few more people. Anyone for one to 12 months? Quite a number of people. How about a few weeks? Okay, a number of people. And is there anyone here for the very first time this morning? Wow, welcome. So I really just want to extend a welcome to you all, and I sincerely hope that this morning you receive some practice nourishment, whether you've been coming here for a very long time or you just walked in for the first time today, or a combination of both, which sometimes is not how it is. And also, as a city person, I just want to encourage you all and encourage myself as well to... really enjoy this beautiful landscape, so precious, and all of its healing, transformative qualities, as after the talk is over, just to walk around a little bit. So to introduce myself a little bit more, as mentioned, my name is Erin, and I am a resident priest at City Center, but I work outside of the temple at a local independent high school that some of you may have heard of called Lick Wilmerding.

[03:26]

I don't know if anybody heard of Lick Wilmerding. couple of people. So I'm in my 13th year at LIC both directing and teaching in a program that we have there called Body Mind Education, which for short we call BME. And so instead of PE, which if you're not from the United States is usually the acronym for physical education, we have BME. So in this program, we offer yoga-based movement classes, mindfulness, indoor climbing, and then we also have health and wellness sessions on a variety of topics for our students, and it's a required course, currently a three-semester required course. And I bring this up just because I feel... so blessed to have both of these communities of San Francisco Zen Center and Lick Wilmerding community as part of my practice. And I really enjoy exploring how the two communities kind of come together, just especially in their engaged, caring, and social justice-oriented kind of approach to the world.

[04:38]

So that's part of what you'll hear a little bit of today is coming together of that. And so what I most wanted to explore with you this morning are some thoughts about the great potential of our bodhisattva vow and our bodhisattva practice towards enacting positive change in the world. And in case anyone is unfamiliar with Buddhist vocabulary, I'm sure you've probably heard of a Buddha. And Buddhas are usually described or defined as beings who are awakened beings. And bodhisattvas are described or defined as awakening beings. And this morning I saw this kind of lovely description from a well-known Soto Zen teacher called Uchiyama Roshi. And he describes the bodhisattva as an ordinary person. who takes up a course in his or her life that moves in the direction of a Buddha.

[05:43]

You're a bodhisattva, I'm a bodhisattva. Actually, anyone who directs their attention, their life, to practicing the way of life of a Buddha is a bodhisattva. So bodhisattvas are beings who have experienced a direct and felt experience of what's called bodhicitta. And bodhicitta is an actual, physical and complete mix of physical emotional experience of wanting to wake up for all beings and wanting to direct one's life, one's life's work towards the benefit of all beings to help everyone awaken. And bodhicitta, this spark, which is often described as spontaneous spark of compassion, is the foundation of of our bodhisattva practice. And so here at San Francisco Zen Center, we chant what are called the bodhisattva vows, usually a couple of times a day, and sometimes a little bit even more officially in our ceremonies, like the bodhisattva full moon ceremony, which I'm sure you probably just had, and our ordination ceremonies as well.

[07:05]

as well. And they're a kind of a job description for bodhisattvas. And we are actually going to chant them today at the end of the talk. So I would say that these vows form the basis of all of our practice activities. And so sometimes when people, including me, get a little confused or just kind of wondering, what am I doing here? Why am I staring at this wall? Why am I chopping this carrot so slowly? Whatever it might be, I think it's useful and important and encouraging to remember the vow of the bodhisattva and how the practices here kind of make space for this vow, for the bodhicitta seed to be nourished and the vow to actually manifest. So I think that one important feature of of the bodhisattva vows is that when you hear them, and I'll tell you what they are in a moment, especially if you just walked in here today, you won't know what I'm talking about, that they sound like impossible promises to make.

[08:16]

They're logically not, they don't really make sense to a logical mind. And when I tell you a little bit more about why this, Bodhisattva vow is so much on my mind today. Hopefully, you'll understand a little bit about why I think this is such a big deal to celebrate and commit to what sounds impossible. So our Bodhisattva vows, as we translate them here at San Francisco Zen Center, go like this. Beings are numberless. I vow to save them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to become it. So from a logical, rational mind, these vows really are impossible.

[09:19]

Nonetheless, we chant and we commit to them. every day and throughout the day, several times a day, and hopefully also remember and feel the vow in us as we carry out various practice activities that are part of life here or life outside, depending on what kind of practice flavor, practice container you have. The sense of saying yes to what's impossible speaks to the essence of bodhisattva activity. and the value of this attitude and view in the context of our cultural and global challenges that we're facing right now. Saying yes over and over and together with the support of our community, which another feature of Zen practice is that we practice together. We make a big deal out of practicing together. In doing this, we really awaken the strength

[10:22]

to face ancient, tangled, twisted systems of thought and being that seem impenetrable or impossible to shift. And through doing this over and over, we have the power to slowly shift them. And so this is really the context I want you to, especially if you just walked in here today, to understand that feeling of the bodhisattva vow and the sort of... our constant, okay, I'll say yes to this. I'll say yes to this impossible thing as I tell you a story from my teaching. So this past fall, I've been part of a collaboration to launch a new class for our 10th graders focused on sexuality. And it's a semester-long class. And also for those of you who aren't from the United States, a 10th grader here is usually around 15 or 16 years old.

[11:24]

So they're pretty young. And so the name of the course, we gave it a very fancy academic title with a colon. And it goes like this. Explorations of Human Sexuality, colon, informed choices, caring relationships, and safer communities from the inside out. And one of the reasons we decided to start this class is that we realized through hearing stories from our students and alumni, parents, faculty and staff, just all of us in the community, that having a very small unit about sexuality, which we used to have just at the end of ninth grade year, was really not enough to support and sustain our students as they kind of launched into this realm of their sexual being, and kind of deal with the level of ancient twisted karma, as we call it, around sexuality that our culture holds and that pervades us.

[12:34]

Many students had experienced real difficulty and sometimes danger or threat from other students and students outside of the school as they tried to negotiate everything from identity to body image to consent. to social pressures and connection, to relationships and other themes. And I'm sure many people in this room, some of those intersections of issues and themes might be why you're here today, and it's not that it ends when we're teenagers. It's still part of our reality. So we decided to create this... mandated, dedicated, and curated space for the students to explore together and also to kind of hear their understanding and views of aspects of sexuality and guide them in places where they may have absorbed misinformation from the wider culture.

[13:38]

So the actual story that I wanted to bring up comes from mid-fall this past year, and we spent about six weeks exploring the theme of consent. And our goal really was to focus on what does consent really mean beyond the surface, beyond just the words or the idea that we might have, and also to look at outside influences on our sexual selves. And the outside influence that we kind of dove into most thoroughly was around gender codes and how the various codes that we absorb from before birth influence how we think, feel, speak, and act around sexuality. So at first, the students were quite upset about having to learn about consent again. Some of them said, oh, my God, we already talked about this last year.

[14:44]

Consent is not that hard to understand. We already get it. Why do we keep talking about this? Can't we just have a free block instead? So, of course, we just went forward and we reviewed the basics of consent, which, of course, they all understood 100%. And then I shared with them a special piece from the New York Times that some of you probably saw last spring, which I think is called 45 Consent Stories. And you can actually, it's online, you can look it up. In this piece, 45 different college students share their stories about navigating consent in college. And many of them are survivors of sexual assaults or just had experiences that were not completely consensual or that kind of disrupt our idea of maybe how easy consent is to understand.

[15:46]

So after reading the stories, thinking about them, talking about them, making posters about them, my students began to back down somewhat from their prior status as consent experts. And you know, they had a lot of questions, and I think they were a little taken aback by some of the stories. Many of the stories described technically consensual encounters, especially with regard to our definition in California, affirmative consent, in which yes means yes. There has to be a yes to establish consent. So in many of those stories, there actually was consent from that standpoint. But while there was a verbal yes, there wasn't an actual wholehearted yes or for whatever reason, one of the people in the encounter felt that they owed a yes or that they had to say yes or that they were frightened of what worst thing might happen if they actually spoke up for themselves and said something different.

[16:54]

So many of the students were kind of shaken up by this. because I think in their minds, and many of them are, a few of them probably are sexually active, but many of them, it's still intellectual for them, and so they couldn't quite figure out why a person would say yes if they didn't really want to be sexual. So, fortunately, following the initial resistance from my students to cover the topic again, bringing up these stories really complicated their experience and their idea, and opened up the space for us to actually dig a little bit more under the surface and look at some of the nuances, why consent is so complicated, why it's important to have this conversation, and some of the deeper issues that feed into our relationship to sexuality that we can't easily fix by just understanding consent on an intellectual level.

[17:56]

And so I'm sure that we can all relate to this in terms of our practice, right? That understanding, having an intellectual understanding of the teachings can be a gateway, can be a way to engage with the teachings, but it's still kind of different from having that saturated body-mind experience of a teaching that digs beyond the intellect. Okay, we're getting closer to the part of the story that is the reason why I'm thinking so much about bodhisattva vow and the power of bodhisattva vow. So towards the end of the consent unit, I think the last couple of days, I asked the students, what would it really take to create a culture that truly understands and embodies consent on all levels? And the students wrote... some journal entries about this. They posted some of their ideas up on the wall, and they talked about it in small groups.

[19:03]

And then we had a larger group discussion just to kind of share out some of the ideas people had. So some people said that they felt like earlier and more consistent education could help. Some of them mentioned that there should be more demand for for accountability from bodies of power in institutional spaces where sexual assault takes place. And some thought change could come from more forceful and public punishment for people who use sex to hurt others. But here's the part of the class that really reached inside and kind of grabbed me by the heart, and the part of the story I'm still thinking about and grappling with in terms of my own practice and bodhisattva vow. One student raised a hand after a while and said, you know, Aaron, no offense, but I think people are just saying these things because it's what you expect us to say.

[20:05]

It's the right answer. But you know what? I don't think any of us can actually change the culture. How can I change the culture? Culture was there before me, and it dictates the rules of how I'm supposed to be an act. It's already there. And it's powerful. Honestly, I don't think anything we do here could make much of a difference or actually change the power structures and codes that are already in place. They're just there and they're not going to change. I don't think anything I do actually matters that much in the larger culture. I'm gonna say that last one. I copied this from their journal, don't tell them. I don't think anything I do actually matters that much in the larger culture. So it's a tradition in our school that when we gather in groups, if people in the group agree with something that someone said, we snap.

[21:09]

And so as soon as that child spoke up and said this thing, the majority of students, not all of them, but the majority of students started to snap. And then, fueled by this accord, another student raised a hand and said, you know, it's just too difficult to go against what's expected of me. I'm pretty sure most people our age aren't going to be the ones to seriously challenge the culture. I'm a boy, and I'm supposed to do boy things and act a certain way, including taking the lead sexually. There are expectations and norms I have to live by and follow. and the price is too high if I start doing things that go against the rules. My friends would think I was weird, and I'm pretty sure they wouldn't want me as part of their group anymore if I started speaking up or calling them out on their actions or not acting the way that they expected me to act. So I think as you can imagine, when I heard students speaking in this way and snapping their agreement, even though I'm used to working with teenagers, I know it can be...

[22:23]

dramatic, I felt somewhat surprised and saddened. In fact, when the first kid spoke up about her feeling of powerlessness in the face of dominant cultural norms, I felt an actual physical sharp pain in my heart and stomach. And my body, especially my hands, started to shake. And luckily it was the end of the class, so I got to go. And I just have been thinking about all this ever since. kind of what are we doing to our young people? I had some idea that hearing other people's stories, hearing the 45 consent stories, would inspire students to want to be culture changers, would arouse the spark of bodhicitta in them. I imagine they would immediately start strategizing about how they could tackle this issue as a group. But most of them just expressed a feeling of lacking agency. And along with that, a willingness to rest in complacency rather than face the potential suffering of critique from their peers or from losing privilege or status.

[23:31]

And this is just a discussion about sexuality. We have in our school many other kinds of discussions that are happening where this comes up, including race and ethnicity and various other tangled, twisted, karmic issues that our culture perpetuates. So I bring up this story because I wonder how many people, and not just teenagers, walk around with this kind of defeated view or even just a shred of this kind of thinking, a little shard of it in our hearts. No doubt kids absorb it from somewhere. I wonder how many of us have a secret, or even not so secret, because some of us are willing to say it out loud, sense of powerlessness, or even worse, a sense that making a move towards real positive change, that could really be a benefit to beings, would be too costly in light of what we have to lose.

[24:36]

How many of us have been desensitized to or shut down by overwhelm, by the onslaught of discouraging stories in our culture, and or by the strange cultural comforts many of us have become accustomed to that keep us bound and not completely committed to our bodhisattva vows. Kind of cut off from that sense of yes, I say yes to the impossible. So in the same article that I read about bodhisattva vow from Uchiyama Roshi, he highlights the distinction between bodhisattvas and what he calls ordinary human beings, ordinary people. Ordinary people live thinking only about their own personal, narrow circumstances, connected with their desires. In contrast to that, a bodhisattva, though undeniably still an ordinary human being, like everyone else, lives by vow.

[25:42]

Because of that, the significance of his or her life is not the same. For us as bodhisattvas, all aspects of life, including the fate of humanity itself, live within us. It is with this in mind that we work to discover and manifest the most vital and alive posture that we can take in living out our life. It strikes me that our precious bodhisattva vow to commit to the impossible and to commit to it over and over again, even if and especially because it seems impossible to enact. These vows need our constant attention, watering, and nourishment to stay alive and vital. And in their verb form, bodhisattva, awakening being, awakening being, it strikes me that some of the most pervasive aspects of our culture, including our speed, our excessive addiction to screens and gadgets of all kinds, our extreme intolerance for discomfort and difficulty, even on a small level, cut us off from real lived sensory experience and contribute to the hardened shell covering our spark of bodhicitta.

[27:01]

So this past week at City Center, we had for the very first time or maybe not, maybe it's happened before, an evening devoted to celebrating bodhisattva practice and inspiration from the past year. The event began with a chance for folks in the community to share their favorite bodhisattva stories of the year. I loved this pilot ceremony. I think it's important that we seek out, listen to, share and celebrate stories about taking on the impossible at great risk, especially with young people, but with each other as well. And to renew our vows and nourish our inner seeds of inspiration as we enter this new year and as we enter each moment, really new year, each moment. For me, hearing these stories awakens that quivery, gentle tenderness of bodhicitta like adding much needed fuel to a fire.

[28:06]

It's so important that we balance our bodhisattva practice of hearing the cries of the world with acknowledging and celebrating those who respond to the cries on a regular basis in myriad creative ways, putting their lives in danger sometimes. So we don't forget that we can and must face the impossible, that we're powerful. that all aspects of life, including the fate of humanity itself, lives within us. I want to say this aloud here in this space and to encourage us all to get in touch with that deep, shaky, and vulnerable quality that connects us to all beings and motivates our practice. I think this is an excellent time of year for this kind of reflection. with such a blanket of darkness, the potential challenges of holiday interactions, and the pain of seeing so many people in our area and in the world struggling for so many reasons.

[29:08]

The founder of this lineage, Eihe Dogen Zenji, who lived in 13th century Japan, focused on bodhicitta in many different writings and teachings. But one of my favorite passages from his work comes from the Shobogenzo Hotsubodaishin, which means arousing the aspiration for enlightenment, arousing, waking up Bodhicitta. Here, Dogen speaks to the powerful effects of Bodhicitta and thus Bodhisattva activity. After arousing this aspiration, when taking up the great earth, all of it turns into gold. when stirring the great ocean. It immediately turns into nectar. After arousing this aspiration, if you hold mud, stones, or pebbles, they also take up the aspiration for enlightenment. If you practice splashes of water, bubbles, or flames, they intimately bring forth the aspiration for enlightenment.

[30:17]

Thus, the offering of land, castles, spouses, children, men and women, the seven treasures, heads, eyes, marrow, brains, body, flesh, and limbs is crowded with arousing the aspiration for enlightenment, the vital activity of the aspiration for enlightenment. It's not without cause that minds and all things, self and other, come together. Therefore, at the moment you arouse the aspiration for enlightenment, myriad things become conditions that increase this aspiration. At each moment, all aspirations for enlightenment and attainments of the way are born and perish. If they were not born and did not perish at each moment, the unwholesome actions of the past moments would not go away. If the unwholesome actions in the past moments did not go away, wholesome actions in their future moments would not manifest at this moment.

[31:27]

In closing, I extend the wish that each person in this room be inspired to reconnect with their bodhisattva impulse and vow. May we rededicate ourselves to our lives of practice together and help each other along the way. May we never allow our Bodhisattva jewel, our Bodhicitta jewel, to be covered over by the challenges of the world. But instead, may we draw on this jewel as a source of strength to meet these challenges with courage, energy, and creativity. May we appreciate Bodhisattva activity in all forms, not limited to Buddhism, and express ongoing gratitude aloud. regularly so everyone can hear, so that everyone can join into the practice. And may we dedicate our practice to the benefit of all beings and all directions. So I want to thank you so much for your presence and attention this morning.

[32:33]

I look forward to talking with some of you a little bit later. There's a question and answer session where you're welcome to bring up your own stories, your own thoughts, your own questions about the topic or anything else. And Also, you can go out and enjoy the landscape, which I think is very, really a great stimulus, at least for me maybe as a city person, to awaken that feeling of tenderness, sincerity, and compassion. And I hope you all will share your bodhisattva stories with one another, whatever they might be, as you enjoy your tea. And now we actually get to chant. the Bodhisattva vows together in a moment. Thank you very much for your practice and your presence. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support.

[33:42]

For more information, visit sfzc.org. and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[33:51]

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