This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening. I was just remembering last time I spoke at the city center, it took me a long, you know, half an hour to pack my robes and pack my car, drive across the bridge, you know. find parking that was probably the longest period of time and then going into the building and having a room and so on you know and this is amazing I just sat down at my kitchen table and here you are it's so great you know I don't know if we'll be able to go back to the old way of meeting in person but I hope we can I hope we can I wanted to start by looking around the room I was doing a little bit of that a minute ago and let's see I've got to go to the gallery view here Some of you are old friends I haven't seen for a while and others of you I'm just meeting now, but just give me a second to look around at all of you and thank you for coming.

[01:11]

Yeah, great. Some of us have practiced atasahara together. How lovely, how lovely. Great, wonderful. There's another page. Excuse me. I'll be right back. Great. Wonderful. Wonderful. And I also wanted to mention that I just got an email today from, I forget who sent it. I think it was Dana. And it was some... publicity that had gone out around the beautiful mural that's been painted on what used to be a grocery store across the street from the building. I lived in the building for many, many years. And it's so beautiful.

[02:13]

I just am so happy you all have that to look at, the Amanda Gorman painting. Anyway, for those of you who are in the city center, some of you aren't. But anyway, check it out. It's absolutely gorgeous. And I know Arlene had a great deal to do with that, and I don't know who else, but it's a wonderful gift to the neighborhood and to the city and to everyone, really. So I know our time is somewhat short, which is fine. So I'll dive in to what I wanted to talk about tonight. I think a number of you may be in the January intensive at Green Gulch, which is being led by... senior Dharma teacher, Reb Anderson. And you probably know, if you are, that we're studying the Lotus Sutra, the Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the True Dharma. And so I thought I would pick up on some of that teaching this evening as well and share with you some of my own thoughts about one of the parables. You may already know that the Lotus Sutra is the most popular and influential text among East Asian Buddhists.

[03:22]

And it is the basis for all of the major schools of Buddhism, of the Mahayama tradition, rather, including our own, the Zen tradition. So before I talk about the Lotus Sutra, I wanted to first share with you a story about a duck. This is a story that I told several years ago at Green Gulch for the children's program. And so I thought I would invite all of you to imagine if you like yourselves as children. as we once were, with that eyes and ears of a beginner. So once upon a time there was a mother duck who laid five eggs in a nest by a lake. Night and day she sat patiently on those eggs to keep them warm, and then one day four little ducks appeared in the nest. But the mother duck had to wait just a little longer for her last egg to open. A few more days went by, and then a few more.

[04:23]

And then after a while, the other ducks went and waddled down to the water to go for a swim. So just as the mother duck was starting to worry, very slowly the last egg began to crack and to open. But the little duck didn't come out. She stayed inside the egg, holding the broken shell over her head. So the mother duck went down to the water where all the other ducklings were waiting and called out to her. Welcome to this beautiful world, my darling daughter. Come on down and take a swim with us. But the little duck stayed right in the nest, shaking her head sadly. And then she said, But mother, I don't know how to swim. Well, the other duck said, Of course you do. You're a duck. And they all paddled around together, singing their happy duck songs. But no matter how hard they tried to convince her to come into the water, the little duck sat quietly in the nest, just shaking her head.

[05:23]

Hearing about the little duck who couldn't swim, a wise old duck flew over to the nest and spoke to her very kindly, telling her that she needn't worry at all because there was a magic stick that she could borrow to hold herself up in the water. The stick was called a skyhook. All you need to do is hook onto the sky and you can swim. And then the old duck showed her how it worked and gave the little duck the magic stick. Everyone was overjoyed as she went into the water with her skyhook and swam just like everybody else all day long. Well, many days later, while the family of ducks were resting on the grass, a fox came sneaking up behind them. The old wise duck saw the fox and cried out for everyone to jump into the water and be quick, which they did. But the little duck who couldn't swim forgot to grab her stick and jumped into the water without it. What do you think happened then?

[06:26]

Exactly. Suddenly she realized that she really could swim, just like all the other ducks, and so she did for the rest of her days, and they all lived happily ever. ever after. So this other story I have for you this evening is also about a skyhook in the form of the magical tricks used by the Buddha to help teach us humans how to manage our lives while learning, just like the little duck, that we already know how to swim, that we are already complete in every way. The story of the parable of the prodigal son is one such story from the Lotus Sutra, which is in a sequence of parables. And it tells us, each of them tells us again and again, that this very place at this very moment is the pathway to Buddhahood. If only we would just get out of our own way.

[07:27]

At the beginning of the Sutra in chapter one, we're told about a very large gathering. on Vulture Peak, during which the Buddha has entered into a deep meditative trance, after which a ray of light appears from the center of his forehead. There's a tuft of white hairs and this bright light comes shooting out. And it's such a great light that illuminates thousands of Buddha fields throughout the universe, which according to the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, Manjushri, indicates to the congregation that the Buddha is about to expound his ultimate teaching. the highest meaning of the holy truths, vast emptiness, nothing holy. And then in chapter 2, the Buddha explains that he too uses skillful means, skyhooks, to adapt his teachings to the capacities of his audience, such as telling an encouraging story to some young people about a little duck. The Buddha then tells this great gathering that the ultimate purpose of all of his teachings is to cause sentient beings,

[08:35]

Again, that would be us. To obtain the insight of the Buddha and to enter the pathway of an awakened life. In other words, not only to teach them, but also to show them, as the wise old duck had done, that they truly have been born to swim. So the next few chapters of the sutra, the Buddha begins to use parables to illustrate various aspects of his teaching. Each one of these is given to help us to build some confidence in ourselves. And then he promises us that through our effort and through our willingness to be taught, including in our modern idiom, our willingness to receive some feedback or some job reviews and so on, that we will realize what is most deeply true about ourselves, that very truth that brings joy to humankind. So part of the great popularity of the Lotus Sutra is this very promise that all beings have the same potential to become Buddhas and to awaken in this very lifetime.

[09:43]

The lotus flower itself symbolizes that we human beings who are rooted in the mud of delusion can come to flower above the waterline and to open into the sunlight in the air of awakening. You know, I can swim. says the duck. You can indeed, says her mother. In chapter four is where Faith and Understanding is the name of that chapter, that the parable of the prodigal son is told to the assembly by the senior disciples of the Buddha who have just had a realization about themselves, who have come to realize that they have been wandering away from the promise of Buddhahood, have become neglectful of their own bodies, and had mistakenly thought of enlightenment as a formless void, immaterial and without function, kind of absence. And then they congratulate themselves on having come to understand the Buddha's skillful teaching, thereby acquiring, as they proclaim, this is from the Sutra, so great and good a gain, an invaluable jewel, and yet, without any seeking on our parts whatsoever, that perfect jewel of understanding.

[10:59]

of complete awakening, which had been there all the while. You know, I can swim. I can swim. So this radical teaching of the Lotus Sutra not only includes the fact that all beings have this potential to realize Buddhahood, but that such a realization is available to each of us, you know, right now. This is it. Right now. There is no other time. There is no other place. There is no other person. So where else could enlightenment possibly be? The parable itself is very simple, actually. It's an easy-to-understand story. And I often tell students that this parable is the basis for how we train ourselves here at the Zen Center, that this parable is the skyhook of the Zen tradition. So for those of you who don't already know the story, It's rather simple, as I said. A young man has left home and forgotten who he truly is.

[12:00]

When by chance he wanders back to his hometown, his father, who is now a wealthy lord with a vast estate, calls out to him, My son! My son! But the boy, in disbelief, thinks he is being ridiculed, and he runs off in terror. The father then sends his guards to capture the boy who faints on the spot, certain that he is about to be imprisoned and executed. So how many times have each of us felt some kind of inferior feeling, like lesser than, about ourselves, shrunk away and behaved in ways that reinforce that feeling, thereby confirming to ourselves our status as unworthy of admiration or even of love? In fact, this... Low self-esteem is one of the most insidious afflictions of our culture and of our age. So the rest of this story has to do with the father, the Buddha, setting up skillful devices to attract his son, starting by sending two men in disguise to offer the poor man a job at double wages.

[13:07]

They offer him a job cleaning out the stables. So the poor man agrees, well, that's something I can do. Here at Green Gulch, and I'm sure it is the same at the city center, we offer new students, the ones we call guest students, piles and piles of our dirty dishes. Well, that's something I think I can do. That's certainly where I started my career at Zen Center. Sometime later, the father, too, disguises himself as a crewhead. He goes to the stables and, in a very stern voice, pretends to admonish the other workers not to be lazy. He then tells his son that he's not been lazy. that he has never been deceitful or angry or complained about the work. And because of that, he will from this time on be treated like his very own begotten son. So little by little, the poor man is given more instructions and responsibilities, first for the stables and then the household and the granaries and the investments and finally the entirety of his father's estate.

[14:08]

But even so, the poor man continues to live in the stables. unable to abandon the sense he has of his inferiority to those that he imagines to be more worthy than himself. So the father, knowing that his son's ideas about the world have been enlarged and his skills have been developed, commands his son, along with all of his retainers and ministers, to assemble around him. Seeing that his own end is growing near, the father tells the entire assembly, This really is my son, and I really am his father, and now all the wealth which I possess belongs entirely to him. When the poor son hears these words from his father, so great was his joy at such unexpected news that he thinks thus, without any mind for receiving them or any effort to do so on my part, these treasures now come to me of themselves. Having told this story, the disciples now declare to the Buddha, The very rich elder in this story is you, dear teacher, the world-honored one, and we are as your children.

[15:20]

You have always declared that we are your children, but because of the sufferings of greed, hate, and delusion, we have borne all kinds of torments, being deluded and ignorant and enjoying only our attachments to trifles. So with the simplest elements of this story in mind, you know, that being the use of skillful means, you know, of the skyhook, I want to talk a little bit more about the value of training, such as the elder gave to his prodigal son. You know, here at the Zen Center, I think we consider the primary value in all of our activities to be training. We often refer to ourselves as Zen training temples. And training is... given in order to reveal to ourselves and to each other those essential values and skills that are conducive to living a life of happiness within the constraints of human life. In one of his earliest teachings, the Buddha said, I teach just two things.

[16:24]

I teach suffering and I teach the end of suffering. And that's what he did. I think suffering isn't so hard for us to understand. It comes with the territory, the territory that we traverse from the day that we're born until the day of our death. And it comes in a familiar and repeating set of conditions. These conditions were outlined by the Buddha in his very first sermon called Setting Rolling the Wheel of the Law. The law in Buddhism is also called the Dharma or the Truth. And this truth is for each of us to validate for ourselves. As the Buddha told his own disciples, just try it out, this truth. And if it doesn't suit you, if it doesn't work for you, well, let it go and try another one. So here's what he said about the truth of suffering. This is from the first sermon. Birth is suffering. Aging is suffering.

[17:28]

Sickness is suffering. Death is suffering, sorrow and lamentation, pain and grief and despair are suffering. Associating with the loathed is suffering. Dissociation from the loved is suffering. In short, not to get what one wants is suffering. So I would imagine that all of these examples of suffering in varying degrees are familiar to every one of us. You know, throughout the day, there's probably not a single day that one or another of these hasn't arisen. The conditions for depriving us of what would otherwise be a life of unending and seamless pleasures as in our dreams. So it's therefore the Buddha went on to say that suffering as above is caused. And this is the hard part for us. It's caused by how we think. And how we think is driven by our desire for things to be the way we want, by our preferences.

[18:35]

So in the Buddha's own words, it's craving which produces the cycle of suffering. This is the second noble truth. Craving accompanied by relish and lust. Relishing this and that. In other words, craving for sensual desire. Craving for being, for existence, for life. Or craving for non-being. for non-existence, for death. In other words, wishing or scheming and planning for things that we must have, or on the other hand, must eliminate, is the source of all of our suffering. And then what are those wishes, schemes, plans, and desires made from? They are made from ideas, from notions and thoughts, from words. We build our house of cards out of our thinking. out of our minds, which indeed we often are. Learning to see how our unhappiness is related to this particular habit of mind called craving is the basic training program for all of us who endeavor to study the Buddha way.

[19:43]

In order to understand this training a little better, I find it useful to be reminded again and again that these habits of mind formed from ideas into patterns and shapes, are what I am using, like my glasses, to see the world. It is no accident that the ideas that I use to see the world look exactly like the world that I see. The world of my preferences, my judgments, my limitations, my terrors, and my delights. A world in which not getting what I want is suffering. So I have really come to appreciate a term that's used in the mind-only teachings of Buddhism, which I have been studying this last year to some extent. The term is emotionalized conceptualizations, those strong feelings which come up together with our thoughts. In other words, we believe that how we feel and what we think is simply the truth.

[20:47]

That what we feel and how we think is the truth. However, the Buddha said, to the contrary, those emotionalized concepts are the cause of your suffering. For example, the prodigal son, who believed he was inferior to his father and fainted in terror when he was summoned to the palace, was certain he was going to be imprisoned and executed. So after detailing the truth of how and why we suffer, the Buddha then went on to teach his second and most important message. that there is an end to suffering. And that's the one that got all of our attention. The end of suffering, he declared, is the fading and ceasing, the giving up, the relinquishing, the letting go, and rejecting of that attachment we have to our emotionalized conceptualizations. The end of suffering is the fading and ceasing, the giving up, the relinquishing, the letting go, and rejecting of that attachment.

[21:50]

we have to our emotionalized conceptualizations. In other words, the end of suffering is to leave the skyhook on the grass and jump into the water with your friends. And before we do that, we need to make use of those skyhooks or skillful means that have been given to us by wise old ducks or by our wise old elders, just as the poor son did in growing into his true worth as the heir of his father's estate. It was his willingness to be taught, actually, that made the huge difference. His willingness to receive the offerings of greater and greater responsibility that brought him to full maturity as a man. At which point, when the letting go was complete, he himself was a Buddha, was the great father. So I hope that all of us, as the sons and daughters of good family, temporarily falling into poverty, will come to realize our own truest state, and that is that there is nothing whatsoever restraining us other than our own ideas of some more perfect and better world than the one that we're in, or some more perfect and better freedom, some more perfect and better self.

[23:10]

Once the Buddha saw how ideas themselves were all that troubled him, he felt a tremendous relief. He was enlightened up and he said things that no one had ever heard before. Things like no suffering, no cause of suffering, no cessation of suffering, no path to the cessation of suffering, no knowledge and no attainment with nothing to attain. This teaching from the Heart Sutra is a declaration of perfect wisdom that this is how the world was for the Buddha. You know, when his egg cracked open and all the colors and shapes and flavors and odors and sounds of the universe were set free. Inside and outside and no sides at all. You know, bodhisattva, hallelujah. May all beings in the universe be set free at last. May all of you, may all of us be set free at last. And thank you very much for your kind attention.

[24:13]

For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

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