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. Good morning, everyone. This thing is working and you can all hear me? Okay, great. So, welcome to Beginner's Mind Temple. And often on Saturdays, because it is a day that we sort of target, as it were, newer people, you know, offering meditation instruction, et cetera, and introductions to the temple, there are often a lot of people who are here for the first time. So if it doesn't embarrass you, would those of you who are here for the first time mind raising your hands? Okay, keep them raised. I want to see how many folks. Okay, well, welcome. Welcome to Beginner's Mind Temple. Very nice to be here.

[01:02]

I'm always honored to be invited to speak. So, as I said, mostly, I think that mostly on Saturdays, people who speak tend to sort of talk more of an introductory sort of talk, give sort of more of an introductory talk, you know, aimed at people who may be here for the first time or relatively new. In fact, I'm not going to do that today. Not just because I'm being perverse, but because I really believe... Well, that too. But no, because it has been my experience, and I really believe that sometimes speaking ahead of the understanding of those who are listening can be an encouragement to explore further. So if there are things that you hear and that sort of pick your interest, but you don't understand them... I think it's something that you might be interested enough to continue to explore.

[02:05]

And I believe that our practice is about exploration and experiment. So if I say things that you don't understand, it's okay, really. Just take what you need and leave the rest. So today I would like to talk about stories. And we are, as a species, sort of storytelling creatures, right? And there are a lot of stories. There are the stories that we inherit. We inherit stories from our culture. We inherit stories from our families. We inherit stories from the people around us. And then there are also the stories that we tell ourselves. our private stories, if you will, our private stories about ourselves, our private stories about the world and how it is, our place in it, our relationships with others.

[03:09]

So there's a constant narrative going on, I believe, in our minds, a constant storytelling mechanism. And, of course, all religious traditions have stories as well, you know. Adam and Eve is a story. Gabriel appearing to the prophet Muhammad is a story. The burning bush that Moses confronted is a story. Buddha's enlightenment is a story. There are lots of stories. All religious traditions have stories. That's part of the package. But you know, Zen is maybe not entirely unique, but it's certainly... In Zen, the stories are actually used for passing on the teaching in ways that they may not be so much in other religious traditions. So in other religious traditions, you'll have something like a confession of faith, or you'll have a holy book that lays out the doctrine, that sort of thing.

[04:20]

And Buddhism has some of this as well, but in Zen particularly, we tend to pass on the teaching via the stories. And we call these stories, many of them, we call them koans. And a koan is actually a Chinese judicial term from the Chinese system of law. And it basically means something like a case history or a case study. It literally means a paper that sits on a magistrate's desk. So a precedent, if you will. And so our koans in the Zen tradition are the stories, the precedents... of the ways that our spiritual ancestors spoke and behaved. So here I'm going to tell you a few stories as we go on, right? Everybody likes stories, I hope. So here's one of the foundational stories of Zen, considered in some ways the foundational story of Zen. So this is the story. So the Buddha came and sat before the assembly.

[05:25]

And this is the time that he normally gave a talk, expounded the Dharma, expounded the teaching. But this time, he didn't do anything. He just reached down, picked up a flower, and held it up. And I can imagine everybody was kind of looking around going, okay. However, in this particular assembly, one of the Buddha's disciples, Mahakashapa, was there that day. and he looked at the Buddha holding up the flower and he smiled. And in at least one rendition of this particular story, the Buddha, seeing Mahakashapa smile, said, I have the treasury of the eye of the true Dharma and the wondrous mind of Nirvana, and I transmit it to Mahakashapa. Okay. So let's examine this story. So first of all, it doesn't really appear anywhere in the literature for almost 2,000 years after the Buddha's death.

[06:30]

So we can pretty much rule it out as something that happened historically. And that's not really a problem, right? Because stories speak to us whether they are historical or not. They don't lose value because they are stories. as the variously attributed saying goes, never let the facts stand in the way of a good story. But let's look at what this story might be saying to us, okay? Because there are layers in stories, right? They say many different things. They're multivalent. So on one hand, it's actually rather a nice kind of pretty story, right? I mean, here's the Buddha. He's sitting up there. He picks a flower up. I mean, who doesn't love flowers, right? And he smiles, and his devoted practitioner, Mahakashapa, understands and smiles back. That's actually rather pretty.

[07:31]

It's rather sweet, actually. You know, the sort of intimate connection between the Buddha and his disciple, Mahakashapa. Mahakashapa, by the way, is considered the first in the lineage of Zen teachers. And we'll talk a little bit more about that later. That's, you know, the story. But what is the meaning of the story, one of the meanings of the story, the sort of understory, if you will? There are several things happening here, I believe. First of all, only Makashapa gets it, whatever it is. So of all the nuns and monks, laywomen and laymen, the great fourfold assembly of practitioners... Only one is chosen by fate, by karma, by chance. And when I was thinking about this, it reminded me of the words of that great American Zen teacher, Emily Dickinson.

[08:39]

You laugh, but I'm serious. She wrote, The soul selects her own society, then shuts the door. To her divine majority present no more. Unmoved, she notes the chariots pausing at her low gate. Unmoved, an emperor be kneeling upon her mat. I've known her from an ample nation. Choose one. Then close the valves of her attention like stone. So what we have here, I believe, is a sort of Buddhist version of divine selection. a kind of Calvinist predestination to salvation or damnation. Some, or in this case one, is chosen. The rest, regardless of virtue or desire, practice or deserving, are not chosen. Only Mahakashapa. In the words of Jesus from the Gospel of Matthew, to those who have it shall be given, from those who have not.

[09:50]

it shall be taken away. These sound like harsh words, but actually it's kind of the way the world works. Just pay attention. So then, we might have to ask ourselves, what was it exactly that Maha Kachapa got? What did he understand? Well, the second message of this story, which is in line with Zen rhetoric, is that awakening, liberation, enlightenment, that unfortunate word, is in fact wordless and beyond concept and language as it is passed from true mind to true mind. This, of course, is entirely different from the vast literature of early Buddhism and later Buddhism in other schools in which liberation very clearly is based on being able to understand the teaching and its concepts reason and logic being crucial to awakening.

[10:51]

The other story embedded here is that because awakening, along with which goes, and this is important, along with which goes authenticity and authority, is something that is passed from mind to mind, wordlessly, and in ways that cannot be described. are reduced to language. And therefore, it cannot be challenged. So another way of reading this lovely story about the Buddha holding up the flower and Mahakashapa smiling is that it really is, on some level at least, about authority, privilege, status, and power. Mao Zedong said, political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. And I think that it is useful to consider that all power of whatever kind is ultimately based on the ability to command compliance and therefore is ultimately based at least on the threat of violence.

[12:08]

There's another story that addresses this, another Zen story that addresses this. So Bodhidharma was the legendary, semi-legendary, first Zen ancestor in China. He was supposedly an Indian monk who came to bring Zen practice to China. And anyhow, he was interviewed by the emperor, Emperor Wu, who said, among other things, I have caused many Buddhist temples to be built and many Buddhist monks to be ordained. how much merit have I gained in doing these things? Bodhidharma said, no merit at all. The commentary says that Bodhidharma immediately drenched the emperor with dirty water. Yeah. In other interviews, in another interview, the emperor asked Bodhidharma, what is the highest meaning of the holy truths? Bodhidharma replied, vast emptiness, nothing holy. There's a lesson here.

[13:13]

Several, of course. One is that speaking truth to power is all very well. It is noble and heroic, but it's always good to have an escape route planned. And because no one, particularly emperors, take well to being drenched with dirty water. So Bodhidharma took the next train out of Dodge, went to the next country, and spent the following nine years sitting in a cave in silence. Bodhidharma was nobody's fool. He learned his lesson. So, that's another story. Let's move to a slightly different venue for our next one. This is a story which is, I think, seasonally germane, although it has neither plot nor characters. It goes like this. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator and with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

[14:22]

These, of course, are Thomas Jefferson's words from the Declaration of Independence. And you might ask, what does this have to do with Buddhism? Absolutely nothing. Which is why I bring them up. these words, I think, serve as a timely foil to the teaching of Buddhism. So you'll notice that Jefferson maintains that the truths he enumerates are self-evident and that they depend upon God to guarantee them. In Buddhism, there is no God, no creator, We are not endowed unalienably with anything beyond our karma, the cause and effect of our actions. Neither are these rights unalienable because they can be and are constantly being taken away.

[15:28]

Take my word for it. I coordinate our prison outreach system here. The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness can be taken away at the drop of a hat. So, on the one hand, we have Jefferson's aspirational statement, and on the other hand, we have Buddhism's rather more clear-eyed, if less heartwarming, assessment of our situation, that we are not, in fact, being watched over by a benevolent deity who will intervene in our lives, in human history, to make things better. Sometimes, you know, the Buddha is compared to a physician. who diagnoses and prescribes for our various infirmities. And this is actually fairly accurate. It's a pretty good metaphor in that the Four Noble Truths, often considered the sort of bedrock of Buddhist teaching, are actually presented, were presented, in terms of the sort of the medical model of the Buddhist time.

[16:38]

So there's the acknowledgement of the problem, right? First noble truth, diagnosis, like what's going on, prescription, what to do about it, and finally the method of applying the cure. So the Buddha is throughout history often called the great physician. So that works. I also like to think of the Buddha as a terrorist. The Buddha tosses a flower into the assembly where it explodes and our bright smiles litter the grass. If you are not frightened by Buddhist teaching when you first hear it, you haven't really understood what it's saying. Buddhist practice is not designed to help us to a more secure sense of self.

[17:41]

it is certainly not designed to improve our self-esteem. In fact, it is to demolish our sense of self ruthlessly, of who we are, of what the world is, and what our place is in it. Buddhism encourages us to follow every idea, every system of thought, every story, including Buddhism, to the end. where they all collapse. Everything that is examined breaks. So not only is the rug being pulled out from under us, but the floor in the earth as well, leaving us, as one of the koans has it, with body exposed in the golden wind. And then what will you do? What will we do? So I want to emphasize, however, that this is not simply destruction for destruction's sake. not any sort of nihilism, but rather a call to courage, the sort of courage it takes to test each thing, to search for a truth that holds up to our most painstaking investigation and to our own experience, to wield the sort of manjushri of prajna, of penetrating wisdom that cuts through delusion.

[19:06]

So we also, I think, need stories that encourage us, as well as stories that sort of clear the detritus, clear things out of the way. So I've got a couple of other stories. And I brought a show and tell. The first is the story of grace. Here is an apple. Here is an apple. I could have picked anything to illustrate my point, but I figured an apple, since we're telling stories, has a certain iconic resonance, right? So this apple, which I paid 86 cents for at Safeway, oh, was that product placement? I'm sorry. This apple is the entire history of the universe. This apple is the detritus of exploded stars.

[20:15]

This apple is a perfect history of trees. This apple is the combined labor of unthinkable numbers of people. This apple is rain and soil and sunshine and darkness and bees and wind and women and men. This apple is farms and trucks and stores and and money and underpaid workers. There is no way we could ever afford to pay with money or with service for what a single apple costs in real terms. So, everything is like this. Everything comes to us through grace, undeserved and unearned. a free gift, everything. That's one story. The other story is this.

[21:22]

I vow to live and to be lived for the benefit of all beings. This is the story of the vow, the Bodhisattva vow, This is one of the vows that we take during our precept ceremony, and there are 16 of them. But I believe that they are all summed up in this one. This is the heart vow. But seriously, how can we believe in such a thing, in such a story? What meaning can such a statement have in the midst of vast emptiness with nothing holy? We create... the vow, by taking the vow through our words and through our intentions and our ridiculous aspirations. And when we have created the vow, we give ourselves over to the vow. And in doing so, we transcend the self, the neurotic self, the self based on greed, hatred, and delusion,

[22:36]

the self that requires continual esteem to feed it. We live through grace, and in acknowledgement of that, in gratitude, we give ourselves to service. A monk asked the Zen master, Yunmen, what is the work of a whole lifetime? Yunmen replied, an appropriate response. So our entire life of practice is about discovering an appropriate response to grace and to the vow. At least that's my story, and I'm sticking to it. So that's really all I have to say right now. If you found anything I said useful, I'm glad of that. If you found anything that I said disturbing or distressing, I'm very glad of that. But, you know, remember, these are all just stories.

[23:39]

And anyhow, everything I say is wrong. 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, visit sfzc.org and click Giving.

[24:12]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_96.77