I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good morning. An ancient Buddha said, The entire universe is the true human body. The entire universe is the gate of liberation. The entire universe is the eye of Vairochana.

[01:04]

The entire universe is the Dharma body of the self. So those of us who have been living together here at Gringotts for the last three weeks have been immersing our bodies and minds in a three-week intensive. And it just ended yesterday morning with two hits by a handless wooden mallet. And during this study period, all of us were benefited by the teaching talent of our abbess Linda Ruth Cutts and our Dharma teacher, senior Dharma teacher, Reb Anderson. Someone once called them affectionately the Minnesota Twins. Among the many things that they revealed to us during the practice period was how they met.

[02:16]

It's hard to believe, but over thirty years ago at the Minnesota State Fair, she was selling snow cones and he was delivering the ice. Some things don't change. So just about every morning one of them would deliver a class, give us a class, on the two core teachings of the Buddha, wisdom and compassion. And sometimes these two are imaged as a great bird, two wings, one wisdom, one compassion, which in order for us to be truly human must beat together. So this is just what all of us are practicing here at Gringotts Farm and Gliderport,

[03:27]

is how to get off the ground, soar and safely land. And yet, each time with the hit of the mallet, the study period comes to an end. Arising, abiding and ceasing. All things are like this, or so it seems. So what I want to talk about this morning is the practice issue that I was studying during this time. And I think of all the teaching stories about the Buddha, and there are many,

[04:29]

the one that I was most closely intimate with during this time was the story of home leaving. I've often thought of the story of the Buddha, or any great religious leader, teacher, guide, as a kind of diagram, or how-to of leading a spiritual life, a holy life. By that I mean a life that's whole, fully engaged. So the home leaving is where it all begins. And I want to propose that if any human being experiences themselves through these same elements of training, that they will fully engage with this life,

[05:32]

and they will experience the multiplicity of insights that come from this engagement. It's just like baseballs into gloves. Inquiry and response come up together. Sometimes it's a lob, and sometimes it's a zinger. And speaking of sports, it's called my bridge right there, bridge. Speaking of sports, I was at a restaurant with my friend Grace, and we were talking, and I had the great fortune of being seated just in front of her. Just next to a television set that was on, which I was raised by a television set, so it was a very happy thing.

[06:39]

Hi, Mom. And what was on at this time were these two very young and powerful women. I think it was the Australian Open. Is that right? Amazing. And they were pounding this ball back and forth to each other. And so I don't remember what Grace and I talked about. I mostly watched this sight. And when I got home later, I was thinking, well, how incredibly kind of them to offer each other this chance to witness their extraordinary capabilities as trained athletes. Who else but another champion could show you the limits and the outreaches

[07:46]

of how magnificent you actually are, like playing in front of a mirror? And then, of course, because I'm human, too, and I have these experiences of the mirror, I recognized in an instant the feeling the young woman had who missed a shot and threw her tennis racket on the ground. Damn! What is it that happens there at the very outreaches of who we are? That idea that we might have an arm just a half an inch longer. And who is it to blame for this lack? So when this body and mind, or any body and mind, are fully engaged, all of the component parts are completely visible, both the sweet and the stinky.

[08:50]

The entire universe is the eye of Vairochana. The entire universe is the Dharma body of the self. And what I believe is important about all of us learning to play out at our edge is that it's the only way we'll really find out how big we truly are and how much we really care. At the fullest extension of that knowing of ourselves is where the entire universe opens in and out as a free-swinging gate of liberation. Anyway, that's how the ancient Buddhas talk about it. But even so, our actual practice is very simple and very common,

[09:56]

just like tennis and bicycles and freeway driving. We put our bodies in a particular situation, and in this case, upright on a cushion called a zafu. And then wholeheartedly we explore the outreaches of our being. And we do this with this nearly unnameable element of our life called the mind. And the mind of ours, very much like the snow cones, comes in a large variety of flavors. There's hearing and seeing and smelling and tasting, touching, and our very favorite, thinking. As Linda Ruth called this flavor, daytime television.

[11:00]

I think it's useful for each of us to know and to be conscious of which of these particular channels is most clear and frequent for us. And it's different for different people. I happen to experience life most vividly through seeing. And my friend Tia hears things I can't hear. I can't even imagine. She's a big ear. Sometimes when we're together it's quite funny, because she's going, did you hear that? And I'm saying, did you see that? Neither one of us knows what the other one's talking about. For my friend Rusa, it's her nose, and for my friend Grace, it's reasoning. So I want to read you a passage from a Korean Zen master, Chin Yul. And this is an essay, a part of an essay called

[12:04]

Secrets of Cultivating the Mind. And it reads a little bit like 20 questions. In ancient times, a king asked a Buddhist sage, what is Buddhahood? The sage replied, seeing essence, is Buddhahood. King said, do you see essence? The sage said, I see the essence of enlightenment. The king said, where is essence? And the sage, essence is in function. The king, what function is this that it is not now visible? The sage, it is now functioning. It is just that you yourself do not see it. The king, does it exist in me?

[13:08]

Ever hopeful. The sage, whenever you act, that is it. When you are inactive, it is again hard to see. The king, when it is to be employed, how many places does it appear? The sage, when it appears, there must be eight places. Finally. Okay. The sage, oh no, the king, please explain those eight places to me. The sage, in the womb it is called the body. In society, it is called the person. In the eyes, it is called seeing. In the ears, it is called hearing.

[14:11]

In the nose, it distinguishes sense. In the tongue, it talks. In the hands, it grabs and holds. In the feet, it walks and runs. It manifests all over, including everything. Countless worlds are collected in a single atom. Those with insight know this is the Buddha nature, the essence of enlightenment. On hearing this teaching, the mind of the king was opened up to understanding. So the instructions that we give to a person for exploring themselves in the style of play we call Zen are very like the instructions that you would give

[15:13]

to the audience at the Australian Open. I was watching them. Very impressive. You sit still. You don't rattle your program. You muffle your coughs and sneezes. And you give your full, undivided attention to the players on the center court, withholding all applause and commentary until the final hit of the wooden mallet. So once the body and mind have settled themselves into the sanctuary of peaceful awareness, which is called Samatha, it becomes possible for us to reconsider some of our long-held opinions and notions

[16:14]

about reality. This reassessment from the calming practices of Samatha is called vipassana or insight practice. First, calming the mind, then discerning the real. You know, it's hard to appreciate the scenery from a galloping horse. So it was with this two-step effort that I was making my explorations into this subject of home leaving. And I wanted to revisit and study my long-held views and opinions about this very important aspect of the teaching. There's a part of the traditional story

[17:18]

of Shakyamuni Buddha's home leaving that has always disturbed me. Maybe it disturbs you too. I could appreciate that he was troubled. So am I. And that by and by he became a great and inspirational teacher. But I couldn't put that outcome together with the image of him standing in the room where his wife and child were sleeping and turning his back and walking away. I didn't like that. And it seems to be that old problem of ends justifying the means. So after a lot of years of

[18:18]

understanding this story in a certain way and being uncomfortable with it, you know, a couple of things happened. The first thing that happened, which actually was fairly recent, was that it dawned on me that the young man who left home was not yet a Buddha. This man was a beginner. He was a learner. And I think all of us who are not yet called Buddhas do many things that neither we nor other people can understand. And in fact when Shakyamuni became a Buddha he returned home to Kapilavastu as a teacher and a mentor to his family and his friends. And many of his disciples were family members.

[19:25]

His long-time attendant Ananda was his cousin. And Rahula, his son, became a disciple. And his aunt, who had nursed him as a baby, Mahapajapati, also a disciple. And all of them teachers in their own right. So the second thing that happened was that I heard another version of this story that I like a lot better. And this version is equally ancient and credible with the more common telling of the home leaving. In this story, Yasodhara, the young wife, knows very well her husband's painful heart. They've been friends since childhood. And when the time comes, she encourages him to go.

[20:26]

She encourages him to find out, if he can, whatever it is that he so desperately needs to know. And well-supported within her tribal culture, unlike us today locked up in single family units, she had friends and family around. She wasn't alone in the house with the cat. So in this story, she becomes pregnant the night of his departure and gives birth many years later at the same moment, as the same moment of his enlightenment. The entire universe is the Dharma body of the self. So this kind of home leaving is by your leave. It's a blessing and a gift from those who love you, those who know your heart

[21:32]

and the pain that you're suffering and who are working together with you to find a cure. Inquiry and response rising up together in the context of community, family and environment. That's what we call Sangha. And we like to be together, whether we like it or not. And we have to work together, we do work together, whether we see it or not. As Philip Whelan, our dear friend who's quite ill right now, once said, we're just a bunch of loners who can't stand to be alone. But the very life of this planet depends on us, together, finding our way. So maybe for you the trip into the jungle

[22:35]

is a weekly session with a worthy therapist or some long overdue conversations with your spouse, your co-workers or your children. And home leaving doesn't have a particular form. As Pema Chodron once said, renunciation means renouncing that which doesn't work. So it's within a bright circle of family, friends and fiends alike that we all take our seats and begin this work of healing the bruising of our tender hearts. And again, whether it's fortunate or not, we all have to tell each other what it is that we're feeling from way down here. Way down in those dark crevices of our hidden pain. And it takes a lot of time and some very faithful attendance

[23:42]

in order for all the big name players to take their turn at center court. All the lost loves, livelihoods, reputations, rainforests. And then as they begin to make their appearances one by one, you may find that a voicing emerges from out of your throat of a long overdue exhalation of anguish and grief. This is the unmistakable sign that a mother is giving birth to a child. In the cry of the young prince, Shakyamuni, over 2,500 years ago,

[24:44]

is still quite audible even to this day. He reached up and cut off his jeweled hair with his sword, handing the reins of his beloved horse to his attendant and turning his back on his much-loved city and all those he cared for, uttering the lion's roar, I will not enter the city of Kapilavastu and all I hold dear until I have seen the other shore of birth and death. So unarmed and unknown, he left the security of the familiar and entered into the forest of swords, the forest of words that we call the mind. And the story goes from there.

[25:46]

So home-leaving as an element of practice has been a very crucial part of my own life as a student of Buddhist teaching. And of course it was a critical element of my life before I heard of the Buddhist teaching when I actually left home for the first time to go to a Buddhist school. The home of my parents. I'd been away for a while, so I was kind of... I'd written back home saying, you know, when I get back I'm going to move out and get my own apartment and get a job. I was pretty excited, my letters were exciting, and they believed them. And so when I got back and I went to what had been my room the year before and my mother's sewing machine was sitting there and my brother's extra sweaters, I started to cry.

[26:54]

But I was mad. I don't belong here anymore, do I? And my mother... Poor moms, I wish we could rewrite their scripts for them, you know. They always say the wrong thing at the wrong time. So she said, Honey, you don't have to leave. You can stay here forever, right? Wrong. No, mom, you're supposed to say, You're right, you do have to go. It is time to leave. You know. So... So that was my first home leaving. And then after coming to practice, to residency in this community, I used the notion of home leaving in many different ways over the years. The first time, when I was 29, I used it to quit my job, give up my apartment,

[27:56]

a nice apartment in San Francisco, and to say goodbye to a number of very sweet friends. As I made my solitary journey south to Tassajara. And then, lo and behold, within a few years, a new home had emerged out of the steaming pots and steaming baths in the Los Padres National Forest. And then I left that home, and very shortly thereafter, yet another new home from a tiny little room off a kitchen in Old Westbury, Long Island, where I didn't know a single soul for a thousand miles in any direction. Except for one old lady, who didn't like me very much. And I don't blame her. And I'm really sorry, Nancy, if you're listening. Back to San Francisco and to Green Gulch Farm,

[28:59]

and to finally the subtle realization that the home that I was coming and going from was the one in my very own little heart. You know, just like Dorothy, on her way back to Canvas. Kansas. Her way back to Kansas. There's no place like home. And home is not a place. It's not at Oz, and it's not in Kansas. It's right here. So, never apart from one, right where one is. And yet we continuously look for it outside of ourselves. So this method of rethinking and reworking and resettling our long-held opinions and views is a lot like working with bread dough or pottery clay.

[30:05]

It's a work of the hands. And our usual way with our hands is to grab a hold out of fear of loss or separation. This other kind of work is the work of release and of creation. Flexing those muscles. So the hands of our minds are made up of stories. In fact, just about everything is a story. About everything. There was a teacher, Gregory Bateson, who came to Zen Center years ago. I've mentioned this before because I like it so much. And he said, they've made a computer that can think like a human. And when they tested the computer

[31:07]

by typing in the question, Do you think like a human? The computer replied, That reminds me of a story. When I was a child, my tenderest emotions were entwined with my religious upbringing and teachings from the Bible, and particularly about Jesus. They're so sweet. The lamb, that sweet man with the beard holding a little lamb, and all the kids around. Very sweet. And for some of you, it was the sweet stories in the Torah, or maybe stories, fairy tales or myths about nature or status or community. So when I heard this piece of music some years ago,

[32:12]

I was really moved by it. And I asked someone, What is that? And they said, It's called Stabat Mater. Stabat Mater. And I said, Oh, that's really nice. It's beautiful. So I went and I bought it, got the CD and I took it home and I listened to it for a long time. It was kind of a regular. The lyrics are in Latin. So eventually, I don't know why, I opened the little story in the CD and read the translation. Stabat Mater means Mother Stands. And the mother in this music is Mary. And where she's standing is at the foot of the cross while her son is hanging there. And this music evokes that feeling of the mother's heart.

[33:14]

This story is hitting us at the very heart of what is meant by non-grasping, non-attachment. It's not about turning away from the pain or stopping the pain. It's Mother Stands with the suffering. Turning away and touching are both wrong, for it is like a mass of fire. Just to depict it in literary form is relegating it to defilement. It's bright just at midnight. It doesn't appear at dawn. It acts as a guide for beings. Its use removes all pains. Although it is not fabricated, it is not without speech. It is like facing a jewel mirror.

[34:22]

Form and image behold each other. You are not it. It actually is you. Stabat Mater, Mother Stands. So through the power of stories and poems and art, music, this link between ourselves and the crying of the world is made visible like piano strings, piano wires, very strong. And they're ageless connections. They have no gender or ethnicity. They don't belong to any denomination. And yet around the world

[35:26]

they're given a name. We give them a name. We give these connections. Often a woman's name. Mary, Madonna, Quan Yin, Tara, Avalokiteshvara. Stabat Mater, Mother Stands, Father Stands. And while you're standing, the child leaves home. And we know that home leaving is forever. So this knowing, this knowing of the standing mother

[36:27]

is itself the birth of the heart of compassion. And it's through the opening of this heart that we are all connected to one another, to all things, through all time. There's another, I find very useful, helpful story from the Christian tradition that takes place just after the crucifixion. And this is the story of the breaking open of the stone heart. Remember? They bury their grief in a tomb. And when the stone rolls away, what is revealed is the light of the world.

[37:32]

You know, this person coming out of the cave of grief is illuminated and walks forward to greet the world. And this person comes from a generosity of spirit that results when sorrow is released. The one they called Christ had become the standing mother. At home in his own heart with the arrival of all things, birth and death, compassion and wisdom, the two wings of the bird meeting as one. So I was working on this talk yesterday.

[38:41]

My daughter kept sneaking into my room saying, Are you done yet? Are you done yet? And I kept saying, I wish I were. No, I'm not. And she said, finally last night when I was tucking her in, she said, Well, how are you going to end it? And I said, I don't know. Do you have a good idea? And she said, Yeah. I said, Yeah. Say, the end. Love Fu. May your intention

[39:21]

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