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. How many of you knew when you... in your cars to come to Green Gulch today that we were celebrating somebody's birthday? All right. Secret birthday. Well, today at Green Gulch we're celebrating, well, I should ask you guys. Do you guys know whose birthday we're celebrating today? Can you say? Buddha! Yeah. Is it anyone else's birthday today besides the Buddha's?

[01:02]

Yay, happy birthday. Yeah, birthdays are a good day to celebrate moms too. Well, so this first part of today's talk is for the little people, and then there'll be another part for the big people. So... What do we usually do on somebody's birthday? This is for the little people. Yeah. What do you do to celebrate somebody's birthday? Presence. That's right, presents. And what else? Do we usually have a party? Yeah. And cake. That's right. I often think of that as the best part of the birthday party. You know, sometimes something else we do on somebody's birthday is we think about that person and how much we love them and how happy we are that they were born.

[02:17]

And then we throw a big party to show them this. So that's what we're going to do today for the Buddha. And for all of us, we're going to think about the Buddha a little bit. And we're going to hear the story of how the Buddha was born. And then I think all the little people are going to go out and make a party for Buddha. And we're going to join you. Does that sound good? Yes. So when I think about the Buddha, the thing that I think about is how much the Buddha loved everybody. I think that was one of the really special things about Buddha. He loved everybody with no exceptions. Every single living being. You might try that out and see if you think there are some exceptions or not. He loved them all the time, even when they were behaving kind of badly.

[03:23]

When they did something bad or they said something kind of mean, which... You know, sometimes do you do that? Or sometimes do your friends do that? It kind of hurts your feelings. The Buddha, he loved everybody, even when they were doing those things. He wasn't confused. He wasn't confused that the things that they said or the way they acted was really who they were. So he could love them. And... Then, once he realized that he loved everybody like this, he spent the rest of his life helping other people learn how to do this. Now, you might notice that there might be somebody, some people in your life that love you this way, like maybe your mom or your dad or your grandma or your grandpa. You might check it out if you do something that maybe you notice they don't like so much.

[04:26]

or maybe your friends. But you might ask yourself, does my mama still love me? Even though, you know, she doesn't seem too happy about what I just did. Does my papa still love me? My guess is that they do. I'm pretty sure they do. And then when you realize that, that's how the Buddha was with everybody. So now I'm going to read you guys the story of the Buddha's birth, which I think on somebody's birthday, it's a really good idea to think about how you were born. I used to do this a lot with my son, Frank. Actually, pretty much every night when he was going to sleep, I would tell him the story about how he was born. It was a really long story. It was a really long birth, and it always had a happy ending, and it really helped him to go to sleep. And the reason it had a happy ending was that I finally got to see him.

[05:29]

You know? And that's how we all feel. We are so happy to see you guys. We're so happy to see you here and every day. So this story is a little different than Frank's, my son Frank's birth and probably your birth because it has some kind of magical bits in it because it's about the Buddha. So maybe you can keep your ears out for that. So many, many years ago, in a small kingdom in the north of India, something was happening that would change the whole world. Queen Maya, wife of the good king Sudhana, lay asleep and had a wondrous dream. She dreamt she saw a brilliant white light shining down to her from the sky, and in the rays of this light was a magnificent elephant. It was pure white and had six large tusks. This elephant of light flew closer and closer to the queen and finally melted into her body.

[06:37]

Queen Maya awoke filled with greater happiness than she had ever felt before. Quickly she went to the king, and together they asked the wise men at the court what this strange and wonderful dream might mean. The wise men answered, Oh, your majesties, this dream is a most excellent one. It means that the queen will give birth to a son and this prince will someday become a great man. Not only you, but the entire world is fortunate that the queen will have such a special child. Hearing this good news, the king and queen were overjoyed. The king was especially happy because he longed for a son who would someday rule the kingdom in his place. And now it seemed this wish was being granted. It was the custom in those days for a woman to return to her parents' home in order to give birth. And so when the time had almost come for the baby to be born, Queen Maya and many of her friends and attendants left the palace of the king and began the journey to her childhood home.

[07:42]

They had not traveled far when the queen asked that they stop and rest. She knew the baby would be born very soon. They had reached the beautiful gardens of Lumbini, and the queen went into this garden looking for a comfortable place in which she could give birth. The stories say that even the animals and plants somehow understanding what a special child was about to be born wanted to help. A large tree bent down one of its branches, and the queen took hold of it with her right hand. Supporting herself in this way, she gave birth to a son. You guys know this? Sometimes babies are born when their mamas are standing up. This is real. This is not the magical part. The attendants cradled the baby in their arms and were amazed to see how beautiful he was and how peaceful he seemed. At the moment, throughout the land, there was a great feeling of peace and happiness.

[08:45]

People forgot their troubles, ceased their quarrels, and felt great love and friendship for one another. Some people saw rainbows suddenly appear in the sky, and many other beautiful and unusual sights were seen. This is actually how your mama and papa felt when you were born, too. Wise men from all over the kingdom noticed these signs of peace and joy and excitedly said to each other, something very fortunate has just happened. Look at all these wonderful signs. It must certainly be a special day. Queen Maya, unaware that her joy at having a son was being shared at that moment throughout the kingdom, took the new baby in her arms and returned to the palace of the king. So there we have it. The baby Buddha was born. It made everybody happy, even when he was just a tiny baby, just knowing he was born. So now, do you guys want to go out and make the party for us?

[09:48]

Does that sound good? Okay. Let me give you a blessing in the night. So the kids are going out to decorate the pagoda to bathe the baby Buddha.

[11:26]

And after this talk, we can all participate in the party by we'll put the zendo back together. So take the chairs out into Cloud Hall and set it up that, you know, will help us with this. And then Instead of going out and having tea right away, we will gather over here on this side of the zendo with our backs to the zendo facing the road, and we will watch the kids do a procession with some elephants. And then after that, we can all have tea and cake. So today we're celebrating the Buddha's birthday and thinking about the Buddha appearing in the world as a human being, the way that we all have been born into this world as human beings, made me just really realize kind of how awesome and rare it is to

[12:53]

to have these circumstances, you know, to be born as human beings and be able to practice the Buddha way. So mostly this talk is really just appreciating that fact, the gift of human birth and the gift of practice, being able to practice in one's lifetime. You know, Shantideva says in the Bodhicaryavatara, there's a verse that says, Lord Buddha has declared that like a turtle that perchance can place its head within a yoke adrift upon the mighty sea, this human birth is difficult to find. So the image of this yoke and this turtle comes from a sutta in the Pali Canon where the Buddha is describing how rare it is to be a human being.

[13:54]

So the image, you know, is like a wooden yoke that was used to attach an animal to a plow. So a piece of wood with a hole in it. And it's like in the ocean, drifting all over all the oceans, all the planets, in wind and storms and kind of moving around. And then there's this turtle who is blind and only comes up for a breath of air every hundred years. So this yoke is floating around the globe, and the turtle comes up once every hundred years, and the chances of being born as a human are greater than the turtle coming up for a breath of air and sticking its head right in that hole of this one yoke. So I think this is... This is like an attempt to just get us to stop thinking about it, just blow our minds with this, with reality.

[14:59]

I really appreciated that. So not only being born a human, which is rarer than this little blind turtle finding this perfect spot in the ocean, but a human that can practice that can hear the Dharma, you know, that lives in a world system where a Buddha has appeared and that we all can be here today, you know, that we all, for some reason, are able to stop and listen and hear some kind of truth open to some kind of truth that is greater than our kind of day-to-day concerns of being a human being. So even given how amazing and fortunate we are, I don't want to minimize the fact that practicing as a human being is not easy.

[16:21]

It's hard sometimes even to know what we mean by practice. So I just wanted to talk about this a little bit today. What is this opportunity to practice? What does that mean? And I will be aided, of course, by all of you, the Buddhas and ancestors, and a 100-foot pole. So Mel Weitzman, who's a former abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center and the current abbot of Berkeley Zen Center, some of you may know him, he once said, our practice has three sides. The first side is turning away from the world and facing the infinite. The second is turning toward the world to face the numberless circumstances. And the third side is the matrix. the side that has no sides, but within which all sides are included.

[17:26]

So two of the sides of practice that Sojin mentioned are probably familiar to most of you. There are different words we use to describe them. Some of them are form and emptiness, absolute or ultimate, and relative. conditioned and unconditioned, or difference and equality. So in the ceremony of zazen, of seated meditation, where in this school we literally turn away from the world and face the wall, we are turning away and we are facing the infinite world. letting go of our usual way of relating to the world, of dividing it into pieces and then getting involved with all sorts of stories we tell about self and other, good and bad, past and future.

[18:44]

So instead we relate to reality from a place of stillness and silence. It's in this place that we can open to the infinite. Things as it is, as Suzuki Roshi often said. An experience of wholeness or unity. Sometimes this is described as letting go of small mind, of the self-centered mind, and opening to big mind, which includes everything and doesn't have one center. The center is infinite, like Indra's net. Indra's net being a kind of the image of a large fishing net. And every place that the net crosses with another strand of net, there's a jewel, an infinite-sided jewel.

[19:55]

And each of those jewels reflects every other jewel on the net. Each jewel reflects every other jewel. There is no center. And each jewel is the center. So many people have tasted this. This experience is not limited to the ceremony of seated meditation of zazen. I often hear the hum of this experience of the infinite when people describe losing themselves in nature. This experience of being intensely present and forgetting about oneself when on a hike or floating in the ocean or looking up at the night sky. In one of my favorite children's books, The Other Way to Listen, Bird Baylor describes it as a sound which you can learn to hear.

[20:58]

She says, sometimes everything being right makes a kind of sound. And the story, her story suggests that once you listen, And you really learn to listen from a place of silence and stillness. And you finally hear it. It seems like the most natural thing in the world. So what is she pointing to? What is lost when we say we get lost in nature? I would suggest maybe identification with self that seems separate from the fabric of reality. And what is heard? The limitlessness and unity that underlies the reality of dynamic interdependence.

[22:13]

dynamic interdependence, that everything is constantly being created by everything else. And there is nothing in addition to that relationship. This is what the Buddha woke up to under that Bodhi tree and what he taught. So this experience of the infinite, in Zen sometimes we call it experience of the absolute, we call it the top of the hundred foot pole. And here's how one of the ancestors, Chong Sha, turns that teaching. His verse is, you who sit on the top of a hundred foot pole, although you have entered the way, it is not yet genuine. Take a step from the top of the 100-foot pole, and worlds of the 10 directions are your total body.

[23:17]

The first sight of practice is vital, he's saying, but it is not yet genuine. It's not complete. There's something missing. Don't cling to it. By saying the worlds of the 10 directions are your total body, He's pointing to the second side of practice, which Sojin called turning toward the world to face the numberless circumstances, myriad circumstances. So the second side of practice is the side of form. This is a side of practice that meets ordinary mind, discriminating mind, that names and categorizes and has thoughts and feelings. This is how we practice when we meet another hiker on the trail in the middle of our wonderful meeting with the infinite. And it appears they have interrupted our connection with the infinite. Maybe we're a little upset.

[24:24]

I was having such a nice time until you showed up. So to practice with this side means to ask oneself, what is an appropriate and beneficial way to meet somebody on the path. You know, what is an appropriate and beneficial way to relate to the thought that my human experience of objects and people and feelings is somehow separate then, or worse yet, obstructing the infinite? So this is a very important side of practice, to relate to our life and to the world as it appears and to wholeheartedly meet it, to move freely in it as your total body.

[25:26]

It is our bodhisattva vow to live in it and care for the relative world, the world of dukkha, of suffering. until everyone is free. So in a way, it's a very straightforward practice. Practicing in the world means following the precepts, having an ethical guide to our life together, and taking refuge in or returning to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. following the three pure precepts of refraining from evil, embracing all good, and living for the benefit of all beings, and the ten grave precepts, not to kill, not to steal, not to misuse sexuality, not to lie, not to intoxicate mind or body of self or others, not to slander, not to praise self at the expense of others, not to be avaricious, greedy,

[26:40]

not to harbor ill will and not to disparage the triple treasure. So in a very simple and straightforward way, to take these up in our lives of the relative world. To refrain from harmful actions that arise from and reinforce the illusion of a separate, permanent self. Usually we do this. We wholeheartedly take up the precepts as the basis for our life because we have had some taste or insight into the other side of practice. We understand that because we are all connected, we must treat each other well. We understand that what we do matters. understand the way that reality is humming along as a unified whole and we are part of it and our actions and intentions are part of it just because everything is humming along as a unified whole does not mean that what we do does not matter this would be one-sided practice

[28:12]

a great misunderstanding. We know because we live here in the world of duality, suffering matters. It hurts. It hurts. I'm sure I do not need to tell you all about this. Most people I meet are quite intimate with this truth of human suffering. So living with all beings in the world of form, bodhisattvas believe things because it is important to be sincere. We put down the equality and hold up difference and acknowledge that we create reality based on our ideas and perceptions of difference. So taking up this second side of practice, of form, You know, even if this is going to block our view of the infinite, it is equally practiced to turn toward the myriad things.

[29:13]

You who sit on top of a hundred-foot pole, although you have entered the way, it is not yet genuine. Take a step from the top of the pole, and worlds of the ten directions are your total body. side of practice is what Sojin called the matrix, the side that has no sides, but within which all sides are included. So the matrix, I think, is the relationship between the two sides. And understanding this is mature practice, which comes from the insight of the incompleteness of any view or experience. So deep understanding of the incompleteness of any view or experience.

[30:18]

It is ease in this side of practice which allows one to completely take up and not get caught by the first two. When I was thinking about this side, the line from the Genjo Koan by Dogen came up in my mind. He said, when you see forms or hear sounds, fully engaging body and mind, you grasp things directly. Unlike things and their reflections in the mirror, and unlike the moon and its reflection in the water, when one side is illuminated, the other side is dark. So in Zen, maybe you know the moon represents enlightenment or Buddha nature. And I think this is a really nice image, the moon and its reflection in the water. I think of, you've probably noticed when the moon shines down, its light is reflected in all the bodies of water.

[31:30]

Not just one body of water, but all of them, and no matter how small they are. So he talks about dew drops on the grass, you know, a tiny little drop of water reflecting the light of the of the giant moon. It's not just that there's one reflection. You know, it's kind of like Indra's net. There are infinite reflections. Each drop of water reflects and manifests the light of the moon. You know, the reflection of the moon on the pond actually creates light, you know. So each person, each feeling, each thought is a manifestation of the ultimate or the unconditioned. And secondly, this image, unlike things and their reflections in the mirror and unlike the moon and its reflection in the water, when one side is illuminated, the other side is dark.

[32:33]

Dogen is telling us that our usual way of understanding does not apply to reality, as the Buddha taught it. The usual way that we experience reflections is that the source of the light, the object, is as bright as its reflection. So the light of the reflection of the moon in the pond is as bright as looking directly at the moon. So Dogen is telling us this relationship does not apply to the sides of practice. When you're grasping things directly, when you're present, when you're fully present with either form or emptiness, you know, the infinite or the myriad things,

[33:36]

One side is illuminated and the other side is dark. You either see the moon or you see the reflection of the moon. You can only see one at a time. You can experience emptiness or unity to the exclusion of differentiating you know, to the exclusion of this mind that can grasp something and talk about it and chop it into pieces. Or we can experience the myriad things. We can be present with our thoughts. We can be present with the way the world appears to us. But our direct experience of unity is not present at that time. It's dark. Or it is present. It is present, but it's present in a way we can't grasp.

[34:43]

I think we learn this pretty easy on in a pretty basic way. We experience sitting on our cushion in Zazen and the quiet and stillness we find there is a different experience than when we're going about our daily life, when we're really engaged in discriminative thinking and trying to accomplish something. So the usual way is we go back and forth between the two sides of practice. The image of the reflection and this third side of practice points to a subtler truth that I think requires faith. A deep sense of lived faith is this third side of practice, this mature practice. The faith that although only one side is illuminated, the other side is there.

[35:52]

The unconditioned is right there. The very appearance of the form, its brightness, is its emptiness. It's just that when you see the form, you cannot see it directly. To remember this, to practice this, this relationship, this dynamic interplay between the light and the dark, to moment by moment, relinquish experience. Relinquish that we could experience the whole of the truth and instead to experience the incompleteness is to practice this third side. So Suzuki Roshi said, actually, there is no top of the pole.

[36:56]

The pole continues forever, so you cannot stop there. But when you have some experience of enlightenment, you may think that you can rest there, observing various sights from the top of the pole. Things are continuously growing or changing into something else. Nothing exists in its own form or color. When you think that here is the top, then you will have the problem of whether or not to jump off. But you cannot jump off from here. That is already a misunderstanding. It is not possible. And even though you try to stop at the top of the pole, you cannot stay there because it is growing continuously. That is the problem. So forget all about stopping at the top of the pole. To forget about the top of the pole is to be where you are right now. Not to be this way or that way. not to be in the past or the future, but to be right here.

[37:58]

Do you understand? So, here we are on a Sunday morning. I am for now sitting in the Dharma seat and you all for now are sitting in your seats, talking about the infinite, pointing at the moon. Are you leaping? Of course, Whether we realize this mature practice or not, it is the practice of all the Buddhas and ancestors, and it is the truth of all existence. So there's no need to worry.

[39:03]

May we all just enjoy the gift of this human life and continue our sincere practice. Thank you very much. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[39:42]

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