This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. You look very alert and perky. That's wonderful. In this green dragon temple... at the beginning of this year we are having a intensive meditation retreat now about 90 of us and so you're welcome here today in the midst of our retreat which will go on for three weeks at the beginning of the retreat this is the fourth day I invited the meditators to look into their hearts and see what aspiration lives there.

[01:16]

What is their aspiration or aspirations? Someone asked me, Is aspiration like wish? And I would say, yes, it's like wish. But it has the word spirit in it. So we usually don't say, I aspire to have breakfast. But you could say, I wish to have breakfast, or I aspire to have breakfast. Aspiration, the root of the word could be said to be to breathe upon. or to breathe on to something it the one definition is a great ambition a great desire a great wish so I'm asked I asked the people in the retreat to look to see is there a great deep inner wish

[02:27]

in your heart and mind. I respectfully ask that question, not saying what it should be. And now I ask all of you who have come here today as this year begins to consider what is the deep inner desire of your life or desires for this life in your heart. I see some young people here today And we sometimes say to them, what do you want to be when you grow up?

[03:30]

Not just grow old, but grow up. What do you want to be when you get really big and mature? In the so-called Zen tradition, we use the word Zen. And we use the word bodhisattva. A bodhisattva, bodhi means enlightenment and sattva means being. A bodhisattva is a being. Could be a human being.

[04:35]

I mean, a human being could have a bodhisattva within them. There could be an enlightened being in your heart right now. And that enlightened being in your heart could be wishing for something. An enlightened being in your heart would be wishing for something. Enlightened beings do wish. They aspire to realize true understanding, true enlightenment about reality in order to benefit all beings. Bodhisattva is the spirit which aspires to realize Buddhahood which aspires to realize liberation in order to teach others liberation.

[05:45]

Buddhahood is liberation which liberates others. The bodhisattva, the enlightened being, aspires to such a state of liberation for the sake of liberating all beings. This is called the bodhisattva. In the Zen school, this bodhisattva is the spirit of the school, of the tradition. The statue behind me is the statue of a bodhisattva. Two statues behind me are statues of bodhisattvas. The statues in front of me, the big one, is a statue of the bodhisattva of infinite perfect wisdom.

[06:49]

And behind the statue of perfect wisdom is a statue of great compassion. And in front of the statue of the bodhisattva of wisdom is the Buddha Shakyamuni, the historical Buddha. in this world system who was a Bodhisattva for a long time leading up to becoming the Buddha in this world historical period to become a Bodhisattva one becomes a Bodhisattva one becomes a Zen person a Bodhisattva by developing this great aspiration by taking care of the aspiration for Buddha hood in order to benefit all beings by developing that one becomes a human being kind of joins that Bodhisattva spirit I don't know if you want to

[08:08]

be a bodhisattva but I ask you to see if you do or what you do want to become what do you do want to develop and if you'll excuse me I'd like to talk about some people who have wanted to be bodhisattvas to tell you some of their stories for the next year And before I tell you the story of one of these bodhisattvas, I want to mention that when you find your aspiration, and in particular, if one finds the aspiration to realize freedom in order to free beings, that aspiration, in order to be realized,

[09:17]

needs to be followed up upon. We need to follow through on that aspiration by training. And so there are trainings which those who wish to be bodhisattvas enter into in order to realize their aspiration. And I will talk little bit later about well I'll talk quite soon actually about how to train in order to actualize the aspiration once upon a time I've heard there was a a person a human born in India in the fourth century of the common era.

[10:25]

And he came to be known by the name Asanga, which means no obstruction or free of obstruction. He was a student of the teachings of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni, And he studied and meditated and he became a great teacher of the path of individual liberation. And after he was a great teacher of the kind of practice which comes to fruit as personal liberation, He became interested in the teachings of great compassion and transcendent wisdom. The teachings of how to liberate others.

[11:31]

The great vehicle teachings he started to study and meditate on. But he recognized that the teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha were not well understood in India in the fourth century he understood them well enough himself to obtain to realize some personal freedom from suffering but he noticed many other people did not understand them well and therefore were caught in the trap of their own delusion and suffered and did not know how to help others effectively so he thought that if these teachings these great vehicle teachings could be realized more fully in India this could bring great peace and joy to the land so he set forth

[12:46]

to contemplate great compassion and to seek, to request assistance from the future Buddha. The historical Buddha said that there will be another Buddha coming eventually in the future. and that next Buddha would be named Maitreya which means loving kindness and this this future Buddha is living now according to the historical Buddha it is the future Buddha is not living among us Maitreya Maitreya is a Bodhisattva one who aspires to Buddhahood and will be the next Buddha this This is something which the historical Buddha taught and which Asanga heard about.

[13:52]

So Asanga thought, I would like to request some assistance from this future Buddha. I know this Bodhisattva cannot come and be Buddha yet, but I would like this Bodhisattva to come and help out, to make an early visit to help us, to teach us. the great vehicle so he went on a great retreat a great compassion retreat where he was going to meditate on compassion more deeply than he had been and he was going to meditate on requesting this great teacher to come to and appear to him and give him help in understanding the universal vehicle for the welfare of the Indian world.

[15:00]

So he went on retreat, this great retreat. Now we have this three-week retreat now. He went on a 12-year retreat. I don't know how old he was when he went on this retreat. I mean, I should say, I don't know how old the story says he was. But the story does say he went on a 12-year retreat. Now we have a three-week retreat. But still, even though this is only a three-week retreat, hopefully we will live 12 more years. And then we could just... Well, we could... forget 12 years. We could spend the rest of our life meditating on compassion and asking great teachers to come and help us understand so that the world will be benefited. Not just us, but so that we can help the world with the aid of these great teachings. According to the story, he meditated six years and

[16:17]

he felt that the great Bodhisattva did not come to him he could not see or hear a response to his request and he gave up and left his retreats center then he saw something he saw a person doing being very diligent person was kneading a needle and the person was rubbing down a big block a big steel rod to make it into a needle and he thought it's ridiculous but the person certainly is diligent someone might actually someone might actually think this is not I haven't heard this part of the story but I'm I'm inspired to say that he thought someone might think that what I'm doing is ridiculous too

[17:20]

to try to get this next Buddha to come down into the world a little early for a visit. But if he's making this effort for a needle, I certainly shouldn't make a great effort for the sake of the benefit of the whole world. So they went back into retreat for three more years and again he became frustrated. He seemed to become frustrated on three-year periods So again, he gave up. And he, in the process of leaving his retreat, he saw somebody else being very diligent. It was a person who had a huge rock out in front of his house that blocked the sun. And the person was wiping the rock with a wet feather to wear it away. And again, he thought, awesome. He said, okay, I'll I'll try again.

[18:21]

So he went back for three more years and meditated on compassion and begged the great loving-kindness Bodhisattva to come into the world to teach. And he couldn't see it. He couldn't see her. So he gave up again. After he left his retreat, he came upon a dog. A dog whose back legs were pretty much gone. only had front legs. And that the back legs were being, were inhabited by lots of maggots. I guess maggots do two things. One is they live off their host. So if you have maggots, they're partly, they clean, they're eating everything and they're eating probably the germs that are on the on the meat but also they eat the meat right because their baby flies maybe so anyway he he felt compassion for the dog so he he wanted to help the dog so he cuts he took a rock and a sharp edge and he cut some of his flesh off it what was left of his body

[19:49]

after the 12-year retreat, and put it down next to the maggots. And his intention was to take the maggots off the dog and put them on the fresh meat. He felt great compassion for the dog. And he felt great compassion for the maggots. But then he thought, but if I pick the maggots up with my hands, it might hurt them. So probably the only way to get them off without hurting them would be to take them off with my tongue. So he bent down to the dog and was intending to remove the maggots with his tongue. And then there was this big burst of light. And he saw Maitreya Bodhisattva. And of course he was very happy to finally meet his teacher.

[20:54]

And after bowing with great tears of joy for a long time, he finally said, where have you been? Why didn't you come before? I've been inviting you to come for 12 years. And Maitreya said, I was always with you. I was with you from the first time you wanted to meet me. As soon as you wanted to meet me, I was there. I'm there for anybody who wants to meet me. But if someone wants to meet me and they're not full of compassion, they won't see me. Just wanting to meet the teacher of great compassion and perfect wisdom is very good. And the teachers of compassion and wisdom respond to us when we ask them to come if we want to meet them.

[22:10]

But if we're not practicing compassion, we won't see them. So he practiced compassion enough, one interpretation could be made, to see the dog. He didn't see anything before that. Actually, now that I look at the story, when he saw those people, those very diligent people, he also saw Maitreya. But in response to them, he didn't then go and try to help them. Probably should have tried to help the guy wear the iron down or wipe the rock away. He actually should have stayed there probably. But when it came to the dog, he didn't pass the dog. He stopped and gave his flesh to the dog and gave his love to the maggots. And then he could see Maitreya.

[23:14]

But still he didn't believe. that Maitreya had been there the whole time, so Maitreya said, okay, I allow you to take me with you into town and show me to people and see if they can see me. So he took Maitreya, Maitreya allowed himself to be made into a little crystal light, and he put him on his shoulder and took him into the town and showed him to people, and people just saw this emaciated, crazy-looking yogi with a nearly dead dog over his shoulder. And he realized that they could not see Maitreya either because they hadn't been practicing compassion enough. So then he actually spent quite a long time with Maitreya,

[24:17]

receiving teachings, and he received a lot of teaching, and he wrote these teachings down. He was like, he was the Bodhisattva's amanuensis secretary. He wrote down these teachings, and we have them now in this world. And then later, he wrote teachings on his own, and when he had trouble, he would ask for assistance from Maitreya. So I said, he had this aspiration and he followed through on it. He had the aspiration to get help to come into this world and he followed through on it by meditating on compassion and continuously inviting this teaching to come for 12 years.

[25:24]

So one could do the same practice. One could do it in this room for three weeks. One could sit and meditate on compassion for three weeks. And one could invite the great bodhisattvas to come and teach here. And those of you who are not in this retreat, you could every day go on retreat. five minutes 10 minutes 15 minutes 16 minutes once a day three times a day you could sit down and be still and meditate on compassion and invite the same Bodhisattva it's the same one it used to be the next Buddha is still the next Buddha you could invite that Buddha to come and teach in this world you can do the same practice that this great ancestor Bodhisattva did.

[26:36]

One time I heard a Buddhist scholar who observed Tibetan monks and Japanese and Chinese and Korean monks meditating. He said that the Tibetan monks, they sit still, upright the male and female monks sit or even though the non-monks the lay people they sit still and they they they chant all money and they own they they chant a chant which is inviting the Bodhisattva great compassion to come into the world to inhabit their body and mind They do that same invitation of great compassion to come into the world. You said the Zen monks of China and Korea and Japan and Vietnam, they just sit quietly and still and make the same invitation.

[27:54]

They just don't say anything. But in America, I don't know. how many of the Zen students understand or want their sitting to be meditation on compassion. I don't know how many of the Zen students wish their sitting to be an open invitation for great compassion to come into this world, a request. There's plenty of room for that invitation. It's not going to crowd your life. compassion doesn't take up any space. Even if you live in a small apartment, great compassion fits in there very nicely. Even in your car in a traffic jam, great compassion can come right in there and fill your car up. I saw a movie once, and I think the name of the movie was God.

[28:57]

I'm not sure. But anyway, In this movie, these two guys were driving in a car. One of them was the driver, I think, and the other one was God. And the driver said, I don't believe you're God. And God said, well, what can I do to help you believe? He said, well, make it rain. So God made it rain, but inside the car. So it was raining in the car, you know. They had a picture of the car, and the car was filling up with water. And it was sunny all around the car. He said, I didn't mean inside, I meant outside. He said, you should say so. So, Asanga followed through on his aspiration by remembering, by being mindful of compassion a lot of the time.

[30:00]

until finally he really became full of compassion. And so when he saw that dog, which, you know, and you can imagine, when he got close to the dog, it was very difficult for him because this dog smelled really terrible. His nose, his human nose, really found this really repulsive to be near the smell of this dog. Somebody I know, which just recently told me that they got near... I take care of a little dog named Rozzy here at Green Gulch. She's now 17 years old. And someone had their face near her face recently when she yawned. And they said it was awesome. Bodhisattvas, the bodhisattva can inhabit our body which has, our body has sense organs and we find some things repulsive but it's possible to come near repulsive things if we have enough compassion.

[31:18]

Things which our senses say, to get close because we are inhabited by this unhindered Unobstructed compassion. But we have to practice it. We have to train ourselves. We have to keep thinking about it. Moment by moment. And when we forget, we have to be kind towards our forgetfulness and return to remember compassion. We have to follow through. in order for our aspiration to be actualized so for one who aspires to realize

[32:30]

in order to liberate beings, that aspiration would naturally imply an ethical imperative, an ethical necessity to do all the practices that would be conducive to Enlightenment. So ethics is one of the ways to look at the training. But sometimes people think of first ethics, then concentrated first ethics meditation, then concentration meditation, then wisdom meditation. But there's another way to see it is that ethics. contains concentration and wisdom.

[33:35]

You can also see it that wisdom, of course, contains concentration and ethics. But today I'd like to emphasize that ethics, imagine the circle of ethics, and within the circle of ethics is concentration and wisdom. If you have the aspiration for Buddhahood, then that aspiration... includes compassion and wisdom. So then your ethics, your ethical responsibility is to act in a way that's conducive to concentration and wisdom. This great bodhisattva, which has inhabited now and taught a sangha, leads a sangha to teach us that the ethics of the bodhisattva, the ethical training, is threefold.

[34:46]

The first aspect of ethical training is the ethics of restraint, or the ethics of stopping. The next is the ethics of gathering all wholesome things. The ethics of gathering all wholesome actions. The ethics of making all actions beneficial to beings. And beneficial to oneself. And the third is the ethics of maturing... and bringing welfare to all beings. The first one is the foundation of the other two. The first one has the nature of restraint or stopping.

[35:50]

And based on the ethics of restraint or stopping, we have the ethics, the other two types of ethics are, their nature is exertion, is effort. Effort in all wholesomeness, effort in all, beneficial action. Under the wholesome comes all the bodhisattva trainings of generosity, ethics, patience, enthusiasm, concentration, and wisdom. Under the ethics of serving beings, comes everything that would benefit beings. Everything that would help them learn compassion and wisdom. One can try to do the ethics of wholesome activity and the ethics of benefiting beings without first...

[37:03]

practice in the ethics of restraint, but one will be less successful. So that's why this teaching is to start. Number one, the first of the three precepts is the precept of restraint. The precept of restraint is first. It's the first practice to deal with with addiction. Addictions. It's the first practice to deal with afflictions, with delusions. Before you try to do anything good, first of all, face your afflictions, face your addictions. The first practice...

[38:03]

The first ethical practice, the first training is don't move. The first practice is presence. The first practice is let go of being absent. The first practice is be here. Be here. Be present. Be present. So in this retreat, we have many periods where about all that's going on in this room basically is everybody's present. Like not all the time. Actually, there's a group of devoted people in the kitchen making food for us in here. But we're just sitting here being present all day long. Not all day long, but we're being present a lot of the time in here. We're sitting in our seats like I sit there.

[39:05]

Jeremy sits there. We just sit there. Now we may think of going somewhere else, but we stop that. We actually just sit there. We practice being present. We're not perfect at it. We occasionally drift away from being present. But we're training. We're trying to follow through on our aspiration to benefit the world by being present. In order to realize Buddhahood, the first ethical practice is being present. Which also means to stop going someplace else. To stop flowing away or flowing in. Be right here.

[40:09]

Also, at the beginning of the retreat, I said that bodhisattvas enjoy practicing solitude. So in a sense, the first precept, the first ethical precept is practicing solitude. Just be solitary. Just be yourself, alone. bodhisattvas practice solitude for the sake of service the whole point of the solitary practice is for service we go on retreat and practice solitude for the sake of service we practice presence for the sake of service we practice presence so that we can practice all wholesome activities and and benefit all beings. The next two precepts are based on practicing presence.

[41:12]

So this is a presence center and a service center. It's a solitude center and a social center or a social work center. We're practicing solitude for the sake of society. We realize that to work for the welfare of society one needs to practice solitude. In order to be of service to all beings, you need to practice presence. So again, this is both a presence center and a service center. The bodhisattva's presence is her service. She's with beings. How is she with beings?

[42:15]

She's present with them. She's right there. She smells. She smells them if they smell. And if she feels repugnance because of their illness, because of their sicknesses, if she feels repugnance, she doesn't move away. from her repugnance. She can stay present even though something repulsive is in her face. She's trained because she's trained to not move away from here. To not move towards there but move towards here. Also, when we practice presence, when we practice solitude, one of the things that people tell me is when they start practicing solitude, they start feeling lonely.

[43:20]

And they feel uncomfortable feeling lonely. Part of... Oh, oh, oh, and then also... they practice solitude and then they feel the yearning for intimacy. They feel cut off and separate. Part of realizing intimacy is to learn how to be present with loneliness. Part of Realizing intimacy is being able to not run away from the discomfort of loneliness. And then to take when and when we're not running away from the discomfort of loneliness.

[44:28]

And we're present with that to take this presence and bring it to another place. but to go to the other, not to run away from loneliness, but to bring the gift of presence, which is not afraid of being alone. And again, as you know, the word alone means all one. When we're alone, we're actually all one, and when we're all one, we feel lonely for the one who felt not all one. We miss our old self who... We feel grief of our old self who was afraid to be here. Of the little boy or the little girl who couldn't stand to be here. We grieve him. He's gone. We've outgrown him and we miss him. So when you're still, lots of things come up for you. Your reward for being still is that certain demons who don't visit you when you're running around will show up.

[45:31]

If you're running around, the demon who stops you from sitting still will not bother you. But when you sit still, the demons come. In Asia, they have the mythology that when people are running around, hysterically, the demons in their palaces feel very relaxed and they're drinking lemonade. They're happy because everybody's hysterical and nobody's practicing presence. And the whole world, nobody's present. We're successful. Everybody's working for us. Mass hysteria. No problem. The demons can relax them. When we're hysterical, when we're crazy, when we're not present, when we're not meditating on compassion, the demons have a break. They're successful demons. But when people sit still, the demon palaces have earthquakes.

[46:40]

And their lemonades fall from their hands. And then they say, well, who, where, where, where are those non-hysterical people? Let's go get them. So then they swoop down, or they swoop up. Actually, they come up out of the ground, they come down from the sky, and they say, you know, this is really ridiculous what you're doing here sitting still. Being present is really... To say overrated is too much. It's really a waste of time just to be present. You should accomplish something in this life. And for most of us, that works. And then we get not present. And then we realize, that's no good. That's not following through on the ethics of restraint, of being present. When we're present, we're ready. When we're present, we're ready to be of service.

[47:44]

We're ready to practice generosity. We're ready to practice the other kinds of ethics. We're ready to practice patience. We're ready to practice enthusiastic activity in wholesome behavior. We're ready to practice concentration. We're ready to study the teachings of wisdom. And we're ready to nurse suffering beings, attend to them. And there's many amazing stories about those other two practices, but today I'm emphasizing the ethics of restraint, the ethics of presence. as the foundation of ethical practice for the bodhisattva. And next time I'll talk about the other two aspects of ethical training for bodhisattvas.

[48:53]

What time is it? 11.07. That's kind of a nice number. Thank you very much. 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. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

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