I forgot. That was a relationship that I observed very closely between my father and his father. They were always working together and physically working together. And it was very harmonious. That was not available to me in any way. And now I have this wonderful opportunity to be practicing here with Genpo. Say this freely, he's not here tonight. But, you know, it's just, it's an opportunity that is, every now and then, you know, I turn around inside me and look at this and just think, how for fathers and sons, fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, mothers and daughters, when they can have that kind of intimate relationship, it's just so precious.

[01:14]

And I know that many of you have that with your children, and you probably had that with you. But that's why, you know, I mean, I think that's what that parable is really getting at. That's what it's coming from. And the attitude that's projected through the whole sutra is that that's the relationship that's being analogized as a relationship between the Buddha and the Buddha. all practitioners who are being assured of the fact that they're going to be Buddhists. And this comes up in one of the parables we'll talk about tonight as well. And I also feel somewhat obligated to that there's no model of mothers and daughters in this sutra.

[02:27]

And there's no model of fathers and daughters in this sutra. And that seems to me something that is painfully absent, at least in the context of the way we look at the world. But that's the thing. We have to make our own analogies, our own parables, we have to see the dharma through our own eyes, not just as received wisdom that has to be swallowed whole. It has to be chewed on, digested, and turned into something that will nourish us. Other questions? I think practice just deepens my appreciation for those relationships.

[03:29]

Yeah, I think so. I mean, despite or in the, when I say in the, well, despite years of psychotherapy, practice as just deepened the appreciation for all that was given to me, all that was given by our parents. And I often imagine that we are at the nexus of multiple streams, but two particular streams we have, our parental stream, that flows for our grandparents and our parents and that leads to us. And it converges with our Dharma stream of all the Buddhists and angels down to Suzuki Roshi and then Sojin Roshi that leads to us.

[04:47]

And we stand at that convergence. And so that's a new... That's a new place. It's a new territory that each of us arrived. And, you know, I often fantasized what would the conversation that my grandfather and Suzuki Roshi have had, you know, how wonderful that would be to stand on the side and hear them converse. Wow. Other thoughts or questions? Well, one of the things I came across that I wanted to share with you is something in an article in Lion's Roar.

[05:54]

that was written by Donald Lopez, who wrote one of the books I'm looking at. I think it's Two Buddhas Seated Side by Side. He was a co-author of that. And it comes up in, it's come up in some of the other parables, but it comes up constantly. What he says is, woven throughout the sutra are what might be called strategies of legitimation. The Buddha recounts numerous stories from the far distant past before events that are described in the text that he's speaking from. These accounts describe the Lotus Sutra being ago in distant universes with an ancient audience, including the Buddha in life's past and who now appears present in Lotus Sutra. So if the Lotus Sutra was taught long ago, it cannot be a modern innovation, something that Buddhism has traditionally condemned.

[07:11]

So in other words, what he's saying, what Lopez is saying is that certainly in the Buddhist tradition, there was a kind of, even though it was constantly being there was a kind of inborn conservatism and reluctance to admit or own up to. So there was a constant attempt, and you see it very much in the Lotus Sutra, to legitimate it by describing how it was taught in the past. Also found throughout the sutra are various prophecies and glories that await the devotee even if that devotion takes such simple forms as reciting a single verse of the sutra, offering flowers to the text or joining one's hands in a bow. One of the other things that you see in several of the parables is because

[08:22]

What we understand from our perspective is that, and we'll see this again in the parables we're talking about tonight, that there is kind of, there certainly is a valorization of the, the Mahayana and a kind of a critique of the Shavaka and Pacheca Buddha paths, which we understand as nowadays we may call that in the Yana, the lesser vehicle. And we will see that the Buddha puts forward these one vehicle teachings And, you know, the question naturally arises like, why didn't you teach us this before?

[09:29]

Why are you just telling us this now? And, you know, were you lying? Were you deceiving us? And it happened several times, and I think it happens in one of the chapters we're reading tonight, that the Buddha says, no, I wasn't lying. you should understand this in the context of skillful means. So this is part of the methodology of the Lotus Sutra is to kind of establish its credentials based on it being taught again and again throughout the past. And also this case for skillful means. So I found that interesting. I just wonder if, well, I wonder two things.

[10:33]

One is what you make of this kind of quasi-open critique of early Buddhism and what it feels like to you Somebody asked me this question, I think, today in . And I wonder how you hold that and what it feels like to you to listen to it and to ponder it in light of this teaching. So any thoughts there? Sue. Thank you. It feels uncomfortable to me, a little patronizing. And what I started thinking about as you spoke was when I was in early childhood, my masters and hearing about Piaget.

[11:45]

Someone like that said you can teach anything to any age appropriately. I'm not sure how that works, but I know that present life and death and the circle of life to preschoolers was sort of obvious and they got it when we buried the goldfish in the under the dirt in a little pot with some seeds. And one of the moms said, she said, this is going to sound really weird. A week later, she said, I'm so grateful your goldfish died. She said, my father died. And we took the children to the funeral. They could even be there with us, but they needed to be. And one of them asked, are you going to bury grandpa under a tree?

[12:54]

And it was perfect. So I think I understand skillful means. But this method or these parables are not feeling respectful to me. You've got some place to go and you haven't made it yet. Message. Good. Thank you. Anyone else? As I think I mentioned in the first class, it just feels really dissonant to me. There's, you know, this simultaneous message that, oh, there's just one vehicle.

[13:59]

But in that one vehicle, the Mahayana is the best. And it... Yeah, it's weird. OK. Just this dissonance, this contradiction between, you know, there's one vehicle and all paths are ways to reach this one vehicle, but also the Mahayana is the best. it just feels like two different messages pulling against each other. And I don't know how to, I don't know what to do with that. It just doesn't make sense. And I love the Lotus Sutra.

[15:08]

I think it's kind of fun, but this is an aspect of it that I've always just struggled with. And I don't know what to do with it. Well, I think, I mean, I understand that. And I think what I came to in reflecting the conversation that I had this afternoon is that I'm here and have experienced different practice traditions. so-called Mahayana and the so-called, not Hinayana, but so-called Theravada. And in one of these, one of the parables today, I think it talks about in the Shravaka vehicle, what one hears is the Four Noble Truths,

[16:16]

and dependent origination. And the Mahayana vehicle, you hear basically the bodhisattva vows and the paramitas, which are the practices, the fundamental practices of bodhisattvas. But I think from my own... I think that the vantage point that we have is the vantage point of the one vehicle. So when I look at, you know, when I've been to Thailand or been to Sri Lanka or Burma, and I see people, or even actually this morning, down the block to the Thai temple, because we're borrowing tables for our, we always borrow tables and chairs from them, you know, and these monks, they are practicing. They're practicing devotedly And it's like, I just, I see that.

[17:19]

I don't see an idea that evaluates or discriminates. I see that as all the Buddha's way. And I think this is one of the things that one, you can look at it. You can look at the Lotus Sutra with critical mind, which is, which is what scholars and intellectuals might do. But you can also look at it with your Buddha eye. And from the standpoint of Buddha eye, if you're looking at things from that Buddha perspective, then you're seeing the whole Dharma in every tradition. And, you know, if there's some... ambiguity about that or, you know, if there's some message that's uncomfortable, you know, I might think about it a little, but I don't feel obligated to buy into that kind of discrimination, if that makes sense.

[18:34]

So in other words, as our practice, I, to see the Dharma in whatever practice we encounter. In fact, to see the Dharma even in other religions and to honor that. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. Again, I can't say that it turns me off from the Lotus Sutra as a whole. It's just there is this triumphalism that runs through it, and it does appear to contradict some of the sutra's other messages. Well, yeah. And in some way, that's really useful. That's very Zen. Oh, we have to live with contradiction. We have to live with something that appears.

[19:41]

things at once and doesn't sit so carefully so comfortably with us uh and to build to i think the the part of the thrust of our practice is to build our capacity to hold that and to hold those apparent contradictions you know that's that's and i i know that that I can see it in myself, and I see it in a lot of other, a lot of you, you know, that you're one to hold that while not losing sight of a goal of awakening. It's like very fortunate. Just anything else before we sort of turn to the parables tonight?

[20:51]

Pauline? Just very briefly, I guess I'll throw out that, you know, you mentioned this sort of repudiation of earlier Buddhism or... And what I think about a lot reading these is the Heart Sutra, which is also, you know, in some sense, a negation of early Buddhism. I mean, you know, a lot of what those verses are just, you know, kind of laying out like, you know, what's in the Pali Canon and saying none of that is real. And so, you know, I ask myself, well, why does the Heart Sutra sit better with me than these parables often do? Why am I more comfortable dwelling there? it's not you know as obviously setting up a clear positive picture against the negation it's just it's just leaving you with that that that dwelling in um doubts and uncertainties uh and and so I guess you know the maybe the way I sort of read that back is that the the idea of you know our our hot ship or sort of the the early you know idea of extinction is is shown to be false and illusory but

[22:10]

Then this figure who's behind it, this Buddha who's a father or a traveler guide or a rich man or whatever, and he's kind of engineering. He's not the end point either, at least. Not for me. He's another figure, but I don't think one stops there. No, I agree. All of these Everyone, well, every teaching is medicine, right? Every teaching is designed to establish some new ground of balance. And that's one way of looking at it. The other way of looking at it is that teaching has some polemical aspect to it. It's making an argument. And some of it we don't even see. The whole of Buddhism, you know, it's like we never talk about, we can talk about Jnana or Shravaka, Prateka Buddha and Bodhisattva, but I don't ever remember a discussion in any Buddhist center that I've been to that talks about the dialectic between

[23:38]

say, Brahms and Buddhism. And, you know, that's kind of a really big context for what was being put forward from all of these days. And, you know, so, you know, we can dwell on these tensions. And they're interesting. They're pretty intellectually juicy. But I don't think they're not the main thing for us. The main thing is actually how we practice and create a space of harmonization around ourselves, around our communities, and in the world. And I think I would... I would apply in conversations that Laurie and I have had over the years.

[24:48]

Schools and just to say on our internal discernment. which the Buddha advised us in the Kalama Sutta, one of the early Pali Suttas. He said, you know, don't take something because you read it in a book or you heard a teacher say it or, you know, this community says it. You need to be able to decide for yourself if that teaching leads to leads in a wholesome direction. And wholesome in that means, does it lead towards connection? Does it lead towards wholeness and happiness? And I think that that's what Laurie and I, we sort of articulate for ourselves is we're a teacher, we're a person, we're a person.

[26:02]

seems wise and evolved, I'll follow it. So where I see wisdom in the Lotus Sutra, I'll follow it. Where it doesn't seem that way, then I'll set it aside. I won't follow it. But it allows us to keep an open mind and recognize that our understanding may not be completed. We may, as we continue to explore, we may see the wisdom in what didn't appear wise. In the past. But. Meanwhile. If it doesn't seem. So I want to. I want to read about this. The magical city. And there's a. There's an interesting setup to it. Let me just. This is chapter seven.

[27:04]

And so it begins with a, there's a long preface where the Buddha, and this is part of this sort of, this kind of, that legitimization. The Buddha tells a story about a past Buddha who reached awakening after eons of sitting under the Bodhi tree. lifetime after lifetime, and he didn't become a Buddha. But he was very patient and perseverant, and he continued under the tree. And he became Buddha called the Universal Surpassing Wisdom Tathagata. But then, you keep The time frame of this, within the Lotus Sutra, there's a constantly shifting time frame.

[28:11]

And in this case, before he became a Buddha, before he became a Bodhisattva sitting under the tree, in time, he had been a prince and was the father of 16 sons. So... Somehow these sons all took up the practice, all became bodhisattvas. And again, this is still in the distant past. They requested that he teach them the Lotus Sutra. And he did that for 100,000 eons. You know, technically, there's some designation of how many... thousands of years is an eon. But anyway, it's a really long time. And the Buddha then says that all of these 16 sons became Buddhas and that he is one of them.

[29:26]

That the Buddha who's speaking or Shakyamuni Buddha is one of the 16 sons of this prince who became a Buddha who taught his sons, who became bodhisattvas and who became Buddhas. And then he teaches this parable. So the parable... The parable talks about... another land at another time. And in a place far from human habitation and beset with dangerous wild beasts, there's a long perilous road leading to a place of great treasure.

[30:34]

And a whole large are being guided down this road, making an effort to reach this treasure. And the leader of that band is wise and compassionate, and he knows the road. You know, he's a skilled guide. And so he knows the road, and he knows the destination, where it is. So... after walking and walking and walking uh all the members of this this group become very and they really uh lose their energy and their determination uh and they go to this guy this leader and uh they do whatever

[31:39]

to urge him to turn around and go back. Because they just feel they can't go any further. And the leader knows that if you could just get them to hold on a little longer, they will reach the goal and arrive at this place of treasure. But they want to give up. So in that, out of his powers, he creates a magical city. And it's, you know, it's about three quarters of the way to the treasure. But he creates it. It's right ahead of where they are at the moment. And he tells them, it's okay.

[32:44]

They don't need to turn back because they can all get to this magical city, which is beautiful and a place of ease, and they can rest securely. So they enter the phantom city, and they're really happy, and they make themselves happy. very comfortable. And when the guide sees that they're all at ease, they regain their strength, their spirit, and they're refreshed, he makes the city disappear. And he says, okay, let's go on because the treasure is really close. from here and he says that the the city that they were resting in was just it was just a magical device to give them a break so that they could restore their spirits so refreshed and and newly encouraged they press on and uh

[34:06]

the chapter ends with basically with the story told in verse. You know, you can read, you can probably draw out the analogies yourself. You know, this long, hard road is the journey of our lives. And on this journey, we encounter all kinds of hardship and pain. We strive to overcome them, but rarely do we get everything that we want. And in the ordinary course of things, many people give up. We've seen them. We see them around us. We can understand them giving up. It's painful to see. And perhaps...

[35:09]

Some of us have come to that point ourselves. So in one of the commentaries, it says, many good people have fallen into defeatist ways of thinking. However much they struggle, they get nowhere. So the best course in one way or another is to slip out of difficulty and get what pleasures they can in life. In short, they give up the effort to progress and escape into an easy attitude towards life. On the other hand, there are people of little moral uneasiness, people who readily fall into evil ways as they seek whatever they do to take the short way of consequences. So this is not the life of practice that we're cultivating. So he offers a way that seems to promise, at least it promises, peace in an immediate sense.

[36:36]

And I think this is interesting. for our practice because I think many of us come to practice because of the suffering we experience and we just want it to cease and we'll settle for a kind of attenuation of that pain and that suffering. And, you know, the practice can offer that. But the practice, I mean, I think this is one of the strengths of the Lotus Sutra. The practice offers something deeper than that.

[37:42]

You know, it's not just offering a place of rest. It's offering a way that, you know, a way to Buddhahood, which means in the context of this sutra, to share the opportunity of ease with all beings. So it includes, as I think I was talking about last Saturday, Buddhahood includes a sense of responsibility. And so the goal is not just to be at ease. And as we'll see in the next session, chapters in the next section of the Lotus Sutra, the goal is not just an end to suffering, an end to rebirth.

[38:58]

Nirvana, that means extinction. It's nirvana that, as we go on in the sutra, that And contrary to what we've, much of what we've learned, eternalism, which is challenging. We have to readjust our minds to that. So when the guide causes the city to vanish, urging them on to the ultimate ideal that human life offers. And at first they're very surprised, but then they embrace it and they take on that journey. So I really like this.

[40:02]

The commentary I'm reading is by Nuwano. who is the founder of this relatively recent Nichiren Risho Kosekai. They have the Lotus Sutra as kind of their core text. He says, human life in the true sense means creative and harmonious living. We are instructed to go beyond appearances if we would escape human suffering and reach a state of peaceful mind. But this state is only a stage on the way to enlightenment. For though as practitioners of the Buddha, we may deliver ourselves from suffering, great numbers of people in the world remain trapped in suffering. To pass these people by and reach a realm of ease for ourselves alone is again a kind of escape and arrogant selfishness.

[41:11]

This is in no sense enlightenment. To strive in the midst of suffering humanity for the well-being is to live a truly human life. Thus, we must do away with any feeling of temporary ease and contentment, leave the phantom city, and set out again upon a road of new toil. And towards the end of the sutra, we have these four lines that we're quite familiar with because we use this at the end of almost all of our service or version of this. It says, may this merit extend to all that we with all the living may accomplish the Buddha way. that we will get there together, that we're all in this together and we're seeking enlightenment together.

[42:19]

So I'm gonna, let me stop here for a moment and see if you have any thoughts about the magical city. Questions or comments? Yeah, Jim. I found this particular parable interesting because the travelers were looking for the jewels, weren't looking for the city. It's as if they forgot when they got to the city, when they got scared. And then they were reminded that they were looking for the jewels, and they continued. So it's not as if it was a... add-on or a bonus, but in some ways it was really their original intent. But, you know, one wonders what they would have thought if the guide hadn't made the city disappear.

[43:29]

That's kind of, you know, maybe we should do it like we could have like a control. You know, okay, who's going to go? Okay. You can have, you know, I'm going to take away the city and the control is I'm going to leave the city and see who wants to go on to the real treasure. It's like, no, you know, it's pretty good here. Maybe I'll stay here. I think one of the things that I like about the sutra is that I... is precisely the kind of these are built into the stories. They kind of stretch your thinking. Any other thoughts?

[44:36]

Everybody's very talkative tonight. Sue? I wonder that this is breaking up a whole lot, and I don't know whether it's my computer or if anyone else is having that, but it's gone on the whole time. Oh, no, I'm in the right channel here. You mean my signal is breaking up? Well, I don't know. If nobody else is having a problem, then it's my problem. Is anyone else having a problem? Okay.

[45:50]

Then my other thought is, isn't this story that we're hearing, isn't this the standard fairy tale story, the quest? I do think it's an archetypal quest story, yeah. Yeah, and I think that a lot of these parables are familiar to us in, right? Maybe, I mean, there's something archetypal about them. Human, sort of, transcultural. And as I said, I think in the first class, It's very possible at the time of its composition, there was already a trans-cultural commerce and communication throughout that part of North Asia, India.

[47:13]

you know, in trade routes. So, you know, the first, the earliest Buddhist texts that have been found so far, which date from about the beginning of the Common Era, a little before, were found in Afghanistan. And they were found... You know, they were found in trade routes, along trade routes. So I think it's fairly safe to say that there were transcultural elements that were appearing in all of these, in the sutras and texts of a range of religions that were evolving at that time, which is wonderful. And it also, I like it because, you know, you can hear your experiences that are very rich and not pure.

[48:29]

We try, you know, we have a penchant for believing that, you know, in wanting something to be pure, this is pure. in that sense. Well, let me go on to the second parable, if that's OK. So the second parable is rather short. Give me a second here. So this is chapter 8. And it's a couple of things, a couple of interesting things happen at the beginning of this chapter.

[49:33]

At the beginning of the chapter, the Buddha gives yet another prediction of future Buddhahead to one of... one of his disciples. And so it's the assurance that's given to his disciple Purna, his disciples, that they will attain Buddhahood. And again, the story is told of Purna's distant past and past lives of the kind of accumulation of merit and of his attaining a bodhisattva status. And when the Buddha assures Purna of his Buddhahood, there are 1,200 arhats in the assembly.

[50:34]

They stand silently, wishing to be assured in the same way. And the Buddha reads their minds. and proceeds to name Ajnata Gandinaya, who in the future will also become a Buddha, who will be called the Universal Light Tathagata. And also at this point, it's in chapter two, if you remember, I talked about this a little, in chapter two at one point, when Shariputra was... assured of Buddhahood, 5,000 Arhats got up and walked. And in this chapter, these Arhats who had walked out confess here that they come back.

[51:38]

They were actually, they confess We were ignorant. We really didn't get this. And we were attached to inferior nirvana. But now they are thrilled to be promised Buddhahood. So they're happy. And then the parable. So this parable is taught by Kondinaya, who is one of the chief disciples. And after the Buddhas, after the Arhats criticized themselves and their arrogance,

[52:44]

he tells this parable, which is the parable of the gem and the rope. So a certain poor man went to visit his good friend. Friend entertained him with food and wine. And this poor man got drunk and fell asleep. And his friend was called away on business. But he didn't want to wake up the poor man and leave him poor. So he thought that what he might do is sew a precious gem into his friend's robe that he would discover when he woke up. So the poor man wakes up later and finds his friend And he leaves.

[53:51]

And he resumes his terrible life wandering about. Never having enough food, his clothes being ragged. And, you know, he was grateful for whatever small amounts of food and shelter were given him. He was great. A long time passed. And one day, the poor man met his rich old friend on the road. And the friend saw the poor man's pitiful condition and was surprised. And he said, how could you be so stupid? Look at yourself. I sewed a precious stone into the lining of your clothes just so you would be able to live comfortably. Then you reached over and took the jewel from the lining of the filthy collar and said, see, buy whatever you want.

[55:01]

Why should you be in want? So this is the parable. And the commentary says, you know, in this parable, Kandinya is saying that the Buddha is like this good friend. I hope not. He was still a bodhisattva. He told his followers that they all alike had the same Buddha nature, the priceless jewel of the parable. And that through practice, they all might gain the enlightenment of the Buddha. But their minds have been plunged in sleep, failed to grasp the true meaning. In getting rid of physical and mental desire, they thought that they were enlightened. But aspiration after the perfect enlightenment of Buddha was not something that they wished for. They sensed there was something more.

[56:03]

And now the world honored one let them know what it was. Now they know that they themselves are bodhisattvas. Now striving for their humankind, for humankind in their practices, they knew they would become Buddhists. Nick Robinson reminded me of a poem this week that is about this parable. It's a short poem. I'll read it to you. It was written by Philip who was a priest in our tradition and a great poet, one of the early beat poets and one of the

[57:14]

One of the greatest ones. So this is called the Lotus Sutra. I got drunk at your house. You put that diamond in my shirt pocket. How am I supposed to know? Laying there in the drunk tank. Strange town. Don't nobody know. Get out of jail. You already spend that diamond? How am I going to know? Read it to you again. I got drunk at your house. You put that diamond in my shirt pocket. How am I supposed to know? Lying there in drunk tank. Strange town. Don't nobody know. Get out of jail at last, you say. You already spin that diamond? How am I going to know?

[58:15]

it hinges on the word know, which is repeated three times. And this is, of course, the question certainly came up for me. I'm sure it comes up for many of you. It's like, well, if you don't know that jewel is there, what's it worth to you? So knowing. How are we supposed to know? That's, I mean, the last word of this poem. Wonderful. How am I going to know? So how are you going to know? What do you think? Susan? For me, this parable has a lot to do with

[59:19]

I think it's about confidence and faith. Like, you know, in the classes that I teach, all of the students have a jewel in their pocket. They really do. But not everybody knows that. And it takes a great deal on the part of the teacher to, you know, encourage and support and inspire the students to find that. It's not something you can tell them is there or show them. It's something they tell. And, you know, to me, the parable just fits right in with this whole theme of skillful means because students learn different ways. And so I just relate to it. through the work that I do in that way, that what works for one person doesn't work for someone else.

[60:28]

And that, you know, just when you think you've got it, you've got to go deeper. And skillful means isn't, it's like, okay, you've got it this time. Okay, throw it away. Now start over, you know, do it. I mean, You can never, even as a teacher, you can never use the same lesson twice and have, it just will not work in the same way. And so there's something really refreshing about that. If we can just, I think, develop our confidence and our faith in that. I don't know, am I way off? That's just the way I relate to this. I think you're really on. And I think that's, you know, I think this is a pivotal moment in the sutra because it, you know, because we all have this jewel in our robes.

[61:36]

That's, I think that's the... And I think it's also saying it's pointing to, you know, how, how unaware we are of what we have. You know, it's, it resembled to my mind as I'm thinking about now, just the, what I was talking about last Saturday, about hearing the morning dove, you know, which had always been available. It had always been there, and I didn't see or hear it. And then, fortunately, in some moment, I came aware of it. So if we had a jewel, if we were really paying attention to ourselves and to our or whatever, you know, I think that if we were really paying attention,

[62:46]

we would notice there's, oh, what's this little lump? And we would explore it. And then our life would be changed. And that's what we can find with, that's true of our Buddha. And the assurance of this whole sutra is that everybody has it. And also, I mean, I love your message. It's like, Well, I have to use whatever skillful means I can help my students become aware of the jewel that they carry. You can't just show it to them, but you have to figure out how to help them unlock that for themselves, right? Yeah, thank you. Yeah, maybe this connects to the earlier thread that was going, which is, you know, do I enter these stories from a certain kind of premise that there is a framing to the Lotus Sutra, so stick to the story as it's presented, or do I bring to it

[64:13]

my sensibility around, you know, just like the koan collection, these stories are as we relate to them. And so to me, what's coming up for me is really around the intimacy of our interrelationship. So in other words, necessarily have value It's unless that's attributed to it. And that requires some kind of relationship. So what was coming up for me was, which is in a way you could say, I can't see myself as I imagine myself. I can only see myself as the reflection of all the other jewels. So that might not be what this parable presented or maybe what it's pointing to, but that to me feels really important for this historical moment.

[65:31]

And it kind of connects to what I remember Thich Nhat Hanh talking about as the self is made up elements. So what What I value as a jewel in the pocket is only because I guess there's some kind of shared understanding of what's valuable. And that's such an important question right now. Time. Yeah, it is. I mean, it's it's it's always an important question. It's not just in our time. It's and. having a conversation with someone about songs, you know, whatever the words of a song are, it doesn't necessarily mean what it does to the songwriter or the singer.

[66:34]

You know, that's a value. That's treasure the singers and the writers. But the real question is, what does it mean to you? What does it mean to me? You know, we look at the Lotus Sutra, it's already gone through, it's gone through layers of construction that we don't understand. It's gone through several layers of translation. So there's nothing, again, there's nothing pure. What's, what's pure is our pure, And. Trying to locate. And. Even that is not pure in the sense that we ordinarily think of purity. So.

[67:37]

Thank you. The story sort of reminded me. Not specifically, but just in the flavor of it, of stories from Helm, the stories from the shtetl where ridiculous things happened. Yeah. And maybe it's just this translation, but just sewing, you know, the way you choose to help someone is to sew a stone into their robe and expect them to find it. It's like, what a shlemiel does that? What was he thinking? And so for me, the skillful means aspect of it was, well, how do we choose to support our friends? And how can we expect them to use that support? I don't know. If you're not skillfully...

[68:39]

no way for that help to be used skillfully. I don't really know how to say it, but it just felt ridiculous and kind of silly. Yeah. Well, you know, this is the world that we live in. You know, I guess we would want to ask, well, why didn't the guy just give him the jewel? You know? But why didn't the Buddha just give us enlightenment? You know? Because we have to find it in order to value it. That's what our practice is. In the process of self-discovery, we're discovering every self. We're discovering the connection to everyone. And we have to find that. the hard way.

[69:41]

If we lived in some other, you know, Buddha field, you know, we could find it another easier way, but that's not where we live. So in order to value something, we have to discover it. But I think it, I do think it is, you know, there's a lot of resonance with those Hasidic tales. And also with other tales, with Sufi tales, there's a lot of other folkloric material that would fit right in. We're getting down towards the end. Any other thoughts or questions? I must say there's something about this story that I really, that I love.

[70:48]

Actually, the poem really does it for me. And, you know, I can see, for those of you, if any of you, knew Philip or saw him you know he was he was a bit of a Zen fool sharp cookie not a lot that got by him but he was he was the I guess he was the abbot of Hartford Street quite a while. And he was also, I guess he was a college pal of Gary Snyder's. So, Dave?

[71:50]

I just want to say, yeah, I really appreciate finding sort of the delight or the sort of nuttiness, especially of this one. This parable is really And I'll say that in general, I do think that the Lotus Sutra, for me, it's interesting trying to sort of put into words what my response to the Lotus Sutra is. The Lotus Sutra is a text that really sort of lends itself to a devotional relationship. Yeah. Like, I feel like I have a devotional relationship to the Lotus Sutra. Like, I love the Lotus Sutra, but it's interesting in the discussion, like I could hear in your questions, like, Like when I try to think about the kind of comes apart, it's like a super weird text, actually. So thinking about it on some level, it's not the entry point that it invites, like, but this kind of delight of like, I have this really ratty sweatshirt.

[72:55]

And then I just like reach it down and like a diamond. And that doesn't actually make any sense. And like, which of my friends put it in here? Like, that sort of feeling of the strangeness of it, that actually feels really profound. So I just maybe wanted to name, or the way the discussion turned towards the end here, name something for me of what this text is. But when I try to think about it, it gets a little thin for me. I don't know. We have other texts that actually really lend themselves to thinking, that I actually feel really energized by thinking about. And the Lotus Sutra is hard for me to think about, but it's really easy for me to feel delight about or like illustrations to or something. So anyway, maybe that's just to name that aspect of like my experience of the text itself. So, yeah. Thank you. Thank you. So that's a good place to end what you were saying.

[74:02]

What I love about the ballad tradition of the British Isles, which is full of magic. Magic was all over it. It's very interesting, because we have some remnants of that tradition here in In the Appalachians, you know, they were discovered, these old songs were discovered, but the ones that made it over here, they've stripped all the magic out of it. So we have murder ballads, we have these grim stories, but in the British Isles, there's a lot of magic. And there's a lot of magic in the Lotus Sutra. That's what I think you're pointing to. Let's end there. We have one more class next week. I hope you're enjoying it. It'll be, as I said, the parables are going to be, I think, chapter 14 and 16, I believe.

[75:16]

So we'll be in this second part of the Lotus, focusing on skillful means. It's there. But anyway, let's close with the Bodhisattva vows. Beings are numberless. I vow to awaken with them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to become it. I hope you all come. Gary's going to give the talk on Saturday. And we'll see you there. And we'll see some of you at dinner on Saturday.

[76:07]

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