Good morning everyone. This is a very auspicious morning. So welcome to all of you here at Berkeley Zen Center. A particular welcome to those of you who are here for the first time and to all of you out in Zoom land there. If you don't know me, my name is Ryushin Andrea Thatch. I've been a practitioner here for a number of years, a long number of years, and I'm one of the priests. When I arrive here, I always have a sense of peace and calm. I am so grateful to be here and to step outside of the world, but sometimes these days feels very inhospitable. cruel and unpredictable, but here there's a sense of calm and reliability, a sense of together, a sense of community that really matters to us and it's really always welcome to be with you today.

[01:14]

It feels very intimate in here, doesn't it? There's something about the light of the day and the freshness of the morning that's particularly and joyful, which is quite a counterpoint from how it's felt a lot of this last time period. Today is Buddha's birthday. Today is a special celebration, an unusual day. You may have walked in and noticed the cacophony out in the patio area with the bower where baby Buddha will be bathed soon. Welcome. Come on in and join. There's plenty of seats up here in the front. The hyacinths, the daffodils, the flowering cranberries and the redbuds coming into bloom. There's new possibility.

[02:16]

It's the kind of life that appears this time of year that's so very encouraging. The sounds of the songbirds, the white-crowned sparrows and the orange-rumped warblers, the robins, the crows reliably in the early morning hours here are also signs of life waking back up again, of the possibility of new beginnings. A birth, as in the birth of Baby Buddha, what we're celebrating today is that kind of possibility. There's something about looking into a child's, a newborn's eyes, that wide open wonder and blankness, anything that's possible of a new life that doesn't have a presumption about what is. It's so very encouraging. It's not unlike the state of our minds. When we sit zazen, we sit in meditation.

[03:21]

with no idea what is, each breath an opportunity to be born again on this moment. Each breath an opportunity to wake up, to not know, to be open, and to receive what might be possible. Today, of course, we celebrate a person, at least we say that we're celebrating this particular person, Siddhartha Gautama, and that his deep desire to solve a question that really mattered to him as a young man led him to a profound understanding that has resounded truthfully for centuries of generations of humans impacting innumerable beings, communities, and societies. and that this one human life, one human life, could do that too.

[04:29]

That is, we all have the potential, we all have some inner yearning, some inner question for our lives, and we too are capable of making meaning not only for ourselves, but for others. In fact, I think it's really part of the mission of a human being. Maybe one that we don't recognize when we're so young, but it's planted in there like that seed, like that bulb that comes bursting out in the springtime. What is the purpose of this life? And that whether we try or not, whether we're conscious of it or not, our life has waves of impact over countless generations. that we too are no different in some way than today. Of course, he was a particular person at a particular time.

[05:33]

He was from a top cast of society born into royal circumstances, and yet he saw through those limitations and the superficiality of those qualities to the possibility that every human being has to obtain deep insight and peace in the same way that he did. In that very insight, you may say that he was one of the early authors of what could be called equity inclusion. And he was born into a world not unlike ours, A world filled with war, hunger, poverty, domination, injustice, as well as a world of families, community, love, laughter, possibility, and peace. And his life was aimed at understanding and addressing the root causes of the suffering he saw in all of this.

[06:36]

We say that the beginning, the kind of clarion insight journey, was in the sight of old age, sickness and death when he was a young man. But it was really his journey as a human being, as a teacher, listening to people and their troubles, that he understood that the disease that threatens the well-being of all the instructions of our mind, and they result from them. What we see and we experience in our lives right now, today, are guideposts for that same understanding, for that same understanding that we too have, that we move our lives towards. Buddha's teaching gives us a way to move toward them and to be able to skillfully engage with them. So this talk, this short talk, is not complete without a story of Buddha's birthday.

[07:41]

It's apocryphal myth. And we shouldn't take it literally, but I think it's really interesting to look at parts of it as kind of illuminations of part of this hero's journey that he makes. He's a royal son, but he's not born in a palace. comfort of his mother's home but he's born on the road in some lonely place not either in either of his families his mother gives birth it said by grasping a tree she's standing upright holding it's not so easy to do you know not so easy to imagine But I think the symbolism is really remarkable, that she is standing upright next to something very rooted in the earth when she gives birth.

[08:44]

And he is born, not in the usual way, but of her side, which I'll say in 40 years of practicing medicine, I haven't seen done. And I don't think any of you have either. So in this kind of inhumanly way, he comes into his life in a way that wouldn't at all be expected for his circumstances. And his mother, the story goes, dies a few days later. And so in a way, all the usual beginnings have been taken away from him. Of course, I think these are kind of harbingers or signs of the life that he will take, that is the road less traveled. And yet, throughout his life, his ties with his family, his aunt, his cousins, his wife, his son, remain intact.

[09:48]

They come to practice together and share their lives together. And so it is when his clan, when the Shakya clan is faced with annihilation by relatives who are the leader of the clan, he's able to appeal to them. Sitting under a withered tree in the hot of the sun, he appeals to their connections with family by saying that he's not hot under that tree, he feels the cool breeze of his and as such, three times the Kosla clan is turned away. This is important. He's not removed from his life, nor his place in it. He's still a part of the space. But ultimately, as we'll see, he's not governed by it.

[10:50]

And then something really remarkable happens to this little baby who's been born, this little baby who's just been given birth to. He stands up. Seven steps. Seven steps, it's said in some of the commentaries. Six of them are for the six realms of migration, of the six realms that the human being will transmigrate through. in a lifetime, actually, in a day, in minutes sometimes, the realms of heaven, the realms of hell, the realms of being a human being or an animal-like state. So he takes those six steps, and then he takes a seventh step, which is a step for freedom. And then he says something that's really unusual. It's quite strange. You might even think it's anathetic. Come on in.

[11:53]

There's lots of space up in the front. You might even say that it's antithetical to what you'd expect from a Buddha. I alone am the world honored one. Now, that sounds pretty egotistical, doesn't it? Like someone who's going to be a great guy is not going to say something like that. But I don't think he means that only I can do this, that only I can be this great person, or that it's all me. I think he's not saying that he's someone better than someone else. I think that just like when a baby cries, it's a cry of, I'm here. I'm alive. This is my life. Perhaps it's with some kind of clairvoyant eye that he recognizes his life will be some big job and with the audaciousness that only a young person has, he feels like he's up for it.

[13:07]

But that alone, that alone and the alone eye is very important. I don't think it means that he feels separate. But I think that that cry of I am here means I'm here to live something that I have been given. And I am the only one who can live it. Isn't that like all of us? All of us, no matter what our circumstances, can only live this life that we've been given. We have to be us. Me, who I am. gift of this human life. This life is mine to express and it's my responsibility to manifest. I think that's a part of what he's saying when I alone, only I can be the one. And yet I don't think he means alone in the usual way that we talk about it.

[14:12]

I think There's an image in Hinduism of Indra's net. It's an image that my teacher, Shohako Okamura, likes to use. In Indra's net, each one of us is a point or a jewel on this net. And all of our lives are connected. And it's like a big spider net that extends everywhere. You can't move any part of it without everyone else being affected. Each one of us has to do our part. We each have to be there in order for that net to function. And so this being alone has to do with also being completely connected. That knowing moment by moment our life is co-created with everything else. And that his life, standing right there in that moment of his birth, has been completely dependent on his mother, on his father, on all the people who are helping her in that moment, on the sun and the wind and the earth that he was living on, the earth that he was given birth on, the earth that he will be enlightened upon and that he will die on, that our life is connected in that kind of way.

[15:39]

When he For his stands, he points to the sky. On the other hand, he points to the earth, the sky above, the connection with everything, with the big, vast universe, the earth below, which we can touch, which we are grounded in, on which our life is dependent. Happy birthday, this birthright for all of us. this task of this human life to manifest the self, the self that's the part of this total dynamic working right now in this moment. I think that all of Buddha's teachings can likely be summarized in steps and that one statement in some kind of way. We honor Buddha today not just for his life, not just for this understanding, but also for this practice.

[16:43]

In this teaching of Buddhism, there are not just three bodies of Buddha, but a fourth body of Buddha, which he calls practice Buddha. And he writes this in a fascicle called Yobutsu Igu, which is the dignified conduct. the dignified conduct of practice Buddha. This, I think, is very important. If you read the books, the two tomes of stories of Buddha's life, they're all stories about Buddha listening to people's problems, helping them solve them, and giving them a skillful way of solving those problems, of finding their way of connecting with each other, of resolving their difficulties. He did that between individuals, between communities, and between kingdoms. He was wise and deeply kind, and he also understood that the events of the world, just like each of us, our personal lives, that the events of the world are such that no peace can be removed, whether we like it or not, in that time or in this time.

[18:04]

When Kosala clan came to attack his clan's land the fourth time, he said nothing. What was happening in that moment was beyond the power of his words. Fights ensued and many lives were lost on either side. So he continued to teach, to mediate, to express his understanding with all the power he had. With time, the king that had attacked his clan became his student, and many of the people had began to practice Buddhism. We chant the metta prayer, which was written by our beloved teacher, Maylee Scott, to move towards suffering with friendly, open confidence, to see things as they really are, and to know that nothing is ever out of place, but that we have to take all All the causes and conditions that have arose in this moment and address them.

[19:11]

And to know that the way forward is with friendly, open confidence in seeing things this way on. This is the life of the Buddha that we're venerating today, and it's the practice that we celebrate. So, in winding down, part of the brilliance, a lot of the brilliance of the understanding is that it has necessarily been pliable to the circumstance of time and culture and of those who are practicing. The ethics The ethics of Buddhism and the meditation, the Zazen practice, have been the same across centuries. This practice has been lived out, is dependent upon the individuals and the circumstances who are practicing with it.

[20:15]

This is our practice to take, to make, and express in our own way under these circumstances. The practice always allows us the access of non-harming, of not taking what is not given, of speaking truthfully, beneficially, kindly and in a way that is well-timed, of not intoxicating oneself or anyone else on including our ideas and not putting ourselves one above the other. Buddha would have had something and probably a lot to say about the destruction of societies in Gaza, Ukraine, the abandonment of commitments to nations whose dependencies on those commitments have been exploited, to walk away from people who are starving in Sudan or facing great natural disasters in Myanmar, and the well-being of people

[21:28]

here who have put their trust in civic commitments. Buddha would have had a lot to say and a lot to do. I think he would have had great affinity with Berkeley Zen Center's affirmation of welcome, one that we all try to enact on a daily basis, one that we're all connected to. This is Buddha's practice, and this is why we honor him. These are matters of commitments that arise out of our vow to wake up, our vow to arise to the cries of God, our own cry, as Buddha's mother did to his cry. I am here. This is mine to do. I along with all of you. So we remember today and we venerate Siddhartha. We venerate Buddha for his teachings and for the practice of Buddhism, a lamp of possibility for our lives and for this time.

[22:35]

In a moment, we'll go out and perform a simple ceremony in which we all get to be Buddha, and then we all get to eat shortcake with strawberries, which is very good because everyone's been Very good to listen to this talk. I don't think we have questions or comments today, but probably . Do I have time? Yeah, we should skip them. Okay, we'll skip them. Save them for later.

[23:15]

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