Well, welcome to the week two of the practice period. We have a four-week practice period going on without our fearless leader, or with him, but he's in Japan, either now enjoying a nice cup of green tea or facing the wall, and we are here practicing and studying the question of living the bodhisattva's vows. And so I'd like to speak about that today and I'd like to speak about how I've been something I've been studying and working with and how I'm practicing with that and maybe we can enter into some dialogue about it. I wore my robes today and I have a practice of wearing robes now during practice period.

[01:04]

I put on different layers and, you know, get all spiffed up to come into the zendo. And these robes are nothing special. I mean, anybody can wear them. You guys can all go out today and get them. And there's three of them. There's a juban. little undershirt here, little Japanese undershirt with fancy, well, girls get fancy sleeves, and a Japanese kimono, which has these great pockets, you know, and just, I got notes and kleenexes and keys and socks and, and then the Chinese kuromo on top. And then this is the, from the Indian tradition, This is Buddha's robe, which you can't just put one of these on. You have to sew it and receive the precepts in a ceremony. But these, all these other robes, and I practiced with them.

[02:08]

They were given to me by someone at Green Gulch years ago when I practiced there, and I loved getting them. I was really, I loved it. But now they're kind of a bother. I don't like them because the material's really heavy. and they don't fit quite right. I feel like I look like the Michelin man in them, you know? So they're kind of a bother, but they're in our tradition and I'm practicing in our tradition. So during practice period, I sort of take these on. And I'm telling you that because this has something to do with my talk, which has to do with practicing with forms. And in our tradition, we have tons and tons of forms, as many of you have noticed. And some of you may be in love with the forms, some of you may really be resisting the forms, but you will, if you practice here for any length of time, be in a really deep and passionate relationship with them, however it's going.

[03:13]

And, you know, I feel like this is how it should be, and I'll tell you why. So I have a particular reason for sort of loving forms, and that's sort of like the relative, you know, Karen loves forms. Oh yeah, by the way, my name's Karen. I told Andrea I would introduce myself. Karen loves forms. I grew up in the Catholic church, and I just love the forms, you know. It was great theater, and it was very precise, and I used to watch. you know, the priests attain each sort of step through the Mass. And, you know, school rules are a kind of form, and I like those too. They were very reliable. I didn't like them when I broke them and had to pay the consequences, but they were there and they were reliable. And they sort of define the environment and they defined me

[04:18]

That's me. And I think there's sort of my relationship to the form, and then I think there's my true nature's relationship to the form. And that is my whole body and mind, and your whole body and mind, and our whole body and mind is crying out for liberation, is crying out to realize things as they are. And this is actually accomplished through the forms. So... It's interesting, it's posing the question, what do these forms have to do with practicing as a bodhisattva? The bodhisattva's vow of saving all beings. We're going to get to the question, I hope, in this practice period and maybe a little bit today, what does it mean to save all beings?

[05:28]

What does that mean? Why is that our vow? And what does that have to do with me and what am I going to get out of it? I'm doing this hard practice, I'm getting up early, I want something out of this. Well, the way I've been studying this is through our precepts. In the class, we're studying the paramitas, the perfections. But most of us here are somewhat familiar with the precepts. And I want to say just a little bit about the precepts in general. I'm going to focus on one precept. Aren't you lucky I'm not going to go through all 16 step by step. Because Buddhism has this great way of everything is usually contained in one thing anyway, so I'm going to take the one thing and we can infer the rest afterwards.

[06:29]

When we talk about precepts or any kind of rules or guidelines or something that sort of keeps us in line, commandments or anything, there's sort of three ways of looking at it. First, there's the literal strict, like there's rules. And when you come in the zendo, you have your hands in shashu, and you face the altar and bow, and you know, don't come, during sashin, don't come late, and don't eat, don't steal food from the kitchen, and you know, don't talk when it's silent. There's lots of rules, and there's a very literal level to it. And it's good that we sort of know this and observe this. It's sort of an objective level, I guess. Sort of like something we can all have a consensus about and sort of agree, right? We're gonna do it this way. And then there is a relationship to precepts that's like,

[07:36]

You manifest this behavior because compassion has arisen in your heart and mind. You sort of feel good about things. You sort of understand a little bit about your own suffering and the suffering of others. And these precepts become, oh, this is how you act like a Buddha. This is how I can sort of manifest the way things are. is aligning myself with these guidelines. And that's sort of like a subjective relationship, which is also important to sort of allow these guidelines to fill yourself and your heart, see what they mean to you. And then the third way or level to think about them is just That it's Buddha. It's non-dual.

[08:38]

There's no delineation. There's no right and wrong. There's no way to speak about it. It's the source of all things. It's what we all are and what we're sort of yearning to realize. And in our school, we have the 16 precepts. The first three are the refuges. I take refuge in Buddha. I take refuge in Dharma. I take refuge in Sangha. These are how we begin to receive the precepts, is by taking refuge. In our full moon ceremony, we actually start with confession, and we confess our karma.

[09:39]

We honor the Buddhas. And this act of confession is always a great way to start, sort of admitting, I don't know what I'm doing, or I've transgressed, or I'm attached to myself. I'm self-interested. I don't care about other people, confessing, and then taking refuge. After taking refuge, there are the three pure precepts, And then the 10 clear mind precepts, which are also called the grave prohibitory precepts. Those are the rules. Those are the do this, don't do that. They're kind of like the meat and potatoes. They kind of really give you guidelines to your behavior. And the one I'm going to focus on is the first pure precept. And one of the ways I've been studying these precepts is through a A piece by Dogen, and I don't know where to find it, I was given just these two pages, and I'm sure there's probably essays by Dogen.

[10:46]

It's called the Kyoju Kaimon, and it's an essay on teaching and conferring the precepts. It's like a commentary, and it's really beautiful. I've been studying it for about a year with a group of other students and a teacher, and we've been memorizing it and talking about it, and trying to practice it. And it starts with, let's see. It starts, the great precepts of all Buddhas have been protected and maintained by all Buddhas and have been mutually entrusted from Buddha to Buddha, mutually transmitted from ancestor to ancestor. Receiving the precepts goes beyond the three times, Confirming the precepts penetrates throughout past and present. Our great teacher, Shakyamuni Buddha, conferred them upon Mahakasyapa. Mahakasyapa conferred them upon Ananda and so on.

[11:50]

In this way, the precepts have been legitimately conferred up to the present abbot as the, and I've forgotten which generation we're in. And you may recognize some of this because we chanted during the full moon ceremony when we take the precepts. So I will read the three collective pure precepts so you know sort of where I'm working. The first pure precept has been translated, we know them as avoid all evil. Avoid all evil, do all good, save all beings. That's the sort of traditional translation. That the first pure precept is to avoid all evil. And trying to understand what that means, a teacher has worked with this and translated

[13:01]

This is the precept of fulfilling rules and ceremonies. It is the abode of the laws of all Buddhas. It is the source of the laws of all Buddhas. And then the second one, precept of doing good, has been translated precept of fulfilling wholesome dharmas. It is the teaching of Anuttara Samyak Sambodhi, complete and perfect wisdom, and the path of the practicer and what is practiced. And the precept of fulfilling all beings is saving all beings. It is transcending profane and holy, taking self and others across. So right now I'm working with precept of fulfilling rules and ceremonies and what this means. There's a way that you follow rules and ceremonies exactly, kind of line up with it.

[14:04]

And then there's a way like a kind of like a plant is trained to a trellis that you just sort of find the form. It's like you're training yourself and you're not bound. It's not rigid. You're actually expressing your life, but you're being trained according to something that's not you. It is you, but it's not the you you recognize. It's the you you yearn for. It's the you that you share with all beings, that we share with all beings. And when we take on forms, rules, and ceremonies that are not things we made up ourselves, we are sort of entering the stream of the ancestors so that we are sort of avowing that there's more going on than my own sort of, my own drama, my own selfishness, my own thing, that there is something to line up with.

[15:08]

And, you know, sometimes I sit in the zendo and I think, these aren't my ancestors. All these old Japanese men who dressed in this way and, you know, ate rice out of a bowl. This is not my heritage. This is not my lineage. And it occurred to me yesterday, this was a great relief, that culturally, it's not my lineage. Culturally, these are not my ancestors. But this is not a cultural matter. What we're doing, sort of facing our lives and facing the truth, and realizing things the way they are, is not a cultural matter. It's a human matter. If these guys, these Japanese masters and Indian masters and the women who practice the way of all these people are holding the transmission of Buddha mind, then I want to be part of that lineage.

[16:11]

If my lineage doesn't have it, I'm going to go where it is. So in that way, I can dress up in funny robes and do gestures that I didn't grow up with. and not have it be just taking on a cultural form and trying to like be okay with it. It's actually, it's actually lining up with what ancestor after ancestor has done for thousands of years. So this is a way to sort of practice selflessness since this is the heart of our practice. You put yourself in these forms, you make yourself wear robes or eat with three bowls and chopsticks and in this formal way or bow a lot and you're going to come up against some sense of yourself. You're going to come up. You're going to resist this. You're going to love it and hate it. You're going to get really good at it and she's going to be really bad at it.

[17:16]

And you know, you will appear to yourself, you will be revealed, your mind, there will be no question as to what's going on, your Self really does arise. I did a Sashin, a retreat at Green Gulch last week, and I was trained there initially, and so when I came here, of course I had all this sort of, well they don't do it quite right here, and they add too many bells there, and they don't do that, you know. But now I've been here for so long, I'm very comfortable in these forms. I went to Green Gulch, and they don't do it right at all, right? I was going wild. I was just going wild, you know, because they have these clappers when you have to do kin-hin, and they have these extra bows, and they ring the bell right when you sit down instead of after you're settled, and I was just going wild. It just, I just, you know, I was in bliss, right? So I was really, I really had my work cut out for me, and that's the benefit of form, is it gives you this very prescribed thing to work inside of, and then you can emerge yourself, your selfishness, my attachments, my yearnings for things to be really different than they are, my yearnings for the good things to stay just the way they are, don't change.

[18:43]

really get revealed. So I think this is a great part of practice is these forms, loving them, hating them, but there you are. It started to occur to me that this kind of practice, really looking at yourself and training yourself back to the way things are, that things are a certain way, regardless of our preference, regardless of our reaction, is like arhat practice. It's like, and I don't know a lot about arhat practice, so I'm gonna sort of give you my musings about it, but there's actually a lot of literature and a lot of practices to study. And it's the way Buddha taught, Shakyamuni Buddha. It was his accomplishment, he was an arhat, and he trained others to be arhats.

[19:45]

But that's not the whole story, but it's all I'm saying for now. So being very disciplined, watching the self, letting go of the self, coming back to the present moment, not attaching to form, not attaching to sensations, all this kind of practice that the form really brings up. Sounds like arhat training. It sounds like striving for liberation. And I think that's pretty good. I mean, I actually have started to think, wow, maybe I need to practice more of that. You know how you practice for a while, a few weeks, 10 years, and you hear something that you've been hearing all along, and it's as if you heard it for the first time. Well, right now, that's how the practice of no preference is occurring to me. Like, oh, like no matter what's happening, I'm not to move.

[20:51]

That there's a lot of energy I spend wanting things to end, things that make me uncomfortable, things that make you uncomfortable, or wanting things to continue, like, ah, I got it now. I get it. I want that to continue. That I don't have any control over what comes up and how it comes up. And I have a lot of attachment to it and training myself back to not moving around it. Whatever comes up, physical pain, emotional pain, emotional bliss, that these things are They're like exploding Buddha. It's just Buddha manifesting, whatever it is. And really training myself to let it be that.

[21:57]

Oh, I forgot to look at this. So in our hot practice, in our hot ship, you know, we practice wisdom. We free ourselves from the bonds of attachment and we are liberated. Wisdom is about the thing that liberates us. And the arhats The arhats, you know, are liberated beings. They're completely free. They're ready to go onto nirvana and they never have to be here again. And a lot of us sort of think, that would be really great if I could just get free, if I could just get free. And there's a lot of different stages and sort of attainments.

[23:08]

But the main point I want to make is that arhats are finished. When they reach a certain stage, they're done with existence. They're done with samsara. They're done with the self. They've realized it. It's there, and they're with it, and whatever that is is happening. And they don't have much interest in us. or well and you know I'm making no distinctions here in the various schools of Buddhism because each individual being expresses themselves in their own way but what I want to say is that this notion of the arhat has this connotation of being done of achieving nirvana attaining and And there's a little bit of the flavor of turning your back on samsara.

[24:09]

There's no need for it. You're free from it. And I didn't think any of that had to do with me, because after all, I had joined this school. I was a bodhisattva. I was going to save all beings. It was like this really altruistic, kind of fed my Christian side, you know, I was going to be a good person. I was going to be a bodhisattva. Well, what I'm putting together now for myself in studying forms and ceremonies is practicing selflessness, sort of entering the stream of wisdom of the Buddhas where I can stay still no matter what's happening. And it's from this place where I believe Bodhisattva vows arise. Bodhisattva activity comes forth. In a way all of this is simultaneous. Right now I'm sort of doing the practice of not neglecting wisdom, of remembering that in any moment there's a way I'm sort of trying to get out of it.

[25:19]

I'm trying to get out of what's happening and staying with it, staying with it as it is, as the seed for bodhisattva activity. That wisdom is sort of the liberation and then compassion is its activity, how it is expressed. I'm looking at my notes and it's like I wrote a whole bunch trying to get it out and I think I just repeated myself over and over again. I don't know how it's sounding out there. It's maybe a one note talk. Anyway, when one is free, one is a Buddha. And moment by moment, we realize that some moments are better than others, right? Buddhas have a desire. Buddhas actually have a desire.

[26:22]

It's sort of a one-track thing. They have one desire over and over again and all they think about, all we think about is how to free other beings from suffering. How to free every being from suffering. Not just myself, because if I were free, well then I would feel good, I'd be a good person. And not just like the people that are close to me that I like. And not just maybe you guys, because you're pretty cool, you all came to a Zen talk today, but like every being, the beings you think you can't let in the room or in your mind, all Buddhas want to do is liberate those beings, free them from the delusion that what's happening is myself, that I'm over here. that I can make a good life for myself by myself. So I'm training in wisdom with the faith that in realizing Buddha nature that is being a bodhisattva, that is expressing being an enlightenment

[27:48]

being, a being dedicated to enlightenment, period. That's it. That's the interest. That's the only thing going on. And I take on the forms as the sort of discipline practice that's not about Karen. I didn't make this up. I didn't make any of it up. I keep trying to insert myself, but it's not about me. It's about not me. It's about who we are, essentially. And the forms are like the expression of that. It's interesting that first precept, the precept of fulfilling rules and ceremonies, the abode of all Buddhas, the abode of the law of all Buddhas, and the source of the law of all Buddhas, is the dharmakaya, is the formless body of Buddha.

[28:51]

It's the essence. And how do we realize it? But by plunging into this very meticulous, very prescribed, very sort of rigorous form. So for maybe during practice period, those that are doing it and maybe those that are not in your own life, you can take on a form. to express your sort of link with the lineage as a way to say every day, I'm practicing, how am I doing that? Now our main ceremony is zazen. It's actually a ceremony. Zazen is a ceremony facing the wall, and you can do that. You can also bow before you eat a meal, or bow when you wake up, These are forms that you can bring into your life, that I brought into my life, small, not ostentatious, just sort of making efforts to link up with the formless body through form.

[30:07]

So, well the time flew by and there's about, there's some time for discussion and I would like to hear from people how they practice with the forms, what they think it has to do with, what you think it has to do with Bodhisattva practice, questions you might have. Adam. Well I think it's like the same thing, it's both are reactions, both are about Karen. Like being attached to the form or resisting it, it's revealing sort of like what I think my ego or myself is. And I think, you know, you can use either one as a opportunity to plunge deeper without attachment and without resistance.

[31:17]

There's no problem with that attachment and there's no problem with that resistance. Those in and of themselves are not hindrances. It's when we think that, oh, that's me, I hate the forms, that's me, or I love the forms, I'm such a great Buddhist, that's me, that's where the hindrance starts sowing its little seed of kind of stinky Zen, kind of like, you know, being really holy, that the forms are it. I mean, the forms are it. But Karen, doing the forms is not it. I can't do the forms. I can't practice the precepts. If I practice the precepts, if I can do it, if I can get really good at practicing the precepts, that means someone else is not so good. It's like, if someone can ice skate, it means someone else can't. the precepts sort of blanket us and hold us. We sort of entrust ourselves to them. And it's the same with the forms. We just sort of give over. And so that attachment is just a little sort of wanting like, it's like wanting a deluded mind to wake up.

[32:23]

You know, deluded minds don't wake up. We can't realize it with our deluded mind. We can only sort of drop the deluded mind and let the awakening reveal itself. Does that make sense? So let the attachment to the form be the attachment to the form. But that's not Buddha practicing the form. It's also not, not Buddha practicing the form, but... Does that? What do you think of that? Are you attached to the forms? No. I'm a resistant. Okay. Well, hold out. Karen did you? Thanks for your talk. I learned a lot from it and appreciate it, but I have a kind of This is kind of what you didn't talk about but I'm also interested that it seems a bit of a leap from avoiding all evil practicing forms of Okay that that seems

[33:29]

Okay, well let me talk a little bit about it. It's part of my getting up and giving a talk is like learning how to practice how to give talks and I get really nervous and there's like this whole thing I'm thinking and then I think I should write it out and then there's big like things that I gaps I just leave and It's Dogen's translation, or it's Dogen's sort of attempt to talk about what it means to avoid evil. Avoiding evil is like not stealing, not lying, not killing, these things that we somehow believe are evil in some way, whatever that means, even though we sit still for them. And the rules are like what you do to avoid the evil. So that's what the 10 clear mind precepts are about, not killing, not lying, not misusing sexuality. This is avoiding evil, following these sort of rules.

[34:31]

And the ceremonies are, the ceremonies, I know less how to talk about it. It's sort of like, one way I think about it is like, well, here, stay out of trouble, go into the zendo and do service, you know? And even then, even then you don't stay out of trouble, right? Because evil arises. It's like, I'm doing the ceremony. So, it's sort of giving us a positive way to practice, and the benefit is avoiding evil. I mean, it's contacting the source. And so, avoiding evil, and I don't know why it's first. It's like you avoid evil and then do good. It's like you can't go out and do a bunch of good if it's you doing it. And avoiding evil is like avoiding this notion of the self, avoiding the clinging to the self, which is our main hindrance, our main thing.

[35:36]

So these are ways to practice that. Sue. Yeah, thank you. a lot of thoughts and realizations while you were talking. And I think that to the extent that we're in our hot practice, I think that we need to acknowledge that we have made it. We have realized. We're over. We're through. We're baked. We're done. At that moment, I think service arises naturally. It's not something we have to, you know, we should do. Right. And so there's this sort of notion of the linear progression that you do arhat practice, you feel, you know, enlightened, and then you can start being a bodhisattva. And it's not really exactly like that. It's like you suggested, moment by moment.

[36:37]

In a moment of sort of realizing it's already, we've already attained the way, it's already realized, you know, the Buddha nature is right, it's right here. You don't have to move at all to go find, you know, it's just like Dorothy, right? It's in her own backyard, it's right here, you don't have to go anywhere. And it happens moment by moment, and there are moments of enlightened activity that happen for us all the time. Is that sort of what you? And it is, and I remember in an earlier practice of mine, where people were processing their relations with their parents. And it just, you got to the point where you said, okay, you got your job done with me, we're complete, I'm done. And then you can go on. And then I think what that experience gives us is choice.

[37:39]

A lot more freedom about choosing what's next. Yes. Good question. I know at Green Gulch, the head of practice changed some of them and it sort of fit the style there a little better. And there's always a lot of discussion and ruminating and arguing before like a form will change around here, I know. And I think we take it pretty seriously, like we, we try not to be flip about the forms, or it doesn't matter how we do it, they're just forms. So, you know, I think when a student is in the position of being a teacher, and be like, like Sojin Roshi is a teacher to many of us, and he studied a lot, and he confers with other teachers, that they work on the forms that way.

[38:43]

and there's an organic sort of movement through the forms and then there's discussion and then something gets changed. I don't know how close to what they did in 13th century Japan is to what we're doing. Some of it's pretty close. Some of it's probably a lot different. But I think the relationship to the form is the thing that is the thread. Do you know what I mean? What do you think? That's a great question, and when I heard it, my first instinct was to say, no, in fact, the form of Buddha is not visible, and yet, here it is. But we mustn't get caught up in just this. Charlie? I think it's easier to think about this stuff

[39:47]

if you keep your intention in front of you? What is it that we're trying to do here? Are we just trying to, you know, act in a little play, a little carita de zen? Or is it really a spiritual practice? I have two notes that I do remember. One is like attention. That's bringing our awareness to what's happening. an intention, which is making a vow, and that both are required in this practice, and that's a really good reminder. Barb. Thank you very much. Personality out in the world can get very, very flowery and very complex, and I think when we come to the Zindo, we use the form and try to maintain see ourselves more fully.

[40:52]

And in that, so form, the form avails us to emptiness, otherwise it would just be so many little clinks of personality that it would just clutter up everything. I think that also that diversity in the zendo, I think that if the zendo becomes too much of one people, that blinds that element to seeing the diversity of the world, whereas diversity is broad, even though that may provide disturbance to the minds of people, because diversity somehow tends to provoke notions of variance, you know, like in people and in that, I think that's disturbing. But when we know what the disturbances are in ourselves, it gives us our work, whereby we know that we are moving more to our emptiness, and that's very helpful also to us.

[42:02]

Really well said. Thank you. I think we need to stop, and so let's finish this outside. Thank you. Creamy.

[42:14]

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