Good morning. Good morning. I'd like to introduce an old friend of mine, Taigan Layton, who We know each other from college days. We went to the same school and knew each other then, and then we met at Tassajara about 15, 16 years later, to our mutual surprise. Taigan is a priest in San Francisco Zen Center in Green Gulch, Tassajara. He is an, I think of him, he may not think of himself this way, or he might. I think of him as an itinerant scholar the old style, the best style scholar who combines really rigorous attention and scholarship with practice. And he writes well.

[01:00]

edited and written a number of books, most recently Bodhisattva Archetypes, which is particularly why we invited him to talk here and what we invited him to talk about, given the context of our practice period, living the Bodhisattva vows, so we thought he might be able to shed some light on the vows and help us. I think he has some copies of the book, which he'd be happy to share with you afterwards and even sign, even though that's not a typical part of our Saturday routine. But since he's got them, we can do that at tea. Taigen also teaches. He has several sitting groups, a group in Bolinas once a month, a one-day sitting in Bolinas, and a morning and an afternoon group, morning and evening group once a week in San Rafael, among other things.

[02:03]

So please give your attention to Tighan Layton. Thank you, Alan. It's wonderful to be here. So today I'm going to talk about the bodhisattvas and the bodhisattva practices. So this book that I have done, which Alan mentioned, is about the different major bodhisattva figures and how they represent different approaches and strategies and psychologies of bodhisattva practice. So just to start with what a bodhisattva is, and I'm sure you're all familiar with that term from many chants and talks here, but basically bodhisattva is what we do when we do this practice.

[03:05]

So the ideal of practice for all of Mahayana Buddhism, including Zen, is the practitioner who is committed to awakening with everyone. And this is based on the understanding that it's impossible to awaken by oneself. That we're all totally interconnected in various mysterious ways that we can't really get to the bottom of, but that we don't exist separate from the rest of the world. We're all totally interconnected in various ways. How do we awaken together? How do we help each other awaken? How do we awaken with all beings? This is the question for the Bodhisattva. The Bodhisattva is dedicated to helping beings in various ways. In particular, small ways, but always with this context of how do we all awaken together?

[04:13]

So, In this book I talk about seven major bodhisattva figures from our tradition and I talk about each of them in terms of which aspects of the practice they represent. So many of them represent particular sutras or schools of Buddhism. So by looking at the different bodhisattvas we can get a sense of the range of the vast body of teaching of the Dharma. Each of them also has a particular iconographic forms. Each of them has been venerated to varying degrees in various ways in Asian history, in Buddhist history. There's a huge body of folklore and stories and Zen koans about all of them. So I go into all of that. What I wanted to focus today on was just to mention them all and talk about which of the paramitas they represent And then I'm going to talk in more depth about one of the bodhisattvas, one of the seven, and then I hope there will be some time for discussion.

[05:23]

So basically these perfections, these paramitas, these transcendent practices, which I understand you've been studying in this practice period here, are practices done by all bodhisattvas. So all of these bodhisattvas are involved with all of these practices. And they can be translated as transcendent practices or perfections. But this word perfection has a different meaning from what we might think of from our Western context. It's not perfect as in right or wrong. It's perfect as in wholeness. So we all are, by sitting zazen, expressing our wholeness. we each express and have some relationship to all of these specific practices. And there's also then these seven Bodhisattvas who are kind of emblematic of very advanced expression of them. But each of us has some relationship to the Bodhisattva figures as well. So just to mention the seven, Shakyamuni Buddha, first of all, who is on the altar here, the historical Buddha, 2,500 years ago in northern India, is considered a Bodhisattva

[06:33]

in his practice, in his path towards awakening, on his way towards the Bodhi tree and his enlightenment. So the particular perfections, the particular transcendent practices which he represents, first of all, great effort. So he made the choice to leave home, to leave his palace, to abandon his conditioning, to commit himself to spiritual practice so one of the main aspects archetypal aspects of shakimuni as the bodhisattva is just this choice in his case it was a choice to uh... leave his palace because he was a prince and would have been king but each of us every day in whatever context we're in have this choice do we devote ourselves to worldly power and material gain and put our energies there or do we leave that conditioning and dedicate ourselves, in whatever way we are actually living now, to caring for all beings, to spiritual practice, to addressing problems of suffering in front of us.

[07:45]

So this is the issue that Shakyamuni brings forth for us, and he made great effort, so effort is one of the Paramitas Have you been talking about the six or the ten? Six. Okay, maybe I'll mention them. The six, you've probably all heard, are generosity, ethical conduct or discipline, patience, effort, meditation, wisdom. Then there's another four, which I talk about in the book, too. Vow, skillful means, powers, or the beneficial use of powers, and knowledge. And I'll come back to what knowledge is and why it's different from wisdom. But Shakyamuni represents great effort. So there's a picture in the book that Alan took in Thailand, a photograph he took of a Bodhisattva. You won't be able to see it all the way in the back, but this is Shakyamuni emaciated with his ribs showing. And this is his years of practice doing austerities before he took vow in the Middle Way.

[08:49]

And then the next practice that he took on, well, all through he was taking this on, but meditation. So the particular aspect of the perfection of meditation that Shakyamuni was involved with was seeing causality, seeing the 12-fold chain of conditioning, seeing through the way we make the world, each of us, every moment. And then he also represents wisdom and his great awakening. So he's, in a way, as an archetypal figure of practice, a model for all of us and for all bodhisattva practice. We all, in some way, whether we're lay people or whether we take on some kind of practice period or monastic practice, in some way we're all working on this question of what is our choice? How do we direct our life? The next figure is Manjushri. I'm on the altar here. Manjushri is the Prince of Wisdom, so he particularly represents wisdom, Prajnaparamita, he represents the Madhyamaka teachings, or the teachings of emptiness, because he is the Bodhisattva who sees into the essence, who sees the emptiness of all things.

[10:01]

So he is the teacher of all the Buddhas and all the Bodhisattvas, because this is the entryway into practice, to see how we construct the world to see how we get caught by our conditioning and our views of the world. So Manjushri usually rides a lion, or often rides a lion, often has a sword to cut through delusion. So this is another aspect of our meditation practice, and usually in the Zen school there's a Manjushri on the central altar of the Zendo. So Manjushri represents wisdom that comes up out of meditation. So he's often depicted as a prince because this is not the wisdom of reading a lot of books and doing a lot of studying. This is the wisdom that we already have. This is the wisdom that kids have, like the story of the emperor's new clothes. The young kid was the one who could see through to the emptiness and see through to the nakedness of the emperor and see that the fabrication that everyone had believed was just that.

[11:08]

of teaching. Kanon, Kanzeon, Guanyin in China, Chenrezig in Tibet, this Bodhisattva of Compassion has many, many, many, many forms. And part of the reason there are so many forms, some of them with a thousand hands, eleven heads, and all kinds of different forms of this compassionate, the Bodhisattva as compassionate, is because of the practice of skillful means, which is one of the four paramitas after the first six. So to address the problems of suffering, to address the spiritual needs of all the different variety and diversity of people, there are these many different forms of this bodhisattva of compassion. So in addition to skillful means, she also represents generosity.

[12:18]

So she has many hands and one of the meanings of her name is to listen to the sounds of the world to listen to the cries of suffering of the world so she hears the suffering and she has many hands to open and offer help with to respond to suffering so Avalokiteshvara is a very complicated figure but I'll just say she also is associated with the lotus sutra and with pure land teaching and with attend a school, so particular branches of the teaching that focus on skillful means and compassion and offering the diversity of teachings to diverse beings. This is her compassion. And she's here on the altar also, Buona Fuan Yin, Chinese Bodhisattva of Compassion. So each of these figures is a whole range of approaches and stories and aspects of the Bodhisattva work, and we can see in our own life different aspects of our practice, of our approach to spirituality, echoed in particular of these figures.

[13:35]

So again, just to give the kind of quick tour after Avalokiteshvara, I talk about Jizo Bodhisattva. So Jizo is becoming very popular in America and is very extremely popular in Japan. Jizo is the earth womb or earth storehouse Bodhisattva. He appears as a shaved head monk and is very involved in practice of vow, first of all, because he vows to go and be present in hell. to be there with all of the suffering of beings in difficult, horrible situations to witness to that. So he also represents ethics and discipline as a monk. And he was also a very interesting figure, also effort, and he's very close to the soil, close to the ground, close to people who are working and laborers. The next one is Maitreya, who is the disciple of Shakyamuni, who is predicted to be the next future Buddha.

[14:40]

So he's often depicted sitting up in the meditation heavens, kind of figuring out how he's going to become the next Buddha, and how he's going to save all these beings, and very kind of complex. So he represents the practice of patience. And he's also associated with the aspect of meditation of the Yogacara branch of Buddhism, which is to study how the mind works, to study the phenomenology of consciousness. So the aspect of our meditation that is looking at all these thoughts and feelings zipping around, or how they come together, and to just be present and upright in the middle of that. this aspect of the perfection of meditation that Maitreya is associated with, and Maitreya is also associated with generosity, especially loving-kindness. It was a surprise to the other disciples of the Buddha when the Buddha said this would be the next Buddha because he was kind of foolish, not a very rigorous practitioner, not very learned, not very wise, but he was very kind, so loving-kindness, and that aspect of generosity is Maitreya.

[15:52]

And then the last of them, the Malakirti, is not so much associated with a school, although he's very, very popular in Zen in China and Japan, but he was an enlightened layman at the time of the Buddha. And there's this very entertaining sutra, the Malakirti Sutra, about his interactions with the other disciples. He particularly expresses the aspect of powers and of knowledge of the world. So he is in the world completely and goes into all realms in the world and in each of those realms teaches wisdom and helps beings awaken, helps beings see the teaching. So he also represents skillful means. So anyway, there are all these different kind of cosmic bodhisattva figures in our tradition, in the Mahayana Buddhist Zen tradition, that we can look at as examples of how to implement this bodhisattva practice. And the point of all of these is how do we ourselves take on these practices, how do we ourselves find our relationship to our deepest self, to our openness, to our ability to

[17:06]

let go for ourselves and others, our ability to help awaken, to express our deepest awakening. So the figure I want to talk about today particularly is called Samantabhadra. And his name means universal virtue or universal goodness, universally worthy. And he's particularly the Bodhisattva of the Sutra called the Flower Ornament Sutra. which is this very long, lofty, visionary, very psychedelic, gorgeous text which has these great visions of the activities of bodhisattvas and all these kind of amazing events happen in it. And Samantabhadra is the main bodhisattva in this sutra and in the Huayen school, which is one of the highest schools of Buddhist philosophy that developed in China out of that sutra. And so on the altar here we have a Manjushri riding a lion and looks like he's holding a lotus on that side and here we have Guanyin or Avalokiteshvara.

[18:22]

So often on both sides of Shakyamuni you'll see Manjushri representing wisdom and then sometimes this compassionate Avalokiteshvara but often there'll be Samantabhadra on the other side in Asian altars. Samantabhadra Whereas Manjushri rides a lion and holds a sword, Samantabhadra rides an elephant. And Samantabhadra particularly represents the activation of wisdom in the world. How do we apply the wisdom of Manjushri in the world, in the situations of the world, particularly Samantabhadra's realm, this function of wisdom and how wisdom functions to help awaken all beings. So they're kind of complementary in that way. However, it's not surprising that there's not Samantabhadra here, because Samantabhadra is very hard to see, and actually, in terms of the depictions of Samantabhadra, it's a little unusual to see him. Samantabhadra on his elephant is this kind of lofty figure, and he's everywhere in the world, but it's very hard to see in his fullness.

[19:33]

So some of you may know the Japanese name for Samantabhadra is Fugen. And this figure sitting on an elephant kind of has this general bodhisattva features, the headdress and robes that sometimes will hold a lotus or sometimes just has his hands in gassho, out of respect. and uh... there's no particular distinctive features but often the elephants are very interesting and have these huge grins very wild faces sometimes he sits on uh... an elephant with several different heads or even i saw it in an antique shop near union street in san francisco samantabhadra sitting on it fifty elephants so samantabhadra in terms of the uh... practices of the perfections. First of all, Samantabhadra represents meditation, the perfection, the wholeness, the paramita of meditation, because Samantabhadra is particularly associated with this kind of visionary quality of the Flower Ornament Sutra.

[20:49]

So, have some of you heard of the metaphor of Indra's net? Some of you, yes. So, Indra's net is a way of describing the universe in this sutra and it's that the whole universe is this vast network and at each place where the nets mesh there's a jewel and each jewel reflects the light of the jewels around them and each of those jewels reflect the light reflected in the jewels around them and so forth so that each jewel in its unique way reflects the light of the whole universe so this is kind of holographic image of the universe, this vision of the universe that Samantabhadra embodies. And his particular meditations, his particular samadhis, also reveal this quality of our interconnectedness. So Samantabhadra is the Bodhisattva who displays and sees clearly our interconnectedness.

[21:52]

So just a description of one of those In the chapter on the meditation of Samantabhadra, he enters a concentration or samadhi called the imminent body of the illuminator of thusness. This samadhi is described as being in all awakened ones, as containing all worlds in the universe and as producing all other concentration states. It contains the teachings and liberations of all Buddhas and the knowledge of all Bodhisattvas and develops enlightened virtues and vows. So pretty powerful meditation. And it goes on to say that at the time that Samantabhadra entered this samadhi of the immanent body of the illuminator of blessedness, he saw vast numbers of Buddhas in many worlds, in all directions, and also saw Buddhas within every atom in each of those worlds. He just saw this. And in front of each one of those Buddhas sat other Samantabhadra Bodhisattvas.

[22:54]

And as soon as he entered into this samadhi of the eminent body of the illuminator of vastness, all the samantabhadra bodhisattvas in all those worlds sitting in front of all those Buddhas also entered into this samadhi. And then the Buddhas in all of the different realms praised each samantabhadra bodhisattva for their great enlightening abilities and bestowed upon every samantabhadra omniscient knowledge of all the different worlds and their workings. and the appropriate enlightening teachings for each of these worlds. When this had happened, the Buddha in each realm reached out and patted all of the Samantabhadra Bodhisattvas on the head. So all of these Buddhas patting all of these Samantabhadra Bodhisattvas on the head. So this is a very mind-boggling vision of how deeply this practice of awakening, this practice of Bodhisattvas is interconnected. So there are Buddhas and Bodhisattvas everywhere.

[23:58]

This is the vision of Samantabhadra. There are many other descriptions of other meditations that he does in the sutra. There's one other I'll mention called the Lion Emergence Samadhi, revealing to the assembled Bodhisattvas the vast array of Buddhas, lands, enlightening beings, powers of Samadhis, and manifestations of teachings from past, present, and future that all exist within the oceanic Buddha lands on a single hair tip and on every hair tip. So this is this amazing mind-boggling vision that Samantabhadra embodies. This is the aspect of the perfection of meditation, this visionary sense of interconnectedness is what Samantabhadra practices. So that's one of the perfections that He embodies another is perfection of vows. So we chant, we're familiar with the four bodhisattva vows that we chant at the end of talks.

[24:58]

Beings are numberless, we vow to save them. Delusions are inexhaustible, we vow to end them. The Dharma gates, the entries into the teaching are boundless and we vow to enter them. And Buddha's way is unsurpassable. What are we saying now? Here we say, we vow to become it. We vow to become it, right. So, these are four basic vows that all bodhisattvas do, but then some of the bodhisattvas have particular vows. So, Jizo, I mentioned, vows to go to hell realms, to go to the most difficult places and be there for the suffering beings. Samantabhadra has a set of his own ten vows, which are very interesting, and I'll just mention a few of them. But, A lot of them have to do with just praising the teaching and praising Buddha, making offerings to Buddhas, venerating Buddhas, asking teachers and asking Buddhas to teach. Some of the vows, Samantabhadra vows to confess his own past misdeeds, to acknowledge his karma, to rejoice in the happiness of others.

[26:08]

So Samantabhadra sounds kind of heavy and somber, but he also is a very happy bodhisattva because he's happy when he sees happiness in others. To study the Dharma in order to teach it, to transfer the merit of practice to others. So at the end of a service we transfer the merit that's accrued from our sitting, from our practice, from our chanting to all beings. This is a basic bodhisattva practice that Samantabhadra particularly vows to do. And then the last vow is to benefit all beings. some of the budget is full for his full glory writing on this amazing elephant uh... is very difficult to see there's a particular sutra about some of the budget which describes this meditation practice what has to do to fully visions about the budget involves forty nine days of we're very rigorous city uh... so to see some of the budget and all this story is very unusual some of the budget is in the world

[27:16]

benefiting beings in many places. So this sense of Samantabhadra taking on difficulties of the world makes me think of him as the activist Bodhisattva. He's applying the wisdom of Manjushri to the situations of the world and he appears in the different realms in the world where beings need help and is willing to take on the slow, deliberate work of trying to work with social forms and social institutions to help beings. So I have this image of Samantabhadra riding on this elephant, walking very slowly. By the way, this elephant is a white elephant with six tusks elephant's foot comes down to the ground, a lotus flower rises from the ground to meet it. It's a very far out elephant. But Samantabhadra, writing on this elephant, you know, very deliberately, in this very dignified way, takes on the problems of society, the problems of the world, acts in the world in many forms.

[28:28]

So there's another aspect of His hidden practice in the world is in this Flower Ornament Sutra, the last long section is about a pilgrim who starts by visiting Manjushri and then one by one he gets sent to 52 different teachers. So each teacher will teach him something about the Bodhisattva path and then send him along to the next teacher. And these teachers are from all different realms and walks of life, men and women, priests and laypeople, businessmen, garbage collectors, housewives, courtesans, everything you can imagine, even lawyers. All of these can be Bodhisattva teachers. And at the end of these 52, this pilgrim comes back to Samantabhadra. and there's this incredibly visionary depiction of Samantabhadra's final teaching. So that's volume three of Cleary's translation of this final chapter of this sutra.

[29:33]

But anyway, Samantabhadra exists in worldly roles and is there helping beings in ways that we don't see. So there's this tradition and Zen practice, a hidden practice, just to open up and uncover your buddha nature and then live in the world in wherever you are and whatever situation you're in, whatever karma you have, whatever body and mind you are, whatever place you are in the world to then in this deliberate dignified way apply this perfection of vow to help beings. So One of the other aspects, one of the other perfections that Samantabhadra represents is knowledge. So this is the tenth of the ten paramitas. And it's interesting because the difference between knowledge and wisdom is very helpful. I guess you've heard about prajnaparamita, the perfection of wisdom, this insight into the essence of each thing.

[30:36]

Knowledge is knowledge of how the world works. but it's not just useless and pointless knowledge it's knowledge applied informed with wisdom applying wisdom, applying bodhisattva intention and vow to using knowledge of the world so this is how Samantabhadra active in the world can express his vow and his commitment and his helpfulness in many different realms so in addition to talking about the traditional stories and folklore and the associated teachings of each of these figures and the iconography and so forth. I also have in the book at the end of each chapter a little section on some of the modern culture figures who I think of as representing that aspect of the Bodhisattva practice. So for Samantabhadra, I think of Samantabhadra kind of as environmental Bodhisattva. Samantabhadra sees how things are connected.

[31:39]

So I have a little section on Rachel Carson, for example, who studied the ocean and how the ocean is this interconnected system. But for Samantabhadra it's not enough just to see Indra's net, just to see this interconnectedness, but also the Bodhisattva acts to protect and to help and to help awaken and to come to the aid. So Rachel Carson, in addition to writing The Sea Around Us, wrote The Silent Spring and started the process of our being aware of pollution and really in some ways is the mother of the environmental movement. This is typical Samantabhadra activity to try and help protect this vision and try and help beings in it. So, I also mentioned Pete Seeger, a folk singer who represents in his songs many different realms and brings songs from different cultures together, often songs of liberation in some way.

[32:45]

But also he was inspired by Rachel Carson to addition to thinking globally to act locally and he has been working on the Hudson River in New York on sailing a boat up and down the river and actually has helped to develop a movement that has in a lot of ways cleaned up the Hudson River. Some parts of it now are, you can even swim in. And when he started it was really polluted. So this is a Solan de Baja kind of activity. Finding some particular project in the world, vowing to do some particular work, some particular situation that needs help. So I also think of many other great spiritual, social activists. Ong San Suu Kyi in Burma, who is standing up to the dictators there, but coming from a great, really deep spiritual awareness from her own Buddhist practice, having been under house arrest. How is she doing these days, Ellen? I know you're in touch with the situation there. She's functionally under house arrest, even though legally not, it's very difficult.

[34:00]

And yet, she's been offered by the dictators there that if she would just abandon her political activity, she'd go back to England to her husband and two sons, and she is standing up there as Samantabhadra and refusing to do that. So I also talk about Dr. King and Gandhi as spiritual activists. But also other people who, in some way, express the vision. So I have a little section on Van Gogh, whose paintings, for me, just express the vividness of the world. And he was able to see that, first of all, which is remarkable, but then to find a way to express that with this thick brush. brushstrokes, vivid color. So the point is that we all have people in our own lives or culture figures who mean something to us who in some ways represent aspects of these different bodhisattvas.

[35:02]

And by looking at the different bodhisattvas we can see aspects, strategies, approaches to bodhisattva activity and how we might see that in our own lives. So most of us maybe have aspects of two or three of the different bodhisattvas or maybe more. But each of these bodhisattvas represents an approach, a style, a strategy for a model for guiding us into our own bodhisattva activity. How do we, as Zen practitioners, express our deepest truths, our most beautiful awareness in the world? So the point of practice, Zen practice, of course, is just to study the self and to come back to our true self. So these bodhisattvas are skillful means, you know, figures on the altar that we can look at as representations of some aspect of this process of awakening practice. So all of these stories can help us see our own story in fresh ways.

[36:06]

So I'm interested in just having some discussion about Samantabhadra or any of the other bodhisattvas or the perfections. So please, comments, questions. I was wondering if besides giving talks like this and being a scholar and having a student group, what other practice, what other for yourself practice is central in your life? Well, writing books. No, I don't do, I have done ink brush paintings at times. I live in Fairfax and have a They're trying to take care of my family life, stepdaughter. So, I also get involved periodically with social action.

[37:10]

I'm the board of the Marin Interfaith Homeless Chaplaincy in San Rafael, and we recently had, well, there's still this struggle over safe business dining and feeding not just the homeless but also poor people in Marin. There was an effort to try and move the soup kitchen there, the St. Vincent's, to an industrial area outside downtown, away from where people could actually use it. And that seems to, well right now it's still in process, but we had a tremendous outpouring of people really organized by the different faith communities, mostly Christian, in San Rafael. So, it's an interesting movement which has led to having a Dignity Day event on June 6th, which you're all welcome to in downtown had together to have a day for, not just for the homeless, but for everybody in Marin County.

[38:31]

People from Berkeley are welcome to come just to walk and there's going to be a picnic and to see how it is that we each express our own dignity, all different kinds of people. Do you believe or do you think that these Bodhisattvas actually exist as spiritual figures that we are in contact with? There are like three different questions there. So where are the Bodhisattvas? Are they up on the altar? Are they up in the sky somewhere?

[39:31]

Are they inside? You know, each of us waiting to express themselves, or I'd say all of the above. I think of them as forces in the world. So by mentioning particular cultural figures, these are examples of how they're expressed in the world. But the practice is about how do we each express them. So in the Tibetan practice, the difference is actually fairly subtle. Vajrayana tantric practice is about seeing different Bodhisattva or Buddha figures and there's a formal visualization practice that one does and one identifies with that figure and there's an initiation from a teacher. In our tradition, in the Mahayana tradition, which Zen is part of, we have the same visualization practices. So, in the Lotus Sutra, for example, and other sutras that are part of our tradition, there are visualization practices that you can do to visualize, or there are mantras to say about these different Bodhisattva figures, and that can help us to bring forth that energy in our own life, in our own practice, in our own meditation.

[40:47]

The difference is just that we don't formally identify with them in the same way. So in the Tibetan tradition, all of these seven bodhisattvas are there, but they also have many, many others, so it's very elaborate. Now, in our practice, in Suzuki Roshi's lineage, in Zen, such a Zen style, we just sit, right? But actually, when we're just sitting, although this is part of it, we sit and by just sitting here and opening ourselves up to what is it like to express our dignity, what is it like to sit upright, how do we be still and upright in the middle of all the confusion of the world, which is also in here as well as out there. these bodhisattvas emerge, and it is okay to sit zazen and do visualization and mantra practices. I believe you chant the Heart Sutra here? So the end of the Heart Sutra has a mantra practice instruction, so if you want to, while you're doing zazen, say, gatte, gatte, paragatte, parasamgate, bodhisattva, silently.

[41:58]

It's okay, you know. And there's an instruction at the end of the Heart Sutra about how to do that, what the attitude is for that. And there are other mantras. Many of these bodhisattvas have particular mantras associated with them. So, this is the background for Dogen and Soto Zen. This is this context. So this Zazen we do is this very pure practice where we just sit here open to the whole universe. But the background of that in our tradition are all these bodhisattvas, all of these sutras, all of these visualizations and mantras. So, sometimes we... Do you... In the zazen instruction here, do you talk about following, counting breaths sometimes? So, you can count breaths or follow breaths, but, you know, if you want to say a mantra to Jizo Bodhisattva, I think it's okay. Yes? Is there any connection between For example, I know the talks here are on Koans.

[43:06]

We don't focus so much on it as other schools, but in your experience, Oh yeah, very much so. A lot of the traditional koans, koans that we study at Zen Center, in the way we do that, have references to these Bodhisattvas. So, I'm trying to remember if there's a koan about Samantabhadra. I think there is actually, well there are things about the Flower Ornament Sutra, but there are lots of koans about Manjushri, of course about Shakyamuni, about Vimalakirti. So yeah, this is part of the lore and tradition of our school. This is the background. So, one of the problems for us as Westerners coming to do this practice is that there are libraries full of all these books about Buddhism, you know, and how do we make sense of it?

[44:10]

There's so many different teachings. Well, there's a reason for that. The reason is that we're all different and we all, you know, there's certain sutras that might be helpful to you, there's certain koans that might be helpful to you. looking at the bodhisattvas I feel is one way to get a sense of where those different sutras are, what the different teachings are, and then as part of the lore, these sutras in Zen school and in the koans and in Dogen's writing, these bodhisattvas appear and these sutras appear. So the very first koan in the Book of Serenity, which is maybe the main Soto collection of koans, is about a time when Shakyamuni was coming to give a talk. And I guess Manjushri was the dowan. And as Shakyamuni took his seat, Manjushri hit the bell and said, behold, the king of Dharma, the king of Dharma is thus.

[45:10]

At which point, Shakyamuni, the king of Dharma, had nothing more to say but just to get up and leave. And the comment about that talks about See if I can remember the whole verse. Something about incorporating the forms of spring, weaving the ancient brocades. Oh, the unique breeze of reality, do you see? Creation runs her looming shuttle, incorporating the forms of spring, weaving the ancient brocade. And yet, nothing can be done about Madhusri's leaking. So Manjushri is kind of also, kind of, sometimes poked fun at as kind of this wise-ass kid, you know. He's the great fearless Bodhisattva of Wisdom, but he ends up babbling endlessly about the meaninglessness of language and things like that. And so there are many stories in our lore about these different bodhisattvas, all used to bring up teachings about ourselves, of course, in our own practice and how to express that.

[46:21]

Yes? But there are also representations of evil, sort of demons and things in Buddhism. It's an interesting question. Not, you know, when you say evil with a capital E-V-I-L, you know? No. So, in Christianity there's, you know, God and Satan and, you know, it's reified. There is Mara, who's the kind of tempter figure who kind of tries to interfere with Shakyamuni's awakening. But evil in Buddhism isn't given that much power. Evil is just our ignorance. Evil is our conditioning. Evil is what ever gets in the way of our just living fully. So evil spelled backwards is live. And whatever interferes with our expressing the fullness of our life is, we could say evil, but it's just, it's our karmic ignorance, our conditioning, our grasping, our aversion. So, really, Buddhism is about education.

[47:35]

How can we educate ourselves to see through our ignorance, our conditioning, our grasping? And that's really, if you want to say evil, that's the problem. Now, there are wrathful, fierce, ferocious images in Buddhism. But they're not evil. Those are protectors of the Dharma. Sometimes they're native spiritual figures from India, from Tibet, from China, from Japan, who have been converted to awakening practice, and they sometimes are very fierce. So the Bodhisattva of Compassion also has sometimes some wrathful aspects, especially in Tibetan iconography, but even in East Asian, Japanese and Chinese iconography. But this is not evil, this is actually helping us, because some of us need to be slapped around, you know, metaphorically. Yeah, so, but in all of these, all of the, even those powerful, even demon figures often are shown being tread underfoot by the protector figures, or there's two statues I love in Nara of these little demons with horns holding up lanterns with a light, with a dharma.

[49:04]

Yes, sir? Well, there's Unwilling Mala, who's kind of evil, but then he comes around. Yeah, so there are these various, you know, various figures from native folklore. Kuli Mala, I guess, was actually a disciple of Shakyamuni. I imagine that as Western Buddhism develops over the decades and centuries, we'll have native Western figures converted to being protectors of the Dharma. So, I don't know, Sigmund Freud holding up a lamp. I don't know, we'll have to leave that to the Buddhist artists. uh... works for comments or questions you mentioned uh... you know that that's the month of october uh... that in the in the sutra that he's associated with interest that each at each place where the measures of that because it's true

[50:13]

Any last comment or question? Should we go out and have tea?

[50:33]

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