Dharma Talk for Sojin and a couple of other people from our sangha and joined people from other sanghas to go to Tassajara this weekend to a shuso ceremony. So we wish them well on the Tassajara dirt road. There's a lot of snow on the top of it. So we're really moving into the heart of the turning point, the end point of the year and the solstice and our various holidays and celebrations.

[01:05]

And I want to talk today about something about our the ceremonies that we've been having and how we use the spirit of the ceremonies in our lives. How we use the spirit of appreciation and intention and gratitude in our lives. So I'm not going to speak too long and I hope that a discussion will follow. So most of us here are in Berkeley or in the Asian tradition probably of celebrating the turn of the season in more than one way. We've been having our various Buddhist ceremonies and we may also be including some Christian, Jewish, other ceremonies also.

[02:21]

There are quite a lot of things actually, as Buddhists, that we do. We have quite a spread of ways of realizing this seasonal turn, this ending before the beginning. The first week in December, we have the Rohatsu Sesshin, the Seven Day Sesshin, which is the celebration of Buddha's Parinirvana, Buddha's enlightenment. And so some of us sit seven days, some of us sat less than that. But we give ourselves the opportunity, we give ourselves the space to sit a lot of zazen, to be quiet.

[03:26]

The year is asking us to be quiet, the season, dark, quiet season. So we take that time and give ourselves space to let the thinking mind, to let all the business of the foreground just settle down, like rain, like snow into the background. So we get some rest from our usual vivid points of view. And in that rest, we appreciate the calmness and the steadiness that arises I just bought from Dharma Publishing House, that place just on San Pablo, just near Ashby, put out a catalog with some wonderful thangkas in it.

[04:36]

And they're just posters, but you can go and buy them quite cheaply. And I bought a beautiful one of a Shakyamuni Buddha's enlightenment. And it's Buddha sitting, with the mudra of his hand on the ground. And in a ring around him are all the floating angels and demons. Now just before, in his enlightenment, the Mara and the demons challenged him, said, you can't do this. And he touched the ground and said, I can. I'm here. And this Thangka, they're all the ring of the spirits and demons, but right around Buddha there's just space and a few little flowers. So that's what we give ourselves in the Sesshin. We give ourselves that space and that grounding.

[05:39]

And we celebrate Buddha's enlightenment and our enlightenment. in the midst of everything that goes on. And also in that week, we have the annual memorial for Suzuki Roshi, who brought this practice to us in 1959, died in 1971. And that's a time when, it's during the Sesshin, people can come who are not in the Sesshin, but it's mostly people who've been sitting at least for a day, that we come up and his picture is put in the altar and each person greets him and either says something or bows, expresses something. So it's a moment when we personally recognize our relationship to

[06:47]

our most recent Dharma ancestor. And it's good to do that every year because, of course, every year one is in a slightly different place. One's practice is a little bit different. So, year after year, I guess I've been doing it a couple of decades or more, but each year I have something different in my heart, mind, to say to my ancestor. So it's nice to have the opportunity to keep reviewing one's position and reviewing how one has been helped. We also, every morning, chant the ancestors.

[07:49]

I don't know, 20, 30 different names of ancestors in Sino-Japanese. And that used to seem a very exotic and strange chant to me. All these men whom I had no connection with. But as the years went by, they're my helpers. They are our helpers. And we recognize some of our helpers we can make. Each of us has a particular list of our Dharma helpers that we can make. But most of our helpers, we don't know who they are, when they were, what past lives, what future lives. So it's nice to be able to just open one's appreciation to the multitude of one's ancestor helpers. So, we have Buddha's enlightenment.

[08:51]

And then, on this last full moon of the year, we have our monthly Bodhisattva ceremony. Coming down this morning on my bicycle, beautiful, clear morning, totally full moon in the sky. That full moon every month is our present. That full moon reminds us, just reminds us. And before I get into the ceremony that we just did, I also want to say that there's one more ceremony coming up, which will be on the December 31st, I guess it's Saturday night, which will be our New Year's ceremony.

[10:01]

And that will begin about 7.30. And everyone is invited for all or any piece of that. And we just sit together here in the dark zendo. And 108 minutes before midnight, a bell sounds every minute. And so that really helps us keep focused on each minute. And the 108 sounds of the bell are for our 108 hindrances, which are also our 108 dharmagates. So in that way we prepare ourselves for the last bell at midnight and hear all the celebrations going on all around. And then afterwards we have a bonfire and write on pieces of paper what we are willing to let go of in 1995 and make those offerings to the fire.

[11:08]

So that's another good ceremony that we have. So the ceremony that we just did, the full moon bodhisattva ceremony, is really a sort of a summary of our practice. And it's good to do these ceremonies and they seem a little odd and bizarre and maybe strenuous at first, and you do them and then you go home and reflect some and then you do them again. Little by little they seep into your bones. So this Bodhisattva ceremony is really a... It includes all the aspects of our practice. The first

[12:10]

The first part of it is soft. all this ancient twisted karma, you say, all this ancient twisted karma I now fully abound, all my ancient twisted karma I now fully abound. When I first did the ceremony I completely misunderstood that. I really, I thought that all my ancient twisted karma, it was sort of like a big black snake behind me that I was going to leave, and the ceremony was going to help me leave that. a vow I thought meant distance myself. Well, it's exactly the opposite, because of course Buddhism never excludes, Mahayana Buddhism never excludes anything, it always includes. So, in fact, it's all my ancient twisted karma I now accept. The first step in our practice is to know where we are, to study the self.

[13:14]

Suzuki Roshi says the whole practice is we study the self and then we forget the self. But if you forget the self, without studying the self, you're nowhere at all. So, all my ancient twisted karma. the whole package. And then, we do the long list of homages. Homages to the various Buddhas, to the seven Buddhas before Buddhas, and the Buddhas, and then the ancestors. I don't know, there are five or six homages in the package. So, we say homage in the Sino-Japanese or the Sanskrit, Pali, it was namo. I throw myself into.

[14:17]

So, first we recognize who we are and then we throw ourselves into the enlightened aspects of ourselves and the world. We throw ourselves into the arms of our helpers. we are putting our trust in the wholeness of our experience. Our Buddhist practice tends towards the whole. Everything is moving towards the whole. And when we allow ourselves When we wholeheartedly offer ourselves, we include ourselves in the whole. When we hold, when we step back, we are suffering and apart.

[15:37]

So this is a whole ceremony. Sometimes it's called the Bodhisattva ceremony, sometimes it's called the repentance or at-one-ment ceremony. The way we bring ourselves into one with each other in all worlds. And now we take the precepts. The way we do that here is that there are the 16 precepts, and many of them are first cast as guidelines. I vow not to kill, I vow not to steal, and so on. So there's the aspect which is the guideline aspect and then there's the aspect which is the bodhisattva aspect.

[16:45]

So all the group chants the guideline aspect and the doshi chants the bodhisattva aspect or the aspect of the precept which is seen from the point of view of Buddha. I'd like to read a little bit from a statement by Maizumi Roshi about this Atonement, Pusatsu service that we just had, and the precepts. In this renewal of vows service, we have 16 Kai, I am reluctant to use the word precepts, which is the restriction of committing certain actions. We say Buddhas and patriarchs directly transmitted the Bodhisattva Kai. This directly transmitted is the Kai that we maintain.

[17:50]

It's very different from the 5, 10, 250 or 378 rules for monks and nuns to maintain. Of course, these have their own value, but the kai that we maintain is something other than, do this, or don't do that. So what is it? Sometimes we call it Buddha's kai. One Buddhayana kai. The kai that Buddha relies on, what kind of kai is that? Sometimes we call it Buddha nature kai. In a way, it has nothing to do with numbers. We say 16 precepts, but Buddha nature doesn't have a number. So Buddha nature, or true nature, or original face, are all these words. The words are different, but what is expressed is the same thing. What is it? That's the life, my life, your life, Bodhisattva's life, and Buddha's life.

[18:55]

Furthermore, the life of everything, anything, That's the Kai we maintain and we renew in this Bodhisattva ceremony. And then we express our commitment to the Bodhisattva way. We say the four vows. The four vows, in a certain way, are summed up by the first vow. Beings are numberless. I vow to save them. That's the way we said it here. Sometimes we say, beings are numberless. I vow to awaken with them. And sometimes we say, it's the same thing as I save all beings is the same thing as all beings save me or all beings awaken me.

[20:08]

So we take this vow which once again is an effort to change our habitual point of view. Our habitual point of view is that I go out to the world. And the Bodhisattva way is that the world comes to me when I let it, when I'm quiet enough, when I know myself well enough. And then we take our refuge in the three treasures, Buddha, the teacher and the teaching and the Sangha. And this is our real life. Now we all have our particular lives and our particular scripts and concerns.

[21:15]

But our real life is in these refuges. our real life is just putting ourselves into recognizing the teacher, the teaching, and the community, the Sangha. But this ceremony gives us a chance to remember that All life is an offering. But there's not much more than we can do than make our lives an offering. They are anyway. They're given to us for a while and then they go. So our good form is to accept that, to accept the impermanence of the situation and say, I offer it all up.

[22:22]

And that's what these ceremonies help us to do. So we, as this turning of the season comes and the new year comes, there's a tendency to look behind and to look forward. And we don't make resolutions so much because there's a kind of fixity about resolution and one mistrusts fixity. You never know quite what's going to happen. But we do talk about, we do talk about vow and intention. And our vow is the kind of opening of our heart. Do not want to have a sealed heart mind. We want heart mind to be open. So vow is our orientation to open body heart mind.

[23:32]

Sort of be impossibly open. And then intention has more of a strategy. within the frame of the vow our intention has more to do of how given our particular circumstances we are going to attempt to live this vow out. I'd like to read a little story from Dogen about usually Not always, but usually our intention is at some distance from the vow. That we, our vow is to be open body heart mind, and then we get into a situation and we intend well, but there's a little echo, there's a little echo of something, hell.

[24:45]

Once in a while it's, you know, once in a while we just do it. So this is a little story, this Dogen volume, Rational Zen, is a clear translation and it's Dogen Zenji's Rinzai side. So there are a lot of little stories that are very koan-like in it. And this is a story about Sadhana visiting Manjushri. Manjushri is the bodhisattva of wisdom. And Sudhana is the human hero of the Avatamsaka Sutra. He's a totally open-hearted seeker, and his job is to go from... He's our model. His job is to go from one situation to the next, to the next, to the next, always asking, person he encounters. What can you teach me?

[25:49]

When Sudhana visited Manjushri, Manjushri said to him, go outside and get a stalk of medicinal herb. Sudhana went out, looked all over the earth, finding nothing that was not medicine. He returned and said to Manjusri, the whole earth is medicine, what should I bring? Manjusri said, bring a stalk of medicinal herb. So Sudhana brought him a blade of grass. Manjusri took the blade of grass, then showed it to the assembly and said, this blade of grass can kill people and can also enliven people. Before it was a blade of grass. Later it was a blade of grass. How far apart are before and after? And there's a silence. And then he says, there are blade of grass apart.

[26:57]

So, that's a nice little story about when we are really close to our vow that we see the whole world as nothing but medicine. When we are close to our vow, everything is willing to help us. One blade of grass, one breath, the samadhi of the one act samadhi, one thing at a time. Wherever we are, we always have access to this one thing at a time, which will bring us into our vow position. One blade of grass, he says, can enliven or destroy.

[28:06]

We need to take life pretty seriously because events, as they come up, are very powerful. And according to how we receive them and how we don't receive them, we are enlivened and we are destroyed. So it's an important matter. So, I'd like us to talk a little bit, explore with each other, about what, two things, about what our intention might be, and what, at this time in the year, we are. in thinking this over, what is my intention?

[29:20]

About a month or so, I was driving rather slowly down Russell Street, and all of a sudden, I hit a woman. Or she hit me, she sort of, the side of the car suddenly hit a woman. And I just had not seen her. And she kind of jumped back, went and sat in the grass. She kind of flung her hand out. Her finger was bruised. She needed to wiggle her toe some. And she was, of course, very upset. But calmed down after a few minutes. She was Chinese, and she was going to go to a Chinese wedding, which she was very excited about. And so after she calmed down a bit, She asked if I could drive her to the hairdresser's so she could get... I was very relieved. I thought, that's where she wants to go. She's really all right. But it was profoundly unsettling.

[30:29]

And for the rest of the day, I just found myself proving again and again that it hadn't been my fault. And then last week, we were having, a group of us were having a discussion and somebody, Rebecca knew a man, a school bus driver, maybe some of you heard about it a week or so ago, ran over a pregnant woman, killed her. And he was about 50, he had a faultless record. It's not clear whose fault it was that's being determined. but, and there were 15 children in the bus that witnessed it. So it made me recall my incident and Rebecca was the man's friend and she said that it's as if we have a shell around us

[31:34]

the way a shrimp does, or a lobster, some shell creature, and you usually don't, the shape of the shell isn't so clear, but when an incident like this happens, when it suddenly, I mean, I don't think of myself as somebody who would run over and kill possibly somebody else, and I could, and suddenly that, and I could, it's possible, that shell, I can feel it. I'm not ready for that. So, my intention is to really keep noticing, keep noticing that shell. what I'm not ready for, how I think I'm immune, how I imagine my immunity.

[32:39]

Just keep seeing the shadows of that. And I think what I'm grateful for in this last year is that I'm much more appreciative of my own suffering and less Need less to deny it and less to disown it and Can appreciate the Better the truth of it the first noble truth that you hear again and again the truth of suffering just just to be able to take that truth of what you don't like and Be there with it So, that's about what I have, and maybe some of you could reflect a little bit about your intentions, your gratitudes, or ask about anything else.

[34:10]

Last month, Thanksgiving morning, I had the opportunity, the invitation to speak at an interfaith meeting, service. And when I was asked, that was the first thing, you know, I questioned myself, you know, what is there to be thankful for? And what came to me immediately in terms of Zen Buddhism is the practice, and that I'm very grateful for. And that opened up for me the whole meaning of what this is. I thought of, for me, the three treasures really is like the center of the crux, you know, the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha.

[35:51]

And so I feel very thankful and grateful for the opportunity A lot of gratitude this year for, I feel like I lost Happy and got Joy. perseverance, hard work, love and effort to conquer all, and it doesn't end.

[37:06]

So there's been a level of giving up. And as I give up, I find myself in this very peculiar place of feeling more and more held I have this sense of this thing which I would call joy, which I often feel most strongly when I hurt most. My intention this year is to... I think of it as to figure out what I want to do when I grow up.

[38:51]

keep on looking at how I want to be a priest and whether I stay in some way within the San Francisco Zen Center or whether I more in the world. I don't know that I'll have an answer within a year, but at least my intention is to keep looking. My intention is to let...

[40:01]

Yeah, yeah, that's a very nice contrast. Going back to what Marjorie said too, the consistency and the grounding and the stability allow one to hold the other elements. I came here the first time on the first Sunday in January of this year to see what it was like. I just want to express my gratitude for having found the practice and having found this Sangha and the really wonderful people who are in it, who really do live out teaching the Buddha in Buddha way.

[41:40]

My intention is to try to realize it. Thank you for coming and staying. We've had many people come, and in this last, this new class, this new sewing, your Rokusu class, I think there are 11 people? It's sort of a record. People willing to throw themselves into the Buddha, stitch by stitch by stitch. Thank you.

[42:27]

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