this morning, I want to start by expanding a little bit on Jaime's question about Bhairavachana Buddha. which brings up the question of, I think implied behind the question is the question of devotion. We speak of dharmakaya, sambhogakaya, nirmanakaya buddha, and it's all kind of intellectual sound. And if you have a focus like a deity, then takes it out of the realm of introduction and focuses on worship.

[01:11]

Worship, the word worship, means to see worth, to pay tribute to worth, or to recognize something as worthy. worthy of offering, or worthy in a bigger sense of the word. Something that is really worth something. Something stable from which everything emanates. So we're always looking for the source. All of our wandering and seeking and desire seems to be seeking out the source. So people do it in various ways.

[02:17]

And some ways look like dead ends. And some ways look like there's some place to go with it. And so, in this world, there have been various paths carved out for people to follow, which seem to be paths to the Source. Some of them, from the point of one path, people on one path look over at another path and say, that's not the right way. this is the right way, and then somebody on the other path will go on this path and say, oh, that's not the right way, this is the right way, and then they get very angry at each other and start killing each other off because they're not following the right way. This is the problem in religion.

[03:20]

It usually leads to bloodshed. So intelligent people question religion. And rightly so. We should all question religion. The people who should really question religion are the people who study it, or who believe in it. And each one of us should really question religion, so that there's nothing left but the truth. And that's what Zen is. questioning everything until there's nothing left of the truth. Sometimes museums call it Great Doubt, where they question everything.

[04:28]

It's necessary to have doubt. Great doubt is necessary. But great doubt is also great faith. On the other side, it's great faith. So just to have faith in something that someone tells you that you should have faith in is not real faith. Real faith comes through your own understanding. It doesn't mean to necessarily doubt the way or doubt yourself, but to find the reality. You cannot rest with some easy answer.

[05:35]

So, in Zen, We honor Shakyamuni Buddha as a teacher, and in the course of time there came to be many different representations of Buddha, and of course people worship these representations. Vajracana is probably the closest that Buddhism comes to a god, which is the personification of Buddha nature, Dharmakaya. And in the Shingon sect, the esoteric sect, which has all the various representations of Buddhism, Bodhisattvas, Shingon is the Japanese equivalent to Vajrayana.

[06:37]

They worship Bhairavachana, who is the Buddha, who sits in the center of the universe. Actually, when we sit in Zazen, very still, without moving, without thinking, we are what Bhairavachana Buddha. matter of fact, we are an expression of bio-channel Buddha. But all of the imagery of Zen is borrowed. There's no special form of Zen. True form is no special form. is no special form.

[07:42]

You don't have to believe me. You should find that for yourself. Matter of fact, you shouldn't believe me. Everything that I say or someone else says, it's just pointing to reality. But the reality is something that each one of us has to personally So in Zen there's no special form, but we have a form, forms which help us to practice. And so somewhere back there, quite a few hundred years ago, the Zen school borrowed the esoteric imagery

[08:47]

from Shingon and Tendon schools. They would study that stuff. That's their practice. And they kind of borrowed it. And that became the basis of our service. So we don't deny the practices of other schools. that is useful, sometimes unused, and they respect. So this imagery becomes a convenient or nice way to help us appreciate or understand things. Sometimes people miss, in Zen, people miss the devotional aspect of other forms.

[09:49]

Buddhism or other religions. But to my mind, Zen is no less devotional than any other form of religion. It's just that devotion, instead of being out there, is right here. Darwin says, devotion to single-minded Zazen. That's real devotion. And when you see everything as an aspect of yourself, then you can find the real devotion in whatever you need. Tozin, the founder of our school, he looked in the stream and saw his reflection.

[10:52]

He said, everywhere I go, I think myself. He may think that he saw his face reflected in the stream, but actually the stream itself is a reflection of the space. The rocks are a reflection of the space. A woman or a man is a reflection of the space. But when we bow, who do we bow to?

[11:55]

A bowing is a kind of devotional act. Do you like that? It is, it's a completely devotional act. But what do we bow to? Buddha? Who is Buddha? Is Buddha an invention of our mind? Which came first, Barbara yesterday said, which came first, the chicken or the egg? That's a Hamanican poem. My answer to that poem, my response to her poem is the chicken came first, They both arose together. Do we invent Buddha or did Buddha invent us?

[13:12]

When we bow, I make Buddha and Buddha makes me. We think there may be some Buddha up there that came before me, or maybe I came before Buddha. Devotion allows Buddha and myself to arise simultaneously. Is Buddha outside of myself, inside of myself, different from myself, the same as myself? Sometimes you have to Buddha.

[14:14]

Sometimes what? You have to Buddha, sometimes you have to yourself. Sometimes you have to nothing. That's right. Sometimes you have to Buddha, sometimes you have to yourself. Sometimes we turn to other people, but whichever it is, we're always turning to ourself. Who is ourself? Everything is ourself. So, great evolution to our no-self. But we like to have something outside of ourself. We kind of feel that there should be something outside of ourself, some warm comforter.

[15:19]

some place to go to, some warm home that we're embracing. When we learn how to embrace, then we will be embraced. I mean, we truly can take care of life as ourself. Life will take care of us. So, kind of to let go of ourself and take care of Buddha. Buddha takes care of us. Buddha is not something outside of ourself. There are many ways, many paths to reality.

[16:39]

The other day, my son Daniel, who is now six, said, Daddy, you know, some people think that God is an old man sitting on top of a cloud in the sky. Isn't that silly? Frankly, I thought it was a pretty good idea. I thought to myself, well, at six years old, it should be a good idea, maybe, to think that God is an old man in the sky in a cloud. But what came up in me was I didn't want to criticize that idea. And I didn't feel so good about him criticizing that idea either. Not because it's not right. But everyone has some need for imagery.

[17:48]

Everyone has some need for imagery. And we create imagery according to our needs. Truth is in silence and no concepts. Absolute truth is in silence and no concepts. But somehow this needs expression. We need to express. And a naive way of expressing is God is sitting in the sky on a cloud. So people have various ways of expressing something, and if we, from our point of view, there is no special form. If you know that there is no special form, then you can appreciate all forms.

[19:00]

They're all wonderful. Even fundamentalist, the most fundamentalist, naive, egotistical ways of expression are kind of interesting. Did you say that today? What? Did you say that all today? No, I said today. Next year. Next year. Getting the advanced course. No, I said today was... I said there is no special form. Since there is no special form, I said, since God has no special form, people have ways of expressing that form according to their needs.

[20:09]

I don't mind. He didn't say anything. But he thought about it. He always thinks about it. What was it, a little fashion? I didn't want him to have any prejudice. I had to be very careful because I didn't want to set him on the wrong track. But I went to allow his mind to be open. And the fundamental thing to realize is there's no special form. And where people get hung up is they think that the form that they have is the right form. And if their form is the right form, therefore, All other forms must be wrong. This is dualistic stupidity.

[21:16]

If you know exactly where you stand in the universe, you can appreciate all the forms as the forms of yourself. It doesn't mean that they're all expressing the absolute truth, but they express the truth of people where they stand. If we understand this from this viewpoint, which is no special viewpoint, we can feel at home in various places.

[22:38]

I kind of take issue with my father-in-law, who is a scientist and thinks that nothing in religion is worth anything. So when he criticizes fundamentalist Christians because they defy the law of evolution. Even though I realize that creationism cannot stand up to the law of evolution, still I feel more like defending creationism than the law of evolution. Because my feeling is that he is just like they are. In his one-sidedness, in his dualistic one-sidedness to prove creationism wrong, he's just like they are.

[23:47]

Just like fundamentalists are in not believing in creationism. They could resolve. If they didn't have such a dualistic viewpoint, they could resolve it easily. But they keep battling. It's stupid. Of course the world was created in seven days. We all know that. So what? So anyway, the world is richer for its diversity.

[24:48]

A problem comes in when the ego clings to versions of the truth. That's a big problem. claims to versions of the truth. The scientist claims to his version of the truth. The religionist claims to his version, or her version of the truth. And the whole world stops. Did you want to say something? I was just going to say that to the digital point, that sometimes creationism is interpreted as the development of the mind. And if you look at that, that idea of evolution is like the development of the mind, and also the evolutionary part is the development of the mind. It's kind of looking like what we were talking about yesterday, bringing in the scientific part of synapses.

[26:05]

It doesn't lessen the experience at all, just like creationism does. There are fundamental misconceptions about reality which are obvious. And the misconception isn't that whatever is created can't be used, but it's usually used in the wrong way. What we read in the Bible isn't factual truth, necessarily. It's based on some fact. All history is based on some fact. But we rewrite history to create a story.

[27:10]

And people say, well, you're rewriting history, and that's wrong. But actually, Rewriting history is the only way we can read history. Because since history is gone, whatever we remember is distorted by the fact that it's just a memory. And the further back it goes, the more distorted it gets, because who remembers it? But the story continues, and the story is rewritten according to the way we understand it. And the way we understand it is what's important. So that's one of the points. And from the point of view of accuracy of events, that's probably so.

[28:13]

from the point of view of how to continue our destiny from the lessons of the past, we have to write it in such a way that we see the picture. So what's really important is the picture. And if you look at the Bible as fact, that's impossible. Not possible. You have to look at it from the point of view of what it's saying, the picture that it's giving. Because, who knows the facts? And who knows the picture? But the picture is something that we can deal with. The picture is something that is important to us. Maybe because we can form a vision from both the successes and failures of the past.

[29:24]

So that's why myth, myth is important. If we look at the Zen lineage, scholars will uncover various dirty tricks, you know. Actually, they'll pick the gaps. So the ancients filled in the gaps with various ancestors. And so the thinking, if you think, well, that's wrong, that's because your thinking is one-sided. You think that it's a handing down of lineage. But it also works the other way, in that you say, this person is in the lineage because they represent something about the truth of our lineage.

[30:44]

So we put them in there. And the lineage originates with the lineage holding it? It's both ways. The lineage originates from the infinite buddhas of the past, the incountable buddhas of the past, to this. And it originates from us back. He's about being a monk, and he talks about the rules of this school and the OK center and everything.

[31:47]

It seemed to me like he was extraordinarily dogmatic about the whole thing, and that if he didn't believe that that was how it was, that there was just no hope. So clearly, Dogey felt like there was either he, as soon as I got this image of Dogey as being a kind of curmudgeon, stubborn, old buzzard had this reason for thinking then that it was important for us to have this sort of unshakable, it seemed like it was a sort of fanatic kind of way of looking at the practice as opposed to... Well, you have to realize that Dogon, you have to put Dogon in his time and circumstances. You have to see Dogon in relation to his time and circumstances. It was a time when Buddhism was in a kind of standstill in Japan.

[32:52]

It wasn't going anywhere. And he was trying to find out where to take it. Where it was coming from and where to take it. So he went to China and his transmission phone Tendon Yojo was a very important thing for him to connect. He wanted to find that connection and carry it to Japan in order to stimulate the Dharma in Japan. he would be very adamant about this, [...] this to make a very strong statement and to give his way legitimacy. In some other age and circumstances,

[33:58]

And essentially it was a very difficult time in Japan. And Buddhism, he felt, was kind of wandering around without a head. The body was wandering around without a head, with no real direction. He was very adamant about establishing the lineage. And Durden was very positivistic. But he had to be. I think the occasion was putting him in a position But, and I apologize in front of everyone.

[35:11]

But, um... Just a really meaningful thing. That was maybe the most meaningful thing. It was connecting. Right? Connecting with the right, the true world. What's that? So in a sense, you can say that Dogen was the strong man of Buddhism in his time. There was Dogen, Nichiren, and Shinra, who were the three reformers of Buddhism. And they shared a different way. Dogen was Zen master, Nichiren He wore armor underneath.

[36:19]

He was a very aggressive sort of person. Intolerant. Developed a chanting of the name of Buddha. Shaman who developed chanting of the name of Buddha. It's chanting the name of the Lotus Sutra, devotion to the Lotus Sutra, and devotion to Amitabha Buddha, chanting the name of Buddha. And we don't so much think of Zen as devotional. Zen is devotion, wholehearted devotion. So instead of making devotions to Bhairavachana Buddha, we include him in an honorable way and respect those forms, those images of Bhairavachana Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha.

[38:07]

Sometimes the statues of those people are called Sutras for Deliverance. Otherwise you get a message without being able to read it. Yeah, they're very... they have a place. to study the sutras and not devoted enough to Chaitanya and Buddha, just sit in dumb silence. It is a physiological aspect to the projection of pictures, though. If you study things like Tarot or I Ching, or crystal gazing, or palm reading,

[39:19]

by sincere practitioners, not fakes. There's something about seeing what's in here by seeing it out there. Evidently, something in our physiology enables... the only way we can get it is to put it out there. We must be involved in that also, not just as a philosophy or a technique. You know, that brings up the whole question of consciousness. That's Vajrayana, isn't it? That's Vajrayana practice, isn't it? Yeah, well, visualization for me. Creating images. And becoming, merging with image. I think some people can't hear everybody because of the wind. One year, we shattered the maple blossoms and cooked them.

[40:35]

It's too late for that. Too late. Too early. It takes months. Yeah, too early, yeah. Well, you have a sharp understanding of how we see everything. is that we create an image of what we see in our mind. And so, when we look at the lamp, we say, I see the lamp. But actually, what I see is the image in my head, in consciousness. Seeing sees an image in consciousness that says, the lamp. And we act as if we really see it. And that's called seeing something. We create an imagery in our own mind. of what is actually seen. So, the subject and the object are really not two different things.

[41:45]

In fact, they become separated in our mind. The object of our practice is to be able to open up consciousness completely, enough so that we can see the true form of our self, the true form of the self, which is no special form and includes all forms. Sometimes we see it a little bit, sometimes we open up to it, sometimes it takes a long time before we really experience it.

[43:06]

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