Thank you for bringing this weather. I'm dealing with just a chest congestion that's been hanging on for weeks. And I drove 6 and 1 1⁄2 hours from the State Department today. I'm down there visiting the one-day city. But actually, I don't feel bad. So as usual, there's too much to talk about. And I really wanted to leave time for actual talking today. One thing that we left kind of hanging a bit last week, and I wanted to relate this history to you, was the formation of the Bikuni Order, the Women's Order. Do you know that history? Do you know that history?

[01:01]

So I'll tell you about that. But I thought that, and then maybe talk a little about the initial development and kind of the, what's unique about Mahayana Buddhism as it developed from the early stages of Buddhism. I realize that it would have been good, actually, to have begun with this. I may have alluded to the Kalama Sutta, which is sometimes interpreted as the Buddha's charter of free inquiry. And I just wanted to use that as a context, because I think that's actually tremendously important principle in our practice. The more you study and the more you read, the more you will find contradictions and confirmation for almost every view that you can imagine.

[02:19]

And so one has to develop this spirit of free inquiry and develop what the Catholic transcript would call discernment. So, once the Blessed One, while wandering in the coastal country with a large community of monks, entered a town of the Kalama people. The town was called Quezaputa. The Kalamas were their residence. So the Kalamas were, when the Buddha settled, were sitting on one side of the Buddha and the monks on the other. And they said to, blessed one, there are some monks and Brahmins, venerable sir, who visited Kesaputta. They expound and explain only their own doctrines. The doctrines of others they despise, revile, and pull to pieces.

[03:22]

Venerable sir, there is doubt, there is uncertainty in us concerning them. Which of these reverend monks and brahmins speaks the truth and which falsely?" This is substantially edited from the Kalama Sutta itself. The Buddha says, Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing, nor upon tradition, nor upon rumor, nor upon what is in a scripture, nor upon survives, nor upon an accident, nor upon specious reasoning, nor upon a bias toward a notion that has been pondered over, nor upon another's seeming ability, nor upon the consideration, the monk is our teacher.

[04:27]

Kalamas, when you know yourself, when you yourselves know, these things are bad, these things are blameable, these things are censured by the wise, undertaken and observed, these things lead to harm and ill, abandon them. Kalamas, when you know yourself, these things are good, these things are not blameable, These things are praised by the wise. Undertaken and observed, these things lead to benefit and happiness. Enter on and abide in them." So what he's warning against, all of these different points and perspectives that we take as authority. So don't count on something that you have heard repeatedly don't count upon the tradition, nor rumor, nor what is in the scripture or holy book, nor upon surmise, nor upon somebody's specious reasoning or very elaborate argument

[05:46]

nor upon a bias, a notion that has been pondered over, in other words, something you've been thinking about a lot, nor upon another's seeming ability, nor upon even the consideration of this monk as our teacher. So this is a very, a pretty high standard, which goes against, even in this kind of anti-authoritarian culture that we have. Even within that, it sets a very high bar, because it's supposed to be based on the certainty of your own experience and understanding, which is difficult for us to know. But that is

[06:47]

That is his words, and there's a setting for these words. The setting was particularly in answer to the question by the Kalambas who were kind of thrown in doubt, and thrown into a kind of skeptical doubt. So he's not, I think he's not advocating skeptical doubt. He's advocating this spirit of really deep inquiry. And I offer this here because I think it applies to everything that we have been studying and that we consider as history, as doctrine, as the truth, and everything that we will study in ourselves and in our lives. So it's very encouraging to have, to me it's really encouraging to have this as a teaching, even though it's quite difficult to be sure when you really know that something is good.

[08:17]

But it's interesting. The context, I think, that he sets for it is not just one's individual perception. It's based on observation of how teachings work in a wider setting, in a social setting, in a setting of community. As he said, these things are good, these things are not blameable, these things are praised by the wise, undertaken and observed, These things lead to benefit and happiness undertaken and observed by oneself, undertaken and observed by others. You watch how a certain teaching is enacted. Does it lead to something that's wholesome and good? Then perhaps it's something you can trust. These things are praised by the wise. It makes me think.

[09:19]

When I first came to this practice, I wasn't all that young. I was in my mid-thirties. And I looked around and I just saw, I felt like I was seeing people that I could admire, who had been doing this practice for a long time. And that was extremely encouraging. It's not that they were superhuman or without any flaws or shadows, but just their lives seemed to be wholesome. Their principles for how they interacted with people seemed to be wholesome. And that was something that encouraged me tremendously. And that fits, I think, also with Dalai Lama's advice you know, he really encourages people to find a teacher, but he says, well, you should, when you find a teacher, you should watch that teacher for, I forget what he says, it might be something like five years.

[10:34]

You know, you should really pay attention to what that teacher does to see, is, are her actions or his actions wholesome? Do they create you know, some benefit for the community, for the people that are there and in the world around them. And that's, that's the criterion by which you decide whether you can rely on a teacher. Not their, you know, not their seeming piety, nor their charisma, nor their flash of intelligence. But in fact, what you really have to see is, is something wholesome being created, a field of benefit being created around it? Is a field of benefit being created around the practice? And of course, that can apply for any endeavor.

[11:38]

So I just wanted to lay this out as a context of any thoughts or questions. OK, I wanted to set that as a context. The last time we talked a little about the Bikuni order, the birth of the Bikuni order, and I wanted to kind of fill that in with the story of it. And, you know, it's interesting to think about what was going on. So let me tell you this story.

[12:40]

The Queen Mahapajapati was the Buddha's mother-sister. And she brought him up as if he and make her own child. Her husband had died, and she'd completed the requisite mourning, and she decided she didn't want to live in a household life anymore. She wished to live the life of a religious life, like a Bikku. There were no Bikku. Under the guidance of her foster son. So there were a number of other women who wanted to take up this life who were interested. So she went to the Buddha and she asked him if out of pity and compassion he would allow the women, all these women, to leave household life

[13:51]

just as the men could leave household life and become monks. She asked him the requisite three times. That's usually in Buddhism, when you ask for something, you ask it three times. And each time, he begged her not to ask such a thing from him. And this upset her greatly. She grieved that her great wish had been refused and burst into tears, as did all the other women, and they left the Buddha's presence weeping. So then, she's not about to be kind of stopped in this. What she did was, while the monks continued their traveling, she stayed behind and she cut off her hair, as they all did, and they all put on yellow ropes, as the monks did.

[15:15]

They proceeded on foot, village to village. until she arrived at the place in the great woods where the Buddha was staying. Then with her feet all swollen and with her long walk and with the dust of the road still upon her, sad and dejected, she stood weeping outside the vihara, outside the temple. And Ananda, who was the Buddha's attendant, saw her standing there in such a condition, pitiful condition, and he asked, ìWhat was the matter? Why was she crying?î She answered, ìIt is because, O Ananda, the Blessed One will not allow women to retire from the household life and live the homeless life under His doctrine and discipline.î ìIf that is so, O daughter of the Gautama family,î said Ananda, ìwait a moment, and I will plead

[16:15]

with the Blessed One, that He may be pleased to allow women to live under His doctrine and discipline, the same as meekness." So this is, you know, there's a, the early, the early model of the ally. Somebody who was, Ananda was really willing to go to bat for these women. So Ananda respectfully asked the Buddha to have compassion on women and allow them to follow the homeless life under his guidance. Enough, Ananda, enough. Do not ask me any such thing, was the Buddha's reply. Ananda was not daunted or discouraged. The second time and the third time he asked the Buddha the very same thing, and each time he received the very same answer. Then Ananda thought himself, The Blessed One will not give permission for women to withdraw from household life under Him when He has asked directly.

[17:19]

But perhaps He may give permission if He is approached in another way. So He said to His Master, If women were to be allowed, Reverend Lord, to retire from the household life and follow the life of homelessness under the doctrine and discipline of the Tatatata, Would they be able to reach the four stages, one after another, of the path of holiness that leads to the deathless, to nirvana? Yes, Ananda, was the Buddha's reply. If women were to withdraw from household life and follow my doctrine and discipline, they could reach nirvana in this life. They could become arhats. If that is so, said Ananda, consider, Reverend Lord, what a great benefactress Mahapajapati of the Gautama family has been. Pray, Rev. Lord, allow women to withdraw from household life, live the homeless life under the doctrine and discipline which you have made known to the world.

[18:21]

Well, and I nestle the Buddha, if Mahapajapati of the Gautama family and the other women are willing to accept and keep strictly these following eight rules along with the the Vinaya, these eight special rules, let this be considered as her ordination. And then the Buddha went on to tell Ananda that, and I have numbered these, that one, every woman who wished to follow his discipline must show respect to any bhikkhu, no matter how lately he may have been in the order or how long she may have been in the order. Two, she must not live in any district where there are no bhikkhus. 3. She must listen to an admonition from an appointed bhikkhu every Sabbath day. 4. She must invite criticism of her behavior, both from bhikkhus and bhikkhudis, at the end of every vassa.

[19:23]

5. If guilty of a serious offense, She must do penance towards both bhikkhus and bhikkhunis, must spend this period of testing as a novice, two years, before being fully ordained by a chapter composed of bhikkhus and bhikkhunis. Six, she must not speak evil in any way about any bhikkhu. Seven, must not officially administer admonition to a bhikkhu, but eight, must accept such admonition from a bhikkhu. If Ananda said to the Buddha in conclusion, Mahapajapati is willing to obey these eight rules and to keep them as long as she lives, then she may consider herself ordained as a female as a bhikkhuni. Then Ananda took leave of the Buddha and went and told much of Mahapajapati, all that the Buddha had said. And Mahapajapati, glad and happy, answered Ananda, O Ananda, reverend sir, just as a young woman or young man, fond of personal adornment, having bathed her head and got a wreath of beautiful, sweet-smelling flowers, would lift it up with both hands and place it on her head, on that, the noblest part of the body, even so do I, O Ananda, take up these eight rules, never to break them as long as my life shall last."

[20:46]

Then Ananda went back to where the Buddha was, greet his master respectfully, said the Mahapajapati of the Gautama family, Reverend Lord, accepts the eight rules laid upon her by the Blessed One. The sister of the mother of the Blessed One is now ordained a bhikkhuni. The Buddha said, Ananda, not for long will this doctrine and discipline of mine endure among women who withdraw from the household life. Only for 500 years will it so endure. Just as families in which there are many women and few men do not long hold out against thieves and robbers, so where women take to the homeless life under a doctrine and discipline like mine, it does not long endure. It will be as when the field of rice or sugar came, when mildew falls upon it. It will not flourish very long." My note was self-fulfilling prophecy? And things happened exactly as the Buddhists had foreseen.

[21:52]

The proper ordination of women bhikkhus, or as they correctly called, bhikkhunis, died out after about 500 years after Mahapajapati became the first bhikkhuni. There being no longer any bhikkhunis then living who had been 10 years in the order, and so able to confer ordination properly. From Buddha's day to the present though, our basic human nature seems unchanged. The three poisons of greed, anger, and delusion are at least as toxic and pervasive now as they ever were. So, in rough, that's the story. I'm trying to remember. This is from a commentary, a modern-day commentary, that I think comes from an issue of a publication called The Wheel from the Buddhist Formation Society in Sri Lanka. And it's based on, you know, some of it is historical sutra, life of Buddha material, and then some of it, like the last comment is a writer's note.

[22:59]

I can't remember the source. But that's the story. It's a very difficult, it still is a very difficult route in most cultures to be a full nun, ordained, fully ordained. From very early on, there began to be monastic organizations, and they were compelled to have actually their own independent monastic organizations. And there were all kinds of strictures put upon them. There was a scholar named Gregory Chopin who found these incredible Indian documents, which include

[24:00]

they include like fundraising letters, you know, kind of the rules for how monks were allowed to raise money. And there was a tremendous, tremendous limitation of discrimination placed upon the women's ability to collect resources as opposed from the monastic order of men. And that's still very much the case if you, you know, in the Tibetan tradition, say, The notaries are very poor, and both the resources and the education available to them are very limited. So you see this is arising within a very strongly patriarchal culture that is perhaps somewhat changed, but in some fundamental ways maybe not changed. Yeah.

[25:02]

I was struck by the fact that he never actually justified why not. I mean, he said, as a community, politely, not modestly. He never said why he was so reluctant to propose in the first place. And I was wondering, you know, is there any speculation or writing about, concretely, if somehow somebody could probe his mind on this, why would he How do you explain this position? Well, there's a couple of things that I've both read and also heard in discussion. The first is that elsewhere what it says is that the inclusion of women, of ordained women, not only would that mean that the life of the Kuni order was going to be limited to 500 years, but it would limit the time when the dharma was available in the world.

[26:17]

Now, who said this? And this is why I wanted to set the context with the Kalama Sutra. Who said this? Whose telling is this? There is a case to be made, I think, in some of the textual analysis that this story is a flashback, that the telling of it was long after the case, after there had already been, after the Buddha's life, after there had already been this manifest discrimination of women in the Indian monastic system, it's clear that there were hukumi.

[27:21]

And there are some quite incredible stories. There's a text called the Teragata. I don't know if any of you have seen it. They're just the stories of the early Buddhist nuns, and they're really compelling stories. And they are actually, they're part of, they're part of the Tripitaka. They're part of the Sutta. You know, they are. authenticated, you know, they're proved as part of the original text. And those are the, those stories in the Theragatha are about, I think they're all of the women whose names we chant in the morning. I don't know if you've been there. But those, I think all of their stories are in the Theragathas. T-H-E-R-A-T-H-E-R-A-T-H-E-R-A-T-H-E-R-A-T-H-E-R-A-T-H-E-R-A-T-H-E-R-A-T-H-E-R-A-T-H-E-R-A-T-H-E-R-A-T-H-E-R-A-T-H-E-R-A-T-H-E-R-A-T-H-E-R-A-T-H-E-R-

[28:26]

Pi, G-A-T-H-A-N. And it's probably likely. There's a book called Stories of Early Buddhist Women. And then there are many more stories in the commentaries. So it's quite clear there was a concluding point. And it's also clear that gender discrimination was really strongly embedded in the culture And you find it tremendously, well, it's embedded in all of the cultures. There are particularly strange forms of it that also arise in the Zen school. And frankly, these traditional prejudices, traditional prejudices against women as being unclean, I think fears and superstitions around menstruation and the expression of that, all of that is there.

[29:37]

You know, you find it running through all of these Buddhist traditions. I think as the kind of perhaps archetypal folk fear, my own view is that it's not, you know, Well, having been president at the birth of my children, this is a power that men could never have. And so there's a kind of fear. That's my own, I want to get your point back. Yeah. When you talk about, when you talk about biology, nobody pretends saying, are you alluding to certain rules that you've seen that talk about, do not enter here if you're from mainstream?

[30:37]

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know about it in Indian Buddhism, but it does exist. I've read materials like that in medieval Japanese Buddhism. It's very popular. Yeah. It sounded a little bit like you picked up some prophecy there, and that's fine, but when it's ordered, then it's not so much the type of order itself, or any lack of capability at all, than the type of order in the general society, as he likens the the difficulty of the continued existence to a household of women being assaulted. It's an incredible person. Right. And I think that a lot of these eight special rules, one can see them as oppressive.

[31:46]

One can also see them, the intent of them was to some extent protective. You can make a case for them. The question that comes to mind right now is, well, these are still in place, which I kind of have difficulty swallowing. They are still in place in the coordination that is offered basically in the Chinese tradition. in the Mahayana ordination, which is, the ordination process is basically the same. So they take these special, it's a gurukul, so they exist within that.

[32:46]

Now, the Chinese, this is maybe getting into, moving a lot further forward in time, they don't take it, all that serious. It's like, well, we'll keep these rules very carefully, but maybe not. So I've seen there's a tremendous deal of equity, for the most part. It's more difficult. Well, there's been a tremendous amount of difficulty in re-establishing the CUNY order in the Tarabana markets, because it did die out. about 1,000 years ago. And I did talk about this a bit last week. It's been reintroduced by way of the northern, North Asian countries, China for the most part. They have China and Vietnam, which have kept this Mahayana organization.

[33:56]

and you're protecting the ones who are probably too high up on the ladder, I would imagine, from a feminist point of view, the protection is, what do you do with the children who are probably so great? Well, that's a, yeah, I mean, I think that's a related question. There's various, it's really complicated. I think the Buddha was also concerned about sexual relations from both sides within the order, and what kind of possible decision that might create. And I don't know much about the history of that. Yeah. Well, where are we talking about?

[35:07]

That's the point. I don't. I think that Americans, I feel like it's in a very big transition that actually, in terms of numbers, there's virtually Within a few years, there'll be equity in terms of numbers of teachers and seniority of teachers. There wasn't, I would say, in, say, Mel's generation, but in the next generation, there are a lot of very strong teachers and there's a tremendous feeling of equity. No, there's no community. And since we only take the Bodhisattva vows, the ordination is exactly the same. And, you know, there are some monks and nuns, even in Zen, even in Western Zen people, people who, by virtue of the community that they're in, take vows of celibacy or that that's one of the

[36:24]

vows that their teacher asked them to take. But that's, it's quite even-handed. So there's, think about the community of Shasta Abbey in Northern California, which is, there's no distinction between men and women. I mean, they live separately, but in terms of rank or status, it's exactly the same. Yeah. Well, I think there's a growing. I really feel that what happens here, there's this feedback that's happening with Japan. So it was so present in Japan. It's very powerful feedback. Because what we have here, in very strong community-based practice, which really has never existed there.

[37:30]

We have strong communities, but it's more communities in the sense of like church, and mostly it's around funerals and memorials. So Zazen has become, in many ways, a kind of... You could see it as like a traditional art in Japan, like flower arranging or kendo or some martial arts. It's a very rarefied thing. Monks do it as part of their training. They don't do it, for the most part, they don't do it much for the rest of their life. Or they enact it as a ritual, a ceremony, and they will do 20 minutes of zazen, or they will once a month have people in so they can get a flavor for what this traditional Japanese religious practice is like. But you don't see a group like this.

[38:34]

people who sit regularly, sit here every day, this is totally rare. And it's more and more, particularly as generations change there, the possibilities that they see in what's happening in Zen in the West is actually having an effect, will have an effect, I hope, on what's happening there. uh it's it's not too alive there i mean it's alive in the form of being a very rich religious organization that has a lot of money and a lot of influence you know but when they're people who are waking up not so many and yet there still are you know there there really are people who are authentically practicing uh And there even are some lay people who are thinking and practicing, but not the numbers that we have.

[39:41]

And I think that part of it is they also have been reckoning with this presence of strong women coming from the West. When I was in Japan last year, Our group was half women. And I think it was mostly the same when it was a group. This was for a kind of a training and sort of key step of authorization from Soto Shu, authorizing us, he said, teachers. And they are dealing with more and more women from here. How that's going to happen there, I'm not sure. Taking us, at the moment, it's going to be a good place to break and take a few minutes.

[40:43]

We'll come back and talk about volume. The Rinzai said they don't study the precepts of Tills. It's the last stage of their poetry. Because concern that if you don't have a deeply realized understanding, you can't relate to the precepts in any other than a dualistic way.

[41:46]

So it's really the very end of the training. So it's not like us where they do this ceremony monthly, where we study them and talk about these things. Yes. That's right. In the Meiji period. Yeah, it was mandated by the government. The government. Right. Right. Well, there's a couple things. They wanted to get them out of politics. They wanted to also break monastic affiliations that were tremendously strong. In the period before the Meiji, the Tokugawa period, the temples were kind of overlapped with what we would call civil society.

[42:57]

They were the kind of the agencies which registered everybody. You had to be registered with the temple in order to be, literally, have a personhood. If you were not registered, then you couldn't get a job, you wouldn't be in a decent position, and you didn't have community to relate to. So there was a real kind of ambiguous relationship between the temple and the state. When it came to the Meiji period, they actually wanted to make that separation. So they were building state power, and they wanted to make that something that had very clear authority, apart from having these kind of temple and head temple affiliations that had a tremendous amount of political and economic power.

[44:01]

And they quite rightly figured, well, if all the priests get married, then their primary loyalty is going to be to their family, to be their family first before their temple affiliation, before their temple association. And it was very effective. So Suzuki Roshi was only in the, he was in the second or third generation of officially married priests. It also did another thing. It created, to some degree, it atomized these temple associations' power because it meant that you created a hereditary transmission of temple authority.

[45:02]

So in other words, rather than the head temples having this great authority, it's, oh, you, priest, go there, you go there, so everything is kind of radiating out from the center, there was, temples tended to be, tended and still tend to be passed from father to son. Suzuki Roshi's temple was was passed on to his son, Hoitsu Suzuki. And Hoitsu is going to pass the temple on to his son, Shungo. And Shungo, he's in this mid to late 20s now. And he's living there recently. He's great. But this is a way of creating other less centralized bodies of power. This is, you know, weirdness. Japanese politics, which are a little bit as weird and perhaps no weirder than Mars.

[46:05]

So, roughly around 500 B.C., the next grains retreat, they convene the first council. And there were 500 bhikkhus who were, all of whom were arhats, fully realized, led by Mahakasyapa, who was the Buddha's direct heir. And they gathered to recite the entire body of the Buddha's teachings, to recite them, and the Vinaya. Vinaya was recited by the Upali, and that became set there. We already talked about that, where they asked him, where they asked Ananda, well, he wasn't going to say it. He said, keep the major precepts, not the minor ones. It would be neglected to ask them which were the minor ones. And they also invited Ananda, who had this incredible telegraph, you know, photographic

[47:14]

micro-photographic memory to recite the entire Dalai Lama, all of the words in Buddha. And he recited that and they wrote it down. So that was the first capsule. I may have said this, it's quite interesting, right off the bat, going back to this question of gender and power, there are no betweenies there. Perhaps they forgot to invite them. But it wasn't that there weren't any Likudis who were ours, but they weren't there. So then a hundred years after the Buddhist Parinirvana, there's a second council, the South, which came to discuss points of difference that had developed, both in the Vinaya and the endowment. And this is where you start having the first kind of parting of the ways. There were a number of different schools that were developing then.

[48:20]

One of the schools was what became called the Mahasanghika. And the Mahasanghika were kind of like proto-Mahayana. This is about 300, 380, 400 BCE. And they were somewhat reluctant, interestingly enough, especially thinking of the Purana Sutta, to accept the sutras and the Vinayas as the final authority on the Buddhist teaching. In other words, they were slightly reluctant to have all this doctrine nailed down. once and for all. And they were called the Mahasanghikas because actually that was the majority faction in this body. And they were beginning to articulate some of the views that developed a bit later as Mahayana.

[49:31]

Present-day scholars, it used to be thought that the Mahayana proceeded from the Mahasanghikas, and now it's not so sure at all. It might be that these Mahayana principles, which I will spell out in a couple of minutes, were actually already in the air, and that the Mahasanghikas were an expression of that. And then there were many more. There was a third council by the king Ashoka, And, you know, I don't think there was a council after that for many hundreds of years, but what you had was Buddhist-informing schools and sects, much like early Christianity, where you had this tremendous proliferation of different sects, different interpretations, in some cases different Gospels.

[50:36]

And you had a tremendous number of of sex, by then, of both Mahayana and what got called Kiniyana, which is a pejorative term. Mahayana has great vehicle, Kiniyana has lesser vehicle. But you might just call it early Buddhism. Of all those schools, the only one that survives to this day, and that survives in a relatively straightforward way, is the present-day Theravada school, which just means Way of the Elders. And a lot of the other schools have, you know, fallen by the way. So, Ahayana Buddhism really arose in about a 200, 250 year period between 150 BCE to about 100 or so.

[51:46]

It's possible that it was influenced by all kinds of other cults and religions in the general sort of in the Middle East, in the Hellenistic countries, even in Africa, there might have been some influence there. You certainly see it when you see the first development of the Silk Road, which was pretty early. You had Buddhists going in both directions, and so the first Buddhists Buddha images are remarkably Hellenistic. They're really cool. I mean, if you've been to the San Francisco Zen Center and Das Sahara, you check out these beautiful Gandharvan figures.

[52:54]

Gandharva is a region along the Silk Road, sort of, here in Pakistan and Afghanistan. But there were common features that developed in Lama Yoga. So let me just kind of lay them out. The first was the replacement of the arhat ideal, which is the ideal of this being who finds their own liberation in practice, replaced by the idea of the bodhisattva. The bodhisattva existed before all of the early Jataka tales and tales of the Bodhisattva, the Buddha-to-be. But in this case, the Bodhisattva is someone who postpones their full Buddhahood for the sake of all being.

[53:57]

We do talk about this, we do the Bodhisattva in the house and all the time. needs are never assigned out to save them or to awaken them, and so on. And so you have the replacement of this kind of individual with a model of the Bodhisattva whose practice is for the benefit of all beings. So that's one end. With the development of Bodhisattva, you also had a stronger emphasis on wisdom and compassion going together.

[54:59]

But whereas previously, the emphasis was much more on wisdom than this cutting through the delusion of everyday existence. Now the emphasis is more on compassion and how they go hand in hand. And with that, in the content of skillful means. Let me take a drink, get some cough medicine, and be right back. This looks worse than it is. How did I get to this? OK, so the principle of compassion, or karuta, linked with skillful means, and whatever works to wake somebody up.

[56:02]

And so that goes hand in hand with the Bodhisattva ideal. You have these Bodhisattvas seen as Well, you have some key Bodhisattva figures. You have Amla Kuntishvara, Bodhisattva of Compassion, Manjushree, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, Samantabhadra, the Bodhisattva of Practice, and several others. And they were seen as active in this world, along with a host of other Bodhisattvas. these were not all ordained beings. It was not required that a Bodhisattva be ordained. And that's a significant difference, and that was one of the doctrinal struggles that happened.

[57:09]

Mahayana emerged really fully. And you see this embodied in said he works as the Vimalakirti Sutra, which is about a layperson who actually ties the other Bodhisattvas in knots. It's brilliant. It's really great. We should actually, that would be fun to study sometime. Or in, it also figures in the Chinese tradition, right, Laman Pong and his whole family, his wife and his daughter, they have a picture of Laman Pong's daughter, or men, These were late people. And so that was also an emerging thread of Mahayana Buddhism. Two other things. One is just the development of a kind of doctrine of emptiness, which was there. It's not like this was something that was invented at a whole clock by

[58:14]

in the course of these Mahayana sutras. It's really there in the early Buddhism, but it was developed much further. The notion that there is nothing that exists that has a permanent essence, or that has any substance in and of itself. The emptiness is is about the complete interdependence and interpenetration of all things and all beings. All things co-creating the reality that we experience, and that reality is constantly shifting. So, emptiness means empty of self-nature, very fixed self-nature. That doctrine was really highly developed in my And finally, one of the set of key teachings.

[59:19]

In early Buddhism, even though there were transcendental and transmundane aspects of the Buddha, basically he was seen as a flesh and blood person. And a lot of the stories are very get a lot of particular attention to his actions. It's very interesting. A lot of them begin with him begging. He'll be begging, he'll be on the ground begging, then sitting down and eating, and then talking with monks or with whoever comes. It's very, very down to earth, very very much about a being that you might encounter as a man, embodied. And the Mahayana develops a much more sort of transcendent idea of the Buddha as, first of all, as each of us embodying Buddha, having that potential.

[60:42]

but also the Buddha has simultaneously, well, as they developed this notion of the trikaya, the three bodies of the Buddha, and so the first body is the appearance body. We chant these in our meal chants, the dharmakaya, sambhogakaya, and nirmanakaya. So the nirmanakaya is the appearance body, which is the Buddha who came in the world. The dharmakaya is the Buddha as truth, as this all-pervasive principle of truth in the universe. And then the sambhogakaya, sometimes referred to as the bliss body, or the enjoyment body, and often that's referring to all of the other countless buddhas that occupy the countless worlds that we can't directly perceive, but that are, you know, whirling about all around us through our planetary space.

[62:03]

So you have this notion, this very cosmic notion of of these three bodies interacting. So those are key principles. And then, of course, there are all these schools of Maya that arose. And they were discovered texts. You know, there's one story about these texts is that they were seen as two they would have been too confusing for people before their proper time, and so the Buddha gave these special teachings elsewhere, and the texts were held until such time when it was appropriate for them to be discovered. It's hard for me to say that now. It's more likely in my mind that these were composed. Anyway, this is just, this is really,

[63:06]

very sketchy outline of Mahayana principles. It's all in the Heart Sutra. The whole deal is in the Heart Sutra, and the Heart Sutra is this great crash course in Mahayana Buddhism. And I think Sogyal Roshi's lecture is on the Heart Sutra in the term prahasa. Is that right? Is anyone there? Yeah. Maybe. Were they from December? No, they're over. Well, they're probably here on CDs. They're really great. And they unpack the Heart Sutra, which is actually a very early Mahayana text. It's one of the earlier versions of the Prajnaparamita literature, which is one of the main bodies of literature of Mahayana Buddhism.

[64:17]

But I think I'm going to stop there. I'm happy to take questions about Mahayana Buddhism or about anything in the 10 minutes or so that we have. Yeah. Now, the first session, I hope you said that. It's just the scholarly literature has been covered. What they used to think was that the Pali texts were earlier than the Sanskrit texts. which is a little confusing because actually the early texts weren't in Pali either. And I don't know the linguistic mids and outs, but it turns out that the number of Sanskrit texts are actually quite early.

[65:26]

And they may be as early as some of the of the text that then got translated into Pali. So it may be that these ideas developed very quickly. If, as they're saying, the ideas of the Bhagavad-Gita, which began to have currency a hundred years after the Buddha's death, if those were already expressing ideas that were in circulation, then this came back very quickly. But this is the kind of stuff that I'm not sure will ever pin down. And it's very interesting. And I'm not always sure what difference it makes to how we practice. But it does engage the mind. I forget the name.

[66:27]

I mean, it had its own language, and I'd forgotten the name of it. One of my oldest friends from high school, he knows these really early languages and I need to find out because it's not in these, you really have to ask somebody who really studies this stuff. It's not in the survey books. Eric might know. You know, they're in an earlier Indic language, North Indian language. Yeah, yeah. And it's just, I don't know, I am kind of awed by people who study this stuff, because it really is interesting. This friend of mine, Richard Solomon, he knows languages that exist like in one set of

[67:30]

simple inscriptions in Afghanistan. It's very interesting. But there were a lot of languages expanded early on. Aside from Pali and Sanskrit, there was Gandharan. There was pre-Gandharan. And these were all kind of in that territory, that North Indian territory, which was very well traveled. Yeah. Why sometimes the references you don't have in other tabs is referenced? Is there a difference? I don't think so. Let me see what I do. Is that the easiest question you'll ever get? No. It's usually. I think usually I use the Buddha, because what it really means is the awakened one.

[68:41]

And there's usually, sometimes there's a modifier, Lord Buddha. But I don't think it makes much difference. Yeah, it's certainly contextual. Earlier, when you were listing off the guru-dharma text, there were six rules, six precepts. If one of them mentions something about a sabbath, you know there must be a sabbath. I think what they mean is the precept day, which would be twice a month. Now, it might mean, they might have also done something like what you have in Chinese and Japanese Buddhism, where in a monastic setting, a break in the schedule, say a four or nine days.

[69:57]

Could be something like that. I don't know that that exists in in the Theravada tradition, I think they're probably talking about the precept observation. Because that would be the day, that would be the right time to do that. Well, it's interesting. You must listen to an admonition from an appointed bhikkhu, like Greek Sabbath day. I think what that means is a lecture. I think that means they had to invite a bhikkhu in to lecture to them. I think in order to keep a connection between the bhikkhu and the bhikkhuni orders, so that you didn't have women just really going off on their own track. They had to keep being in relation.

[71:01]

Well, that's what the word means to us. But I don't know what the context is. I will ask my friends at the Carmel wedding. But I think it's just kind of formal language. That's my sense of the matter. I'm not sure. I'd have to find out. Yeah. Going back to Suzuki Roshan's grandson, and I'm excited about them. One of my biggest memories of BCC is meeting his son, Mr. Cheryl, and he was teaching us those bell chimes. Baica. Yeah. Baica is the name of that. Oh, really? Yeah. Club Blossoms. And he teaches them to the older women of the community. So it was a lot of fun. And my question really is about, our relationship with his family, on the one hand.

[72:13]

There's sort of like family to us, they're like cousins and things like that, and yet they have their own, you know, wrong thing going on in the world. It's just funny, when do you think, with this 20-year-old, what he thinks of us? Oh, I mean... Do I disturb him? Yeah, I mean, I don't... I think that Shungo has been here, but he's been there when, you know, he's grown up there. He's been in connection with Suzuki Roshi's heirs. He's been there when groups of people have come to practice there for practice periods. And I think that he knows that his grandfathers were deeply respected. And he probably knows that his father and mother and grandmother are very deeply loved.

[73:13]

And so I think there's a connection there. I have to say that when I went there, I went there like a week after I was ordained. We had the first group of people go there to do a practice period. It was the first practice period that happened there in about 100 years. And when I walked in completely jet-lagged and dazed and hadn't been to Japan, as soon as I walked into the hall, I was just so powerfully struck by how at home I felt. And I've always felt that every time I've been here, and Rory felt that, and I just feel a tremendous personal connection with And he's one of those rare, have others of you been there when he's there? It's like, he's one of those unique beings on the planet.

[74:21]

And I don't, when you're around him, you feel it. And I think from the stories that I, I've heard of that Suzuki Roshi, who I didn't have the gift of meeting. With Suzuki Roshi, what was similar was that I think everybody, and this is universally the case, everybody who encountered him felt that they were totally seen by him, which is also very well seen and accepted. With Hoitsu, without derogation, Hoitsu is not a Zen master. But he has this quality of transmitting joy. He's very natural.

[75:24]

He's very joyous. And we watched his life change in ways that, when I was there the last time, it just was so deeply moved. He had stopped drinking. and actually had, I don't know if I should even say this, had reinvigorated his marriage. When we were there in 88, there's a fair amount of bickering which happens between people who are married for a long time. And when I was there in the It must have been 96 or 97. It was like there was so much love that was passing between him and his wife that I was just moved to tears. And so some transformation in working on it that's just really inspiring.

[76:24]

That's about nine. Any last questions or comments? Well, thank you. I enjoyed it. And I always remember these words of Suzuki Roshi, that giving a talk or giving a lecture or classes, you're making a mistake on purpose. Because you can never cover what you want to cover. You could never say it completely, but you know, hopefully something that's been communicated, you know, and something about this spirit of inquiry that goes hand in hand with practice. Thank you very much.

[77:16]

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