I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good morning. Well, about half of us are here on the first day of a three-day Seshin, and the rest of you have braved the mercurial weather to come, so glad that you could do so. We're going to study, or I'm going to lecture, and we can read one of my favorite fascicles of our ancestor sitting in a chair, and he was a person who brought Soto Zen from China to Japan, although he was loath to call it Soto Zen, he was actually loath to call it Zen, but it was, about, oh, he came back to Japan, I think, in 1233.

[01:23]

and did a lot of very incredible writing as well as teaching. He taught in Kyoto for about 10 years and then he founded a temple which is now one of the headquarter temples of Soto Zen, Ehechi, a bunch of you. I think I've been there. It's kind of like There's Eheji and Sojiji, the two headquarter temples of Soto Zen, which is sort of, dare I say, the West Point in Annapolis of Zen. Actually, when you go there, it really is kind of like West Point in Annapolis. It's sort of martial. But I don't think that was the spirit that he had in mind, necessarily. So there's a fascicle of his that I'd like to explore with you. And embedded in this fascicle is this terrific, very straightforward line that says, the mind of a living being is difficult to change.

[02:33]

And it's like, well, what else is new? It was true then, it was true in the Buddhist time, and it's true now. And this fascicle is about How do we change our own minds? How do we allow our minds to be changed? And how do we help others? So the fascicle is called Shobogenzo, which is all of his writings, well, A lot of his writings were collected under this heading, Shobogenzo, the treasury of the true Dharma-I. And this is Shobogenzo Bodhisattva Shishobo, or the Bodhisattva's four embracing actions. To embrace is to encircle. I put my arms around you, you put your arms around me,

[03:40]

We dance. This is how we show our love and our connection. This image of to embrace is quite wonderful because it's the act of unification. We have this Zen saying, not two, not one, or not one, not two. Well, when you embrace, what is it? You know, it's making one out of two. And in that embrace, you're never quite clear on where the, where's the boundary? Where's that separation? For that moment, the separations, even when you're in embrace, you're not sure where that separation is. It's really mysterious. And in that instant, you can't actually say, So in this moment of embrace, the limits of our body, of our skin, of our feelings, of our thoughts, are really not clear at all.

[04:52]

And that's a dharma moment, that moment of unclarity, that kind of unclarity. It's very intimate. It's just about connecting. Seen from the outside, in embrace, these two beings are briefly one. They're dancers on this great stage of life. And then we come back to this thought, though. The mind of a living being is difficult to change. Last winter, a little over a year ago, I was I was in Japan at a training monastery, Zuyoji, and at the end of the stay, I think it was the end of Sashin, we had a ceremony that we have here.

[05:54]

It's Shosan, which is kind of a formal question and answer between the students and the teacher. very much more ceremonial there than here, but even here it's a ceremony. We often do it at the end of Seshin, Long Seshin, and the monks, one by one, they question the abbot. So the abbot is Narasaki Tsugen Roshi, who is, he must be around 80, and he's like He's the closest thing to Yoda that you will ever experience. He's really small, and all of his features are really small, and he's very joyous, and he walks with this amazing kind of lightness, like he's maybe about yay much off the floor. So I asked him, which form of practice besides meditation

[07:01]

do we need to maintain in the West? And his answer very quickly was, endeavor every day to accomplish the four practices of a bodhisattva, or what Dogen called shishobo, which was really, I was very touched by it because this is, It's something I've been thinking about for a number of years. And it was like without knowing me, which he really didn't, he sort of went right to this point. And I think I've been studying it because, probably because I need to study it. So these four actions are giving or offering, Dana, loving speech or kind speech, beneficial action, and what Dogen called identity action, which is interesting.

[08:08]

Sometimes it's called, in some translations, it's called just cooperation. But I think identity action has a particular flavor, and it's a little challenging. What does it mean? It sounds a little abstract. We'll get to this maybe the day after tomorrow. But each dharma or each action points to this unification and embrace. It points to non-separation between beings. Or it points to how we simply manifest the truth that we are not separate from each other. We have this illusion that we are. but in fact we're not. I really felt this very strongly this morning sitting in Zazen and then chanting, just like we just had a room full of energy. And it was the particular blender, the particular soup or stew of these flavors of people who were in the room, very rich and tasty.

[09:22]

But it was hard to see distinct beings. It was easy to see just this whole entity together. So we practice these embracing actions. They're the Bodhisattvas embracing actions. And it's an interesting question. Who is teaching whom? The bodhisattvas use these practices to embrace and liberate us. And as bodhisattvas, we use these practices, as bodhisattvas in training, we use these practices to embrace and liberate ourselves and others and become bodhisattvas. I think more basically in keeping with Dogen's teaching, his teaching, one of the essences of his teaching that we try to remember is what he called practice realization, which means we don't practice to become Buddhas or to

[10:51]

have a big experience or to awaken ourselves, but that the act of sitting down upright and breathing, that's actually the expression of being a Buddha. That's Buddha's activity. So we practice to express our realization, whether we fully realize it or not. So to practice these four embracing actions is expressing our bodhisattva nature. So these are old practices, even in Dogen's time. They're found in the early Pali Sutras as the Sangaha Vatu, or the foundations of social unity. And then they're also found in the Mahayana sutras, in the Lotus Sutra, in the Maha Prajnaparamita Sutra, in the Vimalakirti Sutra, and in many other places.

[12:00]

And in the Pali context, what it says is, practicing in accord with these four bases of harmonious action, practice in accord with these four bases of harmonious action, leading to social stability and harmony. These are Dana, giving, generosity, or charity, which includes both the giving of material goods and wealth, and the giving of knowledge and learning. Piyavaka, kindly speech, speech that is polite, pleasant to the ear, helpful based on reason and conducive to goodness, understanding. Atacharya, helpful action, lending a hand to others and actively supporting their activities, performing good works. This includes helping to alleviate social problems and encouraging moral behavior. and Samanathata, sharing, participating with others, behaving consistently and with equality.

[13:08]

So from very early on, these were seen as social practices. But the idea of them being Bodhisattva practices was not developed. they had in early Buddhism a notion of a bodhisattva. Mostly it was conveyed, bodhisattva means just enlightened being or enlightening being, and the bodhisattva stories in early Buddhism are contained essentially in the Jataka tales, which relate the previous bodhisattva lives of Shakyamuni, the Buddha, to be. So in these tales, a prince offers his own body to feed a hungry tigress.

[14:14]

A parrot quells a forest fire by shaking river water from his wings one drop at a time. A hare sacrifices himself to make a meal for Chakra, the king of the gods, who is disguised as a beggar. Again and again, the Buddha to be born gives his or her utmost effort and even gives his or her life for the sake of other beings who are in need or in danger. Now this idea of a bodhisattva became more developed when Mahayana Buddhism appeared and it became kind of a distinguishing mark of Mahayana Buddhism. And so we'll chant at the end of this talk, we'll chant the bodhisattva vows. Bodhisattva vows to awaken with all sentient beings or to save all sentient beings and that's a vow to

[15:24]

to choose to live within this world of karma, to be born again and again, to live within cause and effect until all beings are free. And so in that context, I think that the bodhisattva vow or the bodhisattva's embrace encircles even failure within her willingness to be born again and again. It embraces failure, it embraces pain. And they're all, there are many bodhisattvas. We have, how many do we have on the, we've got three on the altar here. We have Avalokiteshvara in brass there. I can't quite tell which side.

[16:28]

I think this, is this Samantabhadra here? I can't see from the rear. Samantabhadra, Avalokiteshvara is the Bodhisattva of compassion. Samantabhadra is the Bodhisattva of practice, of diligent practice. And Manjushri on the right is the Bodhisattva of wisdom, carrying a sword. Each one, there are countless bodhisattvas, and they take the form or character, whatever is useful to help us free ourselves from suffering. My friend Taigen Leighton writes about these bodhisattvas as the expression of psychological archetypes. archetypes that each of us carries within us. And I think this is true. Each of us, no matter how deluded or suffering we are, we share qualities of mind and character and action that benefit others.

[17:33]

But I also think that these great spirits are more than archetypes. Like ourselves, they're real people, they walk. and they talk and they practice all kinds of generosity and offering and awakening with their bodies. So we have models of Martin Luther King Jr. or Mother Teresa or His Holiness the Dalai Lama or the Cambodian monk, Maha Gosananda, these are all living, or were living, within some of our memory, Bodhisattva models, because of what they did in the world. And because they persevere in the face of discouragement and violence and many dark nights of the soul. And when we meet such beings, even when we agree with, whether we agree with them or not,

[18:39]

whether we understand them or not, we have a sense of the power of their embrace. So first word, I'm hoping to get beyond the title in this talk. This is a common thing for Zen talks. You spend the whole talk talking about the title. I do plan to get beyond it. So this bodhisattva, bodhisattva, shishobo. Shi means for, and sho is the character for embracing or unifying or integrating. It means embrace and accept, or embrace, in another context, embrace and sustain. And there's a commentary, when a Bodhisattva wishes to guide living beings and transform them, he or she, without fail, should embrace and accept living beings and allow them to trust

[19:50]

him and then guide them to the true way. In the Vimalakirti Sutra it said we first attract living beings with what they desire and then we lead them to enter the Buddha's way of wisdom. So I think I finished with the title. So the bodhisattva's essential practice, one of the first practices, is just the practice of giving, of offering, of dana paramita. And that's the first of these four actions. We give one's attention or friendship, material aid, community, spiritual teachings, After this lecture this morning we'll have an annual ceremony observing the parinirvana, the passing of the Buddha from this world 2,500 years ago.

[21:12]

The Buddha freely offered his teachings and freely offered the example of his simple renunciate's homeless life. This is a very vivid teaching, very vivid example. And we know that it's vivid because it's still quite alive 2,500 years later. We're still chanting and studying his words. And we are ourselves going to offer back in the ceremony our respect, our voices, which is very intimate, just the sound of our bodies resonating with the air that moves through them. Incense and flowers.

[22:17]

tea and cake and light. And so he offered us the teaching. Because we understand the teaching, we offer all this back to him. And so this gift stays in circulation. And when it's in circulation, nobody's holding onto it. It just is moving. So giving is also the first of the perfections, or paramitas, dhana, which includes all the other perfections. In the same sense, this first of the Bodhisattva's embracing actions includes all the others. Dogen begins, begins this section by saying giving means to be not greedy.

[23:25]

To be not greedy means not to crave. Not to crave means in worldly expressions not to flatter. So greediness is sort of the key expression of our self-centeredness. I forget what the context was. Not so long ago, somebody asked Sojin Roshi what he thought was the, what did this practice boil down to? Or what did he feel was the, I think, what did he feel was the essence of Suzuki Roshi's teaching? And he said, don't be self-centered. This practice is speaking directly to that. To be greedy means not to crave. When we crave something, it's because we feel there's something we lack.

[24:31]

There's something that we want because it will complete us. And it leads to the next stage in Duggan's unfolding interpretation. Not to crave means in worldly expression, not to flatter. We flatter, or curry favor in another translation, because we want something for ourselves that we think someone else has. And we'll do whatever it takes to get that. There's something, I think, both in Japanese culture and in our culture, there's something, this notion of flattering or currying favors, very distasteful.

[25:34]

it has a feeling of being demeaning, that you're willing to lower yourself even to that extent to be able to get what you think you want. And the question is, is that really what you want? And if you got it, would it be enough? Or would you be happy? So the emphasis in this case is on the getting. Whereas what Dogen is talking about is giving, and he goes on in the next, it's really wonderful. He then explains, even if we rule the four continents, which were the continents around this mythical Mount Sumeru, which means, the four continents means the whole world. Even if we rule the four continents, in order to offer teachings of the true way, we must simply and unfailingly not be greedy.

[26:39]

And then, there's this wonderful language, it is like offering treasures we are about to discard to those we do not know. I think about, we've sort of gotten into lately, putting the things that we don't need out on the sidewalk. And usually, they disappear. We don't see them as treasures, but somebody else can use them. Somebody, one of the residents here, I think, got rid of a bowl and a couple of cups and a glass plate the other day. And I said, oh, bowl, we can use that. And we put stuff out there. Treasures, we're about to discard. But you can't really discard anything. There's no way to get anything out of the system of the universe.

[27:42]

There's no discarding. although I really wish somebody would have taken our computer monitors that we put out there. Maybe there's enough of those. And the next line, he says, it is like we give flowers blooming on the distant mountains to the Tathagata. and offer treasures accumulated in past lives to living beings. This is a wonderful image to give flowers, and it comes up, again, we give flowers blooming on distant hillsides to the Tathagatas. Tathagatas is the Buddha in a kind of cosmic sense. To give flowers blooming on the hillside. These flowers do not belong to us, And yet, they do, or we belong to them.

[28:47]

And we allow this free exchange. It's very rich. Or we offer treasures accumulated in past lives to living beings. We, ourselves, are the treasures accumulated in past lives. Whether we believe in those past lives or not, If we believe in them, you know, all of our actions have given birth to each of us. This is our treasure. These are the treasures, the real treasures accumulated in past lives. It's not like, you know, in past life I I created a hoard of gold and stuck it away in a cave and now I'm gonna go back in this life and find it. It's like we in our bodies are the treasures that are accumulated from past lives and we live so that we can give it to other beings.

[29:54]

And then Dogen says, whether the gift is Dharma or material objects, each gift is truly endowed with virtue according to offering, according to the spirit of the offering. As long as that offering is free, that gift is of great value. So here, this giving begins with a recognition that there's nothing but giving in the whole universe. The universe is not separate from beings who are continually giving back and forth. This, I think, is our true spiritual understanding. And yet, each of us still must do our part and cultivate the practice of giving. The practice of zazen is the practice of giving.

[30:59]

So I give myself to practice, you give yourself to practice, and practice offers itself to this universe of enlightenment and peace. A true giving means giving up one's small self, one's greedy or one's self-centered self. It also means not hiding. It means honestly showing who you are, even if you find, even if you're uncomfortable with it, or you think that that part of you that you show is ugly or unworthy. And it also means, this act of giving also means giving fearlessness, fearlessness of, showing others that one is willing to face one's failure, one's shortcomings, one's difficulties and despair, willing to share that and expose that because we understand that that is inseparable

[32:28]

from being completely alive. There is no life that is without that. So if we want to choose just one part of life, say, well, I'm going to show this, and hide the other, it inevitably sneaks up behind us and jumps out. And everybody is really surprised because they You think they're really surprised because you think they thought you were really good the whole time, but they also could see you all along. So giving means, also freely receiving. In the Vimalakirti Sutra it says, so a bodhisattva, this is part of this I read, a bodhisattva embraces and accepts all living beings with two kinds of offering, offering material and offering of dharma. If some living beings wish material, a bodhisattva embraces a living being by offering material things.

[33:33]

When some seek dharma, the bodhisattva offers dharma. When living beings receive the benefit of those kinds of offerings, they arouse the mind of intimacy and love the Bodhisattva. So we offer gifts and guidance in many forms. At the heart of these teachings is the understanding that this sharing, this peace, is connection. On the simple level, material goods are given. On a higher level, teaching is shared. And on the highest level, there's just connection. This endless society of being, this vast assembly of bodhisattvas, a small contingent of which are sitting in this room right now. There's a really terrific book by Lewis Hyde called The Gift, which some of you may have read. And he describes a dinner in a cheap restaurant in the south of France.

[34:36]

The patrons sit at a long communal table, and each finds before his plate a modest bottle of wine. Before the meal begins, a man will pour his wine, not into his own glass, but into his neighbor's. And his neighbor will return the gesture, filling the first man's empty glass. In an economic sense, nothing has happened. No one has any more wine than he did to begin with, or that he would have had. But society has appeared where there was none before. This is just like in Japan, when one pours tea or sake, one pours for the other person, and then that person pours for you. In terms of a universe where you're looking at simply the conservation of energy, no more or less energy in one set of terms is being expensed.

[35:39]

And yet, what's being created is connection. As I said earlier, and this is a notion that's in Hyde's book very deeply, is that the gift is only a gift so long as it remains in circulation. A monk or a nun carries an empty bowl from house to house, or we sit in the zendo as we do today with our orioke bowls arrayed before us on the tan. This bowl, is emptiness. And yet in this world that we live in, we place this empty bowl here and miraculously somebody comes and puts food in it. So that one may live. So in this sense of emptiness and food, the form of food, embrace each other and dance.

[36:43]

and having eaten, the monk or us, then converts that food into practice, into sitting, into working in the temple, which again is part of this cycle of offering, offering to nourish all beings. So this dance, this dance of peace continues. This again from Lewis Hyde. Between the time a gift comes to us and the time we pass it along, we suffer gratitude. It's a great phrase, we suffer gratitude. Moreover, with gifts that are agents of change, it is only when the gift has worked in us, only when we come up to its level, as it were, that we can give it away again. Passing the gift along is the act of gratitude that finishes the labor.

[37:48]

So we're always passing this gift along. That's the essence of the practice. It's continually in circulation. Just as Suzuki Roshi said about money, it's like, oh, money is very good. You just have to keep it in circulation. You just have to spend it. You use it, you give it away. You get something, you give it away. But giving, and giving is not an abstract thing. Dogen writes here, to provide a boat or build a bridge is offering, as the practice of Dhanaparamita. Now you can think of that metaphorically, to provide a boat or build a bridge, You know, it's the metaphor of taking beings across, of leading them to the other shore, of awakening. But it's also literally to build a boat or provide a boat so that somebody can make their livelihood, to build a bridge so that somebody can cross to a place where they need to in order to meet other people.

[38:59]

And when you see, Alexander and I went to watch the building of the Karkina Straits Bridge a couple of years ago. you know, the new bridge they have there. It was an amazing thing to watch them do it. First of all, it's just sort of awesome in scale, but, you know, all these men as ants kind of scurrying over this structure and machines like spiders weaving this web of cables. You know, even if you could quite rightfully question the function and purpose of modern technology, you could also feel the spirit of offering in this. So to provide a boat or build a bridge is offering as the practice of Dhanaparamita. When we carefully learn the meaning of giving, both receiving our body and giving up our body are offering. Earning our livelihood and managing our business are, from the outset, nothing other than giving.

[40:05]

Entrusting flowers to the wind and entrusting birds to the season may also be meritorious. In all our worldly actions, we should consider what others need and what we can give without nourishing our self-centeredness, without being greedy, without flattering, but just giving away putting others before this notion of self that is so persistent we have. This is really, this is always a difficult practice. And this is why Dogen reminds us that the mind of a living being is difficult to change. This is true for others. And it is deeply true for ourselves.

[41:10]

So I think I'll end there. And if you have any questions or comments, we have a little time. I invite them. The Karl Rove question. It's kind of right up there with the Adolf Hitler question. I think the way you, the first way that I work on it is by

[42:15]

really trying to conceive of him as fully human with all the likes, dislikes, joys, sorrows, sufferings that I might experience. Not the same ones necessarily, the same set, but to see that the human motivation is very consistent. So as I imagine that, something, the clenching reflex that I have softens a little. I think one has to oppose his policies. But, you know, as this is the essence of Martin Luther King's teaching, you know, you oppose systems and oppose policies without hating the people who create them or make them up.

[43:23]

We have to oppose them, sort of wholeheartedly, but we just can't turn those people into something other than ourselves. And we have to strive to see how are we connected? What are the areas of connection? Which means you may have to read about him and study him The more you really know what a person's life has been, the less simple it is to reduce them to a very simple, cliched narrative. This is what we do with people. This is the essence of racism. You know, we see somebody, we think that we know their story because of the color of their skin or any other characteristic, and it has nothing to do with who they are. Not nothing. Their color determines their condition to some extent, but it is the tiniest part of their full story as a human being.

[44:32]

Yet, in the case of somebody like Karl Rove, we really have to oppose his policies without opposing him. Ken. question is, in a way, it's asking too much. It's asking not quite the right thing, because it's sort of assuming that we need to be personal. In other words, we would feel fine helping somebody we liked, but we have a hard time with somebody we don't like. But the point is, I think, not just like you said, just the system, but that it's sort of just that. I mean, we don't really need to worry about, do I like him, or do I sympathize with him, or something like that. That's kind of a red herring, I think.

[45:36]

We're sort of, it's like, We're imagining that we're voting for somebody and we like the good guys and we don't like the bad guys or something. But that's not really the point. If we're caught up just in this kind of personalizing of people, then we're overlooking that system. I don't really have a problem with that. I could despise That's not the issue of social change at all. Yeah, that may be a factor in there that you have to take into account, you know, that under certain circumstances you have to fight them in one way or the other or that. But you can be too hard on yourself and say, oh, I'm sinning, you know, I have a bad feeling about this person. That's not really the point.

[46:39]

You know, the point is doing something to change the things that can be done. And just not getting caught on, is this guy a good guy or a bad guy? Is he on our side or something like that? Well, I think that's right. And the not being caught is part of the practice. So, there are no easy answers to this question. And it's not just, it comes down in our personal relationship, it comes down in our relationships with ourselves. So, you can make the mistake of over-personalizing, and you can make the mistake of over-abstracting. These are both problems, and the thing is, you have to work this out for yourself. how you want to relate, how you want to see the world be.

[47:45]

So, I'm sorry, I didn't, we get into, there's no answer. Ashley? I just wanted to ask a question back and forward to something you were saying towards the end of your talk about, when you're talking about the idea of self-centeredness and the idea of circulation, the idea that having things is fine if you keep them in circulation, And the idea of putting stuff before others and all of that, and just sort of, I don't know, it's a very old question, but one that's really pertinent in my life right now, of like, how do you find the balance of not giving too much to others, to the point that you don't have enough to keep yourself going, and then what is keeping too much for yourself and not giving to others? And like, especially when you're involved in work that very much is about helping other people very directly all the time, part of you feels like you should put all of yourself into it, because it is the most direct, way to relieve suffering, and it's this amazing thing. But if you put all of yourself into it, you don't have anything left to give at the end of the day. So just that balance, I guess, is something that I'm wondering about a lot.

[48:51]

Well, you just answered it. You know, you have to take care of, in order to be able to give, you have to take care of yourself. And you have to find what that balance point is, which is a very difficult thing in this society. Because the balance point here to our eyes is very different than it might be in a more challenged or less developed society. But you have to nourish yourself. You have to be able to have some equanimity and peace of mind and balance for yourself. And there's no way to say, Where is that point? Because some people require very little. And we can't draw the line for others. But you have to take care of yourself. Maybe one more, then we have to do the ceremony.

[49:53]

actually what is the motivation of your giving? And is it actually creating? That's right. That's right. And, you know, here what we're talking about is this non-self-centered giving. And if you really, one of the things about this practice is that you begin to develop a really finely attuned sense of when something is smelly or tainted with self-centeredness. One can always work on that sense, but you definitely, it definitely develops. So much of what we, much of our giving in this, you know, much of giving is premised on getting. But if you think of giving flowers blooming on the hillside, what can you get? Well, thank you very much, and we'll continue tomorrow and Monday.

[51:18]

People are welcome, by the way. Lectures are open at 1010, even during Sashin, so if you want to come, you're welcome. Beings are numberless.

[51:36]

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