I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good morning. I don't recognize all of you. My name is Mary Mosin and I started practice here and Sojin is my teacher and I'm now the priest at the Vallejo Zen Center. So I understand that the first 10 minutes or so is a kid's endo, kid's lecture. And so I thought I would tell you a story. Once upon a time, a long time ago, there was a creature named Monkey. Yeah, Monkey was born in somewhere near China, on the other side of the world. And he was born out of a stone, so he was kind of a miracle being.

[01:05]

And he was very brave, and he was also a real jerk. He showed off a lot, and he was really impatient, and really, really selfish. But because he was so brave, he eventually became king of all the monkeys, because he was the only one brave enough to jump through a waterfall. And he found a magical kingdom on the other side, so the monkeys all went there with him, and he became the king of the monkeys. But then, of course, one day he grew dissatisfied, and he started to wonder, what's going on? What's the meaning of all this? So he went off searching in other lands, far and wide, and eventually he found a teacher. He found a master and he studied really hard, because he was also really smart. And when he wanted something, then he got it.

[02:09]

So he became very powerful. He learned lots of magic. He learned the way things are. He learned how to fly. Yeah, and he could change his shape. He could do all kinds of wonderful things, but he kept on being a jerk. Yeah. And his master recognized him and he became what they called an immortal because he just knew everything and all the practices. And then one day after he had been completely recognized, some of the other monks asked him if he could change into something else. And he said, well, of course, I can do that. And he changed himself into a beautiful pine tree. And the monk said, yay, monkey, yay, woo, that's great. And the master heard. And he came out and he said, what are you doing? And monkey said, well, they asked me to change, so I made myself into a pine tree.

[03:15]

And the master got really, really angry and he said, you are showing off. Get out of here. And he just banished him. He said, you have to leave. And so monkey went back to his monkey kingdom and Of course he got bored again and he started making trouble and he kept making trouble and challenging the emperor and doing all kinds of stupid things, greedy things. There was a big banquet and he went and he just threw all the food off of the tables and just turned tables over and made a big mess because he didn't get invited. So eventually he became so troublesome that the Buddha was called in. And the Buddha said, what are you doing? You're acting like a jerk and you have to stop it. And monkey said, who are you to tell me? I am monkey, I can do anything.

[04:18]

And Buddha said, oh yeah, I'd like to see you even get off of the palm of my hand. Just get off of my hand. and monkey said, ha, that's easy. I mean monkey could fly all around the world in about an hour, jump on a cloud and go. So he got up onto Buddha's hand and then he took off and he flew for about an hour and he came to what looked like the end of the world and there were five pink pillars at the end of the world. Yeah, and he wrote his name on one of the pillars, you know, like, Monkey was here. And then, because he was a jerk and a very rude being, he peed on the base of one of the pillars. Yes, he did. He was not a nice guy, he was kind of stupid. So then he flew back. And he got back and Buddha said, you didn't go anywhere.

[05:19]

He said, what are you kidding? I went to the ends of the earth. I wrote my name there. And Buddha held up his hand and there it was on his finger. It said, monkey was here and monkey could even smell a little bit of monkey pee. So he could not deny that this was what had happened. And Buddha said, you are such a jerk and such a troublemaker, I'm going to have to put you underneath a mountain. And he imprisoned monkey under a mountain and just left him enough room to move around a little bit. And monkey stayed there, imprisoned under that mountain for 500 years. And then one day, Avalokiteshvara, Guanyin, the Bodhisattva of Great Compassion. She's here on the altar, but it's kind of small. I don't know if you guys can see her. She's the gold-colored one. She represents great compassion, and she was looking for people or for beings to help the monk, Xuanzang, go from China all the way to India to get Buddhist teachings and bring them back.

[06:27]

So she told Monkey, if you help Xuanzang, then you can be released from your imprisonment, but you have to be helpful. and stop messing around and stop acting like a jerk." So Monkey figured it was worth it to get out from under the mountain, so he said, all right. And so, yeah, probably more like that, all right. So he did go with Swansong on this journey, and they had to actually walk, because Swansong could not fly, so Monkey had to do it patiently, you know, just one step after another. Long, long years it took them. And they had lots of adventures. And early on, of course, Monkey couldn't take it. Swansong corrected him one time, and Monkey flew off again, said, I don't have to take this. Of course, he did have to take it. He had to deal with it and he eventually came back because it was either to come back or back under the mountain, so he came back and he helped and they had adventures and they fought with dragons and they fought with bandits, thieves and robbers and all kinds of things and they had to deal with their own fear, they had to conquer their own fear and eventually

[07:52]

Monkey learned how to calm down and eventually he learned that he really actually enjoyed being helpful. Yeah, and just doing one thing after another, you know, instead of flying ahead of himself. And he calmed down enough and eventually they got to Buddha's temple in India. They had to conquer a flaming mountain, they had to find a fan, a magical fan, and once they got that fan then they were able to put out the flames on that mountain. and they got to the temple and they got the scriptures and then they were allowed to fly home. They flew home. Monkey was allowed then to fly and they got back to China with all those scriptures and they were offered rewards. They had some companions and these people were saying, you can go to heaven now, you can be this kind of a deity and that kind of a god.

[08:57]

Magical beings. And some of them accepted, but Swansong the monk and monkey decided they really liked wandering around being helpful to people. So that's what they did forevermore. Forevermore. And they're... No, no, I don't know. I think they're still wandering. I think they're still wandering. Just being helpful to people. Yeah, you have any questions? Sure. You never know. Tentacles on it. They have big tails. That's right. That's right. This monkey could talk and he wore clothes like, uh, like regular people do. He was pretty magical. Yeah. No, he walked like people do.

[10:00]

When he wasn't flying, of course, he could fly. Yeah. Yeah. So whenever you need help, you can call on Monkey. That might work. So I'm not sure how this ends. It's been 10 minutes, but I don't know. Do you have any other questions? Yes. In a way, yeah, I think he did. He became a bodhisattva, that's for sure. Is that something that ... oh no, I see. So I want to talk about bodhisattvas today.

[11:08]

I don't know if you know this monkey story, it's a very famous early book, it's a Chinese book, it's a Chinese tale. There's lots and lots of monkey stories. Monkey is a trickster figure, in case you couldn't tell. And it's also called, the book can be sometimes called Monkey, I think the formal name is Journey to the West. And if ever you get to see, there's a play that I saw at Zellerbach many years ago that was just marvelous, that was the journey story, it wasn't the how monkey got imprisoned story, they shortened it, so it wasn't that part, but at any rate, it was great, it was great. So I hope you see it if you get a chance, if ever they do it again. So I've been thinking a lot about bodhisattvas.

[12:18]

You know, we call sometimes a bodhisattva is an enlightening being or a being who is enlightening others. And that's the aim of our practice. We are about bodhisattva practice. Our school of Buddhism, our branch of Buddhism emphasizes bodhisattva practice, putting others first. action not growing out of one's ego or self-interest. Formally, we say that a bodhisattva is someone who has actually reached nirvana, reached liberation, but postpones entry into nirvana until all beings are saved, all beings are enlightened. And we have these Bodhisattva images like Avalokiteshvara Kuan Yin who represents total compassion and sometimes shown.

[13:22]

You may have seen statues of Kuan Yin with a thousand arms and hands and arms with an eye maybe in each, the palm of each hand. They're not usually actually a thousand but a lot. So Kuan Yin hears and sees the suffering of the world and responds with all those hands and arms. or Manjushri who represents wisdom and is usually depicted with a sword because Manjushri cuts through our delusions. These are bodhisattvas. They're also aspects of ourselves, of us. But sometimes as images of bodhisattvas they're not so accessible. It's, I don't have a thousand arms and a thousand hands and a thousand eyes. And I am deluded. And there's a Jataka tale where it talks about Buddha as a bodhisattva saw some hunters that were hungry, I guess they hadn't been able to catch anything, and they were sitting around their campfire kind of complaining because they were hungry, so he turned himself into a rabbit and jumped into the fire.

[14:36]

Well, good. And these are encouraging to us, I think. And I could give a whole other lecture about how I am Avalokiteshvara like that, and you are, and so on. That's another lecture. But what I want to say is that I think it's useful to have some Bodhisattva images that are more accessible. And I'm going to tell you a story, and I just realized I don't know why I think of this guy as accessible, because he's sort of a superhero monster. but still feels more accessible to me because he's flawed, he's not like Superman. He's a different kind, he's an everyday kind of superhero monster. I'm talking about a character called Hellboy. Anybody familiar with Hellboy? Hellboy is a comic book figure.

[15:40]

but also a movie by Guillermo del Toro. Guillermo del Toro is the writer, director, producer of Pan's Labyrinth, which maybe you've either seen or heard of. He really likes monsters. And he was interviewed by Terry Gross a month or two ago and he was talking about his love for monsters. As a child he used to draw monsters all the time. And he spoke about Hellboy and how much he loves Hellboy. Hellboy was a god of chaos and doom. And Del Toro said that Hellboy renounced his heritage and decided instead to help suffering beings, help us become human in essence. And he also pointed out that Hellboy is very matter-of-fact, you know, he doesn't come and say, �I am here.� It's more like a plumber, you know, you got a leak, the plumber comes, says, �Where's the leak?� Goes and fixes it.

[16:54]

without a lot of grandstanding, right? And that's how he sees Hellboy as a very matter-of-fact superhero. So Hellboy eventually became someone, he fights monsters, he works for, what is it, the Department of Paranormal Defense or something like that? And so I decided to rent the movie and It's marvelous. What happens is the Nazis are desperate towards the end of World War II, so they decide to open a portal to the other world and wake up the seven gods of chaos and allow them into this world and have them just destroy the world and then the Nazis could take over. and they are led by none other than Rasputin, who apparently never dies, he gets killed and he comes back, so Rasputin is doing this.

[17:58]

And the good guys are led by this American scientist who is the head of Roosevelt's Department of the Paranormal and a squad of Marines. And they interrupt this experiment, which has already actually started, and there's some big circle that's flipping. And Rasputin puts on this big glove with like a big electrode for fingers. It's kind of low-tech, which is one of the pleasures of this movie. Anyway, and he's holding it out very dramatically. Oh, wait, he has, of course, a young ice maiden Nazi woman who's in love with him. He gives her a book before he goes and puts on the glove. He gives her this book and he says, �Should anything happen to you, this book will lead you to me.� So then he puts on this glove and he points it towards this big circular, like a gyroscope kind of thing turning. electric spark lines start going back and forth, sort of like Flash Gordon for those of you older.

[19:03]

And then of course it concentrates this energy and a hole starts opening in the sky and the Marines attack and succeed and they kill Rasputin again, sort of. then the battle is over and Rasputin's body has disappeared, of course, and they're looking around and they're ready to go home and the scientist said, �No, the portal was open too long, something may have gotten through, we better really, really search.� So they really, really search and they find this little being and they start shooting at it and the scientist says, �No, no, no!� Look and it's bright red. It's Hellboy as a baby. He's about like this. He's got a tail. He's got two little baby horns on his head. He's very cute. He's very cute. And the scientist tempts him down with a baby Ruth bar and then is holding him, cradling him in his arms.

[20:10]

And so the soldiers name him Hellboy. And the scientist, of course, adopts him and raises him. And he joins the Department of the Paranormal and his job is to fight monsters. And it's true, he is very matter-of-fact about it. You keep expecting him to have like a lunch pail or something, you know? And he's also funny. So he's ... At one point he... He's towards the end, Rasputin's come back and blah, blah, blah, and they're fighting. There's never a final battle in these things, but of course, a final battle or a sort of final battle. And there's this huge monster and he takes a grenade belt and jumps down its throat and the monster starts burping and whatever. And eventually the monster kind of explodes and in the process throws Hellboy up and he lands over in the corner on his back and he gets up and he says,

[21:18]

I am going to be so sore in the morning." I think this is a marvelous image for a Bodhisattva. When I heard him talking about it on Terry Gross I immediately started thinking about how Hellboy seemed like a Bodhisattva to me because he renounced his Deltoro said he renounced, I'm not so sure in the movie that that's what I would describe it as, but close enough. At any rate, he could have been an all-powerful God and instead he becomes much more like a human being and he dedicates his, he's very, very strong and very powerful and he's, oh I don't know, he's waterproof and he's fireproof and you name it. And he's big, when he grows up he's quite big.

[22:21]

Anyway, he dedicates that power to helping human beings. And his life isn't so easy because he's so weird, you know, he's very strange looking, so he has to kind of stay hidden. but he just does what needs to be done, and he really does do it without a lot of fanfare, and that's part of my image of being a bodhisattva, when we just do whatever is in front of us that needs to be done to be useful, you know, without setting ourselves up as this sort of godlike being, you know, pitying those poor little things down there. Bodhisattva practice is when we just do what needs to be done, which is whatever is right in front of us, without thinking about it, without separating ourselves from another. The compassion is, they say it's suffering with, comes with passion.

[23:28]

You could maybe say feeling with. or experiencing with. It doesn't have anything to do with pity. The near enemy of compassion is pity. Pity is separating yourself. I feel sorry for you over there. That's not compassion. Compassion is just putting a blanket over somebody who's cold. Offering money or food or time to somebody who's homeless. without giving them a lecture about how they shouldn't spend it on drink. I know a young woman at San Francisco's Zen Center who spoke of, she said she didn't have a lot of money to give people, but she had some time. So when she saw somebody homeless on the street, she would offer to take them to McDonald's or whatever was their choice of, something in that price range. and buy them a hamburger or some coffee or whatever and talk to them and actually listen to their life story.

[24:36]

So she would give them her time and she would give them her attention. That's, to me, that's bodhisattva activity. And in fact, she said she learned a lot and she got a lot more out of it than she gave. She heard some really wonderful stories of people's lives. that's being a bodhisattva to me and that's being a bodhisattva in a way that feels accessible. On a very simple level even if you say no to somebody, if you pass somebody who's panhandling to at least look at them and say, I'm sorry or not today or whatever rather than not looking at them, rather than pretending they don't exist. Because that's very painful to be on the receiving end of somebody shunning you. In my youth, my mother was active in the Democratic Party and her club used to have rummage sales. And we, the kids, would get recruited to get a bunch of flyers and stand out on the corner and hand out flyers.

[25:43]

And it's really awful when people just walk by you as if you don't exist. It really feels lousy. or along Grant in Chinatown or downtown San Francisco, people are always handing out flyers for stores and whatever, I take them. And I do not throw them away right in front of the person, which is another thing. There's another way of seeing Hellboy in the sense that he did renounce his chaos nature, or his father scientist person helped him turn a different way perhaps, but at any rate he didn't go in that direction.

[26:51]

but in another sense he was completely willing to be who he was, so this is what Hellboy could do to be helpful. Now I can't, one of his hands was made out of stone, it's a very large event. I don't have a hand like that, I can't punch people out. But Hellboy did it in his way, and then each of us has to know ourselves enough to know how could I be useful. But all we really have to do is just respond to what's right in front of us and then be useful just respond to it and that is useful, I guess is a better way of saying it. There's a wonderful phrase from the Avatamsaka Sutra, the Sudhana, the seeker trying to find out how to learn to be and to practice as a Bodhisattva asks Avalokiteshvara what to do and Avalokiteshvara says,

[27:53]

without delay, so just responding to what's in front of you without delay, because it's when we back up and start thinking about it, that's often when we separate and we start thinking of all the reasons why we can't do it or we shouldn't do it. But often that initial generous impulse that I think is simply a human impulse, that generous impulse is the appropriate one. What about generosity? You have to include yourself, but what about generosity? My experience is that when I act on that generous impulse, it's usually the right thing to do. Sometimes I need help to kind of give myself or somebody give me permission to act on it sometimes because I get scared.

[28:59]

but my experience is that it's usually the right thing to do. And I think it is our true nature, that generosity, that feeling with other people, not about other people, but with them, that identity with them. And when we don't act from that place, I think it's often out of our fear or self-protection. And Hellboy is a wonderful image of somebody who just goes out and does it. And yes, he's a sort of a superhero, but he's my superhero. I don't know, those of you who have read the comics, I have never read the comics so I only know this one movie, but he just seems like in some way, a really deep way, he's just a regular guy and yet he's a superhero.

[30:13]

So I think that's a useful image of a Bodhisattva, of an enlightening being. I can imagine helping people on the subway. I can't quite imagine jumping into a fire and feeding people, but I can imagine helping people on the subway. So I offer you Hellboy as an example, and you can rent the movie if you want to, but I don't know that you need to rent the movie to take Hellboy into your heart as an encouraging deity, I guess. We have deities, we have people that we ... I hope you do. People, beings, whatever, that are helpful to you in times of need. Images, Guanyin or Prajnaparamita or whatever, images that are helpful to you in the depths of Sashin or other times.

[31:19]

So I offer you Hellboy as yet another modern image of Bodhisattva. I think I will stop there. Do you have any questions or comments about Monkey or Hellboy, Alan? Yeah. Yeah, that's right, that's good.

[32:45]

And he was a jerk sometimes. Right, that's part of his nature. There was still that wildness as there is in us. Yeah. Susan? He was a child soldier in Sierra Leone and he was conscripted. His entire family, his parents, his grandmother, his older brother, his younger brother were all killed when he was 12 and he joined that sort of roaming band of boys trying to save himself somehow and they were And he's an amazing Kauri Sattva and a kind of hell boy.

[34:05]

And it's so moving that a person can survive, not only survive that, but regain his humanity. You talked about the struggle that it was to regain his humanity and come back to a sense of himself as a worthwhile human being. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a wonderful image. I heard him interviewed probably on Terry Gross, I don't remember. Yeah, I have that sense of his actually through suffering finding his way back to his humanity because at the beginning when he was told to go to this camp that's where they lined the kids up and chose some of them and said here you go with these UNICEF people and he didn't want to go and he didn't understand that he had done anything wrong and then slowly

[35:34]

he began to be able to see that, and then in that process find his humanity, have emotions again, because he hadn't had any. I mean, they would slip people's throats and laugh about it. And he'd been high on, what was it, cocaine that they were doing? Yeah, yeah. Anyway, he just didn't understand. He was just a kid from 12 to 15, I think. Yeah, that's really helpful. So he was willing to be completely who he was, which involved, I imagine, facing a lot of pain. coming to terms with it, you know, in some sense it wasn't his fault because he didn't know, but then again he did kill people so he had to come to terms with that and then exactly, as I understand you to be saying, exactly through that facing his own pain then he found his humanity and his bodhisattvaness.

[36:52]

And you remind me, you know, Dogen's, The Four Methods of Guidance of a Bodhisattva, which are you currently teaching? In generosity, the first method of guidance is generosity, and he says, give yourself to yourself, and others to others. So it's like he had to first give himself to himself, and then he could be helpful, it seems like. One, two. You just don't do this. And so she shouted that. And I thought that was really wonderful. But after the war and after doing this, she was still anti-Communist.

[38:00]

And I've had trouble putting those two together. I think of, you know, I don't know. It's not always the intention. It's not like if you kill somebody but your intention is good, you kill somebody because they were going to murder 10,000 people, you still killed somebody. So it's not just like you get a free pass because your motives were pure. her thinking was not so pure, her emotions were not so pure perhaps, but her actions were pure and her thinking was pure in a sense. She said, �You don't do that.� �Nope.� You know, �So sorry.� And I just think, you know, we kind of work out our karma as we work out our karma or we receive.

[39:11]

we experience the fruits of our karma, karmic choices, or myriad karmic choices that have happened, and that's how it works itself out. So she did something wonderful, and in some way a wonderful motive. It's not okay, because you don't like somebody, you don't go around killing them, for God's sake. And I will protect that person. So that was useful. Did it transform her? Maybe it did some. We can't really know. But it didn't change her opinion of Jewish people, apparently. But one can't know exactly. Anyway, it's difficult. Yeah, just a minute. I was struck by the story. In this day and age, again, sort of Yeah, well and we don't have to, I mean I think of Buddhism as not being at war with science.

[40:35]

It's perhaps simplistic but that's my notion, we have to, if they're in conflict, who is it, the Dalai Lama or somebody said that we have to go with the science? I don't know that we have to, I think of what we're doing as more, it's about the process So it's not about a catechism anyway, so that makes it easier, I suppose, to not be in conflict. But still, it's true, there is that notion and there was science was in favor, but also simple humanity. I mean, he really, the scientist fell in love with Hellboy and raised him as his son and called him son. Hellboy called him father, I think. At any rate, dad or something called him his father. Thanks. One, two, did you change your mind? She really wants to say something. I know, I know. I'm moving to the Holocaust, this story of this woman who sheltered a few Jews and she was very anti-Semitic.

[41:42]

One of the women she sheltered said, why do you say that? She said, I've been doing that all my life. I've heard that all my life. I could have changed my life just now. And so there were two realms. She liked her, she was a nice woman, but she had done all this and there was a realm of the beliefs about Jews and she had to go to the shrine. She could not break from that. So that's her suffering, I think. I mean, maybe somebody read her the protocols of Zion as if it were true or something like that. Yes. I just wondered if you could talk about the spirit of the act of donating to Katrina or giving some money to the homeless. And then maybe finding out later that a lot of that money that went to New Orleans was embezzled and all that. To take all that in makes me a little cautious.

[42:46]

Sometimes I do the spontaneous thing, and that feels good. But I was just saying, I do have a hesitancy. I think, for instance, New Orleans still needs a load of money and help. So that kind of bothers me. But how do you... How would you handle that, knowing with the knowledge that it could be eaten up by greedy swine? Yes. Greedy swine, yes. I think, you know, you have to keep your eyes open. I'm not talking about being foolish. I imagine you've heard Sojin talk sometimes about, you know, faith and doubt, and you have to balance the two. you don't just give money to something that pops up on the internet and says, �Hey, give some money, we're going to go to New Orleans and build a house,� and you never heard of these people before.

[43:54]

In fact, what we did is we sent money to the Houston Zen Center, the teacher is Galen Godwin whom some of you know, she trained at San Francisco Zen Center, and they were sheltering people who came from New Orleans and so on, and all the money went to those people. Are they still taking donations? I'm not sure whether they still need it or not. I'm not sure. But there's habitat for humanity. There are organizations, either you know that you feel good about or that you can research. American charities have to tell you how much they spend on overhead or something like that, administrative costs and how much actually goes to people, so you can find out that way or think of their, you know, I give to Doctors Without Borders. I mean, so you just, you know ones that you feel, you feel okay about. I guess my question is just that feeling of being duped.

[44:59]

When you have to choose the right ones, everything's pretty easy in this setting, but most times when you are duped, That's okay, I love, I know, I see this, we have to stop, but there's a column, a John Carroll column that runs every year during the holidays and he talks about the untied way, not the united way, the untied way, and he says, go draw out some money, don't bankrupt yourself, but enough that you'll feel it. and then just go somewhere like the Tenderloin or downtown San Francisco or wherever and just give it out, like in twenties. And really give it, completely give it. And when you really give it, you just don't worry about where it's going. So that's my intention, I don't always succeed. Yeah, I think that it's time to stop.

[46:04]

There's the old large striker sign.

[46:09]

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