I vow to taste the truth of the treasures of the birds. Good morning. Well, we have very dramatic weather. It's a lot to get used to. Well, I wanted to go on talking today about the Lotus Sutra.

[01:08]

We had a class, we finished a class in the Sutra, and that's what I've been thinking about. I've tried to keep it as my background, The Lotus Sutra and the Heart Sutra are both mentioned in our meal chants, the Maha Prajnaparamita Sutra, and then further down in the same chant, the Maha Sadharma Pundarika Sutra, the Lotus Sutra. And so the Heart Sutra is about, emphasizes the wisdom side, how we take away, tear down the extra. And the Lotus Sutra emphasizes the devotional side, what's there when we do the discovering work.

[02:15]

And both were written down about the first century, common era, And somebody heard Thich Nhat Hanh recently talk about the Lotus Sutra and he called it the Reconciliation Sutra because it reconciles the old teaching, the Theravada and the Mahayana, with the new teaching, the first turning of the wheel with the second turning of the wheel. Well actually if you read the Lotus Sutra there's a great deal in it about the Theravadan teaching and some of it is not so gentle, but it is reconciling the two teachings. The teaching of how our effort needs to be mindful and meticulous, the Theravadan way, and the teaching of

[03:27]

inclusion, including everything, Mahayana way. And Suzuki Roshi said that our way is Hinayana practice with Mahayana mind. So, how we use these two sides, these different sides of the practice. Pia Silo, who is a monk from Malaysia who's sharing my house right now, tells a story to illustrate the Mahayana. There's a character in Chinese literature who is cocky and self-assured and kind of braggadocio, named Monkey. And Monkey is kind of running around in the outskirts of Buddha and his assemblage and decides that he wants to that the same thing that he can show Buddha that

[04:43]

He wants to show off his ability to run, which he thinks is quite special. He's a very fast monkey. And looking at Buddha, he can see that Buddha is probably not much of a runner, sitting around with a big belly. So he goes up to Buddha and says, you make a lot of claims, but I really don't think that you are much of a runner and I think I have something to show you. And I'd like to begin by having a race. So Buddha says, okay, you'll have a race with monkey. And they agreed to run some distance to where there is a ruin, where there are five columns standing in a ruin. So, one, two, three, they start out and monkey leaps ahead and goes very fast and is gratified to look back and find that he can't even see Buddha.

[05:50]

So he gets to the place where the five pillars and there's no Buddha in sight. So he lifts his leg and he makes his mark and then he decides that he'll just take a rest. So he lies down in the middle of the five pillars Just as he's going to sleep the ground begins to shake and the five pillars begin to move towards him. And he looks around and as the ground raises he sees that actually he's just lying in Buddha's hand. He never got beyond Buddha's hand. So the good news is that no matter what we're doing, the Mahayana says, no matter how much we're trying or goofing off or whatever it is, we're still lying in the middle of Buddha's hand.

[06:56]

So I want to talk today about one of the parables in the sutra which is called The Hidden Jewel. And it's a story of two friends, an older friend and a younger friend. And they have the kind of relationship that old friends have, that they can be out of touch for some time, but when they meet up with each other, There's nothing lost and they know immediately where they are. So the younger friend has been having a really hard time going here and there, trying to make his living, getting things started, having them fall apart, and is pretty tired and discouraged. And the older, he comes to the older friend's house, and the older friend is living in comfort, considerable comfort, although he doesn't show it off.

[08:10]

And they have an evening together, and the younger man, being exhausted and discouraged, relaxes in this friendliness and gets, and drinks too much, gets drunk. and kind of passes out. So the older man makes him comfortable and puts him to bed. And in the morning, the younger man still hasn't waked up and the older man has to go off. So before he leaves, the older man finds a very precious jewel and sews it inside of the younger friend's jacket and then goes to work. And they don't meet up again for some years. They meet up, and the older friend is sort of surprised that the younger friend is still tired, exhausted, disheveled, and clearly not doing very well.

[09:18]

So he says, well, what's been happening? Younger friend says, more of the same. And the older friend says, Well, didn't you ever find what was inside your jacket? And they unstitched the sewing, which he'd never noticed, and there was the jewel. That could, had he found it, made all those years very much easier. So, this is our story that we have something there is something that we are carrying that is in our nature which it is also very difficult to recognize

[10:25]

and which takes considerable effort as well as faith to recognize and to work with. This perfect background is what Suzuki Roshi calls the teaching of the Lotus Sutra and he says, when you are in contact with the perfect background, you enjoy your life and you don't fear losing it. But we're all stuck in one way or another on this dusty road of conditions. that the younger friend was on.

[11:31]

The world of ups and downs. And we all are carrying around, along this route, greed, hate, and delusion. We're carrying our own ancient twisted karma in these forms. Greed, the belief that something that we can get is going to make a big difference. That if it's a painful Zazen period, the bell at the end is going to make a difference. or that getting something whether it's a second helping or a job or a car or something or something or something is going to make a significant difference and there's a lot of juice in that and there's a lot of exhaustion in that

[12:59]

And then there's the hate or aversion or not wanting something, being preoccupied by that shadow. And sometimes that takes the form of keeping things safe, narrowing the world so that it feels as if we can avoid what we don't want. and sometimes it takes the form of grieving for what we didn't get what we don't have preoccupation with longing depression what didn't happen to us when we were children and then sometimes it's the burden of just being tuned out just not being there half-open eyes kind of fumbling along bumping into things a bit or a lot and just not quite waking up so we have these ways we have these ways of abandoning ourselves of not

[14:33]

recognizing the jewel of keeping the jewel sewn up so that we ignore it so we come here for a long day sitting in an effort not to abandon ourselves to really be with where we are in a very close way. And so, pay attention to posture. Little arch in the lower back. Straight backbone, long backbone. The easy shoulders. and the body sensations. Keeping the attention on the belly.

[15:41]

Really knowing where breath is in the belly. A little tightening, breathing out. A little release, breathing in. Hearing the sounds. knowing what the background body-mind mood is knowing if it's almost neutral knowing if it's a little agitated if it's peaceful whatever it is just knowing moment by moment knowing when the thoughts come, when the thoughts go waiting for the next thought so we come here to be present

[17:08]

enjoying the teaching of being whole in the moment and excluding nothing, including everything in the moment. It's the one vehicle, teaching. Nothing else needed. So that no matter what our condition is, whether a knee is hurting, or back is hurting, or we're not even in the zendo, something else is going on, we can be present, and not abandon ourselves, and know what's going on, even though we don't want to know. So last month I was watering the front yard and I tripped and I fell on my wrist on the concrete.

[18:36]

And it hurt, but when I looked at the wrist, which was completely out of line, I said, oh shit. It was not what I had wanted. And there are moments during this day where probably everyone is going to be up against a moment that one does not want. And of course the practice is to just listen to the teaching of what one doesn't want. So I went into the hospital and had some sophisticated surgery and came out with an external fixator, these pins that hold the bones in place.

[19:44]

And a good friend, a close friend, said to me a few days after I got home, she said, Maile, your teaching is to listen to the healing of the bones. And I think she sewed something in my jacket that moment. So... It has been my practice to be dependent on others, to accept favors without apologies, to lead a slower life, to be patient with discomfort, not to be bothered by clumsiness, to enjoy asking people to please tie up my robes.

[20:56]

When we actually are turned so that we are willing to listen to the teaching, then the condition is not so bad. Then the condition, actually, the condition itself can be appreciated. Dogen wrote a chapter, a fascicle called One Bright Jewel. Dogen refers a lot to the Lotus Sutra. And I'd like to just read pieces of Dogen's interpretation on this story.

[22:16]

The great master Gensha had a religious named Shibi. In lay life, he enjoyed fishing and used to ply his boat in the Nandai River following the ways of the fishermen. He must have had, without expectation, the golden fish which comes out by itself without being fished out. It's a nice way of talking about some kind of realization. We're on the dusty road and we are doing our job and then we get some news about something without expectation. The golden fish which comes up by itself without being fished up. And, in some way, that changes our life.

[23:22]

He was 30 years old at the time. Realizing the peril of the ephemeral world, he came to know the lofty value of the Buddha way. Finally, he climbed Snowy Peak Mountain, called in the great Zen master, Seppo, and worked on the way day and night. So, first, there's some kind of understanding, some kind of tap, into what our nature is, some catch of gleam of the jewel, and then we begin the work of the way, refining it. One time, in order to make a thorough study of Zen, as taught all over the country, he took up his knapsack and headed out of the mountain. But on the way, he stubbed his toe on a rock, and as it bled painfully, he suddenly had a powerful insight and said, This body is not existent. Where does the pain come from? Where does the pain come from?

[24:26]

Whose pain? After I fell and was taken by a friend to Kaiser Emergency and put in a gurney in the emergency room, I realized that it was going to be a considerable wait, with no painkiller, because I was going to have to wait for the surgeon to come and look, and if you're going to have surgery, they don't like you to have anything else. So I was lying on my back, looking at the ceiling, in fairly considerable discomfort and casting around for how the situation was going to be managed. And I remembered reading the Tibetan way of living and dying by Sonia Rinpoche. Also hearing about it from Rinpoche.

[25:31]

And the Karmapa's experience when the Karmapa was in his last days in the hospital the doctors couldn't understand how it was that he was alert, patient, and responsive. Did not seem unsettled in any way. And he said that his practice was to use his pain that on the in-breath he breathed in his pain and the pain of the world and on the out-breath he breathed release. So he was using his pain for the release of the world's pain. And I also remembered at that moment a friend I have who's a Jesuit who gets arrested

[26:36]

frequently, who says he likes to go to jail because jail is a good place to pray. So, lying looking at the ceiling and six floors of patients above me, I thought I'd try it. Breathing in my pain, breathing release for everybody's. And within three or four breaths, my relationship to my pain had changed. And it was a powerful and focused relationship. There was pain, but in a while I was not suffering with it. So this question of whose pain?

[27:37]

When we're in pain, there's a tendency to think, it's mine, and it separates me. I'm in pain, and nobody else looks as if they're in pain. But of course, it's not my pain. We come well-equipped with our parents' pain, with our family's pain, actually with our world's pain. That's the ground of the Bodhisattva vow, that's the realization of the Bodhisattva's vow, that pain is not a private affair, that pain belongs to everybody. and that the Bodhisattva is not going to leave, the Bodhisattva is not going to be released from suffering until all the suffering is over. So if somebody, I was talking about this to somebody and said, yeah, we're just, I'm just a vehicle for the world's pain.

[28:51]

That's a kind of painful view of life. But we are kind of moment-to-moment containers for the circumstances that happen, for the circumstances, good, bad and indifferent, that happen. They are moving through this body-mind container. So Gensho stubs his toe And somehow this question really strikes him. Whose pain? And that focused his understanding and in some time he became a teacher with followings. After he had finally attained the way, he said to people,

[29:57]

The whole world in all 10 directions is a single bright jewel. Then a monk asked, I hear you have a saying that the whole world in 10 directions is one bright jewel. How can a student understand this? The master said, the whole world in all 10 directions is one bright jewel. What does that have to do with understanding? So, this is the problem in our practice, and it's a problem the Lotus Sutra talks a lot about. How can you devote yourself to a teaching that you don't understand? You know, we're so used to orienting ourselves through our understanding. So how do we enter this process of belief and understanding?

[31:02]

It's another chapter in the Lotus Sutra. Discernment and understanding that we know that the jewel is sewn inside. We somehow know that. And there's no way of understanding it. So how do we adjust our lives to that understanding that we don't, to that knowledge that we don't understand? Of course, it's the practice of the way. little by little by little we learn to adjust to realign our lives through some process of occasionally a clear view of something there and much more frequently a pretty steady

[32:24]

realization of when we've stepped off. And to a large degree, as practice matures, we begin to have a finer ear for a finer discernment of when it is we're not in the right place. And then there is more somewhat inscrutable talk about how to understand, how to be the carrier of this bright jewel. The essential message is the whole universe is not vast, not small, not round or square, not balanced and correct, not lively and active, not standing way out.

[33:36]

Because furthermore, it is not birth and death coming and going. It is birth and death coming and going. Being thus, having in the past gone from here, it now comes from here. In making a thorough investigation, someone must see through it as being weightless. Someone must find out it is single-minded. All ten directions is the non-ceasing of pursuing things as oneself. Pursuing one's self as things. All ten directions is the non-ceasing pursuing things as one's self. Pursuing one's self as things. Dogen says this over and over in many different ways. So, how do we pursue things as one's self? That's what we're practicing today in Zazen.

[34:42]

That as mind gradually calms down, and we respond to the structure of the periods, the things that seem outside, the bird calling, the sunlight fading, the ache in the back, the breath, the posture. What we did think of, what we tend to think of, is the inside and the outside. It's all these, it's all the conditions that we are. And it's not the me listening to the bird, it's The bird is just hearing. The light in the branch, just lighting.

[35:48]

Joko Begg talks about it very clearly in her book, Nothing Special, as this transition from the one who experiences the one who moves forth in the world in all the different conditions having some idea about the way the conditions are that they're big or small or desirable or not desirable that whole business moving from that pursuit to the just experiencing that the I shifts to the experience or. So, as we sit today, we can allow that to happen.

[36:58]

We can allow our ideas to rest and to just be. experience the condition of the dimming of the light. And then finally, coming back, coming back to the good news of the Mahayana, this good news that no matter what funny business we've engaged in and what ridiculous schemes we've had in mind, that in fact we are ending up in Buddha's

[38:06]

so even if we doubt and worry that does not mean that it is not that does not mean it is not that this is not the bright jewel I don't know that this is my favorite translation of this Bible. I read a translation somewhere else that was entitled, One Great Pearl, that seemed to me very beautiful. And this is a little chopped up from time to time. Anyway, let's start again. Even if we doubt and worry, that does not mean it is not, that this is not the bright jewel. The simple fact is that forward steps and backward steps in the ghost cave in the mountain of darkness are just one bright jewel so no matter where we are we sit against a perfect background one bright jewel and so as we sit

[39:25]

with some mindfulness and attention and persistence. We also sit with this confidence. We can sit knowing that there is a jewel sewn in, knowing that there's a close friend. So, as we sit without words, just being present, we can also ask, what is it? Who is it? Okay.

[40:44]

When does the lecture end? 11. So there's five minutes if anyone wants to have a question or some response. In a way, I mean, it's like one is almost stepping forward. What is my practice? It's the self stepping forward. And what is teaching? It's almost like more listening. It seems like there's a different orientation, or maybe not, maybe not. I mean, it's arbitrary distinction, but. Well, they could be two sides.

[41:45]

You know, Mel talks about turning and being turned. So what is it? What is happening? And then what is my practice is moving into the out-breath. What is my response? So I think there are two parts of the process. You said something about Yeah.

[42:51]

Well, that's a really good question. That's a really good question. Because we can't heal our pain unless we know what it is. And our habit is to react to the pain and not know what it is. So I discovered that after I got home with this with this fixator in me, I was quite worried about the possibility of having to unwrap the bandage and see it. One doesn't want to, you know, you know there's a wound, but you want to keep a certain distance. And then I noticed that the outside of my thumb is numb. And that was another shock. So for a day or two, I didn't touch it. I mean, let's keep that at a distance. So it was some time before I learned to unwrap the bandage and put oil on the arm and rub the arm and sit holding the thumb.

[44:01]

So it is, it's very hard to come right into the wounding. We have a very good opportunity of doing that in Satsang. So as one sits, you know, you sit and you breathe and a thought comes up and then maybe you drop it right away or maybe you entertain the thought. So why is it that we should spend time here entertaining thoughts? because we're in pain. Either the situation is painful or we are, our thoughts are recalling something that's painful. So how can we sit awake to what's going on, to the breath, to the posture, body sensation,

[45:13]

And knowing what the mood is, I think that knowing what the body-mind mood is, is very important. Particularly if one is getting thoughts that have a charge on them, thoughts that have some kind of emotional charge, or obsessional sorts of thoughts that just keep boom, [...] they keep coming. So what's going on? You know, there's some wounding that's there. And it's very often, it's always, when you get down to it, it's a wounding that you don't fully understand. You have some insights, but the feeling part of the wounding is old and karmic. So it's really important to be with it, to breathe with it. to keep the, not so verbal, but just to keep the wounded feeling there as long as it will stay.

[46:20]

Breathing it in, breathing it out. And that's our healing.

[46:25]

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