This morning we had just finished bodhisattva ceremony. In the past, the recent past, we've been doing, tried to do a bodhisattva ceremony on the full moon, day to the full moon. That's somewhat traditional. And that tradition goes back even before Buddhism in India. But if you try to stick to full moon, then it's pretty difficult to include everyone. So even in Japan, they don't stick to the full moon, although sometimes they call it full moon ceremony. The main point is to avow your karma and to renew your intentions.

[01:18]

That's the main point. So whether it's the full moon or Saturday morning, it doesn't matter so much. And I think that it's better if we do it on Saturday morning, once a month, so that more people can attend. And I think that this particular ceremony, I'd like us to pay more attention to, because it's maybe the most important ceremony that we have. to, you can call it repentance. It's a pretty strong word. It has connotations for a lot of people of the Catholic Church, which they left. But it is repentance. And its meaning is not that God will punish you for your sins.

[02:21]

That's not the meaning. Meaning is that our karma always catches up with us and gets us in the end. When we do something, it has a consequence. And when we do something out of volition, especially, it has a consequence. And volitional activity is something that we can have some control over. Events in the world, we don't necessarily have so much control over all the actions in the world. But our volition is something that we at least have the opportunity to do something about. So that's what we call karma. Karma is our volitional activity. And we can change our karma. we can modify our karma.

[03:24]

We can ease it. And sometimes we can't. But at least we have the opportunity to do it because we have some sense, some control over our destiny. That's our Buddhist understanding. Not fatalism, but some control over our destiny. So, so-called repentance is a very important part of our practice. It means something like to recognize what you've done. To really recognize, be aware, and offer it up. Look at it.

[04:27]

Here it is. and then to be able to turn from it. Karma follows us around and even though we may about it and turn from it, there's still some, and never do that kind of activity again, there's still some residue. residual effect of what we've done, from what we've done. If you've lived some kind of dissolute life and you realize your mistake and you turn from it, you can live a more wholesome life, but still you will feel some residual effect of your former life until that karma has worked itself out. So that's why even though we may come to practice and our life gets turned around in some way, we still have lots of problems, lots of trouble from the effects of our old actions, former actions.

[05:49]

But if we continue to practice and continue to turn ourselves around, the effect will be less and less. we can gradually be free from karma, from our karma. So in this ceremony we face that, our karma. The old This ceremony even predates Buddhism in India. And the Buddhists, monks used it and developed their own style. And the Hinayana style, so-called Hinayana style, put a lot of emphasis on prohibitory precepts.

[06:58]

250 prohibitory precepts. And every month, or twice a month, they would bring up their prohibitory precept, recite the precepts, the patimokkha. And if some monk had transgressed one of the rules, one of the 250 major or minor rules, they would say something at a certain point. And then at the end there would be some punishment prescribed for them. That's kind of Hinayana attitude. Mahayana attitude developed less emphasis on prohibitory rules and more emphasis on fundamental concept of being, more emphasis on Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, on the positive aspect. Both positive and negative aspects are necessary in presets.

[08:15]

But the rules in India, most of the minor rules in India, were only applicable to being in India. But tradition tends to carry over old things. A lot of Buddhist groups still observe the 250 precepts, even though they're not in India. And sometimes it's just lip service. But Mahayana attitude, and especially in Zen in Japan, the precepts were Bodhisattva precepts were reduced distilled to a manageable number. So this Bodhisattva ceremony, Bodhisattva precepts ceremony, called Ryakufusats.

[09:22]

At Tassajara we always call this the Ryakufusats, which means abbreviated ceremony. abbreviated means you don't go through all the precepts like I just mentioned. First we bring up our karma and then we pay homage to the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and then we take our vows, renew our vows. So when we're finished, we are in beginner's mind. We renew our beginner's mind together. And you have the opportunity at that point to change your life because there's no karma left. But we pick up our karma very quickly again, start creating it again.

[10:25]

And we also have the effect of our past karma which influences us in the present. So we say, all my ancient twisted karma from beginningless greed, hate and delusion. So greed, hate and delusion are the three roots of suffering. from the beginningless beginning to the endless end. According to Buddhism, our universe has no beginning and no end. Maybe more circular. Not linear, but more circular. And without naming things one by one, we just all share in our karma. Then we say, born through body, speech, and mind.

[12:05]

This is the way we express ourself. Body, through our bodily action, and through our speech, and our thought, our mind. So, how we practice is to pay very careful attention to how we express our mind and what we do with our body. And we can create either bad karma or good karma through our thought, speech, and action. This is the basis of Soto Zen practice, to pay careful attention to how you deal with your thoughts, with what you say, and your bodily action.

[13:10]

In the zendo, all of our activity has that quality. When we leave the zendo, in order to extend our practice, These three same body, speech, and mind should have the same quality. It doesn't, it's hard, very hard. As soon as we walk out the zendo, we start losing it. But if you practice over and over, something stays with you. You don't bow to everything. that you see, but you have some attitude of respect for things. So in the first part, it's called repentance.

[14:18]

We bring up our... avow our karma and see what we've done. And then, the second part is to pay homage to the various Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. First, the seven Buddhas before Buddha. Meaning of this is that Shakyamuni Buddha is not the first Buddha. Shakyamuni Buddha is the example that we have in our particular era. or millennium, so to speak. But in order to express the idea that Buddhism is not something new, or Buddha Dharma is not some new thing, the people who created the sutras added all the Buddhas of the past to the lineage.

[15:26]

indicating that what Shakyamuni Buddha discovered was what all the Buddhas of the past had also discovered. So there's a Buddha for each age, for each millennium. Millennium may not be right, but long period of time. And the Mahayana Buddhism has a whole system of Buddhas appearing everywhere in their Buddha fields. So the seven Buddhas before Buddha connect us with this ancient path which is beginningless, not just something that somebody thought up. And then we pay homage to Shakyamuni Buddha. We know who that is, I hope. And then we pay homage to Maitreya Buddha,

[16:31]

And Maitreya Buddha, of course, is the Buddha of the future. Maitreya is like love, Buddha of peace, love and peace, who will appear sometime in the future, who sits in the Tushita heaven, waiting to appear. But, you know, Shakyamuni Buddha is also our self, and Maitreya Buddha is also our self. All these Buddhas are aspects of our self, and a way of relating to our self through the dharma. So, in the old meal chant, before it was retranslated, we used to say, the innumerable Shakyamuni Nirmanakaya Buddhas. are all these people, where each one of us is Shakyamuni Buddha. Discovering Buddha, Buddha Dharma, our original Buddha Dharma.

[17:39]

It's not that Shakyamuni Buddha handed us Buddhism, but each one of us has to discover it ourselves. So that's, each one of us is Shakyamuni Buddha. And the last Buddha is also ourselves, Maitreya Buddha, who will bring peace to the world. Don't depend on some other Buddha. Manjushri Bodhisattva is the nature of non-discriminating wisdom, prajna, wisdom. And Monjushri, in a zendo, usually Monjushri is the figure that's enshrined in a zendo. In America, everything takes place in a zendo. But in China and Japan, they have different buildings for each activity.

[18:47]

Buddha Hall, which is a general ceremonial hall. and a dharma hall, which is where you have lectures. And then the zendo is where you sit zazen. And there's a different Buddha, Bodhisattva, enshrined in the various buildings, depending on the activity. And in the zendo, Monjushri is the main figure, Bodhisattva. And Manjushri Bodhisattva is the personification of non-dualistic wisdom. He holds the Vajra sword which cuts through all dualistic thoughts, all confusion. But each one of us is as Manjushri's nature.

[19:50]

So when we pay homage to Manjushri, Bodhisattva, we're paying homage to our Manjushri nature, our own non-discriminating mind. And the next is Samantabhadra Bodhisattva. Samantabhadra is usually a picture riding on an elephant. Elephant is the symbol of Buddhism. And it's the symbol of very solid, slow steps. Elephant takes very solid step. Manjushri writes a lion. And the lion is maybe like mundane nature.

[20:54]

And the mundane nature is carrying the superior nature. But they're not two beings. Manjushri and the lion are one being. And Samantabhadra Bodhisattva is the Bodhisattva of practice, the Bodhisattva that practices all practices. But sometimes Samantabhadra is called Bodhisattva of compassion, but Avalokiteshvara is Bodhisattva of compassion. It's a little overlapping there. But each one of us, when we really engage in practice, are samantabhadra bodhisattva. And our practice stimulates our samantabhadra nature.

[21:57]

And Avalokitesvara, of course, is a bodhisattva of compassion. In China, called Kuan Yin, and in Japan, Kannon, and in the Heart Sutra, Shariputra, the arhat, is asking Manjushri, is asking Avalokiteshvara how the Bodhisattva courses in prajna, wisdom. And Buddha says, it's okay, you can explain it to him. So Avalokiteshvara proceeds to explain to Sariputra how the bodhisattva courses in prajna. That's what the Heart Sutra is about.

[23:07]

So Avalokiteśvara says, well, Shariputra, form is emptiness and emptiness is form, and so forth. So it's an explanation by Avalokiteshvara. And when we do the Daihishin Dharani, Daihishin Dharani is the Dharani of the Great Compassionate One, Avalokiteshvara, Karna. The words are difficult but mostly a dharani you don't translate. Dharani is made like a relic from India with very powerful words that were put together in a certain way to create some evocative feeling. So translation misses it.

[24:17]

Main thing is how you chant. strong feeling of chanting. If you have that, you'll understand the Dharani. And then we pay homage to the succession of patriarchs, and then we take the four vows. And then we take the refuge, three refuges in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Now traditionally, in this kind of ceremony, there's usually a lecture on one of the precepts. We've never done that at Zen Center. But I think that I would like to try doing that, at least for a while, when we have our Ryaku Fusatsu ceremony.

[25:21]

to have a lecture on one of the precepts. I think that precepts, Japanese people don't put so much emphasis on prohibitory precepts, but mostly Japanese priests put emphasis on the positive side. You know, Buddha, Dharma, Sangha is taking, being one with Buddha, Dharma, Sangha is the most important part. And the three pure precepts. Three pure precepts are refrain from doing evil, to do good and to help other people. Those three pure precepts point out a direction for your life.

[26:32]

The three refuges, Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, are the basis. Buddha includes everything. Buddha includes all the sixteen precepts. But we break them down in order to deal with things in an individual way. So being one with Dharma is also being one with Buddha. And being one with Sangha is also being one with Buddha. So in our practice, to be one with Buddha through Dharma and through Sangha is the most important thing. And the three pure precepts to take a path which avoids problems is to avoid evil. Evil is a little bit of a strong word.

[27:37]

But if you know what your path is and stay with it, you avoid hindrances. and avoid creating karma for yourself and others. And to stay on a path which reinforces that. And to see others as yourself is the third one. So, If we continue to be mindful of this, of the precepts, be mindful of being one with Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, and being mindful of the precepts, it will help our practice a lot because you know what you're doing.

[29:01]

If you know what you're doing, then it's not so easy to get lost. But if you don't know, it's real easy to get lost. We do have the 10 prohibitory presets. Don't kill, don't steal, and don't misuse your sexual desire. There's a good translation, I have so many translations. This one is pretty good. Refrain from taking or offering harmful intoxicants or drugs that dilute body or mind. That's a pretty good way to express it, that precept.

[30:03]

And then not to speak ill of others, not to extol the self, not to withhold or misuse the teachings, and to refrain from dwelling in hatred, malice, or ill will, and not to denounce or abuse the Buddha Dharma Sangha. Those ten prohibitory precepts. One of the main reasons for having this ceremony is of course to clean your heart, clean your mind and heart. If we, you know, in our life we're constantly collecting. stuff in our heart and in our mind, which over a period of time can be a big hindrance to our practice.

[31:15]

By our practice I mean a big hindrance between ourself and other people and ourself and ourself. So the ceremony encourages us to look at what we're holding in our heart and to do something with it, let go. We need to learn how to apologize. We need to learn how to look at and see if what we're doing is the right thing to do or not. Sometimes we just continue doing something, whether it's right or not, because we feel bound to it or bound by it. This is one of the biggest hindrances in our life, is to continue doing something that we know is not

[32:20]

wholesome or not correct, but we feel bound to it. I think that happens with all of us. So to find, to do something which cuts off that karma, eases that karma, stops that cycle. This is fundamentally the reason why we practice Buddhism. to stop the cycle of karma and live in beginner's mind, to question our assumptions, and if we really can live in each moment in a fresh way, giving up

[33:21]

and renewing moment by moment, that's the end of our practice. It's like living in reality with nothing left over in our heart. And it turns the base. the base of greed, hate, and delusion into non-greed, non-hate, and non-delusion. The three bases, the three unwholesome bases for our life, roots called roots, greed, hate, and delusion. And when those three are turned, then we have the three wholesome bases, or three wholesome roots. non-grasping, non-greed, non-acquisitiveness, no anger or ill will, and no delusion, no attachment to delusion.

[34:30]

Those are the three wholesome roots which free us from karma. So there's no end to that study, and no end to dealing with those roots. And the more we can recognize what they are, and the more we recognize ourselves as caught by them, the easier it is to deal with them. and there must be some desire to deal with it. Do you have any question? Yeah.

[36:01]

Well, sometimes the precept is, don't willfully take life. Of any sort? Well, willfully, yeah. But we have to look at the precepts, those precepts on three different levels. And one level is the literal level. literal level is don't willfully kill anything. And the second level is a level of bodhisattva, which says even though it says don't kill, there are circumstances in which it's appropriate to kill and circumstances in which it's not appropriate to kill. And that's called using some discrimination. And the third level is the level where even though something looks like it's killed, in reality, nothing dies.

[37:14]

Nothing is either born or dies. And third level is more difficult to grasp. But our life takes place within all three. or activity takes place within all three levels. And the middle level, the bodhisattva level, is where each thing, the precept is taken care of according to circumstances. And the first level is more of a rule. If you try to live by that rule, it's pretty hard. Because even when you scratch your nose, you're killing something. So it's impossible to live without killing. And at the same time, nothing is killed. But if you just go around thinking that you can do anything you want because nothing dies,

[38:22]

That's like Charles Manson. So, the other side, the literal side, balances the absolute side. And then you have the middle way, which is the bodhisattva way, where we willfully refrain from killing. And if you kill, you know what you've done, and you don't do something easily. And you have great respect for life. And even though you have great respect for life, you make things disappear from this world. And so you're very thoughtful and careful about what you do. So if you eat something, you do it respectfully, with some respect for what you're eating. and the life that you've eliminated or, you know, the form that you've changed.

[39:32]

So, this is the world of transformation where everything is being transformed. So, but since we have some feeling for ourself and for what's close to us, we extend that feeling to everything. And we see everything as ourself in that way. When you were talking about About the abounding karma, first you said that when we finish, we could leave with sort of freshness. And then you said something that kind of confused me.

[40:45]

You said, but we still have this old karma of our past to deal with. And of course, you said, we're going to create new karma. disavow, I understand it means, you know, dissociate. Not disavow, avow. Or avow, right. But, um, what is it? Well, it means that we start with a clean mind, clean heart. But we still have the karma? Well, what will you do when you leave? What will happen when you leave? Well, we'll start creating more karma. More karma, right. But you don't have to do that. But we do it, right? Strictly speaking, you don't have to. You could leave the zendo, and everything you do, you can be very careful that you don't create more karma. But what happens is that we walk out, and pretty soon we forget what we're doing, and we just pick up our old habits.

[41:51]

And continue. Very hard to... But you can do it. Yeah, and our way of life, you know. When you walk into your house, which has all of the associations to continue, to cause you to continue your old pattern, old karma. But little by little, you know, we can deal with it, you know, and turn. from old habit, old habitual ways, and do something in a different way. Yeah. It's something like sitting thousand. You're counting for us. Every time you start at one, you're doing a reset for something.

[42:54]

You get lost, you start at one again. And the practice of thousand is always to go back to one when you realize you got lost. Right, that's why Zazen itself is cutting off karma. That's why Hakuin says, Hakuin Zenji, in his song of Zazen, says, one moment of Zazen and you've cleaned the slate. That doesn't mean that, you know, it means... The next moment. And then you go back to the first moment. And that's it forever. So it's a continual practice. It's not... Once you clean the slate, that's it. Because you have to take another breath, and you have to take another step. Describe it like the binary system travels. I don't know if I'm... I like your idea about giving a lecture at the priesthood ceremony.

[43:55]

Good. But Zazen, you know, every day when we sit Zazen it's really the same as Bodhisattva ceremony in the sense of you make a stop to your life and then resume it again. And the life that you live in Zazen is a life of not creating karma. You really don't create anything, any volitional karma at that time. There is some karma, but it's not karma which leads to some fruit that you create. You're not creating something. So it's creative. Zazen is creative in an absolute sense, but not in a relative way.

[44:58]

And that's why people are kind of disappointed in zazen sometimes, because we're always looking for something in the realm of karma. We want some karmic result. And zazen gives you the non-karmic result. And, well, what do I get? You know? In the realm of karma, we say, what do I get? And we're always expecting something from the result, a result from our, what we get, some expectation. But zazen is, there is some result, you know, but it's very subtle. And it's to be free from karma. That's the point of our practice. I think there's, when I think about karma, I think there could be a lot of different kinds of karma.

[46:05]

And the karma that you could have some control over or understand or be able to work with is the kind of karma that has to do with your thinking and your habits. Your thinking. Action. Speech and mind. Body, speech and mind. Body, speech and mind. Whereas, so, and that's the stuff we could change or work with. you're driving on the Neumann's freeway and you have an accident and you get hurt. It might be your thinking karma if you were spacing out, but it could be you just happen to be driving on the freeway. And the car comes, a truck falls on you. Yeah, right, exactly. That happens too from an overpass. So sometimes people think of It helps to divide it up. Otherwise people tend to feel guilty sometimes because something happened and they feel like they're responsible for that kind of thing.

[47:07]

If I hadn't been there at that time, the truck wouldn't have fallen on me. And so my karma led me to that spot. And so people take a kind of blame for that. But I think that's pushing karma. You can't do anything about that. Right? So, when we talk about karma and what we're... those are circumstances. Strictly speaking, I think karma is our volitional actions and the consequences of them, and what we can do to change that. That's the realm that we're really concerned with. You may call the rest karma too, but it's not something you can deal with. But I think the advantage of calling the rest karma, even though in a sense it's not something that we can deal with, is if we become too involved with just dealing with our body, speech and mind karma, that makes us into arhats.

[48:12]

I mean, it's possible then just to get very concerned with your own cleanliness and your own purity. But you can't be arhats in that sense because you are involved with everything. involved with it, and that, for me, it seems as if karma gives us a basin, an environment to work in that saves us from being too small. But you don't have to call that karma. Some people do. Yeah. I don't think you have to call it that in order for that to be so. It's true, you know, we have to take care of the world, you know, Sometimes people talk of a collective karma, you know, the karma of a certain country. And you can use that term, you know, in various ways, as a descriptive term.

[49:15]

But it's peripheral, I think, to the main issue of karma, which is It's not necessarily arhat. It's like, there's one person that you can change, and that's you. You can also help change other people, but the main, if you can't deal with yourself, then whatever you say doesn't mean so much. And to save all sentient beings means basically to work on yourself That's the meaning. If you read the Platform Sutra, the Sixth Patriarch says, it doesn't mean that I, Huineng, am going to save all these people out there. It means that I save my jealous mind, my avaricious mind, my fighting demon mind, and so forth.

[50:18]

Save all the sentient beings of my own mind. That's to save all sentient beings. Can you say something about the difference between being dissolute and getting lost? What's dissolute? It's like despairing, or maybe you don't care about yourself. You just kind of wander around without shaving, and your clothes are tattered, something like that. Is that dissolute? When you were talking... Dissolution. You're falling apart. Is that it? I'm trying to figure out the meaning of dissolute. You were talking earlier about leading a dissolute life. Well, yeah, a non-caring life, you know, where you don't take care of yourself and you just kind of feed yourself and do what comes next, you know, but have no purpose, just wandering.

[51:33]

And what was the other term? Getting lost. They go together. I think it's the same. It's getting lost. I don't see any difference. Do you? there's probably more willfulness to it than there is in just being lost. Because being lost can cover a lot of different circumstances. But it's one of the attributes of dissonance. I would say it's one of the qualities of dissonance, being lost. But sometimes on purpose.

[52:37]

This is it, it's not being together. ♪ Especially inside ♪

[53:09]

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