I vow to teach the truth of the detective's words. Someone asked me about devotion in Buddhist practice, in Zen practice, and so this morning I want to talk about the nature of devotion. I think that

[01:09]

We have a certain idea about devotion from our Christian and Jewish backgrounds, which is very emotional and is usually aimed or directed toward a deity, God or some saint or something. And we usually associate devotion with emotion. And when we think of devotion, we think of emotion. And when you have a deity, like God or a saint, then you can put your emotional feeling, direct emotional feeling toward that point.

[02:38]

So, our Buddhist practice, sometimes we don't know the place of emotion or the place of directing our feeling, how to do that. But in any endeavor, If we want to reach the highest goal or effort in any activity, devotion is one of the underlying legs. one of the legs that makes it possible.

[03:47]

But devotion, and one of the constituents of devotion is emotion. Emotion means to come forth, to e-move, to move, to move out. And so we tend to think of moving out emotionally, but it also means to move out intellectually and to move out with whatever we have to move out with. So whatever we have to offer, whatever we have to offer, we offer.

[04:49]

That's devotion. Devotion says, I want or I want something. And whatever I have to offer, I'll offer. emotion, feeling, intellect, substance, possessions, understanding, whatever. So, if we miss something in devotion, It's because we hold back something. In Buddhism, or in Zen especially, we don't use supplication.

[05:55]

We don't think of devotion as supplication. Because in Buddhism, we don't think of Buddha as a deity. And what we devote ourself to is enlightenment or Buddha nature. We devote ourself to what we call Buddha nature. And it's characterized by Buddha, say Buddha, is the expression of Buddha nature. And Dharma is the expression of Buddha nature and Sangha is the expression of Buddha nature. So when we think of devotion, we think of Buddha as enlightenment, someone who has been enlightened or enlightenment itself. And that's where we begin.

[06:57]

Usually, The usual kind of practice is to begin from delusion and go toward enlightenment. That's the usual way of thinking. Because we're in delusion, we want enlightenment. So we start from our delusion and gradually we gain enlightenment. But in our practice, we start from enlightenment and move into practice. You probably don't believe that. No way. But that's the basis of our practice and that's why things are the way they are within our practice. That's why our practice has the character that it has. Because we start from enlightenment.

[08:02]

and move within practice. So Dharma is the expression of our Buddha nature as understanding. And Sangha is the expression of our Buddha nature as moving and acting in the world. So when we have devotion to Buddha, our Buddha nature, which we call emptiness, and we also call it activity, but it's based on understanding of emptiness and activity. And when we have devotion to

[09:08]

understanding, to learning, and to dharma. Dharma means the law of the way things are. Usually, we want to devote ourselves to truth. If we devote ourselves to a deity, it's because we want something from that deity. But in Buddhism, rather than devoting ourselves to some deity, we devote ourselves to ultimate truth. So ultimate truth means that we give ourselves over to truth and get back what we get back, rather than getting back what we want. So within Buddhism, we're always talking about getting rid of desire.

[10:16]

Desire means if you want something, you think that truth corresponds to your desire. We feel that truth corresponds to our desire. And what we get back is what we desire. So we're always trying to equate enlightenment or truth with our understanding or our desire. And we're always being frustrated because of that. So truth is always present, but We're not ready to believe in it or to see it or to accept it.

[11:17]

What we want to accept is something good, what we think is something good. But because of our idea or our desire, we think that something good is something that corresponds to our way of thinking or what we would like to have happen or correspond to our fantasy. So if we devote ourselves to truth, It means that we have to take the consequences, truth and consequences. It's true. Suzuki Roshi said something like, you know, if you're laying in bed on a rainy day,

[12:32]

you wish the sun would come out. But you don't know that sometime the sun will come out. And so it makes it difficult for you to appreciate the rainy day. Because you want something good, you don't appreciate something bad. Not that rain is bad, but... Because we want something to be, to correspond with our desire, we can't appreciate the way things actually are. And we can't appreciate our own position. So for us, you know, in Buddhism, to understand Buddhism and to have enlightenment is to appreciate and accept our life just as it is.

[13:48]

If we can do that, most of our trouble disappears immediately. Sudden enlightenment means most of your problems disappear all at once. all of your problems disappear all at once, without disappearing. And Sangha is the expression of Buddha nature as our activity together. the interaction of each one of us with the universe and with each other. So there are three ways of devotion.

[14:51]

One is being devoted to our Buddha nature, being devoted to the truth, and being devoted to humanity. But it's all one devotion, and those three are really one. Buddha, Dharma, Sangha is just Buddha nature. And it's our own nature. So part of our practice is to learn how to balance the various parts of our nature. How to balance faith with energy and vigor and mindfulness and concentration and wisdom.

[15:54]

How to balance our thinking mind with our emotional mind. There is, in Buddhism, because it's so hard, you know, to relate to something called Buddha nature. In Buddha's time, there was just a man, and everyone could relate to the man, Buddha. And people had a lot of faith in Buddha and in his enlightenment. and consequently they had a lot of faith in themselves and in their own enlightenment. But as time went on, and people's memory of the man Buddha disappeared, or became vague and fuzzy, Buddhism developed in a more abstract way.

[17:03]

And people started talking about Buddha as cosmic, on a cosmic scale. And the Mahayana developed Buddhism on a very cosmic scale, so that people kind of lost contact with, you know, the person. What should we be devoted to? And bhakti, you know, the Indian word bhakti is devotion. So at some point people started having devotion to various bodhisattvas. So in the Mahayana they developed a bhaktic practice toward bodhisattvas, Manjushri and Avalokiteshvara.

[18:05]

Bhaktic devotion toward Avalokiteshvara was maybe the strongest one. But then there was also the worship of Maitreya, the future Buddha, and so forth. So according to people's disposition, they could choose various bodhisattvas which were the personification of certain qualities. the worship of Avalokiteśvara, Kanon, Kuan Yin, is very strong even today. And then the Pure Land Buddhists developed a very strong faith in the vows of Amitabha and to recite Buddha's name in order to be born into the Pure Land.

[19:08]

These kind of practices, are beyond my criticism. But for Zen practice, Zen is more Hinayana-like. Even though we talk about Mahayana and Hinayana, Hinayana is more practice-oriented. And Mahayana became more devotional, or devotionally oriented. So Mahayana practice, or Zen practice, is a Mahayana practice, but it's really based more on Hinayana foundation. It's a kind of mixture of Mahayana and Hinayana, in the sense of

[20:11]

relying on our own effort. The Mahayana practices had a tendency to rely, in order to accommodate an enormous amount of people, the more people you accommodate, the simpler your practice has to be. So if you want to include everyone, then all you have to do is, anyone has to recite the name of Buddha. You don't have to sit sadhana. Practice the six paramitas or the seven factors of enlightenment, or all the various practices. Of course, this doesn't express all of the Mahayana feeling. I'm talking about just a certain aspect of the Mahayana, which makes it easy for people to practice, or to be included.

[21:35]

But Zen practice is based on coming to realization through your own effort. And coming to realization through your own effort is where devotion finds its way. And devotion, for us, comes from enlightenment and takes its form as practice. So Dogen, in his Fukanza Zengi, says, just single-minded devotion to sitting. If we become too bound up, Suzuki Roshi is very careful about religious practice.

[22:54]

Devotional practice can make you stir up a lot of religious feeling. and make us very dependent on a kind of religious emotional religious feeling which makes us very attached to religion. So You know, if we're attached to some special religious feeling, then we miss the point, you know, it holds us back from actually penetrating into reality or truth.

[23:56]

So, within practice, it's necessary to go beyond religion, to go beyond some religious feeling, or some emotional feeling, or even some idea. That's why Zazen is so... That's why we sit Zazen beyond emotional feelings, beyond ideas, beyond everything. It's... In other words, it's like perfect tuning. We don't have emotion out of balance. We don't have thinking out of balance. We don't have feeling out of balance, but thinking, feeling, emotion, whatever, one is always balancing the other. And when you go beyond emotions and thinking and consciousness, feeling,

[25:10]

When you return to those, because you've gone beyond them, you have a way of dealing with them, because you have the other side. So this is also called not relying on anything. And the Heart Sutra says, form is emptiness and emptiness is form. So this is called form is emptiness, emptiness is form. means not relying on anything especially. So what we have faith in is not relying on anything especially, not relying on emotional response or our idea or our feeling, but taking all of those into consideration, using them instead of being used by them.

[26:40]

Emptiness, form and emptiness, in this case, means that all forms are constantly arising as emptiness, and emptiness is constantly arising as all forms. If you understand this, then understand through practice. Understand through zazen. Then even though you have problems, you have some understanding of where your problems come from. And you're able to accept your problems.

[27:47]

and you're able to accept things as they come, as they arise. If we understand the nature of the problems that we have, we'll understand that most of them come from our self-centeredness. Most problems arise from our own self-centeredness. Getting rid of self-centeredness or seeing through our self-centeredness is what we call enlightenment.

[28:59]

When we see through, you know, have a desire to see through self-centeredness, that's called the desire for enlightenment. It doesn't mean that we have perfect ability to do that, but the desire itself is enlightenment. We may think that you have to wait until you're perfectly omniscient before you can have enlightenment. Just the desire itself to see through our self-centeredness is enlightenment. And when we have that desire and devote ourselves to practice from that desire, then our practice is based on enlightenment.

[30:07]

And when we have devotion, to practice in that way. That's the nature of our devotion. And then everything is included. You can understand emotions and you can understand feelings. You can understand thinking. And you can understand how your problems come from self-centeredness. But until you have that desire, until you really want to see through self-centeredness, our activity is in delusion, on that side, on the side of delusion.

[31:16]

Most of the problems we have in practice are through our self-centeredness. And when we start looking at that very closely, we can see how it's possible to change ourselves, and we can see how it's possible to help ourselves, and then we can see how it's possible to help others. But as long as we have, as long as we don't see that, and as long as our activity is always based on self-centeredness. It's just one problem after another, one big problem after another, which is always the same problem, but just takes different forms.

[32:55]

Just like our emotions are just, it's just emotion, but it takes different forms. Sometimes it's greed. Sometimes it's anger. Sometimes it's love. Sometimes it's hate. But it's just one emotion. And in the same way, through our delusion, all of our activities are delusion caused by self-centeredness. It just takes different forms. And if we have enlightenment in all our activity, whatever we do are the various forms of enlightenment. So instead of asking, you know, for something from outside of ourself,

[34:08]

We always shine a light on ourself. What are you doing to help yourself and everyone else? So when we have our four vows, we say, sentient beings are numberless. I vow to save them. The Sixth Patriarch in the Platform Sutra says, doesn't mean I, Hui Neng, am going to save all these people in the world. It means, rather, to save the sentient beings of my own mind. Saving the sentient beings of my own mind means saving the delusive mind, the greedy mind, the jealous mind, the angry mind, and so forth.

[35:26]

Not in a self-centered way. Not so I can be better. But we work on ourself, you know, in order to help everyone. If we only work on ourself for our own self, for our own sake, that's still just ego. It's still just ego. This was the problem, you know, between the Hinayana and the Mahayana. The problem that people had with the Hinayana was not that the Hinayana was wrong, but their practices were very lofty and very high. But the problem that they had was

[36:39]

it's possible to develop yourself to such an extent that you forget about everybody else and you forget the purpose of what you're doing. Once we start doing something for ourself, helping ourself, we feel that it's just for ourself and we make a kind of game or a kind of self-help program out of our, our self-development program out of our effort. So in Buddhism, we always give away the merit of our effort. This is a very important part of Buddhism, you know, to give away the merit. It's called parinama. And at one point in the history of Buddhism, the development of Buddhism, it became like measuring.

[37:58]

People would measure their amount of effort and then measure the amount of what they gave away, you know, and they could transfer merit. It was called transferring merit. If you have so much merit, then you could give so much merit away, and so forth. And it became kind of like the tax breaks that people have, that big corporations have nowadays. If you have tax credits, then you can shift them around. That's a kind of travesty of merit. I think all religious institutions at some point take something, some kind of truth and distort it and make it kind of grotesque. And that's what we dislike about religion. At some point in its development it always becomes grotesque, you know, and a parody of truth. And so we get disgusted with it. So I think our

[39:02]

effort is not to throw out the baby with the bathwater, but to always stick to the truth. Or not stick to it, but try and preserve what's really true in a rational way, and not get off on some trip. This is a kind of case of really building ego when you're trying to find truth. So, giving away merit means that what you do is not just for yourself and we should find what that means. Whatever effort we do for ourselves should be shared.

[40:07]

That's why we always sit together. We can sit alone, but mainly we sit together, mainly we practice together, and we share our practice with each other, and we share our practice with the world. And whatever merit, so-called merit there is, is always shared with the world. And at the end of every sutra, the end of every service, we always ji-ho san-chi, means the merit goes out everywhere. The merit of this chanting or this practice or this whatever we're doing goes in all directions. So, devotion is really devotion to, ultimately, to devotion to saving all sentient beings from suffering and confusion.

[41:42]

But mainly, we work on ourselves. There's one person that you can help. And that's you. Do you have any question? Yeah. You didn't talk at all, and it's not surprising because it's rarely talked about, the idea of devotion towards one's teacher. In Soto, particularly, it's rather understated. We had a taste of it when Geshe-in talked here. Well, Rinzai model is a different kind of pattern. And I think particularly in the Sangha,

[42:56]

a quiet kind of subject. I think another Soto Sangha says there's more of that quality in people's relationships with the teacher. Okay, that's a good question. In Rinzai Zen, the teacher is the Buddha. So a student would relate to a teacher just as if he was relating to Gautama Buddha. And so you have to have that kind of trust and devotion. So it's... whether the teacher is, has all those qualities or not, may or may not have all those qualities of Gautama Buddha.

[44:05]

But what the devotion is, is to that person's enlightenment. So ultimately, you're making some devotion to Buddha's enlightenment and not just to a person. In Soto, the practice shares that with the teacher. So, the form of practice is very important in Soto Zen. And there's still a devotion to the teacher. And in Japan, you know, if anybody from here went to Japan, they wouldn't know what to do. But reverence and

[45:08]

certain qualities of reverence is very, very important. But I don't like to present myself even as a teacher. If I'm teaching something, then I'm a teacher. If I'm not teaching something, I'm not a teacher. If there's some teaching, there's a teacher. sometimes you're the teacher. But there still has to be some focus.

[45:48]

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