Karen Sun Hun. Her Dharma name is Myu Hu Ho Sho, which means Gentle Rain, Dharma Blossom. Karen has been practicing here for decades. And she received the entrustment from Sakyamuni some time ago. What year was that? It was about two years ago. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. OK. Karen's, these days, the main arena of her practice is in her job as a public librarian in San Francisco. You might not think that was terribly challenging, but I've heard Karen describe that as basically maintaining a compassionate presence in the face of unexpected and changing circumstances. Welcome, Karen. Thank you, Peter. Is this on? Can people hear?

[01:05]

I did turn it on. That's on now. Okay. Hello? Can you hear me? Louder. Perhaps I need to move this up a little bit. Yeah, it sounds fine. How's that? Not so good. Your scar's blocking it. Yeah, the scar. Top layer. How about that? OK. Can you hear me? Yes. OK. Well, I thought I would start today just by telling a story. And one of them, this this particular story is one you've Many of you have probably heard it actually comes from the Lotus Sutra, which is one of the Buddha's final teachings in his life.

[02:10]

And the Lotus Sutra has many parables in it, but this one is pretty popular. But it's basically a story of a hidden gem. And the way it goes is that once there was a poor, very poor man, with a drinking problem and his life was a mess and every once in a while he went to visit a friend of his who was a wealthy man. So he'd come and visit and he'd have food and company and all that and then he'd go on his way. So one time when he came to visit his friend, the wealthy friend knew that he was going to go away for a while. He was concerned about his friend who had lost his way in life. So he decided that he would take a gem that was worth a lot of money and sew it into his robe without him knowing it because the friend wouldn't have accepted it otherwise.

[03:18]

So that night when the friend was in a drunken sleep, he took his robe and sewed a some kind of a gem into it. And then the next day he went on his way and didn't hear from him again for many, many years. Well, then the story didn't work out exactly how the rich friend had planned because he came across his poor friend a number of years later and he was still the same circumstances. And he said, well, what happened to you? Didn't you... I had sewn a gem into your coat. And I thought you would find that and, you know, cash it in and make yourself a life. And then the poorer friend who was still drinking said, oh, I didn't know that.

[04:23]

I had no idea that there was this gem in my coat. So he opens it up and there, many, many years later, The gem is still there. So that's the end of the story. And it's kind of obvious what the meaning is, which is this wealth that we all have that we don't recognize. Often we feel impoverished and unworthy and we study Buddhism and we hear the message that we are Buddha but it's very hard for us to believe that and to believe in our own awakening. We don't recognize in ourselves this capacity to wake up because we're caught in this web of conflicting desires and anger and whatever comes up in our daily life

[05:27]

that we find often unacceptable. So the Loga Sutra is a rather long sutra, and it contains lots of stories like this, and it also contains some more didactic verses. We don't talk about it that much here at the Berkley Zen Center, but we do pay homage to it in our meal chat every day, if you come here for breakfast on a Saturday morning or to sashimi. We do pay homage to the Sadharma Pundarika Sutra, which stands for Sutra of the Lotus Flower. And the lotus flower, as you may know, is a flower that grows in the mud. So it grows in muck. And when it finally opens, it flutters open and closed a number of times. It opens a little, closes a little, opens a little, closes a little. But when it finally matures, it actually shoots out a huge number of seeds. So the basic teaching of the Lotus Sutra is that we will all become Buddhists.

[06:36]

And I'm just going to read a very short verse from one of the chapters on predictions, which is where Buddha basically tells his disciples that they will awaken. So the Buddha says to his senior disciple, Subhūti, My senior disciple Subhuti will become a Buddha whose title will be named form. He will serve numberless myriad kotis of Buddhas and follow the practice of the Buddhas and will become perfect in a great way. So the way this part of the sutra goes is there are all these disciples like Shariputra and famous famous students of the Buddha. And one by one he tells them that they will awaken.

[07:38]

But none of them really believe it. In fact, they find it very hard to accept that they actually will become Buddhas. And then there are As it goes on, this goes on with many, many individual people and then it goes into larger groups of people. Women are asking if they can be Buddhas and all sorts of people surrounding him ask this question and I find it very interesting because for the past year and a half or so I've been co-leading a study group in the Lotus Sutra along with Andrea Thatch and it's very funny because we read these things in the study group and it's almost like people have the same reaction they did back in the time of the Buddha where people don't really believe that this is possible.

[08:47]

So we have a fair amount of discussion about what it means to really have faith that you are Buddha or that we are Buddhas. We tend to get similar, we think similarly to this man in the story who's drunk and unhappy and his life has become a mess and we think, oh that's not possible. for us. There's a certain cynicism, and sometimes I've noticed when people talk about this now, there's a certain kind of self-esteem issue that comes up, you know, I'm too selfish, I'm too angry, I'm too neurotic, too impatient, and therefore I'm not Buddha.

[09:53]

But all that, I think, is a lot of intellectualizing, actually, and trying to come up with a bunch of categories as to what this really means. That's what we call here in our practice dualistic thinking, or discriminatory thinking. Are we good or are we bad? Are we tranquil right now, or agitated? And if we're agitated, that means we're not Buddha. We're only Buddha if we're tranquil. Zen Master Dogen, who we talk about a lot here in our practice, said back in the 13th century, you should have faith here and now that what a Buddha directly knows is within your very heart. Now Dogen believed that the Lotus Sutra was the most profound teaching of all. And then he went on to say in one of his commentaries, our appearing with the Buddha on the divine vulture peak, which is where he gave these teachings, is due to our not begrudgingly our own lives.

[11:14]

But even though the Buddha says to Subhuti in this verse that he will attain Buddhahood, he doesn't say when. And I found myself personally somewhat confused about Buddhahood and Buddha and what is the difference between you know, attaining Buddhahood and the fact that we're already Buddhas right now. I went to speak with Michael Wenger, who's a teacher at the San Francisco Zen Center, and he said, if you're trying to figure out what Buddha is, you're grasping So having faith sounds simple, but it's not easy at all.

[12:35]

And I think the Sutra really demands that we accept this as a mystery and have faith in it even if we don't understand it. And this is a real emotional side of our practice. We can't figure it out rationally. Which is why we really say that, you know, we don't attain enlightenment, but we realize it. That's very different. It's really about realizing. And one of the important aspects of our practice and our zazen is to Let go of fixed ideas. Fixed viewpoints. When our third ancestor wrote Faith and Mind, that poem, he really said we have to let go of fixed viewpoints.

[13:43]

I commute every day to work. So a lot of what I experience every day happens, if it doesn't happen in the library, it happens on BART. And so I ride BART in five days a week. And I'm usually at eight in the morning crammed in by thousands of Buddhists on one train. And it's quite a challenging experience. But on Thursdays I go a little later because I work on Thursday night. So I actually work from 11 to 8 on Thursdays. So on Thursdays are really exciting because I get a seat. So I was waiting for the train and I get on a train and I get a seat and there are I see that there are only two seats left on the train, which is something I tend to strategize about.

[15:01]

And so I get on at Rockridge, and then I get to MacArthur, where we pick up more people. And I hear kind of somebody shouting behind me who got on the train at MacArthur, And I'm hearing somebody yelling, a woman. And I don't know what she's saying, but I hear a few things being thrown. And then she approaches from behind me, and she's kind of a somewhat older African-American woman who then sits down in one of the seats. one of the two seats left. And she, I finally understand what she's saying. And she's saying, I hate white people.

[16:04]

They're so rude. And she was slamming her newspapers on the other empty seat. And they were developing into quite a pile. And I felt somewhat agitated at first by the noise, but I could understand, you know, probably something, there was a reason she was saying it. But at the same time, there was a pile of newspapers there and she was not really connecting to the fact that, you know, there were people quiet there on BART and She was a bit wrapped up in her own world, although I could certainly see how she might be saying what she was saying. But this went on. And then we made the next stop at 19th Street.

[17:05]

And one person gets on who's a very tall, extremely well-dressed white man in a pinstripe suit. shiny clothes, and he looks rather sour. And he's headed for the one seat with a pile of newspapers. And I thought, something went off in my mind. Uh-oh. So he walks towards the empty seat with the newspapers on there. He starts to lean over to pick it up. And the woman who was shouting says, Oh, would you like to sit here? Let me move the papers. And he says, oh, no, don't you worry. I'll move them. I won't sit down. I'll move them. And she says, oh, I'll move them. And he says, I'll move them. And then I hear one of them says, boy, it's a cold day today.

[18:12]

And the other one agrees. And then before I knew it, they were talking about they grew up in the same town. somewhere on the East Coast. And they sounded like, you know, the perfect match of strangers on a train who just, you know, met somebody they really liked talking to. So Dogen says, Do not reproach yourself for the mind's delusions. As the scripture says, whatever is done by you is the way of the Bodhisattva. So enlightenment and delusion aren't really different. We can see our delusions. We can see our anger as it arises.

[19:13]

And we can also see through it. And we can do that, and that's with other people also. Last night I made what I believe was a major parenting error. Some of you know this, but about a year and a half ago my nephew moved in with Nancy and me. And he moved in because my sister and her husband felt they couldn't live with him anymore because they described him as hostile and oppositional and, you know, very angry. And so he moved in with us. And basically he behaves himself when he's with us, but You know, we've had our big moments, you know, big blow-ups and whatever.

[20:20]

But one thing that goes on, which is a dynamic that I'm not comfortable with, is that often during our table conversations, when he's talking, he looks mostly at Nancy. And that's just been an ongoing thing that I haven't really liked and haven't figured out how to address. But, last night that happened at the dinner table, and I was, for whatever reason, I was under a lot of stress, and I was annoyed about that, you know, that I'm kind of invisible at the dinner table, at least when he's talking. Then I wanted to go into his room to get a book, actually, for this talk today. And when he moved in, he took over my room. It wasn't my room, it was my little office with all my books. So I wanted to go in there, and I told him I was going to go in there, and he got suddenly very hostile.

[21:33]

And I mentioned to him that I had to go in and get a book, and he went to me like, And meanwhile, he and Nancy were having a very nice talk. And I thought, well, so that really bothered me. Now, normally I let these things go, but I later, I was so upset that I went to say goodnight to him and I snapped at him, goodnight. I mean, not like that, worse. And this is unusual because I have given him a kiss goodnight every night since he moved in. And I think it's really important to do that because he's suffered a serious rejection in his household. He has a lot of problems. So I really wanted to give him the message that

[22:37]

he is loved and that he can, you know, we're going to survive him beating up on us. But I didn't feel like I was going to survive it last night. And so I snapped at him and I felt terrible. And then I went and talked, I cooled down a little bit and talked to Nancy a little. Then I went in and I explained what happened. And I went and I said to him, You know, I want to say good night again. I just didn't like how you spoke to me before. And he said, Oh, I mean, you're the kind of person who gets offended by everything. So, OK. I understood that. So then I still didn't feel quite OK about it. So Nancy and I had a talk and Nancy and her bottomless wisdom reminded me that just about how much he is suffering and that his anger, you know, isn't personal and that he needs to know that I'm not going to punish him by a nasty goodnight or to

[24:08]

give up faith on him. That's what you said last night, you know, losing faith in his, in him. So that made me, after she said that, I just felt very warm and sad in a way and towards him. I couldn't resist going and giving him a kiss. So I gave him a big kiss and I said, told him I loved him and no matter what happened and he goes, OK. I said it again, he goes, OK. You know. So that was the end of that story. What did you say? I said, to be continued. Well, that's the truth. There's no end. Thank you. What time is it? It's quarter to eight. Well, maybe we can talk a little bit Perhaps somebody has something they'd like to say, or add, or ask, or... Ross?

[25:19]

Thank you for your warm way. I have two questions. You can pick one or the other. One was, I loved the story about what you observed on Clark. I didn't understand how that relates to the Lotus Sutra. or what your take on it was, if you want to comment on that. The other piece is, in the Buddha's teachings, we don't, I've never read anything about his suffering, or what he's going through, and anxiety, and all of that. We only read about this sort of Buddha-like or Vedic smile that he had, and I wonder if how much of it was written out? of the culture, and how in our culture we talk about all of our anxieties and things, and how that is Buddha, but we don't get the affirmation in the text. And I wonder if that implies, or if because of that, we always feel we're less than. And how do you find inspiration in reading the text, which I know that you do a lot of textual study, where these things aren't so explicit?

[26:31]

Maybe they are in commentaries with contemporary teachers, but not in... Are you asking how that applies to one's personal life now? Well, it's like there's an aspiration that is in the text of Buddhist teaching. We don't hear him talking about his right on the heart and the anxieties and sufferings of family. We hear about it before, you know, with his split with his son and family, letting them go to find his way. But I'm wondering how it kind of comes full circle. Well, I tried to illustrate that. For me, it came full circle, both his story about what happened on the bar. To me it was kind of an awakening for me. But also I saw two people kind of snap out of whatever they were into to take care of each other. That's how I see practice.

[27:33]

I mean, we all get caught up. I mean, you know, here are two people, you know, one person on board is angry. Another person is, I mean, I'm jumping to some of the conclusion because it is my own observation, but there's somebody angry and there's somebody who was also a bit sour. And somehow they turned around to meet each other. And also as an observer, I had a point of view of what was going to happen and nothing happened the way I thought it would happen because people are Buddhas. So people were not what I thought they were when I first saw them. Does that make any sense? So Buddhas appeared in front of you, not sentient beings? Well, they're the same. They're the same. Sentient beings and Buddhas are the same.

[28:36]

But it's like, it's an awakening. It's like, you know, we wander around in delusion. We're angry about something, repeatedly. I mean, the whole thing with my nephew is just another example of a place where I personally get stuck and need to turn around in my own mind. And that's my understanding of really what we're doing here, personally. So Buddha didn't ride Bart, but my story is Bart. difficult teenagers. Linda, did you have a question? Oh, yeah. Did you see me? Linda, yeah. Oh, just Ross's question reminded me of how I was kind of...

[29:44]

Ross's question reminded me of how I had, at various points, been irritated by the stories of the Buddha, because he was always smiling beatifically, and he never revealed his ugly sides, you know, like we always do, just as you were saying. We live in California, we psychologize, and we share all of these dark aspects, and this is necessary for us to manifest our practice of love. You know the Jataka stories, all the Jataka stories about the Buddha's previous births as a Bodhisattva, who was destined to be a Buddha, always show him, in these horrific circumstances, acting perfect. Right? And I hope that was an incomplete story. You can all tell me if this is only because of my California conditioning that I thought that. I actually started to write a series of little stories called the Mrityaka stories. Now, that's the opposite root. You know, Jataka means birth and Mrityaka means death or dying.

[30:51]

And they would be things like, you know, once the Buddha was born as a drug dealer or, you know, once the Buddha was born in all these dark things. He had to. It had to. I just had this conviction. Anyway, I'm sort of affirming the point that Ross made, which is that it makes it more difficult for us to accept that we are Buddha, because Buddha is never shown as being us. I understand what you're saying. In fact, this particular sutra is really difficult. And I didn't say this about our study group, but a lot of people don't like it. And that's why they don't like it. They partly don't like it because of the language, the very ornate, baroque language of it. There are everything's shining jewels and emerald palaces and that kind of thing. They don't like that. And what you're saying, in general, we don't like hearing about perfect people.

[32:01]

I'm not sure how to answer that exactly, but I understand what you're saying, and I just... One thing Dogen said, oh, I think it was Dogen. Actually, I might be wrong, I believe it comes directly from the Sutra, but it says that these words were spoken for ordinary human beings that were not written for Buddhists. They were only written for people wandering around in delusion. Yes? I'm wondering if what you're talking about is some kind of mental transformation. And I think it might be useful to really look at it as a psychological phenomenon. of changing the mind somehow. Do you mean in a proper way?

[33:09]

The yoga itself, you know, looking at him as a psychological phenomenon that transformed the mind. And that's, in a way, we can all do that. Well, And maybe he did arrive at a point out of some kind of collapse in his own life and he achieved enlightenment through some kind of surrender to this transformation, a mental transformation. the story of the Buddha, which you probably know about his early life, that he lived a completely sheltered existence until he was in his late twenties. And then he went out and he saw for the first time suffering, sickness, death.

[34:12]

And that's what he had to face, and that's what he had to resolve. And he did have a realization about what that is. I don't know what you mean exactly by psychological, I mean... What is Buddha? Where is Buddha? I mean, in a way that's really the ultimate question. What is it? Well, one of us important... It is a phenomena that transforms something. Well, one of the most important teachings in this sutra is that Buddha is timeless and not limited to any particular space. So you talk about the historical Buddha as a person, that's just one aspect of the teaching. That there was this man, Shakyamuni, who went about and, you know, meditated and reached enlightenment and taught people. That's one aspect. But then there's the other aspect, which is that Buddha has always existed throughout time

[35:20]

and throughout space. So it's really not about one person. It's about all of us. We are all Buddha. And we all need to practice realizing that. And that we all can realize it. I mean, you've probably had experiences too where your mind turned from... Right. I have a question. It's more a comment or something. When those two people were sitting on BART, and you're sitting there, and it's not you, I'm just, you're kind of the example of the universal you. And you saw the two possibilities. the two potentialities of those two forces coming together. And just imagine if what Matt has suggested actually was a projection of what you were thinking was going to happen, as opposed to what actually happened.

[36:31]

And how it happened differently, how our projections... Yes, and that's a major, that's a big point. What happens in reality is so different than what our project, or what could happen in reality, is so different. In relationships, you know, all of your people look at all the things that could go wrong. Well, I think that's an important point, because that's a lot of how we practice. We do have all sorts of ideas about what's going to happen, and what did happen, and what is happening. And that's something that our Zao Zen practice really brings us back to letting go of those kinds of ideas. Because what happened, certainly I had my own imagination going on, and people had their imagination, whatever was going on with them, I can only observe. Thank you.

[37:34]

Ken? Just a couple of points. There is that aspect, but I think although Buddha is not usually presented as saying, oh, I feel for you, da, da, da, I think the feeling is of a person who is totally empathic. So when somebody says, I have this problem, and so on, I don't get the idea that he's saying, oh, don't worry about it. I think he's saying, here is this problem, you have this problem, I'm going to explain something that may help you with that. And it's perhaps a cultural thing that he doesn't do it like we would do it, to say, oh yes, I understand, I had that same experience, and so on.

[38:35]

On that second point about the BART situation, I don't, I think didn't turn out to be true. And so you think, oh, I wasn't looking at these other possibilities. But I think, really, your perception was fairly accurate. Probably nine times out of ten, there would have been some problems. And so you were certainly right to be aware. And perhaps, depending on the circumstances, you might have even intervened in some way. You know, like when I heard you starting got up from her seat and said, oh, sit here. I'm just about to get offers. You know, there are other things that might have been done, and you might have been wise to do them. You know, you shouldn't think that it's always going to turn out this way.

[39:41]

It's just that I think the important thing is not to be attached. Like you can say, this is probably going to be problematic here, but not to lock into it. Because I work, you know, where I work in the library is really in the tenderloin. And there's a lot of stuff going on. I actually have a fairly good nose for when things are really going to happen or not. I really did not think this woman was dangerous. She was making a scene and there could have been words. I was not really afraid. But your point about the Buddha And that smile, you know, I think that's an important point because it's not about being happy, you know. This practice isn't really about being happy in that you get what you want, you know. Isn't it a great day and isn't everybody nice and all that? And aren't we all nice? You know, it's really, his smile is really about being able to accept everything.

[40:47]

The bad things, too. I mean, there was a lot of awful stuff going on in the world when Buddha had his realization. You know, he wasn't surrounded by peace and tranquility. So, I like what you said about that particular smile. Ed? Going back to the kitchen table, when you're sitting there start waving your arms, saying, hey, I'm in this room, too, or something like that. I appreciate that. I have gotten that advice a few times. Well, on the one hand, I'm planning to do that.

[41:51]

I think I need to do it. The thing about my nephew is, When he smells weakness or fear, he gets kind of sadistic and really nasty. So I've been trying to figure out a way to do that without any hint of groveling or feeling... Yeah, I wasn't thinking of that. I was thinking of just really asserting yourself into his... taking care of himself, basically. Yes. The answer is yes. Peter. Thank you very much for your talk. I'm kind of receiving this as a talk about faith and the challenges to our faith that we are, and other people, are Buddha. And your stories, I thought, were wonderful explanations of how we get in the way of our own faith and that reality.

[43:00]

And in fact, what Ed just brought up, I thought was another interesting illustration of that. The teenagers are great teachers. For me, anyway. So, I don't know if you want to talk further about that thread of how we deal with the challenges to our faith, that we are all good at, that we all have a good nature. You know, that's a great question because faith is... The word faith sounds so simple and easy and people often scorn it a little bit as though it's just believing in something. But I don't think it's really believing in something as much as realizing or seeing something often over and over again. So the incident on Bart with the two people was just another... After I saw these two talking to each other and having a great time after what I saw before, it was like... Yes, it just confirmed to me that we are all Buddha.

[44:20]

I was sitting with two Buddhas on the train. Now they looked unhappy, you know. They were unhappy for when they first got on the train. One of them was screaming and obviously hurt about something and having a tantrum, and the other one was... I don't know what his story was at all, but here are two people who looked the way they looked, and then it turned around and it was different. You know, that gave me faith. It was just another example of seeing Buddhas appear. You have to stick. Five after 11? Yeah. If you wanted to, one more stop. Well, I've been trying to answer that question for so long, it fascinates me about faith. And I find every time I try to talk about it, I can't really articulate it.

[45:24]

But I was hoping that the examples I gave were helpful. At least that those were examples of things that moved me personally. Is there one more short question? I'm sort of eager to say one last thing to you before we break up. My question or comment was a little bit complaining and I just, you know, touched off something in me, but I really want to say that As I've said to you sometimes, I really like listening to you. And if you were giving a talk once a week, I would be here once a week. And the two stories you told, I want to tell you that they were really great stories. And I especially appreciated that you didn't over-explain them.

[46:26]

And they will stay with me. So thank you. Well, thank you. And I appreciate your, you know, perseverance in book-seeking. I've appreciated that for years. Thank you all.

[46:44]

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