Gail Sher Sixteen Precepts, Talk 4 Transcript (YouYube automated)

It is a privilege to be here today passing on to you not only the teachings of my great teacher Shunryu Suzuki-Roshi but by passing on the meaning of his teachings giving meaning to all of the great buddhist ancestors all the way back to Shakyamuni Buddha

Soto Zen Buddhism is part of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition in which practitioners are called bodhisattvas and the story of the first bodhisattva is in one of the Jataka tales those are the tales of buddha's past lifetimes and since the precepts that were about to study beginning today um are received during the bodhisattva initiation ceremony where we become a bodhisattva we might start by learning how a bodhisattva thinks therefore i'm going to recount this delightful story that took place countless eons ago in a city called Amaravati so in Amaravati there was a brahmana named Sumedha who experienced both his parents dying while he was still young and the steward of the family's property displayed before Sumedha all of the gold and silver and gems that he would now be inheriting this was seven generations of gold and silver and gems there was a lot of it and when he saw this display he thought after amassing all this wealth neither my parents nor my ancestors were able to take even a single penny with them when they passed away can it be right that i should seek to take my wealth with me when i go thus he told the king that he would give all his wealth to the poor and he would become a spiritual seeker

Sumedha thought suppose a man after falling into a heap of filth hears about a distant pond covered with lotuses of five colors that man ought to search for that pond and if he does not that's not the pond's fault in the same way there is a lake the great deathless nirvana in which to wash off the defilements of my harmful karma if i do not seek it that will be not be the lake's fault so he left home and entered a forest in the himalayas to practice as a hermit because he was a person of great capability he attained superhuman knowledge and supernatural powers while he was thus practicing the Dipamkara Buddha appeared in the world and started to teach in a city not far from Sumedha's forest the people immediately invited the buddha and his followers for a meal and to ease the way they began to fix the road that was flooded and to decorate it with flowers

Sumedha flew there by means of his supernatural power and seeing how hard they were working he offered to help everyone knew about his powers so they told him um if you would fix the muddy part of the road with soil that would be good but Sumedha although he could easily have done this he wanted to use his own hands instead so he started to carry soil but Dipamkara Buddha arrived before he finished

Sumedha didn't want the buddha to walk through the mud so he loosened his matted hair and he lay down on the ground and he asked the buddha to just walk on him which was a dramatic expression of his commitment to take refuge and even today some buddhists um prostrate themselves all full length on the ground to pay respect and express their respect and gratitude when Sumedha lying in the mire looked up at Dipamkara Buddha he made a vow if i want i could now enter the buddhist sangha and by practicing meditation free myself from deluded human desires and become an arhat then at death i would at once attain nirvana and cease to be reborn but this would be a selfish course to pursue for thus i should benefit myself only i want to help all beings as Dipamkara Buddha is now doing i am determined i vow to attain what Dipamkara Buddha has attained and benefit all beings

Dipamkara Buddha seeing Sumedha lying in the mud understood that he had vowed to become a buddha he told his assembly that in a distant future Sumedha would would become a buddha named Gautama hearing this prediction Sumedha was delighted and believed his vow would be realized having praised Sumedha for his vow Dipamkara Buddha and his assembly left thus Sumedha became the bodhisattva which in this case means the buddha to be. this is an early example of the path called bodhisattva practice chosen by Shakyamuni Buddha so

Shakyamuni Buddha chose the bodhisattva way in the previous lifetime in which he was Sumedha the archetypal image of the bodhisattva in this story suggests that all mahayana buddhist practice is based on the bodhisattva which has two aspects and this explains why zen master Isan Reiyu chose to be reborn as a water buffalo because water buffaloes who walk in the muddy water to help farmers grow rice symbolizes bodhisattva practice right they're doing bodhisattva practice they walk in the mud to help farmers grow rice that's their life it's it's a perfect symbol for the bodhisattva what the practice of a bodhisattva is so the verse of the true called the triple treasure i take refuge in the buddha i take refuge in the dharma i check refuge in the sangha directly states the connection between taking refuge and vow where the priest where we get the precepts so taking refuge in the buddha we vow together with all beings to walk this path of wisdom and compassion taking refuge in the dharma we vow to share the teachings and wisdom and taking refuge in the sangha we vow to create harmony without hindrance in the soto zen tradition our practice is based on dogen zenji's teaching of continuous practice and also the sameness of practice and enlightenment so there's continue in in dogen's view there's continuous we do continuous practice and our practice is the same as enlightenment so please listen to dogen's truly inspiring words with your soft zazen mind just just let them flow through you um and last week i talked about dogen's idea of doing not understanding so you'd and so i'm going to ask you to do that right now just do not understanding don't worry about understanding you actually will understand so here is is dogen's very inspiring speech in the great way of the buddhas and ancestors there is always unsurpassable continuous practice which is the way like a circle without interruption between the arousing of awakening mind practice awakening and nirvana there is not the slightest break continuous practice is the circle of the way therefore this continuous practice is not activities that we are forced to do by ourselves or by others it is the continuous practice that has never been defiled the virtue of this continuous practice sustains ourselves and others the essential point is that the entire earth and throughout heaven in the ten directions all beings receive the merit of our continuous practice although neither others nor ourselves know it that is the way it is therefore because of the buddhist and ancestors continuous practice our continuous practice is actualized and our own great way is penetrated because of our own continuous practice the continuous practice of all buddhas is actualized and the great way of buddhas is presented because of our own continuous practice there is the virtue of the circle of the way because of this each and every one of the buddhas and ancestors dwells as a buddha goes beyond buddha upholds buddha's mind and completes buddhahood without interruption because of continuous practice there are the sun moon and stars because of continuous practice there is the great earth and empty space because of continuous practice there is the self and its environment and body and mind because of continuous practice there are the four great elements and the five aggregates although continuous practice is not something worldly people love nevertheless it is the true place to return for all people because of the continuous practice of all buddhas in the past present and future all buddhas in the past present and future are actualized therefore the continuous practice of one day is nothing other than the seed of all buddhas and is itself the continuous practice of all buddhas i just wanted to add that um the beauty of continuous practice is that it's not something you control once it's on board the practice does the practice and takes you out of it so that's why it's so powerful it's pure there's no outflow as we talked about a few weeks ago um so the practice actually does the practice once you set it up i take refuge in the buddha i take refuge in the dharma i take refuge in the sangha these three lines from the bodhisattva initiation ceremony are the first three bodhisattva precepts these are the first precepts i take refuge in the buddha i take refuge in the dharma i take refuge in the sangha so that's precept one two and three according to dogen the essence of the true transmission of the buddha dharma is taking refuge in the in these three buddha dharma and sangha it's called the triple treasure and when when dogen approached death what did he do what practice did he choose on a long piece of white paper he wrote three large black characters buddha dharma sangha and he hung the paper on a pillar in his sick room and then he roused himself to walk around the pillar he likes circumambulated you know he's dying but and there he is in bed and he gets up and he circumambulates to the best of his ability this pillar where he's got sheets of paper with the character for the buddha dharma and sangha he brought his whole life energy forward to rock walk around these three jewels and then he gave to them he gave his life and and he gave his whole life to all beings um taking refuge in when it's translated into japanese it has two characters and one means to throw oneself unreservedly like the way a parent would rescue a child who is in danger to throw yourself unreservatedly and the second means to rely upon the way a child leaps into a parent's arms trusting unequivocally equivocally those are the two japanese characters um that that mean taking refuge and John Daido Loori-roshi relays a really sweet story from his own life that i think just absolutely conveys the spirit of this throwing yourself unequivocally trusting forward so he says i remember when my children were young and they were able to stand by themselves but they couldn't yet walk and i would stand them up on the dresser and i'd say jump and they would throw themselves into space knowing i would be there they had a complete sense of trust it was total doing this is john did lurie roshi unreservedly throwing oneself into and relying upon differs he says from a shelter or protection from danger or distress the more common definition of the word refuge when you are willing to throw yourself completely into your everyday life this is the point when you are willing to throw yourself completely into your everyday life moment by moment you are taking refuge in buddha dharma and sangha so we bring it home when you are willing to throw yourself completely into your everyday life moment by moment you are taking refuge in buddha dharma and sangha in case you wondered how you do that suzuki roshi said that we can't practice the way without adoring the triple treasure and that taking refuge is an act of adoration adoration of awakening adoration of the teaching of awakening and adoration of the community of beings who practice the way of a of awakening and and adoration of all life which is the way of awakening in all traditions of buddhism veneration of the buddha dharma and sangha the triple treasure is the basis of ethical practices and compassionate vows in all traditions of buddhism but please understand when you take refuge in buddha it means taking refuge refuge in who you really are so taking refuge in buddha is refuge and who you really are and when you take refuge you're not trying to be someone else if you are a person whose life has been organized around gaining ideas then the act of in the act of taking refuge you don't try to be someone who's not the person who spent her life or his life gaining with gain trying to at least running after gaining ideas you work with what you are taking refuge in buddha means trusting that you were buddha trusting that your buddha does not mean that you identify yourself with buddha it's not something special about you that makes you buddha it is simply that you being you is buddha you being you is buddha even though people vary in relative levels of virtue each of us completely is an arena for buddha virtue to realize itself reb anderson roshi sometimes says he likes to do what he's good at and and i'm good at being me he says i'm good at being me so i take refuge in being me that this is this is reb anderson roshi speaking so i take refuge in being me that is my indestructible virtue which never is lost except by me forgetting it or not facing up to it taking refuge means to give up running away from home it means to recognize my responsibility to live in accord with my buddhahood so then he explains the meaning of the saying i take refuge in buddha i myself feel like this is totally where it's at here um so anderson roshi explains that the meaning of saying i take refuge in buddha is not in the words but it responds to our devotion in saying these words it's not in the words the power is not in the words i take refuge in in the buddha it's in the devotion um in saying these words and that that arouses a response if our devotion is total there will be a complete response this is the meaning of the jewel mirror awareness in buddhism we have this expression the jewel mirror awareness it clearly reflects our devotion like a mirror it reflects our devotion whether our efforts are partial or total we get back exactly what we give when we hold back from awakening it may seem that awakening holds back from us but even this reflection we're holding back and it seems like awakening is holding back that even that reflection is is a reflection it's com it's spiritual communion um and also appeal and response come together so past and future are cut off we don't appeal now and get response later it's like immediate it's at the same time response appeal and response are like identical um and i i really have experienced this it's just instantaneous so then anderson roshi shares this story of katagiri roshi once standing in front of the altar and saying line up the incense burner with the buddha's nose the center of the buddha statue if you place them in a straight line then your mind will be straightforward lining them up straight corresponds with the arrival of your energy think about this lining up the buddha's nose with the incense burner um makes your energy straight forward and lining them up straight corresponds with the arrival of your energy as soon as you make this effort your mind and heart are aligned with the buddha and try this if you have an altar you know sometimes and cleaning the you know the little images you have can can get pushed aside or something see what happens when you put them exactly where they belong um it's very interesting just notice how it feels this straightforward mind is the mind of a bodhisattva this straightforward mind does not expect anything in return for being straightforward according to um anderson roshi who is very close to suzuki roshi um suzuki roshi once talked about a young monk whose father was a zen priest and when the boy was about to enter practice at Eiheji which is dogen's monastery the father said when you get to Eiheji you'll see that there is a big bell there you will probably get a chance to ring it early in the morning you will ring the bell and after each ring you will bow when you ring the bell just ring the bell still when you ring it remember that with every ringing of the bell the great wheel of buddha dharma turns one degree the boy went to Eiheji and he did get a chance to ring the bell he rang it joyfully with his whole heart just as his father had taught him when the abbot heard the ringing of the bell he was deeply impressed he wondered who was ringing the bell that way and asked to meet the young monk and the boy later became a great teacher so just ring the bell with your whole heart when you ring thusly you were being met in such a meeting the buddha is coming alive the dharma is coming alive and the sangha is coming alive do you understand so reviewing some of the important points first the meaning of saying i take refuge in buddha is not the words but it responds to our devotion in saying these words if our devotion is total there will be a complete response this is the meaning of the jewel mere awareness and second when we hold back from awakening it may seem that awakening holds back from us but even this reflection of our holding back is spiritual communion and also appeal and response come together past and future are cut off and we we don't appeal now and response comes later it's it's instantaneous third when you take refuge you're not you're not trying to be someone else you're you're being exactly who you are and taking refuge in the buddha means trusting that you're a buddha roshi said that we can't practice the way without adoring the triple treasure and that taking refuge is an act of adoration adoration of awakening which is the buddha buddha means the awakened one adoration of the teaching of awakening which is the dharma and adoration of the community of beings who are practicing the way of awakening and adoration of all life which is the sangha and fifth when you are willing to throw yourself completely into your everyday life moment by moment you were taking refuge in buddha dharma and sangha and here are some things to reflect on during the week and write about in your notebooks so first though the first is to just review in your mind this talk today and pick out points that for you really ring true and they could be even small unimportant things but they just resonate with you so capture those write them down so when we say the continuous practice of one day is nothing other than the seed of all buddhas and is itself the continuous practice of all buddhas thinking just over your own life where does your continuous practice live where is your continuous practice what do you do day in and day out that you might call continuous practice and i would say that it would be something that um you have made into a practice so that you're not in control but the practice just does the practice thirdly this idea of the essential point is that the entire earth and throughout heaven in the ten directions all beings receive the merit of our continuous practice as often as you can use this as a basis for your insight meditation sessions that that insight meditation is when you simply hold an idea in your mind gently as you meditate you don't try to do anything you just hold this idea in your mind and it's one of those things that dogen tells us we cannot understand yet it is so and that that is um that the entire earth and throughout heaven in the ten directions all beings receive the merit of our continuous practice that's what dogen says we can't understand but yet it is so so just hold it in your mind don't try to understand when when you meditate that's called inside inside meditation fifth what are the lessons that you yourself learned from the story of Sumedha, Shakymuni's past life, in which he initially took the bodhisattva vow what what did you personally learn from that story that's another thing to think about or write about or both okay i wonder if there are questions the first question that we have is if buddha nature is all pervading in ordinary daily life isn't it a contradiction to do anything to realize this why do we need to sit and take refuge i think we've talked about this before actually this this was um this was dogen's agonizing question um that he had all the time he was a monk in japan and and he couldn't find an answer and he sailed to china to get the answer um it these two practices sitting and taking refuge um they they offer an opportunity to engage in our contradictory nature and i'm and you know we can't get around it and it's very frustrating but i know i for sure have it and have uh not sometimes not very successfully dealt with it for i remember um when i first left zen center ii sewed these three outfits um a kind of loose- fitting top with uh we call them fat pants they were like meditation pants in three different fabrics one for summer one for winter and one for in between and i thought okay now i have everything i need to wear for the rest of my life and then you know immediately like the next day i'm out buying some blouse that i'm really attracted to and think oh what a great you know it's just like uh trying to um trying to not show one's contradictory nature is is definitely something to contend with um reb anderson roshi says sometimes we have to do something extraordinary to realize our ordinariness and or sometimes we need to do a special practice to need that we we don't need to do anything special after all um the answer to dogen's question as far as i can determine is um that even though we are buddha nature buddha nature needs to awaken itself to itself through our practice buddha nature needs rousing like a sleeping dog um it there's something in tibetan buddhism that uh reminds me of this and they kind of formalize this it's called empowerments so there are certain practices in tibetan buddhism that are extremely powerful like the green tara practice the green time the practice of green tara but you can't just bop into doing the practice of green tara you have to receive an empowerment from an enlightened um master tibetan buddhist master and you receive this empowerment it's a rather sometimes a rather long dragged out ceremony and from there you were given permission to do the practice and if you haven't received that permission the practice actually won't um do anything for you it won't actually it won't do anything for you so you're wasting your time kind of and the same goes for um there are statues we have you know statues of the buddhas, statues of of our Avalokiteshvara and Prajnaparamitawe have these statues but if they haven't been blessed and sometimes i have some statues that actually have been filled with gems that they're they're not expensive but gems anyway um that have been blessed and then the statue actually is alive so when i sit in front of a statue that has been empowered in this way um the energy from it is different it's more powerful energy so how did i get off on that um sometimes we need to uh we we need to do we need to do things to um empower buddha nature needs rousing and and we do activities to arouse our buddha nature that's all thank you gail the next question we have is when you appeal are you appealing for refuge or enlightenment or just anything i don't remember hearing about appeal as something to do um that was probably my fault um appeal means taking refuge you take refuge in the buddha in the dharma in the sangha and that's that's like a it's a vow it's it's a vow in buddhism um supposedly you know we you know there's not a god in buddhism so um you might read that so that therefore there's not prayer in buddhism actually but um i pray every day frankly and um it's kind of like mixing up mixing up vowing with this idea of prayer and appeal it's all the same it's all in the same boat um so not to be too um precise you don't have to be too precise in this department because because it's all about your heart it's all about your devotion so if there's devotion there and you're asking to take refuge in the buddha dharma and sangha there will be a re you will be given refuge in the buddha dharma and sangha it's like that it's appeal and response and again it's immediate it's not like you wait three months or check your clock or did did you know or your email did you get an answer yet no it's not like that it's already happened so all right in case that wasn't clear taking refuge in itself is an appeal and i'm sorry i didn't make that clear that's all so somebody asked i grew up in a family entirely organized around and adamant about gaining ideas attainment is my blood hearing that this idea merely reinforces ignorance for example the incorrect notion that there is an independent eye at the center of my world while i believe that i despair frankly of overcoming this lifelong habit any advice it is a habit and actually that's good news because habits are they're alive in your nervous system and they had there's a neural pathway there of your habit and i think we've actually talked about this before you can lay down a new neural pathway that supersedes old neural pathways and and they get the old neural pathways get less and less powerful but you have to work for it and the way you work for it is you you for example in this case you would practice thinking um about lacking your own being when i say own being that's that um independent inherent individual existence but that's just such a mouthful own being means the same thing so practicing the acknowledgement of lacking an independent eye there's no eye there if you practice that being really conscious and really clear being aware of that every single day for 90 days without exception you will lay down a new neural pathway that will supersede the idea of i'm in control and i need to you know beat the other guy or win the competition or whatever the idea of there is no i i lack an own being i lack own being to say that again and again every single day for at least 90 days minimum i've i've done that i did an experiment and i've done this and 90 days was the absolute it was the first moment that i started noticing a difference the subsiding of the previous habit and so um that's how to lay down a new neural pathway and you can do that you can do that with with your gaining idea habit that's all thank you gail the next question is soto zen buddhism is part of the mahayana buddhist tradition in which practitioners are called bodhisattvas i didn't realize that sotos and buddhis were called bodhisattvas how is that i remember when i didn't realize that the way you formally become a buddhist is by taking refuge so there's before you took refuge and there's after you took refuge and before you're not formally a buddhist and afterwards you are formally a buddhist and that that ice there was one sentence in them i talk about dogen saying that the transmission into buddhism comes from taking refuge and you take refuge in a ceremony this wasn't the case when shakyamuni buddha was alive you know it was very easy but now we have a ceremony it's called the bodhisattva initiation ceremony and in that ceremony are the 16 great bodhisattva precepts you receive those precepts it's a beautiful ceremony with repentance as the first thing and then the second thing well actually before you even get to the ceremony you sew a robe a buddhist robe either a whole robe if you're going to be a priest or it's called a raksu which is a miniature buddhist robe and you sew it in this very exact way under very strict japanese sewing instructions saying a prayer with each see there's a prayer or maybe it's a i'm not sure an oath with each stitch um with each stitch you say a prayer um and it can take as long as six months but it's preparing you for the bodhisattva initiation ceremony and on the back of the robe the preceptor writes your new buddhist name which makes you a part of the lineage all the way back to Shakyamuni Buddha this whole business could be the most important thing you do in your whole life it was certainly the most important thing i ever did i take refuge six times a day so that's that's that's how it is that's how you become a soto zen buddhist or which means you're a bodhisattva you know infant you're a bodhisattva infant okay so another comment we have is i see the similarity in the gesture of Sumedha turning himself into a red carpet for Dipamkara Buddha and the one of the child jumping off a chest of drawers into her daddy's arms i begin to wonder if i've ever done anything with such wholeheartedness it's a little depressing to consider my life from this perspective i know it is sad but going forward knowing this you can be extra determined that it never happened again so to make sure that your work for example is absolutely compelling that you're very involved and very behind what you do for your living and also that your relationships are as you wish them to be you're not just throwing them away i see so many people miserable in their relationships and they feel trapped and to think through really carefully what you're doing when you stay in a relationship like that and if you use if you use then your past wisely um and never waste a minute it it will be a gift to you then you can you can go oh well if if that hadn't happened i never would have made these changes that make my life so much better and more powerful and more meaningful and certainly of more help to other people so use it take it as a gift i think recently in one of the lectures i was saying that uh everything that comes to you as a gift if you really really look at it everything is a gift from the universe every single thing so including that you've never you've never had the experience of wholehearted entry into an activity think of it as a gift that's all thank you so this is the last question that we have between the arousing of awakening mind practice awakening and nirvana there is not the slightest break is that what dogen means by continuous practice from this definition we don't even start continuous practice until we've experienced buddhi cheetah the thought of awakening or enlightenment does not the slightest break mean that once there is bodhichitta all the rest will automatically unfold or that once there is bodhichitta all the rest are there immediately immediately that's the jewel mere awareness it's like magic i just want to be sure everyone understands bodhichitta: bodhichitta is the thought of enlightenment it's the thought of oh all of this that we're talking about is actually some something i could do like like um oh oh there are the i could be a bodhisattva like that that uh it's it's a kind of amazing first idea that this all applies to you really that's called bodhichitta and with that awakening mind then you can enter a practice that is a way toward actually once you're in the practice you're already in the awakening mindstream so it's immediately there's no delay bodhichitta and continuous practice of the thought of awakening and awakening it's all it's all in one stream i hope that the talk today gave you maybe a jump start in that direction i hope so and we'll meet again next week then. Bye bye