Zen of the Buddha ancestors, the Buddha ancestors' Zen, is from the beginning to end essentially concerned with compassion. Zen teaching and training is primarily intended to develop and purify our love and devotion to all beings. When our compassion is purified and has no limits, we can work together with all beings for the welfare of all beings. Thus, Zen forms a part of the great vehicle, the Mahayana, the universal movement, the movement of the universe, which is fundamentally committed to liberating all living beings from suffering and realizing their greatest happiness

[01:34]

In order to realize the liberation of beings from suffering, it is necessary to understand the origination of suffering. What is the origin of suffering? Although it's been said many times many ways, Clinging to our stories of who and what we are is the origin of our suffering. Clinging to our stories of who and what we are is the origins of our suffering. Clinging to anything is the origin of our suffering.

[02:55]

But the thing we cling to most of all is our story of the self. Therefore if we want to work most effectively for the welfare of all beings, we must forget all about our own stories. If we wish to understand Buddha's liberating teaching, we must completely let go of our own narration of reality. Each of us has before us our old stories,

[04:29]

I may offer you a new story today. Shifting from our old stories to new stories is not the end of the process of enlightenment and liberation. But it's a necessary step. And in fact, it is enlightenment to shift from one story

[05:54]

To shift from a story we cling to to a new story is the process of enlightenment. But it doesn't stop there. We must even go beyond enlightenment. It's not that the old stories are delusion and the new ones are enlightenment, but rather that holding on to the old stories is delusion. and not attaching to them or anything else, is enlightenment. Forgetting our old cherished stories, each and every story that arrives at our doorstep enlightens us. letting go of our old stories, every story that enters our life wakes us up.

[07:09]

But if we attach to these enlightening stories, delusion and suffering are recreated. There's many old stories, but one of them, which almost everyone holds on to almost all the time, is the story called, I'm Here and You're Over There. My life is separate from yours. The objects of my awareness are external to me.

[08:20]

This is almost an instinctive story. You can barely make it through preschool without learning this one. This story, once learned, is almost impossible not to attach to as real. Attaching to it as real is the origin of suffering. It is the same as anxiety and fear. With this story, we're well equipped with anxiety, but not necessarily well equipped to face it.

[09:32]

So we then can start on a career of trying to avoid the anxiety and blame other people for it. Try to escape from the anxiety. And thus we have the world of, well, horror shows. There's another story. It's a story that I'm not really here and you're not really there. That there really isn't a here and there.

[10:38]

That you're really not a threat to me. and I'm not a threat to you. That we support each other and we have no separate life. There's nothing out there to be afraid of and everything brings us our life. Everything that comes is our life. Our true life is the entire universe. And to have a chance to live is something

[11:46]

just to be grateful for, no matter what form it takes. That's a story. Maybe it's a story. Sounds kind of like a story. Maybe not a good one, but anyway, it's a story. And Letting this story in and giving it not even, well, I guess you have to give it about as much reality as the other story, is liberation from the other story. For me, it's not that the that one of these stories is true and the other one's false. It's just that one is delusion and the other is enlightenment. That one is war and the other is peace.

[12:56]

One is war a little bit and sometimes war a lot. The other is peace a lot, full-scale peace. One is attachment and one is release. One is suffering and the other one is inconceivable joy and gratitude For me, it's not that one is better than the other, but they have a relationship that can never be sundered, really.

[14:06]

And that's another story. For me, Zen practice is not preferring one of these stories over the other. It's just letting go of both of them. If you let go of the story that we're separate and threatening each other, you're open to the other one that we're not separate and we're working together. For me, Zen practice is letting go of the story of misery and the story of happiness and not preferring either one. When deluded, we're just deluded.

[15:18]

And if that's it, delusion drops away. When enlightened is just enlightenment, and enlightenment drops away. Holding on to delusion, we get more delusion. It flourishes. Holding on to enlightenment, we get delusion again. Enlightenment is lost. Fighting delusion, delusion flourishes. Fighting enlightenment, delusion flourishes. Letting go of delusion, enlightenment flourishes.

[16:28]

Letting go of enlightenment, enlightenment flourishes. Embracing both delusion and enlightenment, embracing both bondage and liberation with no preference, heals the wound of separation between them. So that our life can enter into bondage, can embrace bondage with no fear. Can even embrace fear with no fear. And can embrace fearlessness with no attachment to it.

[17:37]

Just holding hands with fear and fearlessness with no preference and healing the wound of separation between them. Okay? Ready to go? By the way, one might wonder, how can we live? How can we live today, for example? How can we care for life, this life, for example? in accord with non-attachment to our stories of delusion and misery and enlightenment and freedom from misery.

[18:52]

How can we live in order to be in accord with realizing freedom from all stories, freedom from attachment, and freedom from liberation? And the response to that question, or the response to that question, or a response to that question, or the responses to that question, are the things which Zen teachers have said for a long time. Always a little different, but basically the same answer. which is train yourself thus.

[20:23]

Train yourself less. It's called the teaching of the way you are or the teaching to be the way you are. of all things, a teaching to be the way you are, a teaching to be the way you feel, a teaching to feel the way you feel, a teaching to look the way you look, a teaching to think the way you think. Right now, a teaching to be thus. Got a story? It's the teaching of having that story.

[21:27]

Period. Explanation mark? Not quite. Question mark? Okay. But anyway, first of all, be thus. However it is, it'll be just like that. If it's sour, it'll be sour. In the sourness, there will be just sourness. If it's blue, it will be just blue. In the blue, there will be just the blue. If it's sweet, it will be just sweet. If it's painful, in the painfulness, there will just be painfulness.

[22:29]

If it's pleasant, in the pleasantness, there will be just pleasantness. This is what the Zen teacher Shakyamuni Buddha taught. When I say this is what he taught, I mean this is what I think he taught. I really do. I don't know if he did, but I think it's true that he did. And that's just what I think. It's not that what I think is true or false. It's just that what I think is what I think.

[23:35]

So I've heard that the Buddha taught like this, that the Buddha taught thus. And this is a way to be, to live, which seems to me to be in accord with all of our old stories dropping away. And then the next story that comes, whatever it is, will enlighten us. And then, if that story is enlightening us, then that story is just that story which enlightens us. And we continue the practice and that story drops away too. And maybe our old one that we just dropped off will come back to visit. But when it comes back in this dropping off, the old story, which we used to cling to and was our misery, will now enlighten us.

[25:09]

But if we cling to the new story or the returned old story, which is now liberation, we're back in bondage, self-imposed bondage. We hold on to the prison walls and they work. We let go of them, they don't. They can't hold you if you don't hold them. The funny thing is that if you let go of them, they let go of you. But if they let go of you and you hold on to them, it's like they don't let go of you. Even though your prison would like a break if you hold on to it, it's still there.

[26:16]

Tomorrow we're going to have a ceremony here, maybe. And the ceremony is called, we call it Segaki ceremony or Segaki. I think Segaki means lots of ghosts or hungry ghosts, lots of hungry ghosts. It's a ceremony to release ghosts. And so we're celebrating on Halloween, although in Asia they didn't have Halloween. We've developed a tradition at Zen Center of releasing ghosts on Halloween, or in the neighborhood of Halloween. This ceremony of Segaki is closely related to another ceremony called, in Japanese, called, I think it's called something hoei, which means, hoei means ceremony of releasing, of releasing animals, of animal releasing ceremony.

[28:33]

So Buddhism has animal releasing ceremonies and ghost releasing ceremonies, and it also has human releasing ceremonies. I went to an animal releasing ceremony in Japan one time. I was one of the priests conducting the ceremony. We made a nice altar with beautiful offerings on it. It was outdoors, this ceremony, and it was at a Zen temple that was surrounded by a golf course And they brought in these several crates, several cages with chickens in them. And the chickens were set next to the altar. And we did various ceremonial ritual things.

[29:38]

And at the climax of the ceremony, the cages were opened and the chickens flew out. We concluded the ceremony and there was a very nice little kind of brunch for the humans afterwards. Vegetarian brunch. I had some brunch food and then I went back to clean up the ceremonial scene and take the altar, disassemble the altar. And while I was doing it, the liberated chickens came back to roost in their cages. They crawled back into their cages. They didn't know what to do in the golf course.

[30:39]

They didn't know what to do with freedom other than get back inside some cage. So they need another ceremony to release them again. So you've got to close the cage. And then they get all kind of, you know, tight in there. It's all crowded in this cage. I wish there was only one chicken in this cage. There's six and so on. Anyway, they develop cage problems. And then if you open the door of the cage, they'll fly out again. Great, we can get out of here. Let's get out. But then what am I doing with my, what can I grasp in the golf course? So I don't know. I'm not a golfer. I can't be a golfer. I can't be a caddy. I can't be like, you know, a member of the country club.

[31:47]

I can't be a tree. I can't be the sky. Well, you know, but I can get back in that cage and be a caged chicken, so I'll get back in. So in this way we grasp our freedom and successfully reenter bondage. Bodhisattvas, the Zen ancestors, do the same thing, but they just go into the cages to play with the inmates. they really can stand life in the golf course without being a member or a non-member, without being a caddy, without attaching to caddyship or playership.

[32:52]

The ceremony tomorrow, we're going to release ghosts Ghosts that have actually been released in previous ceremonies, but they couldn't stand their release, so they got back into their ghost traps. They need to be released every year over and over, or even sometimes more than once a year. So we're going to release the ghosts. So we release animals and we release ghosts. we release all beings, and we release ourselves when we realize, when we release ourselves, when we realize that those ghosts and those chickens are not other than ourself. That there's no chickens out there and no ghosts out there and no people out there. Nothing's out there. Now, there is a story that there are chickens out there and ghosts out there and people out there, but that's just a story.

[34:18]

And when that story drops away, we understand there's another story that nobody's out there, really. Actually, all those beings out there, all those chickens and all the ghosts and all the people and all the trees and all the golf courses are our true body. And we get to have such a body for a little while, and it's a great opportunity, and it's I can say whatever I want, and you can say whatever you want, but those are just cages if you take them seriously. So the Buddha said, train yourself thus.

[35:28]

And lately we've been saying, train yourself thus by saying to yourself or feeling to yourself, thank you very much. I have no complaint whatsoever. Even if I'm in prison, thank you very much. I have no complaint whatsoever. No matter what I am, I'm grateful for the opportunity to be thus. Today I'm, or in this moment I'm, this body and mind, sitting in a meditation hall, feeling this way, thinking this way, and in the middle of whatever thinking and feeling is arising at this moment, I'm grateful for the opportunity to care for what's happening with no complaint.

[36:55]

And even if I'm complaining, I'm grateful for the opportunity to not complain about my complaints. And even if everyone says they hate me and are disgusted with me, I'm grateful for the opportunity to hear them say that to me. I'm not grateful that they hate me. I'm grateful for the opportunity to let what I hear just be what I hear. And therefore I don't grasp these words of hatred as anything more than words of hatred.

[38:01]

I don't grasp them at all when I let them just be what they are. And I'm liberated from words of hatred. I'm liberated from clinging to words of hatred. And if everyone says they love me, I don't change the practice and attach to that. I just say, oh now, everyone says, or a lot of people say, they love me and I'm grateful to have the opportunity for those words of love just to be words of love and to be liberated from those words of love. Of course, it's highly possible that I might say, thank you very much for those words of love, and no thank you for the words of hatred.

[39:17]

But again, the practice of the Buddha ancestors is to train ourselves thus. So that in hearing the words of love, there's just the hearing the words of love, there's just the words of love. In hearing the words of hate, there's just the words of hate. And then there's liberation from both. There's liberation from praise and blame. and the positive sensations that arise with praise and the negative sensations that arise from blame. Now I conclude this relatively short talk with a prayer.

[40:57]

My prayer is, may you, I mean you, may you enter thoroughly into your own old stories and your own current story and become intimate with them so that they may be forgotten. May your body and mind be open and deeply touched by the new stories of liberation and even let go of them. May your heart gratefully embrace all life free of prejudice and preference and be filled with the truth of all things.

[42:09]

May your love be purified and your skillful means be fully realized.

[42:16]

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