There's a Zen expression which goes something like, first clean the temple, then sit. There's another expression which says clear everything away, let go of everything, and welcome enlightenment. Empty your house so that the Buddhas can come. And New Year's is a nice time to empty your house. Let go of all your past happinesses and griefs and welcome the fresh new life of the moment and continue through the rest of the year hopefully each moment emptying the house and welcoming the fresh new moment of enlightenment.

[01:13]

Of course it's difficult to do that. Our body sometimes doesn't want to let go of itself. So This is a rather auspicious moment for us to... auspicious means conducive to success. This is an auspicious moment for us to empty our house and welcome enlightenment. Apropos of this marvelous possibility, during the little break we had before this talk, I went into the teacher's room and I bumped my elbow, not very hard, on a door. Now my elbow that I bumped, I asked Anna just now to put the little mic on me because I can't bend my arm because it was recently wrapped with tape, recently like five minutes ago.

[02:19]

So the reason it was wrapped with tape was because when I bumped my elbow I felt a lot of moisture. My wonderful body with its sense organs felt wetness inside of my robes. And I thought, how did wetness get inside my robes? I didn't have a bottle of water in my sleeve. And I looked in and I saw, see what I saw? Can you see it? Can you see it now? Right here. Can you see it now? I saw these little red marks and I thought, maybe my elbow, which has been swollen for seven months and which I recently realized was infected, for which I am taking a proper, what do you call it, array of antibiotics,

[03:23]

Maybe it's popping. So I took some tissue and pressed on it and lots of stuff came out on the tissue. So I've just cleaned house here. somewhat. And that's why I can't bend my arm more than, I have to bow like this to you, because right now I can't bend my arm because now there's gauze on the elbow, receiving more gifts of bodily fluids. But I have been feeling for several days like I wish this thing would pop, but I didn't, I wanted to stab it. So, but I thought that might be foolhardy. During these seven months the swelling didn't hurt, but it was a little bit red and I thought maybe it's infected.

[04:27]

I went to see various doctors and they said it's bursitis. And actually I think it is bursitis, but it's a bursitis that has an infection in it, it looks like. So on the 26th at night, was it the night of the 26th or was it Christmas night? Anyway, one of those two nights, for the first time it started to throb. And it was quite hard. So I went to the emergency room and they drained it. And the stuff that came out was yellow. And there was a lot of it. so then they put me on antibiotics and then since that time the redness has continued and it's gotten more and more sensitive to the touch. I imagine that maybe like a baby, when it's time to come, the surface gets thinner and thinner, you know,

[05:35]

Is that called being effaced? The surface gets effaced. I think that the skin became effaced so that when I just touched it slightly a few minutes ago, the stuff started coming out. It was ready for it to let go, I guess. So this has been a seven-month challenge, which I have been not uninterruptedly patient with. I sometimes have been a little impatient, a little bit concerned leaning into the future of when this thing would be not visiting me more. So I feel, I feel cleaned out right now, quite cleaned out, and I wanted to share that with you. I could have not, because it's kind of gory. And I hesitated to give you as much details as I could, which I did.

[06:47]

But if anyone wants to see more stuff, I have more stuff. This morning I met with the priests for the New Year's greeting and I was thinking of showing it to them, but I thought, no. Last night, my grandson wanted to see it, and I showed it, and he sincerely was frightened. He was like, hey, granddaddy, show it to me. And I showed it to him. He really was frightened. It was almost like, huh? What caused it? It could have, you know, there's a lot of possibilities. It could be a bite, a scratch. In the diagnosis I got in the emergency room, did it say cellulitis? Is that a skin disease? Skin infection. Cellulitis. He said it could be from a scratch, a bite, and blah, blah, blah.

[07:49]

So we don't know. But originally my primary care physician referred me to an orthopedic surgeon who was an expert on elbows, who I know quite well already. And he diagnosed it as bursitis. So it actually may be that the infection went into the bursa. which might be good because maybe the bursa held the infection so it didn't go up my arm. So anyway, it might be a combination of infection and then the bursa becoming infected and now the sac has burst and we'll see what happens from now on. I had been concerned some nights that I would die in the night. You know, so I was very kind to my wife before I went to sleep every night, thanking her very much for being such a good wife and, you know, being ready to die because I thought it might break

[09:00]

But I felt that the likelihood was not so great since I was on these antibiotics. But it kept being read, and it still is. And then today, auspiciously, you get to witness the kind of natural bodily release. It did its thing. It fought a noble fight. And part of that noble fight was to start throbbing and saying, man, this is getting, it's time to go to the doctor. And if you can get any help, go ahead. So antibiotics plus the wisdom of my skin has released this fluid which was coming to try to deal with whatever this infection was. And I've scheduled an operation to remove the bursa.

[10:05]

And it's scheduled for January 27, 2012. And I was contemplating spending a whole intensive, which starting this week, with this thing on my elbow. But it looks like maybe I don't have to have the operation. We'll see. Looks like maybe the bursa will calm down and I can move on to other problems. And I'm happy to see Robert Anderson sitting on the floor. Your back has been relieved somewhat? No. I'm doing surgery January 12th. Wow. For your back? Yeah. Which I am grateful for. But if whatever releases itself before then, maybe not.

[11:08]

Yeah. Great. Well, I wish you well on January 12th. January 12th, 1986, I was appointed, I was installed as abbot of Zen Center. Is that 26 years ago? Being New Year's, I just want to look back and say that last year around this time I made a formal public commitment to focus on studying delusion this year which I did, and many of you joined me happily. Also, as part of that, we started studying a text called the Summary or the Embracing of the Great Vehicle, which describes the dependent core rising of delusion and the dependent core rising of the transformation of the base of delusion

[12:34]

and this text I intend to continue to study this year. So the text is called, in Sanskrit, Mahayana Sangraha, and the author of the text is Asanga, and there is a painting of Asanga on the altar now, which I, on your behalf, I offered incense to the great teacher Asanga who lived in India in the fourth and fifth centuries of the common era. So one of his works is called the Mahayana Samgraha. He also was the Immanuensis for Maitreya Buddha. And in that function he wrote the Bodhisattva Bhumi, the stages of the Bodhisattva path.

[13:38]

And so he wrote down quite a few marvelous Mahayana teachings, great vehicle teachings. By inspiration, from the future Buddha, and he wrote a number of texts from his own understanding, his own meditation practice, and the Mahayana Samgraha is one of them. So I would like to continue to study that here and there and in between, even though there's no such thing. So I look back and say, I fulfilled my vow of last year, and I'm very happy that that was able to happen. Now this year I'm making a new vow, which I just told you about, and I'll tell you more about it in a bit.

[14:49]

But before I do, I wanted to say that I'd like you to consider what your aspirations are for this year and beyond. This temple is called No Abode and No Abode is paying homage, the word No Abode of this temple is paying homage to the mind of the Bodhisattva. It's paying homage to the heart of a Zen master. male or female. The heart and mind of bodhisattva Zen masters or Zen master bodhisattvas is said to have no abode. It's full of compassion but it doesn't abide anywhere, it doesn't attach to anything. So this temple is, in that sense, dedicated to the promotion

[16:00]

of the bodhisattva mind which has no abode. So I look to myself and I look to you to say, do you aspire to be a bodhisattva? Which means, do you aspire to realize unsurpassed, complete, perfect enlightenment so that you can be of service to all beings? Do you aspire to perfect enlightenment, perfect liberation, so that you can liberate others? That's a question for myself. That's a question for you. This is the aspiration of the bodhisattvas. This is the aspiration of those who really have a mind that doesn't abide anywhere. A couple of years ago, one of you came to me and said, is there some formal way to request the teaching or request someone to be a teacher for you?

[17:20]

And I said, well, actually there are many ways, but one of the ways that we're practicing is at New Year's, to come and meet the priests I practice with at New Year's come and offer me a written, traditional written expression, wishing that I would be pus-free, for the new year, thanking me for my efforts in the past and wishing that I will continue, and begging me to continue to function for the sake of the great vehicle. And I said, well, lay people could do that too. Householders could do that also. So we could do that in no abode. So I think this is the third year that we did it. that we on New Year's have an opportunity for people to bring their requests for me to continue and wishing me good health.

[18:28]

And again, wonderfully, I feel that just that you've done that, you came here, and There was this great release from illness that happened from the energy of you wishing me well. Thank you very much. And then part of that New Year's greeting is teaching and teaching what? There's many things to teach, but since I have a limited amount of time and energy, I'm focusing on the teachings for those who wish to realize Buddhahood for the welfare of all beings. I'm focusing on bodhisattva teaching. If someone wishes to be free of an infection in their elbow, I'm totally supportive of that, and I'll do whatever I can to help. After this thing popped, I stepped out the door, had somebody help me soak up the stuff, and there was a nurse.

[19:35]

There's a backup nurse up there too. So, yeah, so thank you. And if anybody has any other infections they'd like me to help them with, I've got some antibiotics I'll share. But that's not my main focus. I'm not a doctor. I'm not a nurse. I'm a Zen priest. And so my main thing is to encourage people to practice enlightenment using Zen forms. Like, for example, this New Year's greeting is a Zen form. Will you ask the bodhisattva teacher, the teacher of the bodhisattva way, to teach you the bodhisattva way? Will you ask the teacher who has been taught by a teacher to practice the bodhisattva way together with you for another year? But it's optional, this request.

[20:40]

The question is, in your heart, do you have the aspiration to do the wonderful thing of serving all beings, do you wish to do that wonderful practice? If you aspire to that, then we have a training program for you. As a matter of fact, if you aspire to the authentic understanding of reality in order to serve beings, Because without understanding reality correctly, we are somewhat limited in our service. We can help people somewhat. For example, even if the nurse was not totally enlightened, she still can help me with my elbow. We don't know if she's totally enlightened or not, but she did help me with my elbow. So you can help people in many ways. without having authentic understanding of the Dharma.

[21:44]

But to be really most effective, it is proposed to become a Buddha would really help out. Following from your aspiration, if you have an aspiration, then the question is what training follows from that. If you aspire to be a nurse, nursing school might follow. If you aspire to be a lawyer, law school. If you aspire to be a bodhisattva, bodhisattva training. Usually, I have been speaking this past year particularly that bodhisattva training is basically described as the bodhisattva practice, the bodhisattva vehicle, the great vehicle. That's one way to say the training of the bodhisattva.

[22:47]

Another way to say it is the six perfections. But another way to say it, which I'm bringing up today and which I'd like to talk about for a while, is that the bodhisattva training is training in ethics. So I'd like to focus on the bodhisattva ethics or training in bodhisattva ethics. In the early teachings, some of the enlightened disciples of the Buddha related to the practice of the Buddha way in terms of the three learnings. Ethics, concentration, and wisdom.

[23:52]

Sila, Samadhi, and Prajna. those are the three learnings. And those three learnings, it's not necessarily mentioned, those three learnings are for people who are already practicing dana, giving. So in the Asian context, all the people who wish to be disciples of Buddha practice giving. And some people go to school. And at school, in addition to practicing what all the Buddhists practice, they practice ethics, concentration, and wisdom. But in a bodhisattva vehicle, particularly as taught by a sangha, ethics includes all of them. Ethics includes giving.

[24:58]

ethics in a limited sense, patience, heroic effort, concentration in wisdom. So I'm starting by saying that I'd like now, if you have the aspiration, or I shouldn't say if you have it, but if the aspiration to be a bodhisattva is living in you, if the bodhisattva spirit is alive in you, then I just wanted to try to make clear that I think training is needed. And the training I'm suggesting is bodhisattva ethics training. So I was going to do some calligraphy, but in my infected state I was not able to do it yesterday. I hope to later, when my arm is supportive of the project, to make a drawing, a painting, a piece of calligraphy, which has a circle.

[26:05]

And the circle is ethics. And inside the circle of ethics is concentration. And inside the circle of concentration is wisdom. That's one picture. Do you have that picture? Bodhisattva ethics, Bodhisattva concentration, Bodhisattva wisdom. Or Buddha's ethics, Buddha's concentration, Buddha's wisdom. Another drawing, another thing you can envision is the other way around. You have a circle called wisdom. And inside the circle of wisdom there must be concentration. And inside the circle of concentration there must be ethics. Or there is. These bodhisattva training methods of giving, ethics, patience, heroic effort, concentration, and wisdom, they mutually include each other.

[27:21]

It may not be a surprise to people that wisdom includes concentration and heroic effort and patience and ethics and giving. But giving also includes wisdom. Full, complete giving includes wisdom, concentration, and so on. And ethics includes wisdom, concentration, giving, heroic effort, and patience. So it would be nice, if I live long enough, to spend a year on the circle which has giving, and then inside giving is ethics, patience, heroic effort, concentration, and wisdom.

[28:29]

And spend another year on wisdom, including all the other bodhisattva practices. And then spend a year on effort, heroic effort as including all the other practices because it does. Because all those practices are fueled by heroic effort. So it encompasses all the other practices. But patience also encompasses all the practices. We can't be truly wise and truly generous and truly ethical and so on without patience. So each of these Bodhisattva, each of these six Bodhisattva practices includes the other five. And to make the story, to me, to plot, to thicken the plot, although they mutually include each other, they're done in a certain order. You cannot really practice perfect wisdom before you practice perfect giving. But you can practice giving to some extent, which leads to wisdom to some extent, and when wisdom is completed, then the giving becomes completed.

[29:35]

But again, I'm starting this year with emphasizing ethics, inspired by a sangha who said that he thought that ethics was the easiest way for a lot of people to understand the bodhisattva. But his ethics, again, is not the ethics which is a preliminary to the higher practices of concentration and wisdom. It is an all-encompassing practice. It includes them all. Many people come, as I said many times, many people come to Zen centers wishing to enter into the higher practices and they're allowed to wish that. So they can immediately sit and practice concentration and wisdom, they can immediately sit and practice enlightenment. Fine, no problem. But if their sitting does not include ethics, then they're not practicing concentration and wisdom.

[30:42]

And they're happy to practice concentration and wisdom, or just concentration. Many of them would be happy to try that. and they do and they sometimes have trouble practicing concentration and when we look carefully we find that they have an infection in their heart and the infection they have in their heart is that they're not practicing ethics or they're not being generous towards themselves so they try to calm down and be tranquil and concentrated and focused but they can't be because they're distracted and they're not kind to their distraction, so then they feel more distracted and so on. So again, a lot of Zen students come and they want to immediately practice concentration and or wisdom. Some of them don't even want to be concentrated, they just want to go right to wisdom. And so we're discussing wisdom teachings and they start talking about it and when I'm talking to them I feel like, you know, I recommend you

[31:46]

that you practice more concentration before you try to deal with these teachings, these studies." And then as they start practicing concentration, I say, I recommend that you practice more patience with how badly this is going. And then when they try to practice patience, I say, I think maybe you need to be more careful about the way you're dealing with your life so you can be patient. And then I notice that they're not being generous. So we have to go back find out all the things that they haven't been doing which are necessary in order to practice concentration. And the things we have to do in order to practice concentration are giving ethics, patience, and heroic effort. We must do those, otherwise our concentration is hindered by our not doing the things that support it. But once again, now I'm talking about ethics as a way to understand all these practices.

[32:48]

Or another way to put it is that we have an ethical duty as aspirants to Buddhahood. If you aspire to Buddhahood, then you have an ethical duty to practice all the other practices. ethical, like this is what you say you want to do. So then since this is what you want to do with your body, your speech, and your mind, then this now is your ethical responsibility because you said this is your aspiration. So in that sense, this is looking at all these practices from the point of view of behavioral responsibility, conduct and duty, There's a text which I don't know, I don't know how to get in touch with the text, but I just saw it quoted by Asanga, where he says, and this text is written in Sanskrit originally, and it's called The Three Trainings, The Discourse on the Three Trainings.

[34:20]

Three, three, sambhara, trainings or disciplines, on your desha discourse. And in that text it says something like, any son or daughter of the family, sometimes they say any son or daughter of a good family, but anyway, one way to say this is any son or daughter of the family participating in the bodhisattva vehicle. So there's a family of men and women who are practicing the bodhisattva vehicle and that's going to be called a good family. Any one of these sons or daughters who are in a family that's practicing the great vehicle who fails to follow through

[35:23]

with the teachings of the great vehicle. As soon as they have been heard, that's quite a tall order, right? Imagine now that you would follow through on the practices of the bodhisattva as soon as you heard them. until we can follow through on the practices of the great vehicle, of the bodhisattva vehicle. As soon as we've heard them, we cannot be fully awakened to unsurpassed, correct, authentic, complete enlightenment. But when I say that, it makes sense to me that that would be the case. In other words, if you hear the Maha Antityas and you hesitate for like a moment, you just missed the chance to awaken to supreme enlightenment.

[36:41]

And not just give it a try, but follow through on it. So, So this aspiration is in a sense a teaching, and when we fail to follow through on it, we kind of miss the boat, the bodhisattva boat. And then there's teachings for what to do when you miss the boat. And when you hear those teachings for what to do when you miss the boat, and you notice you miss the boat, if you don't do them right away, as soon as you hear them, you miss the boat again. And then the Buddha is talking to his disciple Kashyapa and he says, why is this so? Because Kashyapa, unsurpassed, complete, perfect enlightenment is to be attained by following through, by being assiduous.

[37:45]

Would somebody try and say assiduous? What? Diligent. It can also be translated as follow through. Diligent. It's accomplished by diligence and not without it. So let us follow through, shall we, on our aspirations. Especially our highest and best or deepest and most wholesome. Let us follow through on our aspirations. Let us generate the totally supreme thought of enlightenment. Let us hold steadfastly to each of the three branches of ethics. the ethics of moral discipline, the ethics of collecting all wholesome factors, and the ethics of being devoted to the welfare of all living beings.

[38:50]

I am now, you might say, prepared, or you could say I am equipped to go on with this further. But I already feel that what I've said is so important to me that I want to give it some space for it to sink into me and you. Before I go on to talk about the essence of ethical discipline, which I'm equipped to do, I've got it right here. Before I want to talk about the essence of ethical training for bodhisattvas, I want to stop. encourage us all to consider, do we have the aspiration to be a bodhisattva? And do we have any questions if we do have that aspiration? If we don't have the aspiration, then I would say, well, what aspiration do you have? And whatever aspiration you do have, then the question is, what training follows from that?

[40:23]

So I often ask people at the beginning of training periods, practice periods. What is your final, ultimate concern? What is your ultimate aspiration? Now, at the beginning of this year, I asked you, what is your ultimate aspiration? What is your final, highest and most important aspiration? I think aspiring to eat lunch is fine. But do you aspire to eat lunch for the welfare of all beings? That's a question. So again, I'm just sort of saying I feel like I should go no further at this time. Maybe this afternoon I'll get into more about ethics, but again I ask us to look inwardly and see what our aspiration for our life for this year is and what training, what training, what discipline would follow appropriately and

[41:30]

would be supportive of our aspiration, or what training would be following through our aspiration. Okay? So that I can survive this day, I now would say, with my arm rather straight, May our intention equally extend to the even place with the true merit of Buddha's way.

[42:13]

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