I'd like to discuss the ceremony that we've been preparing for for a couple of weeks now. The Japanese name for it is Seijiki, which means food offerings. used to be called segaki, which means food for spirits. And gaki is a word actually for hungry spirits, sometimes called hungry ghosts. We started to do this at Zen Center in the 1970s, maybe the middle of the 70s. And I think when we first started doing it, I think we did it at the time of the annual

[01:17]

memorial ceremony for the founder of Zen Center, Shogaku Shinryu Daisho. So we would do memorial service for him and then in the Buddha Hall in San Francisco and then turn around and face the other direction to another altar and do this ceremony for feeding the spirits. Part of the rationale for that was, well, the rationale for the ceremony for the founder and then the rationale for following it with this second ceremony was to turn the merit of the first ceremony over to the second ceremony And then at some point we started not following the Founders Memorial, but to do it separately and to do it around Halloween.

[02:30]

And I'm not an expert on the history of Halloween, but one story I've heard in Europe, they had a day called All Saints Day. And that the evening before All Saints Day was Hallow Eve, the Holy Eve, the celebration of the saints. And then part of the idea was that by caring for other spirits, besides the saint spirits, or in addition to the saint spirits, the way would be cleared for appreciating the holy ones, the ones who had realized wholeness.

[03:36]

So it's the eve, the evening before celebrating the great whole beings, we kind of give love, give compassion to, I would say, the partial beings. We have the two. One week later, earlier, we have a day all souls. All souls. We are all saints. Is All Souls before? Not necessarily? November 2nd, All Souls. So you do All Saints and then All Souls, and do you do something else before? So we started to do it on Halloween, but we didn't follow a ceremony for the saints.

[04:44]

And we're continuing that to do it somewhere around Halloween, which turns out to be towards the beginning of these practice periods at Green Gulch. And so the Asian image of a hungry ghost, the gaki or the preta in Sanskrit is called preta. So the idea of the hungry ghost was circulating in Indian culture. And then something like it was transmitted to East Asia. But I think before that, East Asians already had this concept of some form of being that's hungry. So there's something that's hungry, and it's not just for food, or it's for many things.

[05:57]

And is this something which is some beings other than us? Could these hungry spirits be some aspect of unconscious cognition? So in consciousness we're aware of hungry beings. It may be that there's other hungry beings that are unconscious. So I imagine that part of my life is unconscious cognition. And I imagine that unconscious cognition supports me or supports me living in a consciousness where I imagine an unconscious cognition.

[07:15]

And I imagine that if I don't behave consciously in certain ways, for example, if I don't consciously pay respects to my unconscious or to the unconscious, that the unconscious will continue to call for attention, for attention. And So that's, you know, my present life imagined in consciousness, where I am, is I imagine that I am actually, part of what I am is unconscious cognition.

[08:26]

And part of what I am is conscious cognition. And we perform this ceremony in both realms. but we're unconscious of the unconscious of performing the ceremony. And in the conscious realm, we are performing this ceremony to benefit our conscious mind and to benefit but we do not consciously see or hear or even imagine how actually our conscious efforts in performing this ceremony, we cannot, it's how our conscious efforts are benefiting our unconscious, partly individual and partly shared,

[09:43]

I propose that I cannot imagine how that actually works. And we have this ceremony which we perform consciously and imagine that there are effects of our conscious performance which will appear in our consciousness. but I actually would suggest we cannot see in consciousness the effects of our conscious performance. But that the effects of our conscious performance are simultaneous with the performance, with our conscious performance. And the effects are unconscious. our unconscious cognition can be put to rest. That our unconscious cognition is in a sense our ancestors because it is the result of our past actions.

[10:56]

All the past have had consequence. And their consequence is a mind, an unconscious mind. And that unconscious mind supports a present cognition and others too. So my unconscious, the unconscious which supports my conscious life, is my ancestor, and it's your ancestor too. My ancestors are the effects of my past karma and your past karma. Our past karma is our ancestors. are, it seems, not fully at rest.

[12:07]

So they're ancestors, but they're also to some extent like ghosts, like hungry ghosts. Because the way they have consciously acted is such that it has not recognized has not been kind in consciousness and it has not been kind to the consequences of our karma. And when we're not kind in our present karma and when we are not kind to our past, it creates in our minds, in our minds, our unconscious minds. And also hunger, which could also be, have a conscious partner or not.

[13:13]

So when we say hungry ghosts or hungry spirits, this is one way I imagine it is that it is a vast unconscious cognition which is somewhat individual and not shared and partially shared. And everything each of us do, each moment, every action we are participating in, in each moment in our conscious life, has the consequence of transforming mind. So the Sejiki ceremony isn't exactly an apology for all the hungry. But in a way it could be, you know, because we don't start out with confession and repentance in that ceremony.

[14:29]

But in a way our daily practice of confession and repentance in feeding the spirits. But in this ceremony we make a special effort to invite those dimensions of mind which we're not conscious of to come and receive our attention. our gentleness, our appreciation, our... We can't actually recognize them, I would say, but we can to them, even without recognizing them, and we can dedicate all the merit of the ceremony to them, and we can make gestures of offering nourishment to them.

[15:32]

even though we don't know how they will eat it. And we can make gestures to open their being so they can receive nourishment. And we will say that over and over, that we're making the best food for you. We're wishing that the merit of this will give rise to peaceful nourishment. as a result of conscious activity there's a realm of mind which carries, in some sense, or is the consequence of lack of appreciation. And when we recognize a spirit which feels unappreciated that begins to feed, not the unappreciation, but feed the spirit and make them feel appreciated.

[16:38]

This is a food to open their throats. In the beginning of the assembly we make sounds and then we actually verbally say, please come, so that we can pay our respects even though we don't know who you are. We honor you, we respect you, we remember you, we care for you. We don't reject you, we don't abandon you, We're not trying to get rid of you. We want you to be at peace. And in this way our ancestors become more and more beneficial to us. Or you could say our unconscious becomes more and more beneficial the more we honor it.

[17:45]

But in this ceremony we're particularly honoring those parts of our unconscious which may have felt unappreciated by me or by you or by the... So I don't imagine any spirits that are outside our unconscious cognitive domain. I do, however, imagine spirits which, in a sense, aren't outside our conscious domain because they surround us, but our conscious domain can't recognize them. So they seem that way. I imagine that the unconscious cognition, as I said, is hungry, and particularly is hungry for fresh, excuse the expression, blood.

[18:55]

The fresh blood is consciousness. And it would be nice if that blood, if that fresh consciousness was pretty much positive energy. At the end of our, at the ceremony we say, the positive energy of this assembly. We give this positive energy. So hopefully we will generate positive energy the form of the ceremony has evolved apparently from the time of the Buddha and has taken different shapes in different countries. And we have this form now which is evolving.

[20:00]

So, for example, this afternoon we had a rehearsal, two rehearsals, and we had one rehearsal with senior members of the community. We had two groups of five And these people were making incense offering during the dedication of the positive energy. It just seemed like we couldn't get all five to be able to dedicate the positive energy during the chant. So we were trying to slow the chant down to see if they could do it. So now I'm suggesting that we reduce the size of the group. And for any of you who came to the rehearsal, I thank you for your patience. But some of you will not be needed. So we had 10 people making incense offering, and we're going to reduce it to six. So they don't have to rush, but also slowly. So you experienced the very slow chanting tonight.

[21:05]

We're not going to chant that slow. Lee. So we'll chant a little bit faster and we'll have less people doing it during the ceremony. ...of many people we used to know. We'll say their names, we'll remember them. And we're not saying that these people are hungry ghosts. They're just names of people we care about. In a way, the care we have for them, we send to all beings who we don't know the names of. We use the names of those we know and those we loved and still love. We use those names to say their names and feel our love for them. And our love for them goes out and it goes to all the other names that nobody knows. We don't have any friends left. Our friendship is now going to those people who have no friends to put them to rest.

[22:12]

And them to rest means the effects of their life for their friends and themselves and the other people who didn't care for them properly. We now will care for everyone, we will attempt to care for everyone who did not take care of themselves fully or who would not care for fully. We will now care for them. Which will also be caring for our own, it's also caring for our own unconscious mind. So it's both beings we've known and it's also at the same time the beings we have known and the way we knew them is our present mind which supports our present consciousness. So that's some imaginations about this ceremony. And again, one story is that one of Buddha's great disciples

[23:20]

was a person who had unusually profound vision and he could see that his mother, for whatever reasons, his mother was not at rest. His mother had passed away and his ancestor, his mother, was not at rest. She was not at peace. And the Buddha said, we should do a ceremony to encourage and promote her peace. And that's cited as one of the origins in our tradition for doing ceremonies for our ancestors who may or may not be at peace in some way or another, which again is to do ceremonies for our present mind, which is too vast and complex for us to consciously know. And it includes relatives and all of their relatives.

[24:24]

All of our ancestors are our mind. So that's enough maybe to start. If you have any comments or, before I say any more, before I say thank you for practicing this ceremony with whatever you're going through to do it, I appreciate your effort. You've been very kind in response to our request that you learn these chants. Yes. Could you say something about language? It's not Japanese, it's not Chinese, it's not English. Well, the first part is English. I recognize that. Yeah. And then the next part, the next part is, basically, it is... But it's... a Chinese way of pronouncing Sanskrit and then it's a Japanese way of pronouncing the Chinese.

[25:32]

So the Chinese used characters to make the sounds for the Sanskrit. And the Japanese pronounce it differently. But, for example, when you're chanting, you hear some of the chants go tatagyata. That's tatagata. So it's close to the Sanskrit. And you also hear mandala, which is mandala. And you hear and something like bhajere. So it's actually the parts that are not translated in English are actually originally Sanskrit Dharami's which are not pronounced in strict accordance with the way a Sanskritist would pronounce them. And so it's mostly just English and Sanskrit now.

[26:33]

It kind of reflects that it's the oldest chants we do, or the oldest ceremonies we have. You know, I don't think it's one. I think what gets credit to be the oldest ceremony is the, what's called upasata. So we say fusatsu, ryaku fusatsu. Do you know that term? Another name for a full-length ceremony is Ryaku Fusatsu. And Ryaku means abbreviated, and Fusatsu is the Chinese-Japanese way of saying Upasatta. And Upasatta is a ceremony that was done, maybe the first Buddhist ceremony, where the monks would get together on the full moon and the new moon, on the darkest night and the brightest night. They'd get together and they would recite the precepts and they would also confess shortcomings. And it's called Upasatha. That's actually the oldest kind of sacrifice.

[27:40]

Of course there were other ceremonies in the time of the Buddha, like the way people came up to the Buddha and talked to the Buddha was a ceremonial way of addressing an honored person. So there were small rituals that people did, but compared to the elaborate ceremonies of Hinduism or Brahmanism that existed, Buddhism reduced the ceremonial repertoire considerably. And then after the Buddha developed, he didn't have precepts right away. After he developed the precepts, then they would get together and recite the precepts and offer confessions. That's an older ceremony. This one, this ceremony is pretty old. Supposedly it did exist from the time of the Buddha because it's from Buddha's interaction with one of his had monks with one of his chusos, Mahamadgalyana. Yes?

[28:42]

In the dedication at the end of the chants, what are the three realms and the eight difficult situations? Three realms, there are six realms, and three of them are really difficult. So the six realms are devas, belligerent deities, so happy deities and unhappy deities, and then humans. And all are able to, to some extent, listen, hear the teaching. Then we have animals, hungry ghosts, and hell dwellers. Hell dwellers means people who are in a state of torment and isolation.

[29:43]

And the hungry ghosts are the ones that this ceremony is particularly related to. So those are the three realms, animal, hungry ghost, and hell dweller. Eight difficult situations. I forgot what they are. Hmm? Living too long, living too old. Being born in a time when there's no Buddha. Being born in a time when there's no Buddhas. Not being able to hear. Not being able to hear. Yes? When you said you were a champ in names, what was the names of... Oh, hasn't there been an announcement yet? No. Well, we invite you to give who?

[30:47]

We invite you to write down the name of anybody you would like us to invite who's deceased. Deceased. Anybody you would like us to invite so that we can all pay our respects and offer the merit of our ceremony to, to help them be peaceful, supportive ancestors. Our cognition is the ancestor of our conscious cognition. And it's an ancestor that lives with us right now. And we can make that ancestor more and more peaceful so it can support more and more peaceful consciousness, which can support more and more peaceful, gentle, unconscious. And the cycle in this way promotes peace. So if you would like to have, if you would like to have a name and you would like to direct great compassion to this being, we chant the Daishindrani first.

[31:54]

So we're We're sending compassion to everybody, and then we're going to specifically... And when we do that, many of us will feel a special compassion for that special person who we specially know. So if there's somebody you'd like to have in there, you can give us a name. We'll add that person's name to the list. So we say the names of everyone we did a memorial ceremony for this year. we will say it in the ceremony. If you want to add someone's name, we can do it. And we also say the names of some people every year. So we have quite a few names. And for me this is very moving to hear these names of all these people I've known. Over the 47 years I've been at Zen Center, I've seen so many people come and pass away, so many great people. To hear their names is just so moving to me, and that moving, the movingness of it for me, I would say resonates back to them, which means it resonates to the mind which

[33:04]

was touched when I heard those words and it permeated this huge consciousness and then that comes back. This resonance among all beings is celebrated by this ceremony. But if you like a particular flavor of somebody's name that means something for you, you can say so and we'll say that person's name. When would you like to receive? Yeah, because otherwise we might have trouble pronouncing it. So we have to, yeah. What do you think? Should we put cards in there and then we don't have to transcribe?

[34:05]

Would someone who likes to write very nice, very neatly, like to help make the cards? Okay. Okay. So assistant can make the cards. Okay. Yes. Yes, it's from Zen Center. We haven't been doing it here, but we do it at Tassajara. Yeah, so we just, we have not, I don't remember bringing this up and saying we don't want to do it, but it's something we haven't started anyway.

[35:34]

This ceremony is performed during Obon. So Obon is not just a ceremony. The main ceremony of Obon, in a way, is this ceremony. But there's also dancing and so on that goes at Obon time. So Obon is more than just a ceremony, but this ceremony is a key part of Obon. And if you look in the Soto school standard observances, they have the annual ceremonies. In July and August, you have Obon ceremonies, Obon festivals. And then under there, you have the Seijiki. There's this one really intense part of that sermon where you're saying, hadayami, you go up, you go down.

[36:50]

What's going on there? That's a Dharani. The first one is om bodhisitta boddha hadayami. That means it's like amen, bodhi, mind, rise up. So it's a dharani to invoke the mind of enlightenment. Bodhicitta, enlightened mind. So start to, om, which is like amen, rise up, mind of enlightenment. And the next one is om sam maya sattva bhan, which means arouse the spirit of discipline, the samaya precepts, the discipline precepts for our practice. Samaya is like, in Sanskrit, samanya.

[37:57]

Yes? When I say that? Yeah, do it like I do it. I know. Exactly. if you can. In the book where they just have the chant of the Kanromon, the Gita Sweet Do, there they just do it three times. But when you do the ceremony, then you do it 21 times. It may be to give a plan to eat.

[39:01]

Because it's happening right while or right after the offering is made. But I don't know why it's done 21 times. But that's what it says. And also many of the chants in there that we do once are usually done three times. So we're abbreviating somewhat. So we do homage to the Buddhas in ten directions, Dharma in ten directions, homage to the Sanghas in ten directions. So usually it's done three times. So most of those things we're doing are done three times usually. But the om bodhisitta boddha hadayami, we are doing that three times. Very important part. Is that enough for tonight on that ceremony?

[40:16]

Thank you for your open, generous, conscious minds. May these minds be conveyed to every being in place. May they be conveyed to the vast realm of unconscious cognition. May our practice transform that realm to make more conscious life and so on. This cycle go on until all beings realize buddha way.

[41:07]

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