Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Don, happy birthday to you. And it's a big one. I'm slightly embarrassed to You know, kind of not know where I am, or who I am, or what I'm talking about.

[01:06]

I know I've been talking for a while about something, various things, but I don't know where and when I've been talking about them. Now, if I was just, if I was at Green Gulch all the time, then I would know, well, I must have said it at Green Gulch. But when I'm going from one city to another, back and forth across the country, I can't remember if I've talked to you about this or not. So did I tell you about the young woman who came to talk to me and asked me what sincere practice was? So she came and she asked me what sincere practice was, and I didn't actually say this, but what I said was sincere practice is, you know, a moment of sincere practice is equally wholeness of practice and equally wholeness of enlightenment.

[02:25]

Wholeness of enlightenment. And what I really meant was the sincere practice of those who are really sincere. Because I think that we can be sincere but not yet quite be wholehearted. Or not yet quite realize it. So the sincere practice of a bodhisattva or a Buddha is equally a wholeness of practice and equally a wholeness of enlightenment. That's one translation. But actually a more literal translation is that the sincere practice of a bodhisattva is equally the same practice and the same enlightenment. of the person, of the sincere person and all beings.

[03:32]

The sincere practice or wholehearted practice is not my wholehearted practice or your wholehearted practice. It is the practice which is the same practice as you and me and the same enlightenment as you and me. That's what I could call sincere practice. That's the practice of the Buddha or Bodhisattva. And that practice is what's going on right now among the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. They are enjoying having the same practice as us and the same enlightenment as us. They don't like to have another practice, their own practice, which isn't ours. Do they enjoy it more? Well, in a way they do enjoy it more because they understand that they have the same practices as us. Most of us do not have the same practices as everybody else.

[04:39]

We see some other people practicing, that's their practice, that's not my practice. Well, that's true in a way, but there's something about their practice which is the same practice as your practice. And that's the practice. Of course, the actuality of this is inconceivable. Any way you think about, well, what's the same practice of all beings? That's inconceivable. But to open to that, to open to that practice, not pushing your own little idea of your practice anywhere, just leave it, leave it be. and realize that there is a wholeheartedness, there's a propality about your practice. There's a way that your practice is supporting and supported by all other practices, and that's the practice of the Buddhists.

[05:52]

So I said to her. And then she said, kind of like, it was kind of implied, okay, fine, I got you. What about following your breathing? Huh? It was kind of like she said, yeah, sure. Fine, old man. But anyway, but I heard Suzuki Roshi recommend following your breathing and some other people recommend investigating your thought. And I said, Those are perfectly good practices. And then when you do those practices, if you're following your breathing, if you want to be sincere and also realize that you're doing this together with everybody, your following your breathing isn't the same as somebody else investigating that thought. That's the difference. But while you're doing this practice and somebody else is doing some other practice, and while you're following your breathing, Somebody else is trying to follow their breathing but not able to.

[07:01]

And somebody else is doing something different. Understand you're following your breathing and you're simultaneously opening to the practice of all beings. And then you can also go to this other practice too, into the same thing. So no matter what you're doing, no matter what you're doing, there's a practice, which is the same practice as what you're doing now, and everybody's doing it, and it's the same enlightenment of what you're doing now, and what everybody else is doing. That's the actual practice, the inconceivable practice of the Buddhas. That's the practice which you read about, which you recited in your service today, of where the enlightenment of all things is resonating back to you returning to you so you're practicing and you're opening to the enlightenment of all things and there's a path by which the enlightenment of all things resonates back to you back to you yeah because you just you just emanated it out it's coming off you to all beings and coming back to you

[08:21]

So it says in the one translation is, there's a path by which the enlightenment of all things returns to the practitioner. And then the practitioner, together with everybody, realizes the enlightenment of all things. That's Samadhi. And then to be focused on that, that's Samadhi. And then it says, after telling you about how everything inside and outside of the entire universe is unfolding as dharma, you know, and it says, all this, however, does not appear within perception or within consciousness. It doesn't appear within your conceptual consciousness because it's unconstructed. It's the unconstructedness of everything. So I'd like to talk to you about another way to get at this, to warm up to this, is by the practice of bodhisattva vows.

[09:31]

So again, another way to talk about what sincere practice is, is sincere practice is a practice of, for example, sitting or walking. So you're sitting and a wholehearted practice or sincere practice is that you actually open to practicing with all Buddhas. And you open to practice with all beings. And one way to open to it is to think about the Buddhas. So the bodhisattvas, the great bodhisattvas, when they're sitting in meditation or walking in meditation or when they're cooking lunch or when they're brushing their teeth or when they're washing their face or when they're talking to a friend or when they're opening a door or when they're closing a door, they vow

[10:45]

They vow, they promise to, in each moment, think of all Buddhas. So that's a little message we got from the Bodhisattvas, that this is how they practice all day long. They vow to practice this way of vowing to constantly think of Buddha, to think of their relationship with Buddha. They deeply and in a deep and dignified way promise, wish and promise to think of Buddha every moment. think of all Buddhas every moment, and to think about a relationship with them. So for the restless retreat, if you want to, before you actually make the vow, you can just experiment to see if you want to make the vow.

[12:03]

But you could also make the vow right now. That you promise to try to think of your relationship with Buddha every moment for the rest of your life. That you promise to try to learn how to do that. Like right now you're sitting here and you could be thinking of your relationship with Buddhas. You could want to have a relationship with Buddhas and you could think about it. So, for example, I might want to have a relationship where I venerate, where I honor, where I respect, and where I pay homage. And paying homage, right now I'm doing it. paying homage is to publicly tell you that I see myself in relationship to Buddhas as someone who wants to assist them and wants to be like them and wants to pay my respects to them.

[13:07]

I publicly say that to you. This is an example of paying homage to Buddhas. And I can also right now think, I want to do that. I want to work up to, anyway, doing that every moment. So although I'm talking to you, let me say, I'll be looking at the moon, and I'll be seeing you. I'll be looking at you, but I'll be seeing the Buddhas. Now, when you think of Buddhas, that naturally leads you to think of living beings, because Buddhas are totally thinking about living beings. The Buddhas are also thinking about the other Buddhas, but they're also thinking about the living beings. There's other vows, which are to think about all living beings, but I'm just talking about the one about the Buddhas, because strangely enough, it's...

[14:08]

It's something that a lot of Zen students don't do. They don't think about Buddha. They don't vow to think about Buddha. Even though the Zen masters in the past, and I'm not saying every single one of them, but a lot of the Zen masters have spent much of their life thinking about Buddhists. and thinking about bodhisattvas. And they promise to do it every moment without stop. And this aspect of the Zen tradition has not been explicitly transmitted to the West, so that a lot of people in the Zen school are surprised to hear about thinking about Buddhas all day long. Now, I would guess that most Zen students have heard of the word bodhisattva and do think that Zen has something to do with bodhisattva practice.

[15:17]

Would some of you think that too? Yeah. Could you please explain or define for me bodhisattva versus Buddha? Bodhisattva versus Buddha? Bodhisattva is, well, strictly speaking, the bodhisattvas and Buddhas are inseparable. The word bodhisattva was originally used in the tradition to apply to Buddha in all his lifetimes prior to being Buddha. including his years, his like 29, 35 years in India prior to attaining the way together with everyone. He was a bodhisattva in 35 of that years. And then the next 45, he was a Buddha. But he's a bodhisattva in the first part. So we are all bodhisattvas? Well, according to one definition of bodhisattva, if you... If you wish to attain supreme enlightenment for the welfare of all beings, if that desire is in your heart, you're a bodhisattva.

[16:31]

Or I would say, a bodhisattva lives in you. Or the bodhisattvas are living in you, if you wish that. If you wish to attain enlightenment, for example, for your uncle or for yourself, and that's it, you're not a bodhisattva. What if I don't fall into any of those categories? I'm just an ordinary, unenlightened person. Yeah, if you don't fall into those categories, then you're an ordinary, unenlightened person. Bodhisattvas are also unenlightened in a sense. They're unenlightened in the sense that they're not Buddhas yet. So bodhisattvas are actually called sentient beings. but they're this special kind of sentient being that gets born in order to help people, whereas most other unenlightened beings get born to help themselves. So a bodhisattva is someone who has this desire in their heart, or someone in whom this aspiration has arisen.

[17:38]

Without that, we probably wouldn't say that the person was a bodhisattva. Yes. Wasn't there, in one of the books I read on the history of Buddhism, it talked about the distinction between bodhisattva and what do you like to call them? Arhat? Arhat, yeah. Arhats and bodhisattvas. Yes. And wasn't that a term that came along later to designate people that just didn't want nirvana for themselves? Was bodhisattva a term that came along for not wanting nirvana for themselves? That they wanted more, that they were willing to come back again and again until all beings were enlightened. Whereas arhats were more interested in it just for themselves.

[18:42]

Well, the arhats wouldn't necessarily be interested in it just for themselves, but they might not have the bodhisattva vows. They might wish to become an arhat, which means to become enlightened and to attain nirvana. But it doesn't mean that they would say, oh, it's only for me, but they wouldn't explicitly say, it's for everybody else. And nirvana is not quite the same as Buddhahood either. Bodhisattvas often, I think, attain nirvana. But attaining nirvana is not the same as becoming a Buddha. What's the difference? The difference is that among those beings who realize nirvana, those who also have this huge, what do you call it? I don't know what the word is, but anyway, this huge accumulation of virtue and nirvana together makes a Buddha.

[19:50]

I think the Buddha in past lifetimes attained nirvana. The Buddha was enlightened before. In past lives he was enlightened. But he wasn't a Buddha. And his disciples, his arhat disciples, even before being an arhat, his disciples were enlightened. And then they got more enlightened and became arhats. So he had arhat disciples. But in the early part of Buddhism, these disciples were not talking about becoming Buddhas. There's very little record of them, of the early disciples of Buddha, speaking of becoming Buddhas themselves. And but a lot of people would say, well, although they didn't speak of it, later they might actually join the bodhisattva path. So just because someone didn't explicitly practice for the welfare of all beings, it doesn't mean that they actually were thinking about doing it just for themselves.

[20:55]

But bodhisattvas explicitly get it out there in front. They publicly and explicitly say, I'm doing this for everybody. Whereas arhats may not take that on. But if you actually talk to an arhat, this is an enlightened person, right? And you say to them, are you living for the welfare of all beings? They say, totally. That's what I'm doing. Have you made vows to that effect? And they might say, well, actually, no. Just like people who live together. Do you love this person you're living with? Yeah. Do you feel committed to their welfare? Yeah. Have you actually promised and publicly made the commitment? No. You're not married? No. So you can be devoted to someone, actually feel it in your heart, without actually having promised to continue to be devoted. And then, if you didn't feel devoted the next day, it would be like, what do you call it, no skin off your nose.

[22:02]

Because you didn't promise. Bodhisattvas feel this, they feel this spirit, and they become bodhisattvas, and then they promise. So first they feel this feeling, and then they promise. They commit. And the commitment they make is really, really, really big. It's really, really big and wonderful. And a lot of people, when they hear about that, they become faint-hearted. You know, when they see, well, wait a minute, you know. Bodhisattvas also say, hey, wait a minute, but then they say, okay. No problems. And it's because they have this spirit in them that really wants this, that really wants to help people. Because, like I was talking to somebody, one was just recently, they said, that sounds really difficult. Yeah, the Bodhisattva path is difficult, but it's so beneficial that you still might say, okay, I'll do the difficult thing. So bodhisattvas are, arhats are great and arhats are sometimes more enlightened than some bodhisattvas.

[23:11]

Because arhats are enlightened. Not all bodhisattvas are enlightened. But bodhisattvas have the huge vows which arhats may or may not have. You can be an arhat and have these vows. Shakyamuni Buddha was an arhat too. He was an arhat and a buddha and a bodhisattva. He was a bodhisattva who became an arhat and a buddha. So you can be a Buddha and an arhat, and I think a lot of arhats have a very similar feeling to the bodhisattvas, except they might not actually feel, I want to attain supreme Buddhahood for the welfare of all beings. They might not actually want that. Bodhisattvas who aren't as enlightened as arhats, they want this, and then they might become arhats later. But they wouldn't stop there. They would keep working. They wouldn't go into nirvana and stay there.

[24:15]

Arhats kind of are set up to go into nirvana and then check out and not come back. Bodhisattvas want to come back so that they can work to help people more and develop Buddhahood because Buddha makes Buddha glands. But I think that I'd like to not get too much into the theory of bodhisattva, but more talk about the vows. Is that okay? Yes. So I have a question about the vows. Yeah. The vow to save all beings is completely clear to me. Yes. I don't have any hesitation about that. Okay. But the vow that you just suggested, the vow to think about the Buddhas all the time, Yes. I have to sort of go mmm. You have to go mmm. How does that relate to the vow to save all beings?

[25:20]

OK. So can we hold that for a little bit? Sure. Yes, please. So we've been in this retreat chanting these, called these four vows, which are a very popular form of bodhisattva vow. We've also been chanting the vow, the verses to arouse the vow by Dogen. So that's not exactly, it's sort of like his vows, but it's also a verse to arouse the vow. It's kind of a vow, but it's also like, one, two, three, let's, you know. It's kind of like trying to warm you up so the vow will arise. So it's both a vow, because it says we vow, but he's also saying we vow or I vow to generate more vows. So that's another vow. And another vow which we might chant during this retreat is by another Zen master named Tore Zenji. He has another Bodhisattva vow.

[26:22]

He expresses his. But then there's this another vow which I'm alluding to, which I haven't told you much about. I just told you the first tenth of it. Not even the first tenth, but anyway. Yeah, the first tenth. These are the vows of the bodhisattva Samantabhadra. So Samantabhadra is the bodhisattva who specializes in vows. Avalokiteshvara, guanyin, specializes in compassion. Manjushri, wisdom, and so on. Samantabhadra is the bodhisattva of vows. And he had ten vows. And the first of his vows was to think of paying homage to all Buddhas all the time. That was his first vow. And I would say to you, just right now, a short answer is, in order to open your heart to... Now, you say, save all beings, okay?

[27:27]

And then you hear about thinking of Buddhas all the time, and you go, hmm, rather than, yeah, okay? It's like, I'm like, I'm totally open to saving all beings, but open to think of Buddhas all the time? Or maybe, I'm not so sure. Yeah, maybe. So that's an example of this vow is a way for you to open your heart more. Okay, so I vow to save all beings. Your heart goes, okay. I vow to think of all Buddhas all the time. Your heart goes... So that's part of what Samantabhadra is doing for you is Samantabhadra is saying... sister open up more and you say okay i'll think about it and that's the first one there's more coming which i'll tell you about but my experience is that these are

[28:31]

These are teachings and practices of vows from this Bodhisattva. And my experience is that they're heart-opening exercises and people who want to open their hearts are resisting. I've been traveling around the country, around the world actually, in the United States and Europe, bringing these vows up, and my experience is that these people who want to have wholehearted practice, when they hear about these vows, they say, wait a minute, that's a bit much. Yeah. But that resistance is, actually their heart is like starting to move a little bit. They can feel, this is, my heart's not that big yet. Okay. Just keep thinking this vow and it'll start to grow. into this inconceivably limitless heart-mind. Okay. So, in order of seniority, Al, and then Catherine, and Catherine raised her hand, but you already had one, so you can wait, Catherine.

[29:41]

But actually, I'm, you know, I can't remember where I am, so I forgot to tell you to come up here. Al, come on up. Don, many years ago, said to me, we were discussing different books on Zen. He says, I want to pick up the book on Zen that makes me put that book down and go sit. And when we started talking about Buddhas, Arats, Bodhisattvas... Amen. ...that Buddha... This Buddha, that Buddha. I felt myself sort of closing up. Right, that's sort of what she was saying in a milder way. When you hear about an open heart, you know, and your heart starts to close up, that's showing you that your heart's closed. It was more reacting to... It was reacting, yeah. Rather than opening, you reacted. That's what this vow is for, is to let you know that you think you're a bodhisattva, but actually when it comes to bodhisattva practice, it's like, It was to the distinctions that I was reacting and closing up.

[30:52]

Because what appealed to me to Zen... You just said it. You're reacting and closing up. So if I don't bring up these distinctions, you feel pretty open. Okay, how about this one? So that's what these vowels are for. They show you where you're not opening. They're showing you where you're closing the door on open heartedness. But my question... What I was going to say is that what appealed to me to Zen is someone would come to a Zen master with a question, probably like this one, and then get shoved down in the mud, and then figure things out, instead of coming back with an intellectual answer. My question is, what is the role... I'm just shoving you down in the mud right now. And you're reacting to it. This thinking of Buddha's is getting shoved down in the mud. This is what it is. So that's the role of knowledge? I don't know if it's the role of knowledge, but it's getting shut down in the mud.

[31:53]

And to see if you go kind of like, oh, this is not Zen. Maybe you're like, oh, yeah, this is Zen. I've gone to mud. Okay, fine. Okay, then we're going to dry cleaners now. Wait a minute, that's not Zen. Oh, yeah, that's really Zen. Okay, we're going back in the mud. When will you find where your resistance is? Eventually you'll find it. So this is an example. Like I often use the example, a lot of people hear the Zen story, if you meet a Buddha on the road, kill it. Or what's Buddha? A piece of dried shit. That's Zen, right? That's what appealed to me. Huh? That's what appealed to me. Yeah, right. It gets you out of your head. It gets you out of your head, okay? Now that you're out of your head, now I'm going to get you out of your head again. Inside of every particle of that piece of shit, okay, are infinite gluteus. Did that get you out of your head? Yeah. And I like that what Don said about when I was reading the Lotus Sutra, I read in the Lotus Sutra, and it doesn't literally say in the Lotus Sutra, close this book and go on and help people.

[33:09]

But it was a voice came out of the Lotus Sutra that said, close this book and go help people. So you can also, every time you're not helping people, open the Lotus Sutra and read it for a while and it says, close this book and go help people. Okay, so next is Catherine. But after Catherine, if you want to, I'll go into the next nine vowels. When you were responding to Soto, it occurred to me that at the beginning of the Soto school, there's a teaching that the practices of Buddha are Buddha, if I'm saying that correctly, and that that is this, that the teaching at the beginning of the Soto school, among others, that the practices to practice Buddha is Buddha, and that that is this vow, and that the practices...

[34:15]

Does that look like a form? The practice, I started to feel like, because I'm bringing this up, it's like reinforcing the, like, Catherine wants everybody to do everything in form. But what was coming up was this... Especially since she can't do it herself anymore. But that the forms embody these vows. Just as the Dogen's vow that we are familiar with in chant, as Dogen includes, I haven't counted out all ten, but it includes a lot of these vows. So it's not as alien as it might sound at first. It's kind of just opened up how their language seems a little different, but it's not real. And when you hear about Buddhism that sounds alien, that means the Buddhism which you've embraced in the past didn't include this new dimension of Buddhism.

[35:26]

And then you get to see, I thought this was Buddhism, and I embraced it, and that was great. And now I hear that there's another Buddhism, which is outside of my realm of embracement, so I have to make a bigger embrace to do that. And, well, you know, kind of like, I've got enough problems. Okay, so I'll just tell you the next nine quickly. Get you warmed up. And who's the bodhisattva of vows? His name is Samantabhadra, which means universal goodness or universal wholesomeness. He rides an elephant. And so his vows are And by the way, before he introduces his vows, he's speaking of the virtues of the Buddha.

[36:29]

And then he says that all the Buddhas got together with their wisdom and tried to comprehend the virtues of the Buddhas. And if they tried for, if all of them together throughout space and time tried for infinite eons, they would not be able to comprehend the virtues of Buddha. Which is the same thing it says at the end of the chant we did today. The zazen of one person. If all the Buddhas got together, they would not be able to comprehend the merit of one person's zazen. But this one person's zazen is not one person's zazen. It is the zazen that that person is doing together with everybody. It's a zazen which is the same practice as everybody. And that practice, that zazen, all the Buddhas could never fully comprehend. That's the same way of introducing the merits of the Buddhas, Samantabhadra says.

[37:32]

And he says, and if you wish to attain these merits of these Buddhas, if you wish to realize them. It's the same as saying if you wish to realize the zazen practice, which is the practice of everybody. So the merits of Buddhas is the merit of everybody's practice. If you wish to realize the merit of everybody's practice, of everybody's enlightenment, which is inconceivably great or small or whatever, then here's ten ways. Starting with one or two? Starting with one. Number one. The short version of it is, pay homage to all Buddhas. Worship and respect all Buddhas. That's number one. It's the first vow-practice of Samantabhadra. Second one is, praise all Buddhas. Third, make offerings to all Buddhas.

[38:35]

Fourth, confess and repent your own shortcomings. Fifth, rejoice. Rejoice in the merit of others. Did I say sixth? No, it was five. Sixth, Request the Buddhas to teach to turn the wheel of Dharma in this world. Request the Buddhas to turn the wheel of Dharma in our world, in the world. Is that okay? Can you real quickly do my dharma wheel? Teach. You know, the first teaching of the Buddha is called setting the dharma wheel rolling. That's the name of the first. So we speak of Buddha's teaching of turning the dharma wheel.

[39:40]

You could simplify it and say request the Buddha to teach the dharma wheel. The next one is Beseech the Buddhists to stay and not, you know, not go to nirvana. Seven. Huh? That was seven? Okay, eight. I'll basically copy all the Buddhist practices. Do the practices which all the Buddhists have done. Vow to do all the practices that Buddhas have done. And nine, accommodate, constantly accommodate to all living beings. And ten, turn over the merit of all these previous nine vows and practices, turn it over to the enlightenment and the welfare and enlightenment of all beings, all living beings.

[40:51]

In this case, we don't turn it over to the Buddhas. We've already actually above turned it over to the Buddhas as the third practice. Now we turn over all these practices to sentient beings. Those are the ten vows of Samantabhadra. Those are the ten ways of practicing to make whatever practice you're doing this inconceivable Buddha practice. Those are the ten. And then there's detail on each one of them, which I'll go through with some of them later during this retreat. But those are the ten. When you say accommodate, does that mean to be wholehearted? This... I would have gone... Yes, it means wholehearted, but also the vow to do it constantly and with all of them gives you a sense of what it means to be wholehearted. Like you could accommodate to somebody, which is part of it, but this is not just to accommodate to one person, this is to accommodate to each person all the time.

[41:58]

So that's more of an openhearted attitude towards all living beings. But also, just before we get any further into it, remember, number four is confess and report the shortcomings. And then again, people ask, well, what would Samantabhadra have to confess? Samantabhadra probably doesn't have any shortcomings. But maybe Samantabhadra, in some flash, tiny little moment at least... forgets to do some of these practices or is slightly close to somebody, you know, some horrible thing that somebody's doing, they kind of like cringe a little bit. So Samantabhadra actually, in some flash of a moment, might cringe from one of these infinite practices with these infinite beings. Infinite practices of the Buddha, infinite beings to accommodate, infinite moments to do it and miss it. So these great bodhisattvas actually would be catching quite a few moments of where they slip up in these infinite practices.

[43:06]

Infinite practice with infinite beings allows infinite slip-ups, and therefore infinite opportunities to practice confession and repentance. This is what gives you a feeling for open-heartedness. And again, you feel kind of like faint-hearted in the face of it. Yeah? That makes sense? So now we have to make a case for how good it would be to do these practices, because how beneficial would it be to be that open-hearted? So in one sense, we think about it, and we think, oh, no. In the other sense, we think, but how great. Oh, no. How great. Oh, no. And again, you know, like I said to the person who said, well, I thought Sugarshi recommended following your breathing. Well, he did. It's true. But he also recommended, someone pointed this out to me, I was talking, so I went to Texas and then I came back and then I went to Los Angeles.

[44:12]

I went to Mountain View, California, which is down the peninsula from San Francisco, and I gave a talk there. And I was talking about these vows, and then someone said to me that he was reading some, either reading or listening to Suzuki Roshi's talks, and he said, Suzuki Roshi said something like, if you think that you can practice zazen-bai on your own, we call that selfish practice. And then he said, and we despise it. And the guy said, that didn't sound so gentle to me. And I said, well, yeah. I said, I don't remember him saying that. And it is kind of shocking that he would say that. I said, maybe he just found the wrong English word. But the other possibility is Suzuki Roshi slipped now and then. I never felt like he was perfect. I just thought he was great. But when he did these little imperfections, like, I mean, that's a pretty big one, despise.

[45:19]

But anyway, when he would do certain things, I would say, yeah. One time I was watching him eat in the early days when Zen Center was still over in Japantown before they had the city center. And he was eating lunch, you know. And he had his Buddha bowl, you know, and it was tilted forward, you know. And he had made his rice kind of, kind of had gathered his rice, white rice, with his spoon. He'd made it kind of into a little ball, you know. And his bowl was kind of tilting out away from him. And I thought, wow, it looks like that rice might fall out of the bowl. But, you know, he's a Zen master. It won't fall out. But he just rolled right out on his lap. So I had a little bit of expectation it'd be perfect, but he kept showing me, no, uh-uh. And another example, you know, I'm telling you all these bad things about Suzuki Roshi, right?

[46:25]

No. One of his Zen master friends was coming to visit, and before the guy came to visit, Suzuki Roshi was putting out the Zoris of his students on the hallway, so the guy would walk by and see all these Zoris when he came in. Sorry, what are Zoris? Zoris are Japanese sandals, a certain type of sandal. And somebody said, what are you doing? He said, I want him to think I teach giants. His stories were like this, you know. His stories were like this. He was also able to, you know, I mean, incredibly humble, too. But he did, you know, a little bit... He strutted a little tiny bit on that. You know. But he never was saying, you know, I'm not... He never was saying, I'm perfect.

[47:26]

So that was okay. He didn't lie and say, I'm perfect, and try to hide it. He revealed his, you know, whatever, his limitations. So I saw other examples, too, and I go... Fine. He's still my teacher. Still very happy to practice with him, even though that sounded kind of like something I might do. That sounds like a crack I might make. Yeah, so anyway, great bodhisattvas vow to have something to confess, and they do have something to confess, probably. Because they said they're going to do it. Would they be promising to do something that was impossible for them to do because they're so perfect? Well, maybe. It's possible. But it's also possible that they actually have something to confess, even though it might be quite small.

[48:30]

Like, I resisted one person for one moment or two moments. That might be what they're doing. Or, in one moment, I didn't think of Buddha. I was talking to somebody, you know, and I kind of got carried away by the conversation, and I forgot to think of the Buddha simultaneously. So again, he said, to think that you can practice Zazen by yourself is selfish practice. That's right. That's no problem there. And then he says, we despise it. Maybe that's going too far. Maybe he could have said, and we try to be gentle with selfish practice and kind to selfish practice. Usually he was kind, but once in a while he would say to somebody, who do you think you are that you can practice Zazen by yourself? Occasionally he would do that.

[49:31]

I myself, of course, don't do everything. I just brag that I don't do it. But anyway, I do have lots of opportunities for people to talk about my... They say, my practice, my practice, my practice. And then I mention that there's a practice that's not really yours. There's a practice that's ours. You might consider that one now and then. So, once again, when you're hearing about these practices now and you're going to probably, if you think about them, you're going to notice that it isn't something you're already doing. You're not already constantly thinking about the Buddhas and paying homage to the Buddhas. You're not doing it moment after moment after moment without getting tired.

[50:35]

You're not yet doing it that way. But here's the vow. It's available, you know, although it's been practiced by people before, there's no shortage of opportunities to practice it. You don't have to wait in line. You can start right now. And then you can consider actually deeply, sincerely committing to it. You could do it this week maybe, but maybe it's too soon to do it. But anyway, start to think about it. Think about thinking about Buddhas all the time. Like right now I'm talking to you, I can simultaneously be thinking about paying homage to Buddhas while I'm talking to you. And if I sit in meditation, I can think of my sitting as homage paying. Like a few minutes ago, I was talking to someone about praying, and I said, you can sit as a prayer to Buddha. You can go and sit and say, this sitting is a prayer to Buddha. This sitting is paying homage to Buddha.

[51:36]

This sitting is praising Buddha. And this sitting is an offering to Buddha. You can think that. You can think it at the beginning of the period, and then forget about it for the rest of the period. Or you can think about it every moment through the period. And you don't have to say it over and over, but you can still sort of like feel and intend and promise that every moment of your sitting will be asserting, expressing, affirming, acknowledging your sitting, but this is an act of expressing your relationship with the enlightened beings. What do you visualize when you say Buddha? Well, you can visualize the way all beings are supporting each other and being supported by each other. You can visualize that. Okay? But it's a little bit hard to visualize, isn't it? Sounds like God. Sounds like God. Yeah. And you can visualize God, too.

[52:38]

Go ahead. But your visualization of God and your visualization of Buddha are not God or Buddha. So it's okay to visualize it, but also, I said before, you can't visualize it. No matter how big your vision gets, it doesn't reach it. It's inconceivable. There's no way you can picture it. But you can try. That'll be good too, probably. So I'm not saying it isn't God. I'm not saying it is. I'm just saying that our ideas of God and our ideas of Buddha, not to mention not just Buddha, but all Buddhas, Those are just ideas. And we're talking about opening up to the inconceivable reality of our life, which is part of open, wholehearted practice. Wholehearted practice is not just a practice according to your idea of practice. It's bigger than that. It's more welcoming than that.

[53:39]

It's warmer than that. It's more alive than that. outside words of scripture. Good. Come up here if you want to talk. Stop tricking me into letting you talk. Stop tricking me. Clever young man. Well, the specific vows and the kind of conversation we've been having about bodhisattva, arhat, Buddha, this is all getting in a way at the history of Buddhism and the way that it's produced certain distinctions that are important and that a lot of people have picked up and vows that are official, transmitted, inherited vows. And I'm struggling, and I think I heard bits of my struggle in things several people were saying about how much there's room to...

[54:53]

have a critical or selective relationship with Buddhism. That is, I understand no one's stopping me, right? But, you know, what's a good way to think about it? Because on the one hand, I think there's this American tendency to make everything a designer individualized version, right? So I can come up with my, like, one part Walt Whitman and one part this pop book. And I worry about that. And one of the reasons why I've joined a sangha and I'm really interested in practicing with other people is because I think there's something about structures and input and not pretending that my individual self and individual judgment it almost makes it too real if I want to come up with the one that perfectly fits me, right? But on the other hand, sort of like your story about Suzuki Roshi, you know, ways in which the teacher isn't perfect or ways in which the coaching is the product of a moment or the product of history is something I'm struggling with.

[56:05]

And an example might be the vow to honor... ancestors and Buddhas. Because part of me says, in a really kind of pop history way, right, this developed in cultures where worshiping ancestors was an important part of the culture already. And so, of course, it gets into Buddhism. And I don't have anything really against it, except that it sort of sits oddly with other ways in which the point of view you're talking about, you know, suspends time and space, which in a way makes it easier to think of participating with them than honoring them almost, you know, that their practice is... In some ways, that part's easier for me. And also this tension between... individual selves and the way in which we're all part of a whole. So I end up in a funny loop about it because I think, you know, Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, okay, they don't exactly need my homage.

[57:10]

It could be good for me if it's yet another way to realize that I'm part of something bigger and I don't do anything except as part of the we. But it seems like kind of an arbitrary one. You know, there's a lot of ways for me to realize that truth. But this is a vow that's got a, you know, historical importance in Buddhism. And it must be important to you because it's part of what you're just, you know, you're giving us a set of vows that are the tradition. So I'm... This is probably too big a question, but I'm kind of struggling between the ways in which Buddhism seems like, you know, a way of loving and a way of thinking that's kind of generative and portable. You know, you could use it to think a lot of things and expand yourself in a lot of ways. And Buddhism has a really specific tradition that's got a history and a set of insights and terms and practices. And I'm having trouble fitting those together. Okay.

[58:11]

And also part of Buddhist history is right now, we are actually the front edge of the history of Buddhism right here. So we're making history today here in this situation. And what kind of history are we making? And one part of our history we're doing is we're to some extent repeating some things that have happened before, or we're reiterating some traditional things. And another thing we're doing is sometimes we're reiterating traditional things which we've sort of done before already. But the way we're practicing in this retreat is not as close to In a way, it's not as formal as the way things are practiced at, for example, the San Francisco Zen Center. But I think things are more formal in this retreat than past retreats I've done in Pittsburgh. And when I went to Texas, too, the first time I went to Texas, I didn't wear my robes. You know, I could have maybe, but I didn't.

[59:17]

And gradually things have become, in some sense, closer in some ways, or at least more have become more formal than they used to be. And that way we're making history by, in some sense, reaffirming some traditional forms. But another way we're doing, and some other forms we're doing, we haven't done before. So this bodhisattva vow thing has not, as far as I know, has not been really exercised very much in the American Zen history. I talked about these bodhisattva vows like Approximately more than 10 or 15 years ago I brought them up at Tassajara. But I didn't understand at the time how useful they are to help Zen students be wholehearted. So part of history of the tradition is that it's come to the West and this particular person has come to see that this is a way to open Zen students' hearts.

[60:18]

And part of opening the heart is that Al says what he said when he heard about these things. That was a way for him to feel like, ooh, and now you're having certain questions. And these vows are a way to kind of like get into your being and open it up in ways that Some other discussions don't. Plus, it isn't just me trying to open you up. It's me telling you about something which I've noticed helps other people open up. And I didn't make it up just to open people up. I ran into them and I thought, oh, this seems to open me up and it seems to open others up. It also helps people find out where they're resisting. But resisting is not necessary. All criticism is not resisting. But if you define the resistance in the criticism, we've got to get the criticism out there and we don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

[61:29]

We don't want to throw the criticism out with the resistance. There can be criticism which is not a resistance but which is an offering to all Buddhas. I like that one. Yeah. The supreme offering to Buddhas, there's lots of wonderful material things to offer to Buddha. You don't offer Buddha... There's three kinds of offerings. Material offerings, fearlessness, and dharma. You don't offer Buddhas fearlessness. You can make material offerings to them, and you can offer them dharma. And the Dharma offerings, for example, for you would be to offer your practice of criticism as a Dharma practice. Buddhists practice criticism. The Buddha actually encouraged criticism of his teaching. Critique and analyze what I've said and listen to it and then verify it for yourself.

[62:30]

Check it out. Put it to the test. He recommended that. So Buddhism is a self-critical tradition. Matter of fact, there's this new kind of Buddhism in Japan called Critical Buddhism. And their proposal is that criticism is the Buddha way. That the essential ingredient of Buddhism is to be critical. That's a good point, actually, that they have. Has that been translated yet, or is that still in Japan? There's a book called Pruning the Bodhi Tree. which is a collection of original English essays and translated Japanese essays within the critical Buddhism tradition, which is fairly new, and this tradition of critical Buddhism is a Soto Zen phenomenon. It's within Soto Zen that this critical Buddhism has arised, and they actually feel that Dogen actually is in accord with this critical Buddhist attitude. They feel that part of their proposal is that their critical Buddhism is true Buddhism and also that Dogen was in accord with this critical attitude towards Buddhism.

[63:45]

So these are Soto Zen priests usually, most of these guys are Soto Zen priests who are also scholars. So if you have a critical capacity which you can apply to Dharma teachings, that can be an offering to Buddhists. Now, could you simultaneously be critical and also be open to making your criticism an offering? Or do you resist it for some other reason than criticism? Do you resist it because you would be a different person if you did that? You can look at that and you can analyze to see where is the criticism and where is the generosity. Criticism can be generosity because we have critical faculty. Do you wish to make your critical faculty a gift to all beings or do you wish to use it to hurt people? Do you wish it to make a living or do you wish it as offering? And some people, some critics are just very inspiring, you know.

[64:49]

They really turn you on. They make you love music. They help you love music and love. They want you to love the music that they love and not waste your time on music they don't. And so on. A lot of them I feel inspired by and guided by. And some of them could also feel that this is a gift that they're making. If you're practicing generosity through criticism, this is an appropriate gift to give to Buddhists. Okay. You're heading me where I live. Yeah. And I guess I also want to say, of course, I also think it would be such a hard thing to do that it wasn't as though I was ready to commit to think of all Buddhas all the time and then come up with this little stag in my thinking. I mean, it also sounds really hard, but even thinking about what are the hard things I'm going to try, that's partly where I'm grappling. That's good. Think about where it would be hard. It is 4.40.

[65:58]

I think it's time to stop. Unless it was... You said one more person? Well, we've been discussing... That's okay. Thank you. If it's okay with you, I will carry on. And I'll carry on. Thank you. With your support, I will carry on to bring these vows up as a way to help you work with your stories so that they become wholehearted. Your stories of your practice, for example. To bring these vows to be with your practice stories so that your stories are lived in a wholehearted way and aid you to make the most positive contribution. These are practices to open bodhisattva's hearts to make the heart grow and grow and grow, to make the mind grow and grow and grow.

[67:01]

But again, all this stuff should be done gently, uprightly, honestly. This is trying to open us up. Did you want to say one more thing before we stop? Yeah, this is sort of a housekeeping thing. You know, I sent you a note about missing Zazen because I was sick. Yes. But I didn't get better that fast, and I'm thinking I could send you another note, but my missing Zazen is affecting everybody, so I just wanted to say something to everybody about I'm doing the best I can to get well and to be able to be here fully. Okay, did you hear that? And I've heard from a number of people that they're feeling dizzy. So I think there's maybe some sickness going around. So maybe if you're careful and rest, you won't get super sick. And so, yeah, please take care of yourself. Okay.

[68:03]

Did you want to say something, Amy? Whenever we practice with Sherry, it's always wash your hands before going through the food line. Wash your hands before what? Wash your hands when? Before going through the food line. Please wash your hands before going through the soup line or the red line. And yeah, wash your hands a lot, please. And take care of your health and enjoy the rest of this retreat. And thank you very much. So you can return to your sitting whenever you're ready.

[68:40]

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