Today is the day that we traditionally celebrate the birthday of the great Zen teacher, the great Buddhist teacher, Dogen Zenji, Eihei Dogen, Daisho. Eternal peace. originator in the way. And as you've heard so many times, he said that in general, in India as well as in China, the overall character of the school pervades, which is simply total devotion to immobile sitting.

[01:27]

simply complete engagement in sitting. When Dogen was not approaching death, Our other ancestor, Tetsugikai Daisho, was standing nearby. He was the director of Eheiji. And Dogen said, come a little closer, please.

[02:41]

And Ginkai came close, and Dogen said, Although concerning the Buddha Dharma, there are still millions of things which I don't understand and have not thoroughly mastered. But I can say that I certainly have realized right faith.

[03:50]

He painted, he calligraphed on a scroll, a paper, the Chinese characters for going for refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, and hung this calligraphy on a pillar in his sick room And with what physical strength he had left, he walked around this pillar and chanted the refuges, taking refuge over and over. His faith is certainly the faith of all Buddhism ancestors, of all schools of Buddhism.

[06:09]

The more I study in Zen and in Theravadan Buddhism and Vajrayana Buddhism, the more I find that this reverence and veneration for the Triple Treasure is the core, is the heart where all the Buddhas, of course, meet. It's the place where our schools are most in accord. And for us in this lineage descending from the Zen teacher Dogen, that means in a ritual form, in a formal way of practice, it means sitting still.

[07:20]

But of course, everything that we do throughout our daily life really must be this same taking refuge, this same returning to our true home. The character of the school is total engagement in this returning home. Discovering in your heart right faith.

[08:25]

and celebrating that faith moment by moment. Making every act an offering making every act an expression of reverence and veneration. Dogen Zenji once wrote a fascicle called, in Japanese, Kie Bukpo Ho. The way of taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha.

[09:39]

Do you venerate the three treasures or not. This clearly shows that reverent veneration of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha is the essence of the correct transmission of the Buddhas and Zen pioneers. both in India and China. Without taking refuge in the three treasures, it is impossible to reverently venerate them. Without reverently venerating them, it is impossible to take refuge.

[10:56]

Some years ago, one of the members of our community told me that she didn't want to use the word revere anymore. And she said, you know why? And I said, no. And she said, because revere means to fear. And I thought, oh, yeah, that's not so good, is it? So I've been shying away from, I've been afraid of the word revere ever since. But this morning, When I read Dogen Zenji saying that reverence for the Triple Treasure is the essence of the correct transmission, I thought I'd better look up the word, give it a chance. And I was pleasantly surprised to find out that in my dictionary there's no reference to fear. in the definition or root of the word revere.

[12:28]

The root of the word revere is the Latin re plus vi verere, verere, re verere. Re means is an intensifier and means, in this case, again. And verere means to respect, to feel awe. So an intense respect, an intense feeling of awe. Synonyms. Worship. adore. Suzuki Roshi said that the foundation of our sitting practice is adoration of the Triple Treasure.

[13:40]

I looked up adore. It means to love with rapturous and complete devotion. Do you venerate and revere the triple treasure or not? Do you adore the three treasures with rapturous and complete devotion? Revere has the sense of treasuring with profound respect. Venerate, veneration. has the quality of love added to esteem.

[14:58]

And it has the root venere, which is related to Venus. Veneration has the root love. like venereal, same root. When people get married, they often are aware of loving each other. And Suzuki Roshi would say, that's good, but there should also be respect. Almost as though respect were more important, but there needs to be these two. Veneration is love and respect, respect plus love, love plus respect.

[16:08]

And respect means re, which means in this case back, and speck means to look, to look back, to look again. Don't assume that your perception is what the thing is. Both of these terms, revere and venerate, imply the utmost and deepest respect and esteem Do you venerate and revere the Triple Treasure or not? Adoration of these is the essence of correct transmission.

[17:17]

And without taking refuge, you cannot reverently revere the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. And without reverently revering Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, you cannot take refuge. I sometimes feel in myself, and I think I've heard from others too, that aside from the other precepts, that when they take refuge in the Triple Treasure, they sometimes wonder if it really happens. Here's an indication of how to

[18:25]

assist and contribute to making refuge-taking really happen. And that is by opening your heart and seeing if you can find there the utmost respect a rapturous love and devotion to awakening, truth of awakening in the community of awakening ones. The merit of having taken refuge in the Three Treasures inevitably appears when there is a crossing of the paths of appeal and response.

[20:11]

So I shied away from saying that you can assure, that you can guarantee, that you can guarantee that the actual virtue and merit of taking refuge will be realized if you open your heart and completely adore these treasures, because it's not something that we do all by ourself, but that the merit of taking refuge is realized by the crossing of the paths of our effort, of our appeal, of our openness to awakening. of our openness and our adoration for the Dharma of awakening, for our adoration, our respect, our utmost esteem for the community.

[21:33]

That's our appeal. That's our energy coming forth. We must do this part. And without this, the merit of taking refuge will not be realized. However, the actual realization happens when this crosses with something else, with another path, and that is the path of the actual Buddha. Dharma and Sangha. The crossing of these two is where the way is realized. The actual Buddha responds to the arrival of this kind of devotion.

[23:12]

And the inquiry and response come up simultaneously. They come up together. We, the residential community, we allow people to come into the zendo and sit. And we were allowed, I was allowed, to come into the zendo and sit before I was conscious of adoring the Triple Treasure. Actually, before I even hardly heard of the Triple Treasure, I just was interested in sitting. Fortunately, I adored sitting. I came to sit because I adored it.

[24:20]

I was rapturously in love with it and devoted to it. That was the way I understood the Triple Treasure at the beginning of my practice. But we even let people come in here who don't adore sitting, who are not conscious of rapt devotion to sitting, who just want to try it out, who just want to try out the Triple Treasure in the form of immobile sitting. We let them come in partly because We respect them deeply, even in their beginning interest in the Triple Treasure as it manifests in the practice of sitting. But what I have been more and more influenced to think

[25:31]

is that to realize the full merit of sitting, we must have this complete openheartedness to it. We must reverently venerate it. And that also means reverently venerating the Buddha's teaching and all the people in the Sangha. So, in other words, unless you can reverently venerate every person in the Sangha, the merit of your sitting is not fully realized. But if we can reverently venerate every person, adoring the Sangha, adoring the teaching and adoring the Buddha, then the merit is realized there.

[26:47]

Then the refuge can happen. And also, if you feel some limit in your ability to feel the most profound respect for the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, then taking refuge will help you feel that. So back and forth between the human emotions of veneration and reverence going for refuge, and going for refuge to cultivate the feeling of taking refuge. And then also realize or understand that there's a matching grant that's always coming to you when you're making this effort, that all the Buddhas in ten directions come to meet you when you take refuge.

[27:58]

When you are sewing your Buddha's robe, do you speak English and Japanese or Japanese? Do you say, namu kie butsu? Do some of you say it in English? Anyway, the namu means, guess what it means? It means, I feel wrapped. devotion. And kye, the key of kye means to dive into or to throw yourself into, to throw yourself into Buddha. The A means to return and also means to depend on.

[29:08]

So the Chinese expression kye in some sense is really a strong, it's like an intense form of returning and depending. To throw yourself into, to return to and depend upon Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. namu kie butsu. So the namu and the kie embrace this veneration, this reverence, and also the sense of returning and depending. Again, Suzuki Roshi said that our practice in practicing this way, we are free from karma.

[30:17]

And if in your daily life, if your daily life is based on this practice, and by this practice I mean this taking refuge in the Triple Treasure, but also total devotion to immobile sitting, same thing. If your life is based on this, your life is free of karma. And in some ways, people may look at the children of Buddha and think that their life is like the people who do not feel that they are children of Buddha. But our founder says, actually, they're completely different. And this may sound somewhat exclusive, but it's all a matter of your own heart. If during your daily life, even if you have a membership card of the Buddhist Sangha, still, if you don't live your life based on this practice, at that time your life is karmic life.

[32:04]

Because you don't appreciate your true nature, you exclude yourself from the life which is free of karma, just by your attitude. One way is the life of karma, a karmic life. The other is a life free of karma. And as I mentioned before, there's a very simple expression of this, the difference, and the difference is in Japanese to say height.

[33:10]

It's kind of convenient that that's the way you say it in Japanese because that way, everybody you meet, you can say, hi. Everything you meet, you can say, hi, which means, yes, I will. Sometimes I look at people whose hearts are closed and hard, who are saying, I'm bored with this life. I don't like this. And then I can say, oh, those people, they're so resistant. They're so tough. And they seem to be that way. But still, I can say, ooh, that's bad, or I can say, when I see this, I can say, yes, I will. Yes, I will respect this person.

[34:18]

Yes, I will give the utmost respect to this person, to the world manifesting in the form of a belligerent being. I won't fight them. I will honor them. And at the same time, I will honor deeply Buddha Dharma, too. When we see someone who resists returning to their true home, who says, I am not interested in this, this is not worth my time, Leave me alone. I don't like you. I want to be with my friends, and you're not one of them."

[35:21]

When we see this, it hurts, and we may then become angry. I remember one time in Zen Center a lot of people got angry. I was having tea with Oksan one time and she said to me something like, don't people know that Suzuki Roshi's way is not to hate people? It was like, you know, people thought that that was the Buddha way, hate people.

[36:25]

Or at least hate some people. And also hate the people who didn't hate the people. And I thought, I wanted to, I wanted to go tell the Sangha, hey, did you know that Suzuki Roshi's way was not to hate people? That hating people was not his way, did you know that? But I couldn't tell them that because I was afraid they would stone me. Who does he think he is to tell us that? Does he think he's a Sukharaji student or something? Well, I did actually, but I would be afraid to say so. Can you believe it that we get so frightened sometimes that we're afraid to tell people that Buddha's way is not to hate people? We're afraid to say that because people will attack us if we say that. And you know what? They will. Sometimes they'll attack you for mentioning that the Buddha way is not to hate people because they'll think they'll hate you.

[37:36]

They'll think, what's she up to now? What's this about? Hmm. Let's get her. Anyway, if you dare to say, yes, I will. Yes, I will. I will. Of course I'll forget, but right now I manifest the never-again mind, the mind of repentance which says, I'm never again, right now I'm never again going to be cruel to beings. Right now I'm going to appreciate everybody. Sure, you know, a few minutes later somebody's going to make a look at my face and I'm going to forget this, but forget about that right now. Right now I'm never again going to forget. Never again am I going to disrespect beings. I'm going to appreciate even this one.

[38:38]

Oh, it's so hard. Come on. I can do it. I appreciate you. I deeply respect you as a Sangha. Yes, I will. This is the heart of the precepts. So you hear about people asking Zen teachers, what is the mind of all living beings? And they say, Buddha mind. What is Buddha mind? It's the mind of all living beings. So there's you. all living beings and Buddha.

[39:41]

They're the same thing. Respecting your mind, respecting all living beings, respecting Buddha. This is total devotion to a mobile sitting, to be unmoved, to be devoted to not moving, in enlightenment of you, of everybody else, and of course of Buddha. The Buddha of you and all beings to be unmoved in that oneness. And to take refuge in that oneness is to take refuge in the Dharma. Again, one time somebody asked Suzuki Roshi's wife, who was the principal of a Buddhist kindergarten associated with Suzuki Roshi's temple.

[41:03]

They said, what's the most important thing to teach the children? And she took her hands and brought them together. She joined her palms. This is the most important thing to teach the children. And use this for every dharma, for everything. Use this as an expression of deepest respect and esteem. I also looked up the word esteem. It means, you know, it comes from estimate. It's related to calculate. What's the deepest calculation you can make about anything? What's the utmost calculation?

[42:08]

What's the utmost estimate? So let's make that utmost estimate of each other, of the Buddha and the Dharma. Let's be little children of Buddha and join our palms and bow to all sentient beings, realistically recognizing that we are capable of giving rise to delusions every moment. we are able to imagine that the person in front of us is a 330 pound Dallas cowboy. A 350 pound demon who hates our guts.

[43:12]

We can imagine such things at that time. we should remember this is what we're imagining. This is my delusion. I must admit I'm a human being who can imagine such things. And now this human being will sit still and take refuge in the Triple Treasure. And thus I will do the Buddha work of making the correct transmission of the Buddhas and ancestors alive at this moment? Yes, I will. I will dare to say that. And I will share this and encourage all beings to dare to say, yes, at this moment I make the way of Buddhas alive by this simple practice. And at that time, all the past, present, and future Buddhas come and join us because they did this same practice.

[44:26]

So I'm talking here, and this is what I have to say. But you have to say it too. And it has to be you saying it. With your own voice, you have to say whether you venerate and revere all the Buddhas, dharmas, and sangras in ten directions or not. You have to say so. You have to check to see if that's you talking. I can certainly say I can certainly say what Dogen Zenji said.

[45:40]

I can say that in this life concerning the Buddha Dharma, there are millions and billions of things which I do not yet thoroughly understand. And this does not make me depressed. I'm very happy that there's an ocean to study. I'm looking forward to, drop by drop, drinking the ocean of Buddha Dharma. And I shake in my boots to say what he also said. But I must say it, that I certainly have right faith. And I, part of my right faith is that I need each and every one of you to someday say that you certainly have right faith.

[46:53]

You may not be able to say it today, and that's okay. But I still am waiting and needing you to do this and say this someday. But whether you say it or not, you can still come to Dogen's birthday party and have some cake, which is also something that all Zen masters do. They eat cake. And someday I'll tell you about cake, but for now, I'll say, Happy Birthday.

[47:49]

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