in case you didn't notice
today was a wonderful day

we were blessed here in this little temple and we also blessed this little temple thank you so much

so i brought up these ten vows and ten practices your remember
and you
and i put quite a bit of emphasis on the first file of the first practice paying homage and also paying homage
as a formal practice is to
offer incense and prostrate
and let's see a one story which i share with you is about western woman
i believe she's german she went to japan studies then and she studied and she just study and she
yeah and she did prostrations
but she
she felt uncomfortable and resistant to join the prostrations
at one time where she is doing prostrations she thought
somebody here is really resisting the prostrations
and really questions whether this is
appropriate thing to be doing but somebody else is buying very whole heartedly

so now comes the ten cake story
which wonderfully relates to this issue

it's a story about
a
buddhist monk who we often remember by the name dragon pond

i must we don't have too much time so i'm restraining myself from telling you
the whole life story of dragon pond
he's gonna tell you about when he was a boy
he was from a family in china
tang dynasty and his family were
tea makers or t bakers
and this script
tea cake bakers cake bakers they made cakes
nine a visit
tradition and southern china called dimson
and dimson ms dot heart or dot the heart
or hit the spot
and
most of you may have had dimson at some point right
so this traditions quite old to make these cakes and sorry
as part of his job he was a delivery boy for his family
and his family and he made offerings to a buddhist priest named ken wong
davo and he probably was called ten walk because his hut or his temple was in front of a large monastery called ten wong sir
so this boy brought this monk
an offering of ten cakes i'm not clever the weather was daily or weekly when i knew where he brought him ten cakes
and gave him the ten cakes
as a service
he was a priest was not paying for these cakes
and so he gave the ten cakes but every time it gave them the monk gave him one came back and said this is for your descendants
and the boy the boy thought this kind of strange
and one day
he questioned the the monk he said i bring cakes everywhere why do you give me one came back
and the teacher says to bring cakes everywhere what's the problem of me giving you one back
and the boy thought again
him
and he he somehow had a new understanding of his life and i think he went home and asked his parents if he could
retire from the cake baking business and become a monk and they said okay i guess and so he went and
start to study with can walk i

after some time ah god who said to him
i'm going to give you know a buddhist name
and you have been you have respected me and trusted me so i'm gonna give you the name respect and trust
chong's shin
and then
junction a young monk continued to be with our will and serve as his attendant
it doesn't say in their to standard record doesn't say but maybe dot we said you can you can stay here and practice with me and i will teach you
the pivot of mind
or the pivotal mind
and the word for pivotal usually translated as essence
then he says essence of mind or mind essence

after a couple of years
the still young monk said to the teacher daru
well i've been here for quite a while and you told me you will teach me the pivotal mind
but you haven't taught me anything about it
and i've always said i have done nothing but teach you about it
and
charlie shin said well have you taught me
and
that was said
when you brought me t i received it and drank it
when you brought me food
i received it ate it
when you formerly bowed to me
i lowered my head

i have done nothing but teach you the essence of mind
house and i'll stop there temporarily and say
these interactions
the student bowing to the teacher and the teacher lowering his head to the student that interaction
that homage and receiving the homage person bowing person bow to their nature empty and vast
person bowing person to that's the pivotal mind of the buddha's
that's realized in the practice of paying homage
that's the pivotal mind in action
student teaching is to do it and serving not trying to get anything just giving the teacher foods teacher receiving food this interaction
the student the the third practice of some onto powder making offerings
he made offers to the teacher and it came to practice with a teacher and continued to make offerings and the teacher receives them
this is the pivotal mind which he was teaching
which he was an acting with the student but the student and see a than teacher says students as well how have you and the teacher demonstrates and reminds him and then the student stops
i think he lowered his head for quite awhile
and teacher said look directly at it
if you think about it you'll miss it

and ah
and the young monk
realized this essential mind which was being taught him all those all that time he saw it without looking for the teacher just pointed into their relationship
and then the boy a young monk said
how can i take care of this now
he said we're just
just live your life and remember it and and don't look any place else for it and that's all you'll take care of him
and then he
keep living and maturing into a very wonderful bodhisattva who
was the teacher of other wonderful body cyprus but i'm not going to get into that today he had wonderful disciples who he helped in lovely interactive ways like that
a people who came to serve him and he served them and in this way they transmitted
the bodhisattva path sometimes called the zen path
so that's the ten cakes part
which particularly relates back to
practice homage number one practiced a number three practice

is there anything you want to tell me

yes

i yeah i think so yeah asked me that a while ago on
i would i think you know
a baby can just discriminate between
mine
and
not mine
usually it's discriminating my most of the time
mine mine mine mine that's a discrimination everything's mine
and gradually they with the kindness of their
their family members they start to open the possibility of somebody else might have something to so then there's mine and yours has to discrimination
but they might but discernment member you might be used to discern that you're making a discrimination so the sermon might be used you could say discern this and that that's kind of remember we might also use discernment for like some insight into noticing oh i'm making this
i'm making discriminations i'm discriminated between myself and others some everybody does that
but not everybody notices oh i'm discriminating between me and you as so i think discriminate discernment a little bit touched to move up the ladder a little bit towards wisdom discernment is part of the way you move from just
discriminating and usually without discernment you get stuck in your discriminations so you could also use discernment to notice oh one kind of attached to what i think's going on
that i might use discernment for that but discernment and one of the main things that you might make discernment about our our discriminations and by carefully studying your discriminations
you become for have your discriminations
and part of the careful study is to be respectful of your discriminations and other people's
because we can get stuck
we can be disrespectful of other people's discriminations and then we get stuck in a way
but either way sell for other whoever's making the discriminations by studying them we compassion happy we can not get stuck in them and as i often say
security nicely said in english
using refers quite good sometimes
something like non discrimination which is which is wise discernment or wisdom
now undiscriminating wisdom is not not discriminating
it is studying everything
when we're stuck in artist discrimination we study some things but not others like we study math or english literature
are we don't study comic books
because we discriminate against comic books
are we study other people and examine other people but we don't examine ourselves because are caught in the discrimination
a one run with when we don't discriminate everything's interesting everything's yeah
last week at gringotts when a class on monday and i showed a piece of calligraphy written by out
a wonderful japanese scholar of zen
and one of the things i noticed about this scholar on and a calligraphy was a picture of bodhidharma
said
wall gazing in the back a flower blooms
some was gazing is another term for the withered tree
so you're sitting in meditation
but what's going on with you is that your minds like a wall
the check in your minds like a wall is gazing
you're gazing at the wall that's normal
but when the with it when the tree withers your mind is like the wall so your mind is like the wall gazing
and then as in the back because you're facing the wall in your bag this flower blooms a bot reluctance as great lotus flower that's the he wrote that calligraphy and gave it to me one time when i was visiting him in japan
a wonderful guy and he also came
i'm proudly report that the only time he left japan in his life was to come to the san francisco zen center
we wandered him to come and put him he never left japan because he was a great guy but he was some somewhat concerned that porn food wouldn't work for him
but with the aid of one of the sense in our friends who said now the forge really good as censoring you will be okay if not hamburgers
and and begun whatever
and he came in the food was alright and i noticed a thing about him which the buddhist scholar carl beautiful tipped me off too
he said he he has something of the zen master him so he's a zen priest also but mostly he was a scholar at the university
but he has something that zen master anime and what was that thing the thing was he he he actually is found everything interesting
not just
really amazing zen literature from the tang dynasty and chinese
but you know every little thing he can like delighted to study
i think he he seemed to have realized is not discriminating wisdom
where he'd discriminated between
green gulch in japan between the zondo and the farm between the plants and we have them we had chickens at that time he discriminated but he was interested in everything it was grinning i'm kind of he wasn't a stuffy old scholar he was a brilliant scholar
but he didn't let that get in his way to be appreciate each person each situation he was wonderful
so that's
not discriminating wisdom which is more like discernment
that's the route and the kids
reminder
man who have accepted yet sir
it takes a while with story that
it
you
home
oh i see oh yeah right
it gets lost and for fifty years and wind up back home and his parents are still alive and they see them and they're very happy and there are extremely wealthy and
the his father sends his
elegant and gorgeously dressed servants down to bring his son up to the house but when he sees them coming he can accept their gracious invitation and only face
because he because he thinks they're gonna put him into slavery or something because he's such a miserable person because he has for so long denied his home
yeah it's like that's for him and that story is sometimes said to be about us that and that's a certain phase of all and students is that we just can't accept
our buddha-nature is just too wonderful gimme a break yes
remember the thirteen ancestor great way is not give up
boy you in
i've always wondered about that
right now
yeah right now so when he says avoid picking and choosing i couldn't like when it got it home
we've got give him the benefit of the doubt and tell you what he meant
when he said avoid picking and choosing he met avoid
getting sought getting stuck in picking and choosing pick and choose as a dance were doing the pick and choose dance want to drink pick one two three tooth
rather than pick and in a color so i think in that way
when we need to be careful but to avoid picking and choosing again would be like having a know me
he but even with labonte me my still might be picking and choosing much in eight

yeah so i think go
avoid picking a jury the other way is using not another way to give him credit the credit benefit of doubt about this statement would be he's just saying if you want if you want an easy have them all bottom me
you're an easy life just take off your discrimination had who equipment and it'll be easy
but but the bodhisattva path is not to try to have an easy way is not to like avoid picking inches borisov passes like all
the way is not easy just avoid picking and choosing boys emphasis i'm not looking for the easy way i'm looking for the way not necessarily the hard way i'm looking for the way that liberates all beings which might mean i have to go in some really difficult situations i'm not looking for the easy way i'm looking for the way that ben
if it's all beings and if that means i had to do something hard
i'm up for it
guess i ought to be up for it
and if i'm not up for it
i confess my shortcomings because i wanna be up for doing whatever helps people
not looking for the easy way
like it would be easy not to to pick and choose between people
but you don't do that because it's easy
you do it because you don't discriminate a free of discrimination than you don't pick and choose sides that interested in to meditate on
and by the way the third ancestor who might not have written that text anyway but still
the story is that he was a leper
the third answer to resent in china was the leper so of course he was not like mr popular
you know and he wasn't unlike talk shows and stuff he was kind of like
he was like
and you know i reject of society they probably kept him away but we couldn't mix with ordinary people but he could mix with his teacher his teacher could i could if teacher
work with him and saw that he was really a sincere student teacher wasn't pushing them away a lot of other people did and so hot he still when most people push it away he did find it a successor a wonderful six after who we call the fourth ancestor
then i have
ah i have been trying to make away her grit a living tree
i'm a and then the settler time on that side of the is
ten vows to and ah i was watching theorising mass
ah
is is positive and negative attachments and be a lie if i think about it as a line
browse
this is kind of a lion's head attachment that that actually is

when you start doing when you start paying homage when you start aligning yourself
you might be attached to the homage
is awesome
it yeah cause i'm there might be wholesome
maybe but it's not it is is not the homage them
when god
the homage the wizard tree as the homage where you're not attached to the homage as the wizardry but when you first start during the prostrations you might be attached he might even be trying to get something
he might be trying to get with
so that's okay we can work with that
like again this and i don't want it do the balls with somebody else does when you first start doing it i don't want to do the balance or i do want to do the bows
i do want to do the balls but there's somebody else who's not really wanting to do not want to do the bows who just doing the bows
they're free of there
like and dislike
picking and choosing they're just boeing but if somebody else's to in choosing to bow or bowing but resisting the by that often the beginning
the tree still to some extent a tree could actually be getting a little bit more
vigorous from that kind of by it can you could start getting more an arrogant like by so much more than anybody else around here
i mean i'm i'm like a superstar boeing
and i've heard about some sentence mowing superstars and they got in big trouble from being so good and mine
the permitted put themselves above the below average bowers and the lord and the blah blah irish bars like fill your just amazing in the midst hard about the one who has who has above average and thought he was better than them now we have a scandal
he decided he was subtlety
a while
oh the the virtue of the prostration is that even if you start being attached to getting something from it
from if you're attached to like getting wisdom are getting fame are getting profit are getting freedom
are you attached to helping people help or one wanted to help people's wholesome being attached to it is not wholesome
but still it's still somewhat wholesome to to try to help people even if you're attached but the attachments not wholesome it's somewhat interfering with the good intention but doesn't mean that there's nothing good about it anymore is just as being kind of like defiled
it's being constricted somewhat
still it's still good thing in itself but is unfortunately being
confined by
various kinds of grasping
but as we do it more and more we start to notice the grasping and see eyes and this is a with this actually is kind of optional that last bow i didn't even try to get anything that was kind of relief let's try another one of those oh that now i tried to get it again
okay and i tried to get it and then suddenly forget to try to give something and do it without trying to get it and another one with on-trend and and start you know your bowing and and trying to get anything and yeah
and then used actually say oh wow
wow wow wow wow
person by person bout to their nature empty and vast oh me and buddha were not to oh wow
but not because you're trying to get that but you're just baldwin
you just pay your respects paying your respects and enough after lots of balls left her lots of bows
get over counting hair bows and you start them and they're just bowing
yes there's also trying to put things together and i was thinking about your ten case story in a little wind wondering why is that story portals that is the about that story and what is the pivot on line
and has a connect everything else is that it now and so when i when i think is the pivotal linus is like the wind down with the land as if an appropriate response it that's one way of thinking about it and now
the pivotal is is is an appropriate response me and that it connects to the rest of it because one of the things that gets in the way of the appropriate responses attachment to discriminate be like a windmill that was the chinese were attached
yeah to the tree for the all are you tired all the when bells to the tree and the wind's blowing has kind of wool from result was you know
so but if or or the somebody's out there holding the when bells and and i'm trying to keep them apart or having certain ones touch and not others that's interfering with the natural relationship between the wind and the bells or somebody else is the wind's blowing and the pels are moving but not enough
so somebody comes and blow themselves out hit each other well that's okay if dwindle can accept that the one who is balling them as being like a windmill though
the windmills okay when the winds very gentle and the chinese are not touching the sound it makes when the wind as soft as like
and then when the when the wind gets some la stronger it makes us my son and when the when gets really strong it makes kind of sad sound of the window of the windmill falling on the ground breaking
but that's what it does just them that's wisdom to it doesn't have any idea it's not clinging to idea of what a window should be doing and we can be like that too
if we hang out in the wind long enough
well will become the appropriate response to the situation
thank you for the another lovely day