Good evening. Welcome, everyone. Good evening. So we've been talking about Bodhisattva practice and using stories about the major Bodhisattva figures in this practice period. This is the last Dharma talk before the closing session next weekend. So we've been looking at these different Bodhisattva figures as a way of looking at the terrain of bodhisattva practice. Tonight I want to talk about kanzeon, kanon, kuanyin, avalokiteshvara, many names, but the bodhisattva, the bodhisattva of compassion. So I have a number of extra images on the main altar tonight. to represent this bodhisattva of compassion. Of course, we've talked about other bodhisattvas who also serve as kind of balances to the practice of wisdom, who represent aspects of compassion.

[01:09]

Samantabhadra, who is more of the deliberate activist bodhisattva, Jizo, who's the bodhisattva who witnesses to hell realms, Maitreya, who represents loving-kindness. So there are different aspects of kind-heartedness, we could say. But there's a kind of basic rhythm between looking at what Manjushri represents, the bodhisattva, wisdom that sits underneath the image of Buddha represents, well, sameness or oneness or the interconnectedness of everything, the emptiness of all imagined entities. And then the other side, which Avalokitesvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, particularly represents, looking at the differences, looking at individuality, we can say.

[02:12]

So this is the bodhisattva who looks at the particulars, looks at the particularities, looks at how to be helpful and serve the different beings and their different needs. So this is the bodhisattva who hears particular needs and sees particular beings. And so this bodhisattva has many, many, many different forms to appreciate the many different kinds of suffering, the many different kinds of beings, and how they each have their own different ways of finding awakening, finding liberation. So that's why there's so many different images, different forms of this Bodhisattva. So just to talk about some of them.

[03:15]

There are seven major different forms. We could say one of them, perhaps the most striking, is on the altar to my right. It's usually in the Doshan room. It's a little unstable, so we don't often bring it out. But it's the Thousand-Armed Bodhisattva. This is the Tibetan version, Chenrezig. But this is the Bodhisattva of Compassion with a thousand different arms, each with different implements in it to be used to help different kinds of beings. And each hand of the thousand hands has an eye in it to see beings from different vantage points. And also there are eleven heads, as you can see. in the Tibetan version, they're kind of in a pyramid up to the top, and we meet a Buddha's head at the top. Again, to look from different perspectives at the different kinds of beings. So we're all the same, in a way. Dogen came back from China and said, what he learned was eyes horizontal, nose vertical.

[04:22]

We're all the same. And yet, each one of us is very different. I mean, Michael and Bill, they're just You know, you're the same and you're very different, right? Each of us is very different. And there's another image over here of one of the, it's hard to see because it's cast iron, but it's an old image with 11 heads, so you can look at it when you go out. So 11-headed canon is another one of them. The basic canon, there's a little wooden figure in the front, just a simple kind of goddess of mercy in Chinese restaurants. of pure Kannon, sometimes amplified with different implements, like the more colorful, larger figure to my left, who's holding a jar of nectar to pour out to help sweeten all beings. And this one, she happens to be standing on a frog, which Suzuki Roshi likes. And there's so many different images.

[05:26]

There's seven major ones. But then there's 33 other minor ones that comes from the Lotus Sutra. So this bodhisattva is actually the most popular bodhisattva in Asian Buddhism. He or she, in China, Guanyin is female, a kind of androgynous in Japan. This Bodhisattva is in all the cultures, even the Theravada cultures. There's a smaller metal image of it to my right in front, which is the Bodhisattva Kanon of the Tibetan Dharani, Om Mani Padme Hum. So there are many different chants to the Bodhisattva of Compassion. In the Lotus Sutra it talks about thirty-three different forms, and there's different versions of those thirty-three different forms.

[06:29]

One of them is the Bodhisattva of Protecting Life. So the chant we just did, the Enmei Jukku Konangyo, is the short sutra of the Bodhisattva of Compassion for protecting life. And there's a particular one of the different bodhisattva, forms of Kanon Bodhisattva, who represents that particular chant, that particular form. So, again, all of these different forms of this bodhisattva are there because they address different needs of different beings. we could say there's 33 forms, we could say there's 33,000 different forms. The Bodhisattva of Compassion understands wisdom.

[07:34]

So in the Heart Sutra we chant, the Mahapalakirtishvara appears because she's informed by wisdom, and yet she expresses herself as in a great variety of different forms because of all the differences and the different needs and the different twisted, ancient twisted karma that we each have. So this dynamic dance between the universal and the particular, between wholeness and the individual between the communal sangha practice and each of us on our own cushion, expressing Buddha in our own way, needing the help of bodhisattvas with compassion in different ways. So just to mention some of the other bodhisattvas, one of them is

[08:39]

fish basket Guanyin. This is named, this is based on Lingjiao, who was the daughter of the great layman Pang, who was an 8th century Zen adept. And she, his whole family were Chan adepts, and his daughter particularly made a living, her living by weaving baskets. So one of the 33 forms of Guanyin is based on her. Another one is dragon-headed guanyin. So that's another one of the 33 forms. So we could say there's 33, and again, we could say there's many. One that particularly is relevant to us is one-leaf guanyin, and this is a form of guanyin that appears on water floating on a leaf, and there's an image of her in the back there above Bill and Michael, and there's a story about this Bodhisattva and Dogen, and I'll come back to that because I want to talk about some of the

[10:03]

folklore about Guanyin. Again, Guanyin is, Kanzayon, all these different names, is certainly the most popular bodhisattva in Asia. It's the one that people call on. And part of that is the name, Kanzayon in Japanese, Avalokiteshvara in Sanskrit, Guanyin Chinese, means to hear sounds, or to hear the sounds of the world. Kan is to listen, to regard. Ze is the world. On is sounds. Kan ze on, when we chant that. This is the bodhisattva who hears the cries of the world. So in some ways this bodhisattva, and this bodhisattva as compassion, is defined as the bodhisattva who listens.

[11:05]

So compassion as the practice of counselors, therapists, hospice workers, if you will, people who listen to the suffering of others, just for listening. So the one who hears the suffering, who hears the pain or the fear. And I think we all know, we've all experienced it sometime or other, what it's like to feel really heard. It's, maybe it's a little unusual in our world, in our culture, to actually, for beings who are suffering to actually be heard.

[12:11]

Politicians don't seem to hear the suffering of the people. But there are beings who listen. And this is the work of Pannam, of Banyan, to really hear And then beyond just hearing, in some ways maybe that's enough, but then there's also the response. So this Bodhisattva specializes amongst the different practices and skillful means. So this is a practice that's particularly discussed in the Lotus Sutra. This bodhisattva is popular in many forms of Buddhism, in many of the different scriptures. One is very popular and very important in the Pure Land schools, in many of the schools, and also in Zen. But the practice of skillful means is particularly discussed in the Lotus Sutra, and this bodhisattva especially

[13:23]

works at skillful means. And skillful means is not about having some instruction manual of how to take care of all the different beings, but it's about listening and responding. So all the different hands and eyes, and then in each of the hands there are various tools often. So to use what's at hand, to try and respond. Not to necessarily have the answer, but by trial and error, to try and listen, to try and respond, to develop skillful means by making mistakes. So in the Lotus Sutra, there are many stories about skillful means, many parables. One of them, a famous one, is about a man who represents the Buddha who comes home and finds his house burning and his children are inside the house and he tries to get them out and they don't want to come out because they're too busy having fun playing with their toys and so he tells them that he has all kinds of wonderful carriages, all kinds of wonderful vehicles outside and they should just come out and they can, you know, have these wonderful vehicles, Porsches and BMWs and anyway.

[14:43]

But it turns out that there's just one vehicle that comes out of him. There's this one vehicle which works for everyone. Anyway, part of the story, though, is that he tries various things to get them to come out, and they don't want to come out. Beings are very stubborn. We like our suffering sometimes. So how do you liberate beings? How to relieve suffering? How to listen to what are the real fears? What are the real needs? What is the real pain and difficulty of beings? So this listening then involves some response. And the principle of the response is not to have some... Skopelianism isn't about, again, about knowing the perfect answer for everyone. There's a famous story in our lineage Dongshan's teacher, Yunyan, the teacher of the founder of the Chinese school of Sotong, who wrote the Jewel Mirror Samadhi.

[15:52]

His teacher had a talk with his Dharma brother, and one of them said to the other, why does the Bodhisattva of Compassion have so many hands and eyes? And the other one said, it's like reaching back for your pillow in the middle of the night. just reaching back for comfort in the middle of the night, not knowing what, but just trying to find something to bring comfort. So anyway, it's a more complicated story than that, but that's the basics. So yeah, the point of listening to all these stories and studying all these different Bodhisattva figures is not to learn about some Buddhist history or Buddhist doctrine or Buddhist teaching, but how do these support us to practice listening? How do these stories show us ways of enacting kindness and compassion?

[16:57]

How do these encourage us to try and enact skillful means in the situations in our own world in our own society, all its troubles in our own lives, to try and respond. How do we listen? How do we see compassion? As listening and then trying things, trying to respond, and seeing what might work. So there's other aspects of this Bodhisattva One of them, all of the different bodhisattvas have particular relationships to our zazen practice. All of them have particular ways we can see them related to meditation. There are a variety of those for this bodhisattva, but one of them is just meditation on sound. So kanon or guanyin just means hearing sounds.

[18:02]

So for those of you who are going to be here this weekend, sitting for three days or a day, you're part of those. There are several sutras that recommend just focusing on sound as we sit. So tonight is the sound of the air conditioner. but actually any ambient sound, wherever you're sitting, whenever you're sitting, just to be present and uplifted. Hear the sound. So it's, you know, we can say metaphorically the sounds of the suffering of the world apprise of beings, but it's also just listening to sound, focusing on sound. So that's highly recommended. a concentration object to help steady, to help settle.

[19:06]

So I wanted to mention that. And then I'll just end by telling some stories, because all of these bodhisattvas have a whole variety, and they're mentioned in particular schools and sutras and their various teachings about them. But there's also this folklore, and that's particularly colorful for this bodhisattva of compassion, because She's so popular in all the different Asian cultures. And how Guanyin or Dhanal or Chenrezig appears is a little different in the different cultures. And it's changing as this Bodhisattva comes in. Oh, wow. So one story is from China.

[20:15]

And you don't have to take these stories as literal truth. Or you can if you want to. But these are old stories. But they show kind of how people understood these bodhisattvas. This story has to do with a military commander in the Northern Wei dynasty, which was the 400s and early 500s. And this general was a devotee of Guan Yin, He was captured by an invading enemy and sentenced to execution. The night before his sentence was scheduled to be carried out, a Buddhist monk appeared in a dream and taught him to recite a sutra to Guanyin. And I think it's the Enmei Juku Kanongyo that we chanted.

[21:19]

So he awoke and recited it 100 times. The next morning, The executioner broke swords three times when striking his neck. So his captors were amazed and decided he was not supposed to be executed and released him. He returned home and he found that the Guanyin image on his home altar had three sword marks on its neck. So that kind of story appears in a lot of the Bodhisattva literature, where some Bodhisattva image stands in for somebody. But it's interesting as a comparison to how our culture thinks about execution. A little while before I heard about that story, there was a case in Florida where a man was supposed to be executed in the electric chair. and they threw the switch and it didn't work. I mean, the juice came and it just didn't kill him.

[22:22]

And they did that three times and he was still there. So finally they increased the voltage a huge amount and when they did that his head went on fire and that killed him. And then later on they discovered that actually he had been innocent. So in terms of how we see the death penalty, this is an interesting story. Those people invading China realized that they could be mistaken. Anyway, that's one story. Another story also has to do with dreams. Dreams are really, a lot of times, these bodhisattvas, again, in the folklore, and again, you can take this as just a way that people see these but this is from 13th century Japan, and same time period as Dogen, and there was a medicinal hot springs, and the story tells the town, it's called Tsukuma, it was in Shinano province, which is modern Nagano prefecture, if any of you have been there, and there was a townsman in the dream, there was a townsman who had a dream,

[23:41]

in which a voice announced that Kannon would come to the town square the next day. So this was a town with a medicinal hot springs. And the dreamer asked how he would know it was Kannon in the dream. And the voice described a scruffy, 30-ish warrior on horseback. After this townsman awoke from his dream, he told his friends. And everyone in the village was excited and gathered at the appointed time because they wanted to see Kannon. So we may think this is sort of silly and gullible, but anyway. A samurai fitting the description arrived, and all the people prostrated themselves to him. The astounded warrior demanded an explanation, but the townspeople just continued their prostrations until finally a priest told him about this dream. The samurai explained that he had fallen off his horse and injured himself and simply had come to the medicinal springs for healing. But the townspeople just continued making frustrations to him.

[24:46]

After a while, it finally occurred to the perplexed warrior that perhaps he actually was Kannon and that he should become a monk. He discarded his weapons and was ordained and later became a disciple of the famous priest. So we don't know anything else about him in history, but just it was enough to hear this dream for him to consider himself canon. So that's kind of a strange story. It wasn't even his dream, it was somebody else's dream. But people took dreams more seriously in medieval times. The last story I'll tell is about Dogen. And I referred to it before. So Dogen is the founder of our branch of Soto Zen. He went to China as a young man and spent four years there and finally received transmission and brought back the teachings of the Soto lineage when he was 27.

[25:52]

But the story goes that on the way back from China to Japan, he was on a boat. And at that time, it was a kind of perilous voyage And a large storm arose. And the sailors and all the passengers on the boat thought they were going to be capsized by the huge waves. But Dogen calmly sat on the deck and chanted the chapter on Avalokiteshvara from the Lotus Sutra. So we chant that sometimes, the first closing of that universal gateway of Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva. After a while, Dogen had a vision of one-leaf Kannon, who I mentioned before is one of the 33 forms, riding on a leaf atop the waves. Dogen continued chanting, and as predicted in the sutra, the waves calmed and the storm subsided. The story goes that Dogen then carved into the wooden planks on the boat the likeness of Kannon that he had witnessed.

[26:58]

Later, a priest at the temple where the boat landed in Japan made a rubbing and preserved this Kannon image. So I heard this story when I was in a practice period in Kyushu and doing Takahatsu, begging rounds, and then we stopped at this little temple, not much bigger than this, and there was no priest there. It was an old couple who were caretakers, but they gave us copies of this image of one-leaf Kannon, supposedly carved by Doge. And that's it, up above Michael and Bill's head. So the inscription on the top is supposedly by Dogen. The priest there, it was the Shingon Temple at the time, took it to Kyoto when Dogen was becoming famous at Koshoji, and Dogen wrote on it. Anyway, whether that's historically accurate or not, I've seen images. Buddhist art books that had that image attributed to Dogen.

[28:07]

Anyway, so all of these stories are just ways that people have understood Kannon, this Bodhisattva of Compassion, hearing the suffering of the world, and then appearing in dreams and people responding. So that's a little bit about the Bodhisattva of Compassion. So now I will listen to whatever comments or questions or responses you have. Please feel free. So yesterday I talked about, yesterday morning I talked about Vimala Kirti, who was famous for his silence. Kanan probably heard that, but yes. Vimala Kirti, who I talked about yesterday morning, is famous for his silence.

[29:13]

Yes, Paula. I heard somewhere that Bodhidharma was considered a manifestation. Yes, in fact, in case one of the Blue Cliff record that is usually the case used in Shuso ceremonies, it says that Bodhidharma came to China as a manifestation of Avalokiteshvara. So I didn't talk about that aspect of Avalokiteshvara. Sometimes he manifests or she manifests tough love. And Bodhidharma is an example of that. But also, His Holiness the Dalai Lama is officially considered a manifestation of Avalokiteshvara, Chenrezig, in Tibetan Buddhism. So that's another part of this whole thing about these bodhisattvas. There are beings, particular historical people even, who are considered to be incarnations. Again, it's up to us to see how we want to use these stories, really, in our practice.

[30:26]

from the Zen perspective, what is the usefulness of looking at, hearing, considering sounds and listening as a form of compassion? So Bodhidharma was silent with Emperor Wu. In some ways he was stern with Emperor Wu. But maybe that was a kind of kindness. But one of the ways to look at these figures is to think about people in your own life who express some aspect of this, or people that you can know of in the culture. So I don't know if any of you have examples of people who you think of when you hear some of these stories or hear this kind of way of talking about this Bodhisattva. Yes, Samantha, hi.

[31:33]

Yeah, yeah, well that's part of the bodhisattva idea actually. So it's to listen to all beings. We listen to those around us and listen to those close to us, listen to our friends. You know, I was talking in the beginning about the different kinds of balances to the wisdom side, and Maitreya, Metta, the one who practices loving kindness, particularly there is a practice of loving kindness to those one is close to and then extending that Metta practice out to loving kindness to people who we think are doing harm and trying to wish them well so that they might change. And that does happen. So I'm gonna talk about that in a week or so. But yeah, that's part of the idea of the Bodhisattva, is to benefit all beings, to not give up on anyone.

[33:10]

Yes, Jan, hi. Oh my, oh my. No, I just, it's okay. get Jesus to calm down and not be so in your face to the authorities.

[34:19]

And the same thing happened to Martin Luther King. You know, at the end of the ICP, he says, you know, don't say that, and try not to rile up the people who are actually in favor of the war, and be more subtle, be more tactful. And so I'm just interested in the stories behind the people, the stories behind the person in these dichotomy myths or legends the evil one, because there's always a reason that that person turned down. Yeah, thank you. That's a really interesting, important comment, I think.

[35:21]

I think there's a story by D.H. Lawrence, maybe, about Judas Iscariot. I may have this wrong, but some of you who are more literary than me might know, but about how Jesus Who Jesus was depended on Judas. Yeah, and Jesus couldn't have been who he was without that betrayal of Judas. You know, there's an example of that in Buddhism, in the Lotus Sutra. Devadatta was a cousin of Shakyamuni Buddha, according to historically, and he tried to, historically, as far as we know, he tried to found his own order in strataschism, and he thought that Shakyamuni wasn't strict enough, and he had his own order, and he actually

[36:26]

tried to have Shakyamuni killed. He sent a wild elephant to stomp Shakyamuni and Shakyamuni pacified him. But in the Lotus Sutra, Shakyamuni says about Devadatta that Devadatta was actually, in a past life, one of his teachers who helped him to evolve to become the Buddha. So, you know, there's lots of stories like this in history as well as in folklore of people who seem to be doing terrible harm who can change. Yeah, there was also one of Shakyamuni's major disciples who had been a serial killer and he was converted by Shakyamuni.

[37:30]

So this, you know, there is in many spiritual traditions the idea of not giving up on anybody. Other comments on compassion and Ananda? Yes, Dylan. How does that relate to the idea of just sitting? It's just sitting, the emptiness of being open to any possible meditation object. It's the absence of meditation objects. How does that relate to that? Well, just sitting is understood in a variety of ways. Sometimes just sitting is taken as some special formal practice where there's nothing but just sitting, whatever that means. But I think practically speaking, just sitting means just sitting and whatever comes up

[38:32]

The point is to learn to be able to be present and attentive and aware, whatever situation you're in. So we come and saw Zen for a period or for a few days, and it helps us to be present in whatever situation we find ourselves in, you know, a few days later at work or whatever, or in a relationship or, you know, so, It's helpful sometimes to have something to focus on, to help settle. The basic practices just sit in whatever comes up to pay attention to it, to be aware of it, not to be caught by it, but to be open. But sometimes it helps to have something to focus on, to settle. And there are various things. There are various focusing on breath, focusing on posture, and focusing on sound is a good one too.

[39:34]

So any other? Yes. She also responds, yes. Different kind of... Yeah, she does. Samantabhadra has a different kind of response. Samantabhadra's the one who's more, I was gonna say methodical, more looking at systemic sources of suffering. This is my interpretation, to some extent. But Samantabhadra is more deliberative, more involved in the processes of the world and in the interconnectedness of the world.

[40:45]

Avalokiteshvara is more immediate, what's right in front of her. But both of them can sometimes respond. Sometimes there's no way to respond. This is one of the most difficult parts of practice, Be attentive and patient and aware. And sometimes there's nothing to do. And yet, with all the hands and eyes, Amalekiteshvara tries things. When she sees something, it might be helpful. But it's like immediate in your face. So if there are no other comments or questions, we'll close with the four bodhisattva vows which we chant three times.

[41:45]

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