Good morning, everyone. This was a wonderful occasion. This was the first day of the first multi-day session we've been able to have since December 2019. It's three and a half, whatever years ago. So I think we're all a little rusty on how to do this. I won't speak for everyone, maybe not everyone, but some of us are anyway, but it's a great show. We've been having this practice commitment period, which actually technically will go through this next week, but we're celebrating it with this session.

[01:06]

And some of you are a big part of that, some of you haven't, but we've been talking about the Vimalakirti Sutra. But I don't want to do a text-based talk during the session, though it's possible I'll also look at it for two or three times, but maybe not. I want to talk about how the teachings we've been looking at, the teaching themes we've been looking at, and practice themes, relate to our practice, our practice in the world, our practice in Chicago, in St. Petersburg, I never said that in California, anyway, we've various parts of the country.

[02:09]

So one of the main themes of the Sutra is practice in the world, right in the middle of the world. Practice, realization, is not a matter of escaping from the difficulties of the world to some high-falutin place, somewhere high up in the mountains, somewhere in Japan, or California, or Japan, or whatever. Here is the place, here is the way it unfolds, for instance, just this is it. How do we use these Bodhisattva teachings to help support our lives, to help support our practice of helping all the beings in this difficult world, helping all the beings,

[03:26]

including ourselves, to see beyond, not to escape them, to see beyond the problems that beset us in our own lives and in the world, to see something deeper, that actually helps inform how we practice in the world. So this is sometimes called traditional, doing the Buddha work. We're part of the family of Buddha, particularly of the Shakyamuni Buddha, of those Sutras that Shakyamuni Buddha showed us. There are Buddha fields in many places. How do we support this life, this world, this city, this time, this strange time?

[04:38]

To be a Buddha field, to be a field of awakening, how do we help the great beings, including ourselves, of course? So this is challenging, this Saha world, the world of endurance, is difficult. So it's difficult, and it's also that we are privileged to be. So, as I've said, Bodhisattva Shiva, all those many world systems described, Bodhisattva and modern scientists who are going deeper into what this reality actually is, how do

[05:44]

we support all of that, to be a Buddha field, how do we support that, how do we do the Buddha work to help beings who suffer, to help ourselves who are suffering? So, the Vimalakirti Sutra talks about inconceivable liberative practice. So this is also one of the prior skillful means. And this is very much the question for us, how do we effectively support beings in this

[06:50]

challenging world, in non-challenged realms? So this skillful means has to do, first of all, with patience, and we learn patience as some practitioners sitting upright for a day or two or three or whatever, waiting for the bell to ring, or just enjoying being upright and present and inhaling and exhaling, and paying attention. So, even when you feel sleepy, how do you pay attention to that? Even when you have some pain in your knee or shoulder or wherever, how do you pay attention to that? And then when we're paying attention, when we're paying attention also to all the cruelty

[08:00]

in our society, how do we find ways to be helpful? Of course, this is not easy. And if it were easy, then all the bony self is lined up to be born and adopted, you know, wouldn't bother. In pure Buddha fields, everything is beautiful. And even here, everything is beautiful in its own way, but how do we not ignore the cause and effect of the difficulties in our own lives, the difficulties in the world around us? And at the same time, through sushin, through settling in, through satsang, through Shalavastar

[09:07]

Dharma study, we can find whatever I call it, isn't it, a sense of wholeness, a sense of ultimate reality that supports us, can't just be helpful in the world. And then by trial and error, you know, we try to be helpful, we try to support beings who are wicked, we don't bother misguided beings who are actively promoting hate, fear, and cruelty, it doesn't help to hate them personally, but how do we try and work for kindness, but not for us. So part of this, as the Mahayati Sutra also teaches us, is the reality, the inconceivable

[10:17]

reality, to go beyond what the thinking is happening, to go beyond our ideas, our conceptualizations of who we are and what the world is, to go beyond our limited perceptions. As we were talking about the other day, some of us, as I said, it was Monday night, you know, dogs smell the world around them, we must use our eyes, but we have limited perceptual faculties, we also have limited intellectual faculties, and it's not that we should not use our sight and our smell, and we know the smell of our sounds and enjoy hearing where it's going.

[11:27]

But we can hear and know that this teaching of inconceivable duration, that the world is not what we think it is, it's not limited, it's both in space and in time, the world is much more complicated and deeper than our ideas about it. So this is actually a great help, hearing this, understanding this, as we start to realize this more and more, this is a great help in terms of skillful liberative technique, the more we see that which is not just, you know, the surface conventions, what is proclaimed by the

[12:41]

pundits on cable television or whatever, the reality of the world is deeper than that, it's more than that. So we are here in this Saha world, this world of endurance, that is shocking when you split a field. So one of the ways to be, to help liberate beings is to support this, and all of us are children, just by virtue of your being, whether you're here in the sector or elsewhere.

[13:44]

So there's the practice of Sangha as well as, as part of doing Buddha work, and so Sangha is a wonderful jewel, it helps, it can help us. So by sitting together, whether we're in the room or together online, we support each other to do the Buddha work, to see the possibility of skillful liberative techniques, to help each other, to cooperate, to see the world as it feels. So it's our Sangha, you should join the Zen Gate, and some of the other Sanghas as well, that's fine, but our particular Sangha is just one of many, as they've been called islands of sanity in this world, and how things change is not what's

[14:46]

in the history books often, certainly not what's promoted in the last year, how things change is much more organic, much more conceivable. So how do we support kindness and cooperation? Working together. This is possible, and this is part of how we help the world awaken. Today, it's possible to feel these days quite daunted with all the difficulties, difficulties, climate destruction, cruelty espoused by politicians and books,

[15:49]

prevent people from getting calcium, and so forth and so on. How do we present something that is other than that in the world? It may not be obvious to the mass media, but that actually has power from beneath. We've learned relatively recently that forests are living sentient beings, to put it that way, that there's this mycorrhizal network of forests, mycorrhizal, related to mushrooms, that through which different trees in the forest, even of different species, even trees that are from different religions, or from different ethnicity, or different colors, cooperate with each other.

[16:53]

They send warnings about danger, they send nutrition, they send help. So, Samba is like that. Samba is like underneath the picture of the word for monastery, it's kind of Japanese, it's so rich, forests of monks. Underneath the conventional world, in this inconceivable collaborative field, that the volatilities see through are something about 2,000 more years ago. The science is just confirming there is this possibility of change, of growth. And I've mentioned this phrase that's prominent in the Volatility Sutra,

[17:56]

which is the patience and tolerance of the inconceivability, ungraspability, unknowability, birthlessness, of things, of reality. It's very important. Zazen and Dharma study can give us instant sickness, and in our practice we can seek further answers to this sense of deep connection, that we can't control things. Things have to back to our Buddha work, most of the things. But it's not about controlling

[19:05]

the world, or controlling other people, or even controlling ourselves sometimes. To know that the world is much more, inconceivable is one word, much more strange and wonderful than in our usual sense of it. Just to hear that, just to have some sense of that reality, is powerful. When we have some sense, some taste, some sense of the possibility of ultimate reality, of the wholeness of that all,

[20:19]

this is a great support for our work in the world. So, it's important not to surrender to hopelessness, or feeling like there's nothing to do, or that, you know, it's, this is called, on one level. On another level, something's happening, we just don't know what it is. And yet, we can support and contribute to kindness, cooperation, to listening to others. So, for bodhisattvas who

[21:31]

work with difficult beings, we have to have great compassion. So, all of this is about great compassion. How do we express care and kindness in the world? And even people who are promoting harm and cruelty and want assistance, our politics here in our society, we don't have to hate or despise them personally. We can promote them. So, this has a lot to do with the precepts. Well, we could say that bodhisattva precepts are ethical guidance, they are in some way.

[22:41]

But more deeply, they are a way of confirming and connecting with something very deep in our buddha lineage. So, we'll be chatting later about the lineage of buddhas and ancestors, the Vishnu lineage that leads up to us. And so, we're going to do a jinkai or precept ceremony here in mid-June. There are three people, all of them are participating in this session. And something happens to this kind of ceremony. So, you know, a lot of people come to Zen and talk a lot about ritual stuff. You know, for people on their first time, it does feel strange. It's not

[23:50]

one of our culture. Some of our religions have more ritual than others. But this kind of ceremony is about verifying the presence of Buddha for the people receiving the precepts, receiving the newspapers. But it's also for all of us who do this, when we do these ceremonies, to confirm Sangha, to confirm Dharma, to confirm Buddha, which are already here. So, they're kind of celebrations, in some sense, celebrations. Very somber and serious. There's a laughing Buddha who's coming to watch all of it. So, please enjoy your Zazen during the session.

[24:55]

Please enjoy your inhale and exhale. Please settle into being present on your seat as long as you are here. But also, Zazen is not a new ceremony, so you're not separate from the rest of our lives. I'm just going for a walk and enjoying the fluidity of our muscles moving, just enjoying the trees, or the houses, or these days, the flowers. Please sit in front of this little world. This is all part of the Buddha work. So, there's a lot of work to do. There's so much suffering in this world,

[26:00]

and this world, and this planet is so fragile. But our practice can make a difference, and there's not one right way to just go from this. Each of us has our own special gifts. Each of us has our own particular way of expressing Buddha. Each of us has our own way of encouraging kindness and cooperation. So, please appreciate that about yourselves and each other, and the support from someone. So, that's what I really wanted to say today. I might say more of that tomorrow or the next day. Maybe not. I'm just saying that all the time. But we have discussion time this afternoon with tea.

[27:07]

But if there's anybody who has something you really want to say now, can't wait for this afternoon's discussion, including the folks online. Okay, well, let's do the four bodhisattvas now.

[27:40]

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