most of you, that most of us know, is we commemorate Buddha's birthday. Actually, in our Japanese tradition, it falls on the 8th, April 8th, but we usually celebrate it on the day when everybody's around. In Theravada tradition, they celebrate Buddha's birthday, Buddha's enlightenment, and Buddha's power and nirvana on the same day, all three ceremonies at once. But in our particular tradition, we separate each one of those and celebrate it on a different Scholars disagree as to exactly when Shakyamuni Buddha was born.

[01:08]

It's pretty hard to pinpoint a day at a time, 2,500 years into antiquity, so something like 2,476 or 2,500 or something like that, a pretty long time ago. And there are several legends about Buddha's birthday, about Buddha's birth. None of which I want to talk about. If you're born in a Buddhist country, legend has some kind of meaning for you, I think.

[02:10]

I think in America, maybe the legends sound too fantastic. too colorful. But according to the legend, most legends agree on that there was a very auspicious time in the world. The world had a lot of problems at the time, and when the world has a lot of problems, people are anxious to have some enlightenment and to look for someone who has some enlightenment, some kind of leadership in a difficult time. So when Buddha was born, it was a difficult time for people.

[03:19]

And there were many auspicious signs pointing to the birth of some wonderful leader, spiritual leader. And his mother, Buddha's mother, always dreamt about an elephant. And we don't have elephants here in America, except in the zoo. But in India, the elephant is a very powerful symbol and actually remains as the symbol of Buddhism. There's the elephant, the horse and the rabbit, three symbols of depth, of understanding of our life. The rabbit runs over very quickly without hardly touching the ground, and the horse runs touching the ground, but his feet also leave the ground as he's moving.

[04:35]

The elephant takes very steady steps, very heavy, very steady, and each step is solid foundation, maybe like a tree or a pillar. So the elephant is considered a symbol of Buddhism because it's very steady, careful, and not given to flightiness or attachment So his mother, Queen Maya, dreamt of an elephant, and then she found out that she was pregnant. And the baby Buddha, sometimes referred to as Little Baby Elephant.

[05:42]

He was born in the grove at Lumbini. It was a very joyous occasion, lots of flowers and birds singing, and the weather was beautiful, just like today actually, very much like today. And Buddha's birth also comes in the spring, you know, when there's a feeling of renewal, a feeling of a new beginning. And one legend says that when Buddha was born, unlike most children, he took seven steps and he turned to the four directions and put his hands like this, one hand pointing to the heavens and the other hand pointing to the earth. And he said, below the heavens and above the earth, I alone am holy.

[07:00]

Or, I alone am holy. Sounds egotistical. But this is the heart of Buddhist understanding is in this statement. And the key word is alone, I alone. Usually we think of alone as being detached, but the root of alone, if you look it up in an etymological dictionary, They refer you to the word �one,' and meaning �alone' is �at one.'

[08:04]

So, in an egotistical sense, if you say, �I am alone,' it means, �I am detached from everything.' But in a non-dual sense, alone means not separate from anything, or completely at one with everything. So this statement of baby Buddha, I alone, means I at one with everything am the Holy One. When we have our ceremony, Buddhist ceremony, Buddha's birthday ceremony, there's a little baby Buddha covered with a canopy.

[09:13]

and there are flowers all over the canopy. And the baby Buddha has one hand pointing up and one hand pointing to the earth. And during the ceremony we offer incense to the baby Buddha as a welcoming. then we pour sweet tea over the Buddha. That's very traditional. I think in Japan there is a certain flower that they use for the sweet tea, but I don't know what we use here. Sometimes I use a red zinger. So the feeling is a kind of blessing and welcoming ceremony.

[10:19]

And when we have our meal chant, The old meal chant talks about the innumerable Shakyamuni Nirmanakaya Buddhas. Innumerable means each person is a Shakyamuni Buddha, and each one of us is that little baby. So there are two ways, two understandings of Buddha. One is there is a historical person who was born 2,500 years ago and he lived in India near the border of Nepal and was born into the Shakya clan.

[11:21]

and grew up and came to great enlightenment. And the other understanding, the complementary understanding, is that each one of us is that Shakyamuni Nirmanakaya Buddha. Buddha is not a god. Buddhism, although it is a religion, it's really, as someone said, the condition of our mind. So each one of us has the opportunity to come into our own inheritance as Buddha.

[12:24]

When we come home to ourself, we inherit ourself, our true nature, or our Buddha-mind understanding. So sometimes the Zen school is called the Buddha-mind school of Buddhism, to understand that each one of us has the ability to perfect ourself. Sometimes when I say perfect ourself, that could be misleading. Sometimes we say we take refuge in Buddha as the perfect teacher, but perfect It is a word which in its non-dual sense includes perfection and imperfection.

[13:36]

If we want to be perfect, or if we think that by becoming Buddha we'll be perfect, and that that perfect means no imperfection, then No matter how hard we try, we'll always be discouraged, because in a dualistic sense, we're never perfect. So when little baby Buddha raises his hand to the heavens and to the earth, it's a visual connection with the whole universe. Touching here and touching there means that his fingers meet someplace in full circle, which includes all the good things in the universe and all the bad things in the universe in perfection.

[14:52]

Everything is included in Buddha's perfection. One of the problems that we have in our religious life is that we try to separate out the good part from the bad part of our lives. Religion shows us a path to goodness and to meeting a pure life. And no matter how hard we try, we can never quite make the ideal life for ourselves.

[16:03]

So religion is always a little bit ahead of us. Our ideal life is always more than we can actually meet. And the more we try to create an idealistic life based on purity, the further we go away from it. And we will try almost anything to get ourselves into various situations trying to create a life of purity that's always falling short of possibility. Until we come to realize that our life is one whole piece, our shortcomings and difficulties and the problems and the things that we dislike about ourselves are all part of our life, all part of the purity of our life.

[17:24]

In Buddhism, there are various tendencies, and in one certain style of Buddhism, there's a tendency to separate out, to eliminate all the bad part of our life, and just let the good part stand out. In our Zen practice, Our life doesn't work unless we include and recognize and accept our whole self completely, good and bad, right and wrong, ideal and actual, all together. So instead of trying to get rid of the so-called bad side of our life, We offer our mundane existence to our practice and include everything in our life in the realm of reality.

[18:52]

We try to eliminate, always get rid of the bad part, you're constantly making a value judgment about right and wrong, good and bad. Good and bad do exist. There's a right way to do something and a wrong way to do something. But to be able to accept ourself completely as we are, and see ourself completely as we are, Just to see everything in the light of reality as it is, is the first step of enlightenment, Buddha's enlightenment. So little baby Buddha steps forward right away and he says, holy, seeing everything completely as it is. without leaving anything out.

[19:55]

I am complete. But in order to find that completeness, we have to let go of our idea about things. So first, the first entrance into Zen is to completely let go of all of your opinions and ideas in order to see everything, to see things as they are, really. Our ideas are always very partial There's a story about a man who went to see a Zen master in Japan.

[21:03]

He was a university professor. And he went to the Zen master and had an interview. And the Zen master was pouring him tea. And they had the cup in front of them, and they were pouring the tea, and he just kept on pouring. At a certain point, the tea kept rising higher and higher in the cup. But the Zen Master just kept pouring the tea, and pretty soon it would start overflowing, the cup. And his visitor was rather alarmed, and he said, �Can't you see that the cup is full and no more will go in?� And the Zen Master said, just like this cup, your mind is so full of yourself that nothing will go in. So the task or the necessary entrance point

[22:19]

is to be like a baby Buddha, with nothing in your mind, no opinions, no ideas, to just have nothing. Then you can begin to see again. So, a Buddhist is kind of like a born-again person. Actually, to study Buddhism or to study Zen is actually to let go of your knowledge and understanding, and to be completely empty and start again, to see everything in a completely whole way. And that's maybe the most difficult thing to do.

[23:24]

As a matter of fact, it's called enlightenment. And it's usually the end of practice, but it's actually the beginning of practice. So in our style of practice, we start from enlightenment. Our practice starts from enlightenment, rather than starting from delusion. and gradually gaining enlightenment, we start from nothing. So, the entrance point is nothing. No thought, no idea, no opinions. Just emptying your mind. Emptying your body and mind. And that's why zazen is such an important part of our practice.

[24:30]

Because in zazen, we leave everything behind. You know, Buddhism is called the left home way. Leaving home means in Buddhist time, people would actually leave home. and become monks and give up the world. In our time, it's pretty hard to do. But in a sense, we do leave home, without leaving home, without going anywhere. Leaving home means giving up everything that you depend on as opinions, views and just see everything completely new and whole.

[25:37]

When you see the whole universe in its entirety, there can't be anything else in your mind. You can't have some idea about it in your mind. So, Shakyamuni Buddha, as he grew older, discovered that his father kept him very well protected, because there was a prediction that he was going to become, that he might be a monk, he might be a Recluse, and his father was a very wealthy Raja, and he didn't want his son to do that, he wanted him to inherit his kingdom and to be a worldly person.

[26:48]

And so he kept him very secluded, didn't show him anything, any of the suffering of the world, wouldn't let him look at the suffering of the world, and he was surrounded by entertainers all the time, dancing girls and wonderful kinds of entertainment to keep his mind centered in the palace. But one day, Buddha walked out of the palace And he saw a dead person, a sick person, an old person, and a monk. And he investigated. He'd never seen anything like this before. He'd never heard of death. He'd never seen anybody that was sick. And he wasn't familiar with old people, with what happens during old age.

[27:54]

And he needed to investigate these. So, one day he left. and became the monk that he saw, and became an ascetic and did all the ascetic practices. He got down to where he was eating one grain of rice a day and fasting for months at a And his body was, he never washed, his body was caked with dirt, like a potato, when you dig it out of the ground. And people would come by and defecate on him. That was the extreme, he was called the extreme ascetic. And then one day he realized that asceticism was not the way.

[29:03]

There was a middle way between asceticism and indulgence. But still, Buddhism tends to has an ascetic edge to it, even though it's not considered asceticism, it does have an ascetic edge, which is lean rather than fat, you might say. Buddhism is always on the lean side of things, rather than on the fat side. So we say to have warm feet and a cool head. Not a heated up head. Always bring me down to a nice cool temperature so that we don't get into trouble.

[30:10]

When Buddha finally had enlightenment, it was when he decided he sat down under a tree. And he said, I'm just going to stay here until I get enlightened. And I'm going to cross my legs, stay here until I get enlightened. And he did. So, cross-legged sitting has always been a central part of Buddhist practice. And we, some people in Buddhism, sit in order to be enlightened. But our understanding is more that because we're enlightened, we sit, rather than seeking enlightenment through sitting. sitting as an expression of our realization rather than a seeking of it. So, the seeking and the expression are bound up with each other.

[31:27]

So, in a sense, we're always seeking enlightenment, but in the same sense, the seeking is the enlightenment itself. So each step is realization, and at the same time is seeking. So when you stop seeking, maybe there's no realization, but at the same time, if you don't see the realization within the seeking, then you're always looking for something. beyond where you are. So the important point in sitting zazen is to realize that it's right here, that there's no place to go to find it.

[32:35]

And you don't have to do something. You don't have to go someplace special. to find enlightenment. If you just stop where you are and look at yourself, you can see clearly. You have the opportunity to see clearly. So when we're always running, it's pretty hard to see. It's like the water, when it's always turbulent, it's hard to see through. But when you calm the water, and it's very still, then you can see all the way to the bottom. So, when we sit in zazen, very still, we don't think about something special.

[33:52]

It's just like baby Buddha putting one finger, one hand up and one hand down. Sitting in zazen is just like that. Without anything in your mind, to just be connected to the heaven and the earth. to just realize who we are, without any idea interfering, just direct experience. All of us are sitting here right now. just directly experiencing ourself. It's quite wonderful.

[34:57]

Each one of us is a baby Buddha, whether we know it or not. Just experiencing ourself in our completeness, wholeness. Nothing to add and nothing to take away. Breath is just coming and going. Breath is just in and out, just in and out. Whose breath is it? Whose breathing? Just some great functioning.

[36:11]

th th So on this day of our Buddha's birth, of our birth as Buddha, let's be joyous and happy and let ourselves be free, feel some freedom with each other and with our true nature.

[37:16]

Very simply. Thank you.

[37:32]

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