Good morning. I thought I would talk a little bit about the Bodhisattva Ceremony, which we just did. There seem to be a number of newer people. The Bodhisattva Ceremony is called Ryaku Fusatsu, which in Japanese means short repentance. ceremony. And in Buddhism, since the beginning of Buddhism 2,500 years ago, repentance's ceremony has always played a very central part in Buddhist life.

[01:12]

And the monks used to have confession twice a month on the new moon and the full moon. So life of conduct was very important to the Sangha. And the original repentance ceremony was much longer because the preceptor would recite the 250 rules of behavior. And then if anyone had transgressed those, they would acknowledge it. And then the elders of the Sangha would decide what kind of, what to do with the person, what kind of restriction or repentance that monks should do.

[02:25]

So the monks are pretty, the life was very strict for those monks. And in time, actually, the Sangha became kind of rule-bound or precept bound, which is what happens when you overdo something. And so that in Japan, the precepts were condensed to 16 precepts, which includes the vows of taking the vows to acknowledge the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, and the three pure precepts, which is to avoid evil, do good, and to devote your life to all sentient beings.

[03:30]

And then there are the ten prohibitory precepts. This particular ceremony, usually in Japan they recite the precepts as well as doing the bodhisattva ceremony. We haven't done that. But today I just thought I would talk a little bit about That list of things that we all did, just did, all the bowing, what we were bowing to, and why, and something of the intention of it. I appreciate your, for the people who have not done that before, your willingness to enter into something so easily. First part of the, just before I say that, this is the, this particular ceremony is the short version and there's no particular transgression that we talk about, that we deal with here.

[04:58]

What we're dealing with is more of a non-dualistic approach to life and precepts, which is not so much to admonish for something done in a particular way, but to acknowledge all of our activity, all of our acts, and to reunite with the universe. So in the beginning, we don't say, I did this and that. We say, all my ancient karma from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion, I now fully avow. So it means that everything that we've ever done in our life. If there's a past life, then we acknowledge that.

[06:04]

And we bring it into the light of the world. Basically, it means my straying from unity. In Buddhism, instead of dwelling on sins, we put more meaning on straying from unity, straying from our true nature, ignorance. So instead of sin, we talk about ignorance, doing something out of ignorance rather than out of wisdom. So the mistakes we make are mistakes of ignorance, even though they may be very purposeful. But even our purposeful mistakes we do out of ignorance because we don't realize that we're separating ourselves when we do something self-centered.

[07:20]

or which doesn't take into account the whole of our surroundings. So when we lose that perspective, when we lose the perspective of our surroundings and the wholeness of life, then we fall into ignorance and our actions come from ignorance, whether we like it or not. So all of our ancient karma from beginningless greed, hate and delusion. Greed means wanting too much and causing a lot of problems because of that. Hate is anger or ill will, which separates us from each other. And delusion is ignorance.

[08:22]

not understanding how things work, not understanding that when you do something, that action creates a response, and the response creates a fruit which ripens at some point or another, and then we feel at some point, right away, or maybe a little bit down the line, or maybe a long ways down the line, that response will come to fruition. And we say, well, geez, why did this happen to me? So our ignorance of the law of cause and effect, which is called karma, actually karma is the action itself, is It's truth and consequences.

[09:34]

We play the game of truth and consequences all the time. So what comes to us is something partly created by our own actions. So we say, all the ancient karma. all the actions of the past, from beginningless greed, ill will, and delusion, born through body, speech, and mind. Body is action, speech is what we say, and mind is what we think. I now fully allow. So there it is, folks. I offer it to Buddha. And then, after we make that offering, the first part is bringing up our ancient karma, and the rest of the ceremony is reuniting with Buddha, Dharma, Sangha.

[10:56]

Buddha is all the, we say all the seven Buddhas before Buddha. That's the first one. But it really means innumerable Buddhas before Buddha. Seven is just a number. We could say all the Buddhas before Buddha, because Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha, is not the first Buddha, and Shakyamuni Buddha is not really a god, or creator, or something, but a manifestation of human perfection, which is united with everything. So in Buddhism, the cosmology of Buddhism, there are innumerable Buddhas of the past, and Buddhism talks about kalpas and aeons of the past where there were these other Buddhas.

[12:11]

There's a sutra that has the names of 3,000 Buddhas of the past. But it's just a way of imprinting in our mind that there has always been Buddhas. And Shakyamuni Buddha is the Buddha that the inspiration for our present aeon or millennium or Buddha land or whatever you want to call it. And then we pay homage to Shakyamuni Buddha, who was the focal point for this time. A man born in India, but we don't always think of Buddha as just a man born in India. We're all Buddha. We're actually identifying with ourselves. So when we talk about the seven Buddhas before Buddha, or Shakyamuni Buddha, we ourselves are Shakyamuni Buddha.

[13:15]

In the meal chant, the way it was translated the first time, it was, we pay homage to the numerous Shakyamuni Buddhas, meaning the whole Sangha, everyone in the Sangha is Shakyamuni Buddha. And then we pay homage to Maitreya Buddha, right? Maitreya Buddha. I think there's one left out of here. Is this a good one? homage to Maitreya Buddha. Maitreya Buddha is the Buddha of, like the messianic Buddha, the Buddha of the future.

[14:20]

And most Buddhas are pictured sitting cross-legged in meditation. And you can usually recognize a figure, Maitreya, because he usually has a more relaxed pose. More kind of like this. And with one leg up, but he's sitting in a chair. Much more relaxed. And Maitri means love. And so the future Buddha is the Buddha who unites everyone with love. But there is no future Buddha. It's only ourselves. So if you want to see Maitreya Buddha, just act like Maitreya Buddha.

[15:29]

So all these Buddhas are really aspects of ourself. You can also talk about the Buddha of the future if you want to. It's okay. In the future there will be Maitreya Buddha who will come down from Tushita Heaven to unite everyone. I remember a book came out several years ago What do you do, what do we do till the Messiah comes? It's a good koan. So, Maitreya Buddha is maybe the Buddha that, our own Buddha that we need to turn into. And Monjushri is a Bodhisattva.

[16:32]

And the Bodhisattvas are also Buddhas, but there are various levels of Bodhisattva. Monjushri Bodhisattva and Samantabhadra Bodhisattva and Avalokiteshvara are like celestial Buddhas or models, idealized models. Munjushri is the epitome of prajna, or non-differentiated wisdom, the root of wisdom. Not conventional wisdom, but Buddha wisdom. And Bodhisattva is a being who is on the path to becoming Buddha. But we also say, you know, everyone in the Sangha is a Bodhisattva. Anyone who practices is a Bodhisattva.

[17:36]

And Bodhisattvas are not limited to the Buddhist Sangha. We can recognize Bodhisattvas everywhere. And Samadhipadra Bodhisattva is the Bodhisattva of many practices. Sometimes it's called the Bodhisattva of Compassion, but it's easy to get Samantabhadra mixed up with Avalokitesvara, because Avalokitesvara is the embodiment of compassion. So, to distinguish Samantabhadra. Samantabhadra is usually pictured riding on an elephant. And the elephant is the symbol of practice. Samantabhadra Bodhisattva is the Bodhisattva who practices all practices.

[18:40]

Sometimes we say the shining practice Bodhisattva, the meal chant, we say the shining practice Bodhisattva, Samantabhadra. So, Samantabhadra epitomizes our own practice, the various practices that we have. And Avalokitesvara is the epitome, of course, of compassion, and in China was Kuan Yin, and in Japan, Kannon. or kanjizai, the one who hears the cries of the world, or one who looks down on suffering humanity, and not looks down on them, but sees from a broad perspective, like standing on the top of a mountain, he sees everything.

[19:50]

So Avalokiteśvara is our compassionate nature. So these, when we bow, we bow three times, we go through this line three times and bow. So it's reestablishing our connection with these qualities in ourselves. And then the four vows, beings are without end, I vow to save them, are the Bodhisattva's vows. We now have different translations where we say, beings are without end, I vow to awaken with them. which is less messianic and more of a pure feeling. I am not standing outside and going to save all human beings.

[20:57]

As a human being, I vow to awaken with everyone and help them to awaken. For Bodhisattva, Bodhisattva's life is about helping to awaken sentient beings. That's the purpose of a Bodhisattva's life. And in the Mahayana, the Bodhisattva gives up advancing to full Buddhahood. in order to help sentient beings. I remember one time I was talking to Suzuki Roshi and I said, but you know, I'm not a saint and I'm not actually so good, you know.

[22:00]

And he said, well, teachers are not saints. There are people with problems like everyone else. If you don't have these problems, it's pretty hard to help other people. If you don't know the nature of your own problems and have all the problems that people have, it's pretty hard to help them. Then he showed me some calligraphy on the wall. I can't remember what it said, but it was something like, no saint or something, or get in the mud. So by helping to awaken yourself, by really working on yourself to awaken yourself, you also help to awaken others without really trying.

[23:03]

Saving sentient beings has a kind of feeling of trying to help other people. And sometimes we have a big problem when we try to help other people. Sometimes the more we try to help, the worse it gets. So it makes a big difference what we do with ourself. We have one person that we can experiment with, and that's ourself. You can do something good or bad, you know. So vowing to awaken with all sentient beings is a new way that we have of saying this. We haven't gotten around to changing everything yet. And then we say delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. and the Dharmagate is endless.

[24:06]

I vow to enter it." It means there's many ways to enter the Dharmagate. Dharma is a word that has several meanings, but it really has one meaning and various ways of expressing that one meaning. It means everything from the Dharmakaya, which is the inexpressible potential of the universe, through which everything manifests. And Dharma also means the smallest insignificant thing. It's a dharma. Everything in the world is a dharma, with a small d. And then there's the technical way that the Buddhists devised of talking about what constitutes a human being, both mentally and physically, and those elements are called dharmas.

[25:17]

And so all dharmas are an expression of dharma. All small things, all the little particular things in the universe are an expression of dharmakaya, or big mind of the universe. So the small dharmas and the big dharmas go together. Small dharmas are an expression of the big dharmas, big dharma. So when we say the dharmakaya gate is endless, it means that you can penetrate to the dharmakaya through any gate, through any feeling or emotion. You can find emptiness or true mind through any particle of dust. My son has a little book that I used to read to him called Happy Little Raindrop.

[26:35]

That little raindrop, did you get that? That little raindrop falls down, and he goes through all these adventures in the world. He falls down on a leaf, and then he falls down on the head of a cow. Then he falls under a blade of grass, and then he falls onto a twig. And he's carried out into the ocean, and he has all these adventures. And then he goes back up home on a sunbeam. And all his brothers and sisters are going up back to the sun, and this sunbeam, you know, it illustrates his little life, but it also illustrates something about, you know, how things work together, and the Dharmakaya is like this big sun, and the Dharmas are like these little sunbeams, these little raindrops, everything being recycled.

[27:53]

Kind of a wonderful little illustration, story. So all of those things are dharmas, and they're all expressions of dharma. And we can get to the dharma through the dharmas. Through any little raindrop expresses the whole thing. We really understand a raindrop, we can see all the way through. to its source. This is called studying the Dharma. And then Buddha's way is unsurpassable, I vow to become it. Well, what can I say? Then we take the three refuges.

[28:59]

I take refuge in the Buddha. Before all being, immersing body and mind deeply in the way, awakening true mind. So true mind is also another name for Buddha. Sometimes Buddha is called true mind. Sometimes Buddha is called suchness. Things as they are. Sometimes Buddha is called dharmakaya, sometimes sambhogakaya, or great spirit of things, of the universe. Sometimes Buddha is just myself. Instead of saying take refuge, refuge is correct, but meaning is to be one with. So we always say to be one with the Buddha, that's myself.

[30:03]

And then we have to say, well, what is myself? So there opens up a big koan. The first koan, what is myself? I take refuge in the Buddha. That's myself. Well, what is myself? Well, happy little raindrop. And then I take refuge in the Dharma. entering deeply the merciful ocean of Buddha's way. Sometimes Dharma is called the law, the way things actually are. So what we try to do as Buddhists is just to maintain the law, to understand what the law really is, and to maintain it, to go with it. not somebody's law that they made up.

[31:05]

How do things work? Is that the same as Tao? Tao is way. It's different, but it's another way of expressing it. Tao is another way of expressing the law. It also means path, you know. Path means a way, following things as they go, so we don't make mistakes, too many mistakes. And then I take refuge in the Sangha. bringing harmony to everyone, free from hindrance. So Sangha is like harmonious living together, harmoniously living together. And it can be family, Buddhists,

[32:13]

people, universe. So in a sense, the Buddhist community is Sangha, strictly speaking. But in a bigger sense, the whole universe is Sangha. We have to find our balance and harmony with everything. So in a big sense, wherever we are, we're surrounded by Sangha. So three refuges, Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. So this is a ceremony of presenting ourselves as we are and renewing our intention for the present and the future. There's no time for questions.

[33:22]

Thank you.

[33:24]

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