Welcome, everyone. And welcome, especially, to the new people, a number of new people. I'm Taigen Leighton, the teacher here at Ancient Dragons Zen Gate. And today's Buddha's birthday, or at least the day that is celebrated as Buddha's birthday in East Asia. There's a different day that's celebrated in South Asia. And we don't really know when he was born. But we honor his birthday anyway. And this statue that we've bathed of the baby Buddha honors this story, excuse me, the legend. We don't really know historically, there were no videotapes of the event, but the story is that right as soon as Buddha was born, he took seven steps forward, and seven steps backward, and seven steps to the left, and seven steps to the right, and after each seven steps, and actually sometimes it says seven steps in all directions, So, I don't know what that means.

[01:02]

But then he raised his hand and he lowered his hand and he said, below the heavens and above the earth, I alone am the world honored one. Pretty cocky kid. So this story is that he was born as the Buddha. Of course, that's one story. But that story is why we have this statue of this baby Buddha with one hand raised and one hand lowered. And there are various different versions of this story, but anyway. one of the legends about the Buddha. Another legend, and this is particularly for the people in our practice period we started last week about the different bodhisattva figures, major figures of awakening beings, that we're gonna be studying over the next couple of months. In some ways, the Buddha was a bodhisattva too until he became the Buddha.

[02:07]

The story about that is that he was born, one story is that he was born as a prince and his father was a king. Historically, probably his father was like a village chieftain or a chieftain of a region. But anyway, the story goes that he was the son of a king and then There was a kind of wandering sage, a wandering psychic who came by just after he was born and looked at the kid and said, wow, this is a wonderful special kid. And of course, all children are special, right? And this wandering psychic said, this child either is going to be a great political ruler, a great powerful being in the world, or he might be a great spiritual sage and wise man. So his father, according to the story, was a king. Of course, wanted him to be a political ruler. So he protected him and gave him this wonderful childhood where he was protected and never saw, the story goes, he never even saw somebody who was old or sick or dying until he was 29.

[03:25]

He had this wonderful, you know, he had all the pleasures he could possibly want and was pampered. But the point of Buddha as this archetype for all the other bodhisattvas is he had this choice, which we all have. to some degree or another, whether to devote himself to power and material wealth or to spiritual activity, to helping to care for suffering beings, to helping to awaken. So Buddha just means awakened one. And at age 29, he left the palace and wandered off, the story goes, and eventually sat down under a tree and sat up all night and saw the morning star and was awake. He touched the ground just to say, yes, yes. and he became the awakened one. So we sit like this, we sit upright, to sit like the Buddha, to see the awakening in our lives and in the world.

[04:31]

So this is the story that all Bodhisattva practitioners, that's what we do here. We practice for the sake of all beings because we can see that we're connected to all beings. So we sit upright like the Buddha. We sit and feel the Buddha on our seat. So this is our practice. But this choice we all have, that the Buddha had. But when he was first born, he was this cocky kid and he kinda knew, he knew something. He knew that he was this Buddha. So anyway, that's the story. And so, you know, he kind of needs to cool out. So we give him a bath. And all babies need a bath, you know, when they first get born. So that's what we just did. So here we are celebrating this. And I think a couple of the children have birthday cards for the Buddha. And I want to just open this up for discussion and questions and to talk about the Buddha.

[05:35]

the baby Buddha and babies and maybe also now we can start serving treats and juice and so Michael will lead that and maybe Dylan and Jerry and Aisin and Sid can help and if any of the children want to help, maybe you're welcome to, but we also want to hear from the children. So, this is just for those of you who know our formal meal practice. This is very informal. As soon as you are served, you can just go ahead. So, thank you, Michael. So, does anyone have any questions or comments about the baby Buddha? Yes, Kevin. You know, I don't know.

[06:39]

Maybe it's to help him wake up? To get over himself? I don't know. It's tradition. I don't know why. Does anybody have any ideas about that? Yeah, it's a kind of blessing. Okay. Flowers blossoming. Good. Good. Belinda? Yeah, I was going to say that. I think there was one story that said the dragon kings, the deities actually come and steal water out of the well. That's good. Yeah, I like that too. Thank you. Maybe you could leave some there too for those two people. Thanks.

[07:40]

And for where you're sitting, too. So maybe you'll need more. So yeah, so we use tea sometimes, sometimes water. This is more of an announcement for the service. Cops are going to come around, and there's going to be juice and tea. So if you don't want one, wait for the other one. There's hot tea. Hot tea and apple juice. Great. Thank you very much, Katie. And I don't know if they will need more servers, Katie. Maybe you can check with Michael. So Dylan, maybe you can leave cups here too. So other questions about the Buddha, or the baby Buddha, or babies, or tea, or anything else?

[08:52]

Yes, Kathy. That's a really good question. You know, he had, not that I know of, he had lots of cousins. And he had a son, because he got married, and actually a bunch of his cousins and his son and his wife and his mother, or his aunt, who is his stepmother, they say his mom died in childbirth. Sad. But many of his relatives became monks or nuns in his order later when he became the Buddha. So it was a family business. And we also need a few more plates around. Thank you, Katie.

[09:57]

So I think there were a few birthday cards for the Buddha. Do we want to see? Read? Oh, good. Can you hold it up so people can see? Oh, yeah. And there's the baby Buddha. Oh, good. And a big piece of cake, yeah. Maya, can we see your... Oh, great. So other questions?

[11:13]

Comments? So please feel free to just start with your treats as soon as they come around, as soon as you're served. This is informal. tagging as Buddhist birthday a big celebration in Buddhist cultures? Maybe the biggest. Okay. It's called Vesak in South Asia. It's at a different time in South Asia. I forget, does anybody remember? I think it's late May. Late May, yeah. It's in the spring too.

[12:16]

But it's, so we don't really know historically the right dates of all of these things. The history, in India, history was not so important, so. Could you get me a napkin? And they also had a different kind of calendar. They had a lunar calendar anyway, so. Yes, Belinda. Yeah. So it got translated to the solar calendar. Yeah. Thank you. I think Suzanne needs a plate too. Yes, Reed.

[13:37]

Okay, there's this different holiday we honor in mid-February. So, the Buddha died, he, There's different stories about that too. So the Buddhist order of monks and nuns went around and did begging rounds and just ate whatever they received. So mostly Buddhists like to be vegetarian, but one story is that he was given pork and it was bad. And that's what he died from. Another story, depends on the translation of what the original is, was that it was mushrooms, bad mushrooms.

[14:39]

But at any rate, we have a statue that we bring out in mid-February of the Buddha lying on his side, and he lied on his right side. which is actually the position that monks in the monastery, when they sleep in the meditation hall, lie on their right side. So that's a kind of meditation for sleeping. And there are, he died between two sala trees, which have, each of them had two, they're called twin sala trees, each of them have two trunks. And there's an early and there's a later sutra about his passing away. It's called Parinirvana, passing away into nirvana, because when the Buddha died, then he was not reborn anymore. So that was his entering into freedom from rebirth. So it was, for him, a wonderful event.

[15:42]

For his students, it was terrible because they were losing the Buddha. but he said that the teaching would be like, for them, after that. And then there's another, so there are many different stories about all these things. In the Lotus Sutra, which is important in Bodhisattva teaching, and also in Sutta Zen, they say that the Buddha actually will live a very, very, very, very long time, and he just pretends to pass away, Because some people need him to pass away so that they can do their practice. So that's a different holiday. But anyway, that's what happens. That's how we talk about that. Kathy? I know in meditation instructions, when I got to be 20, you said you did meditation at school. Oh, great. And it made me curious. Maya, is there meditation in school?

[16:48]

Tell me, what kind of meditation do they do in your school? Well, that's nice. Yeah, so I think in schools and in hospitals now, people understand that meditation helps in calming and healing and settling. The kind of meditation we do, we keep here, in this tradition, we have our eyes open. So you probably heard that. And there's no chanting or music, although we do chanting. As you heard, sometimes. So it's just more settling and being aware of whatever's happening. But it's related to the kind of meditation it sounds like you do in your school. Anybody else who is here for meditation instruction who has any basic questions about this tradition or the meditation?

[17:57]

Yeah. Partly, we have our eyes open just to help not fall asleep. Because when we do, sometimes we sit all day or sit in longer periods. And part of The challenge of meditation is not just to get into a funny sitting position, but when we settle, one thing we notice is that our mind is racing around sometimes. But also sometimes we get very sleepy when we settle. So keeping your eyes open helps with that. But more than that, I say we keep our eyes open the way we have our ears open. We're not looking at any particular thing on the wall. We're just aware of the visual field around us. And it's not to lock anything out. We look at the wall, it's like a mirror. We see ourselves. So as we sit, we see our thoughts and feelings come up.

[19:20]

And we don't try and shut that out, but we don't try and do anything either. We're just aware. And we also see And this happens more when we do a regular sitting practice, sitting every day or many days a week, even for a little while, and we start to see our connection to all the people in our life and to everyone. So it's a way of, so it's a mirror and it's also a window to see how we're connected to everything. So we don't have to focus on any part of the wall. It's just gently keeping your eyes open. And you can close your eye, let your eyelids close a little bit for a little while if you need to. So it's just a gentle gaze, like being aware of the sounds around you gently. So you could try it that way and see if that helps. easier to do that over time.

[20:21]

You just let your eyes relax a little bit. It's actually easier to do looking at the wall than looking at the floor, where our eyes want to grab onto all the patterns we could possibly see. And the wall presents a little bit of a stimuli. Oh, yeah. Except, yeah. Because now when you teach the newcomers, you put them. Everything breathes together. Yes. Yeah, I think it's actually true in ways that it's not how we usually think.

[21:48]

Of course, we're all breathing and sharing the same oxygen and so forth, but also The floorboards, the wall, the candle is sharing in this atmosphere in this room. And we don't usually think of inanimate things as breathing, but plants are involved in some exchange of, they provide, they take our carbon dioxide and provide oxygen. And so there's a way in which And part of our practice is to take care of things as well as we can, and that reflects our sense of the world and so-called objects as connected to us in some way. So yeah, thank you. So we start to feel our connection to things in a different way.

[22:53]

And I think keeping our eyes open helps that a little bit, and keeping our ears open. Other comments about about babies, we're honoring the baby Buddha today. What is it like when we're first born or can people report on, some of you are mothers maybe and can talk about or have witnessed births and can talk about what is that like? What would it have been like for the baby Buddha to have stood up and pointed up and pointed down and what's going on there?

[24:01]

Why that story? It's strange. I don't understand it. Any ideas? I think that's the story. I think he did that exceptional thing, and then he went back to baby talk. Yeah. That took a lot of effort, so he had to, yeah. He needed to nap after that. But somehow, he managed to.

[25:02]

make this, do this performance. But, you know, there's all kinds of stories, you know, in all kinds of religions about great leaders and, you know, and strange things they do. But this story is particularly odd. So any thoughts anybody has? Yes, Mike. Mm-hmm. Yeah, if he said, I alone am the world honored one, somehow that had to include everything.

[26:14]

So obviously that's a story that people came up with. And the question in my mind, I guess, is why does that meet? development and struggle and pursuit of wisdom with his whole being and then his awakening, that in some way that wasn't enough and it became necessary that he was always awakened and that he knew he was awakened and that something showed that right from the beginning. of all babies.

[27:33]

You know who you are, or were, but all babies are a little bit miraculous in that Babies are capable of empathy. I forget what the studies are, but at extremely young ages, babies are capable of empathy. If one baby in a nursery is crying, other babies will cry in sympathy, they say, or maybe because they're also feeling distressed suddenly. But also babies will, if they see someone upset, they will try to, there were studies that show that they will try to do something to help, you know, comfort that person or offset their suffering a little bit. And so, you know, it's always, I've always been a little bit hung up on the whole issue of, you know, could the Buddha have been raised entirely without suffering and knew no suffering? I don't think it's humanly possible. But the thing that I take away from that is, you know, when we're babies, we are almost entirely, well, really entirely dependent on comfort coming to us from the outside for our suffering.

[28:49]

The only thing that can ease our suffering is it comes to us from the outside. And as we get older, we learn a little bit about how to work with our environment so that we can ease our own suffering or prevent suffering for ourselves or for other people. And everybody's in that process of learning a little bit more about how can I help stop this suffering, my own suffering or other people's suffering. And it doesn't stop when we get to be adults. I feel like that's what spiritual practice is about, continuing to open to awareness of suffering inside ourselves and outside ourselves and a greater awareness all the time of, you know, how can I help to ease this? And maybe that's partly what Zazen helps us do is to quiet down long enough so that maybe we can reflect on, you know, how we ease suffering internally and externally. So I see it as sort of like a lifelong development process, but that's kind of miraculous.

[29:50]

baby and yeah really there is this just amazing energy that they bring out of everybody around them and some of my best teachers were listed on. And she saw that in the room and she just like went to it and sat and we stood up and sat and just the act of the ability to sit and stand up and sit and stand up was just new and fresh and what we call in practice beginners mind. And it was just it was such a good teaching for me.

[31:03]

That's cool. I never thought of that as an image of beginner's mind. Yeah, that works. And also going back to Caroline's question, that in some way the Buddha was just a human being who awakened, right? But then also as the Buddhist teaching and philosophy, if you will, developed, there's this idea of dharmakaya, of the Buddha as the nature of everything, and so then that becomes special, and then you have this special story. Maybe that's where, you know, this thing comes from. I don't know. David.

[32:21]

I want to make a comment on babies. When my children were first born, my wife was nursing them, and I would, at night, go downstairs and walk with them. just to be with them after nursing. And it's something I lost a little bit coming back to here, trying to get back to that place. And then as they got older, I had expectations, they had expectations. Thank you.

[33:53]

Yes, Belinda. We have to do it. Yes. Nobody else can tell you how to be Buddha. Yeah. I like that. Thank you. Oh, ask Phyllis. To me, it's seemingly a realistic story of Buddha's birth.

[35:01]

So often we fall into the habit of looking at our lifetime as, begin as childbirth, begin at the moment when we're born, or conceptually. So, for Buddha, we have also learned that, from other stories of his lifetime, that he had had this many, many lifetimes before that particular suffering. So, it's not at all surprising that he would be able to walk, maybe, since he had lived eons before he was falling back into the body. And so, to me,

[36:16]

Yes, yes, yeah, so our usual way of looking at what's happening is limited and we don't understand all of the costs and conditions to anything. Yeah, and yeah, thank you. So, any, yes, Michael. Be a light unto yourself or but I like Mary Oliver re-translates it as, become a light for the world.

[37:32]

So, that's another way to see it. Yeah. Yeah, why shouldn't every baby just be able to stand up and point up and down and take seven steps and, you know, make some proclamation? Sure. Yes, Saturday Night Fever, yeah. On that note. Does anybody have something else? We'll close with the four Bodhisattva vows we chant, which are in the back of your chant book, and we chant three times.

[38:34]

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