Good morning. I'm happy to be here on this late fall day. Thank you to Sojin Roshi for inviting me to give a talk. This is day four of our 2019 Rohatsu Sesshin and so we are deep in the middle of it right now. which is good. I hope it's good for you. Satyagrashi began his talks on Monday saying that he was going to talk about Buddha's enlightenment. We're still getting there, I think, although what he talked about is kind of the nuts and bolts of enlightenment, and I want to expand on that a little and also tell some of the story and the back story around Buddha's enlightenment.

[01:15]

what do we is it saturday or sunday that we have the ceremony saturday so saturday uh after lecture we're going to have buddha's enlightenment ceremony which is a great joyous celebration where we uh tromp around the zendo and make a mess and uh you know chant loudly and and really celebrate uh the fact that uh this amazing event happened so long ago, 2600 years ago, and because it happened, here we are. So generally, Buddha's enlightenment in East Asian tradition is celebrated on the 8th day of the 12th lunar month. And With the westernization of the calendar in Japan, that's been kind of set on December 8th.

[02:28]

And in a lot of the rest of the Buddhist world, we, in the East Asian tradition, we celebrate Buddha's enlightenment. Buddha's birthday and Buddha's death on different days. And a lot of the Southern and Southeast Asian traditions, they're sort of combined into what's called Vesak, which generally takes place on the first full moon of the fifth lunar month. But here we are with Buddha's enlightenment. The basic outlines of the story, I think you know, that long ago in North India, Gautama, Chakya Gautama, left the life of princely privilege and wandered through the cities and forests, determined to free himself from the bondage of old age, sickness and death.

[03:42]

He was convinced that he could do that. So, he became a wandering mendicant and he studied and traveled in communities with other renunciates, shramanas, other people who had left the world and were also seeking their own form of release. So at the age of 35, after six years of practicing with numerous forest masters, the Buddha had gone about as far as he could go. I'm going to come back to this. His last teacher was Udaka. who had a community of students and Udaka's accomplishment was the accomplishment of the mind of neither perception nor non-perception.

[05:00]

And he acknowledged that the Buddha had attained that level of awareness. And he was pleased by that and decided that the Buddha would be an appropriate adept to turn over the responsibility of his community to. And Buddha thought about this. And he thought, well, this, you know, this is a pretty good meditation, but this is really not what I'm looking for. And, you know, he did not want to be saddled with the responsibility for teaching, particularly teaching something that he felt was not, he just intuited that it was not complete. So, He went off by himself and he practiced all of the ascetic practices that he could.

[06:22]

I mean, he had brought with him five friends from Udaka's community and so the six of them took up residence in the in the forest and they vowed to be very, very strict with themselves. Let's see if I have a description. One of the things in the Pali Sutras, there's a lot of stuff, there's a wonderful book called The Life of Buddha, which is a collection of different narratives, a variety of narratives from the Pali Sutras and commentaries about the life of Buddha and the section on the Enlightenment is very good and the section about what preceded the Enlightenment is very interesting.

[07:42]

He went into the forest and he had this vision, these similes appeared to him that he was like a piece of wet wood, and that if you wanted to build a fire, wet wood would not burn well. You know, you wanted to season it and dry it, and he felt that his body-mind was soaked, still soaked with desire. And so, that's why he decided that he would take up this ascetic path. That's what they did. They pushed their own endurance and they refused nourishment and they looked on, he and his friend looked on, looked for the fruits of this, of these austerities and he strove to reach beyond the level, beyond the limits of body and mind.

[09:04]

Suppose I take very little food, say just a morsel each time I do, and as I do, as I did so, my body reached a state of extreme emaciation. My limbs became like jointed segments of vine stems or bamboo stems because of eating so little. My ribs jutted out as gaunt as the crazy rafters of an old roofless barn. And the gleam of my eyes sunk far down in their sockets. They looked like the gleam of water at the bottom of a well. If I made water or evacuated my bowels, I fell over on my face there. Yuck. If I tried to ease my body by rubbing my limbs with my hands, the hair, rotted at its roots, fell away from my body as I rubbed because of eating so little.

[10:08]

Pretty graphic, you know? Don't do this. I'll tell you, to cut to spoiler alert, this didn't work. So the Buddha was on the brink of self-eradication. In trying to subdue himself and his restless passions that he already identified as part of his problems, he succumbed to the use of force, banged himself into submission as the aesthetics of his time counseled. He moved into the forest and he said to himself, I have to defeat all my fears. And so, he moved into the forest where it was pretty dangerous in the forest there. There were snakes and there were tigers and bears and defeating his fears didn't mean that his fears went away.

[11:11]

He ignored them. He beat them back. So, he was very fearful, but he sat there. He was also very determined. And at the same time, he was trying to go deeply into these problems, into the problem of birth and death. And he started to question himself. He started to question whether this was the path. I thought, whenever a monk or Brahman has felt painful, wracking, piercing feeling due to striving, it can equal this but not exceed it. But by this grueling penance, I have attained no distinction higher than the human state that is worthy of a noble one's knowledge or vision.

[12:21]

He asked, might there be another way to enlightenment? And that was a critical thought. And this is a moment that I think was a turning moment to him. And you may know the story, you may not, but he found a memory. And the memory was of a time when he was a young boy and he was sitting under a tree. plowing festival in the Shakya tribe and his father was there and all of the people of the community were there working in the fields energetically, joyously.

[13:23]

He said, I thought of a time when my father was working and I was sitting in the cool shade of a rose apple tree quite secluded from sensual desires, secluded from unwholesome things, and I had entered into the abode of the first jhana, first meditation. He didn't know that at the time because he was a boy, but in reflection now from all the work and training that he had done, he saw, oh, that was the first of these concentrations, which was a whole arc of concentrations that were part of the Indian meditation training. And they're also part of Buddhism. So I'd enter upon the board of the first jhana, which is accompanied by thinking and exploring with happiness and pleasure, born of seclusion.

[14:32]

And seclusion here doesn't mean isolation. It means just born of Being free from desires, it's actually what Sojourn, what it says in the first line of the Shin Shin Mi. It's the great way is easy. If only you can avoid partiality or picking and choosing. So in that moment, sitting under that tree as a boy, he experienced that and he hadn't remembered it all this time that he was on over six years that he was on the spiritual quest he hadn't remembered that he reflected upon this time under the rose apple tree watching his father work

[15:37]

He remembered a simple pleasure that sprung from his state of mind, one that he compared to the fruits of concentration and meditation. The commentator says, under the canopy of the protective arbor and his father's benevolent but non-interfering presence, A young child experienced a taste of joy that was born out of relaxed contemplation. The pleasure that was just being and living. And in the midst of the ascetic practices that he was doing, this came flooding back. And it was amazing to him. He said, you know, he thought, maybe there's another way.

[16:45]

He also noticed in Kamege that there was something a little scary about the memory of that pleasure. Which was interesting. The fear or the anxiety seemed to come out of nowhere. So why am I afraid of such pleasure, he wondered. He made one comment and then didn't expand on it. He just said, it is pleasure that has nothing to do with sensual desires and unwholesome things.

[17:47]

And he wondered, how could he embrace that pleasure? What fear really resided in that moment. And that was the impetus for him to move forward. It's a wonderful story. If you look at the path of his meditation, he started with the Kalamas and he studied with Udaka and he studied all of these, these meditations that were, could be described as very advanced meditations, meditations that come in the, in the final four formless jhanas.

[18:58]

But there were meditations about, in a way there were meditations about losing the body. Meditation of neither perception nor non-perception seems like kind of disappearing into nothingness. Which is okay, it happens to all of us at times in our meditation. But you can't live like that. Nobody lives in that state. We're talking with Lori about this yesterday. She was talking about it in the context of hypnotherapy. And that those meditations you could describe as their trance states and we all have them at certain moments in our lives but again we don't live there, you know, you can't.

[20:15]

Whereas what the Buddha was recognizing in that moment as a child was that seems to me very much in his body and free in his body, and it's precisely a place that one can live. You can't make it happen necessarily, but as my old teacher, Eken Roshi, said, Enlightenment is an accident, and Zazen makes you accident-prone. Zazen makes you accident-prone.

[21:19]

Yeah, I mean, all the teachers say that. So this was the prelude to Buddha's sitting down. So, he found a place outside of Bodh Gaya, and he sat down at the foot of the Bodhi tree, and there's purportedly a relic or descendant of that tree at Bodh Gaya. Probably, I've been there. Some of you probably have been there. I think the environment is somewhat different than it was in Buddha's time. It's hardly the place for a recluse.

[22:22]

They have competing chantings and sound systems and, you know, but it's He sat down there on the banks of the river and he said, he described the scene, he said, there I saw a beautiful stretch of countryside, a beautiful grove, a clear flowing river, a lovely ford and a village nearby for support. And I thought to myself, indeed, this is a good place for a young man set on striving. It's quite beautiful. So, he sat there for six days and then we know the drama. He was tempted by Mara who sent bevies of celestial dancing girls to entrance him and beautiful food and also challenged him.

[23:28]

Basically, Mara said, who do you think you are? You know, who authorized you to be the enlightened one? And the Buddha touched the earth and said, the earth is my witness. And the earth answered, yeah. I think the Earth sounds like one of the ants in Lord of the Rings. You know the walking trees? Those are my favorite figures. You can see that Ma brought the orcs, and the ants came and gathered around him. So the Earth was a partner to Buddha's work.

[24:30]

The day before his enlightenment, the night before his enlightenment, he had five dreams. The first dream, let's see, oh, I skipped, I missed an important part. So he decided, before he sat down there, He was so weak, he decided he'd take some food, but he didn't have any. He saw a corpse that was lying on the ground. His robes were just threads. And so he unwrapped the cloth around this corpse and he took it down to the river and washed it. and washed himself but he almost hardly had the strength to get out of the river again and he finally crawled onto the banks and he was lying there and this young girl Sujata saw him and she had been bringing offerings to the forest gods

[26:00]

But she saw a monk lying there by the stream, and she brought him rice milk to eat. And he didn't eat it, and he was refreshed. And following that, he took up He took up his seat, and as I said, last night he had these dreams. The first one was that the earth was his great bed, and the Himalaya mountains were his pillow. His left hand rested in the Eastern Sea, and his right hand in the Western Sea, and both feet in the Southern Sea. which all which meant he would awaken to unexcelled right awareness.

[27:05]

The second dream was there was a wooden vine, a thick vine growing out of his navel, reaching up to the sky. And when he, which meant when he had awakened to the Noble Eightfold Path, he would climb this vine and proclaim it to all the celestial beings. The third dream was of white worms with black heads crawling up from his feet. They covered him. as far as his knees, which meant that many white-clothed householders would go for lifelong refuge to these teachings that he was about to discover.

[28:09]

The fourth dream was four different colored birds coming from the four directions fell at his feet and turned entirely white. which is that people from the four castes, priests, noble warriors, merchants, and laborers, having gone forth into life of practice in the Dharma, would realize enlightenment themselves. So it was available to everyone. The fifth dream was that he walked back and forth on top of a mountain, a great mountain of excrement, but he wasn't soiled by it, which suggested that he received gifts of robes and food and lodging and medicine, and he would use them

[29:15]

freely and unattached and just give them out as he could and so he awoke and from these dreams he knew that the day had come when having attained supreme knowledge he would become the buddha so he sat under the tree he was tempted and resisted the temptations And he was awakened in the course of his enlightenment. He remembered his past lives. He moved through all of the jhanas, all of the concentrations, and then returned to his body. He took food lightly. He conceived the core elements of his teaching, the Middle Way, the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, and the teaching of dependent origination, teaching that everything arises dependent upon other factors and causes.

[30:44]

And he saw all of this in graphic terms. And it was pretty much fun, you know, for him. He enjoyed it. It's like he knew that what was done had to be done. And he was quite content to sit there. He sat there for seven weeks. And here again we come back to questions of preference. I think it really relates to some of the discussion between Sojan and Ross yesterday. You know, he didn't feel the need to go anywhere. was he questioned whether what he had discovered could even be shared and he was beseeched by Indra and the other celestial beings who said the world needs your teachings.

[32:05]

You know it would have been easy and also quite pleasant to spend the rest of his existence under the tree. But he heard that call and was convinced, okay, I should try to teach this. And I just like to tell the story of his first teaching. He went forth, he was dressed as a as a monk and he went forth and there was another mendicant approaching him on the road and they greeted each other and the guy said, who are you? And the Buddha said, I am the completely enlightened one. And the monk said, well, good for you, and walked on.

[33:14]

And then I like to think the Buddha that, well, that kind of didn't work as a pedagogical method. And he proceeded on to Varanasi. And when he approached Varanasi, the five friends who had deserted him, they had deserted him earlier because they were They thought that he had chickened out, you know, that he was taking food, he was, you know, he was lazy. But they saw him, and first they were going to go the other way, but they saw something has happened here.

[34:16]

And he greeted them warmly, and they said, something's different about you, what is it? And together they sat down and he offered the first turning of the wheel. You can read this in the sutras, the Dhamma Chakravartara Sutta, which is the first turning of the wheel. It's where he teaches, he teaches the middle way, concern about him being a sellout. The Eightfold Path, the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, it's a beautiful, it's a beautiful sermon and it really in depth talks about the kinds of suffering and the sources of suffering and then talks about the path to the end of suffering.

[35:20]

And that was the beginning of his teaching. He gave that teaching, and they heard it, and they were awakened as well, and they became the first monks. And here we are, 2600 years later, still embodying this teaching. And I think that when I look at him going forth, We talk about no preference, which we've been talking about for the last three days. He didn't have a preference to go forth. He was responding to a request. It was a request saying, the teachings that you have, the gifts that you have are valuable and can serve others. please share them.

[36:27]

And on that basis, it wasn't a question of whether he wanted to or didn't want to. He just said, like a good Zen student, yes. And saying that yes, probably was saying yes to a life that wasn't necessarily convenient or always pleasant, but it was a life of meaning and purpose and a life that chose to offer the benefits of his understanding to other people. I think that churning experience under the rose apple tree is good for us to reflect on.

[37:32]

Not so much because we've all had experiences like this as children, but because we're all having experiences like this all the time. And when we sit in here, we sit together in this peaceful abode, today, yesterday, tomorrow, we avail ourselves of the opportunity for that ease just to arise. It's not something that the Buddha did. And the way I think of his enlightenment is not something he did all these things, you know, he learned all these difficult meditations, he practices austerities. But really, when he sat down on the tree, it's just like, I'm putting myself in the way of opening of allowing myself to be open and receptive.

[38:47]

And let's see what happens. I have a, I have an intuition that that's the right way for me. And it's also, I think it's significant that he sat down under a tree that often you find when you sit outside. The way I think about it, sitting outside, sometimes it feels like the top of my head has been lifted off. And you're just open and receptive to the universe, which can pour in its many treasures. So it's good to sit outside. But of course, there's no inside and outside. Nevertheless, it's good to sit outside when you can. And we have this funny way, at least in the north, when you go to India or Southeast Asia, a lot of this, a lot of the meditation is outside because the climate allows for it.

[40:03]

Here, you know, in the northern traditions, we build these, you know, we find these really beautiful places and we make buildings and go inside, you know, but we have to take care of ourselves. We have to guard against the weather. And anyway, the moment under the rose apple tree are moments that, you know, he didn't, in the 35 years, in 35 years, he hadn't remembered that moment until it was ripe. And so I just, what we're doing this week is allowing for ripening. We're allowing for those moments to happen. We're allowing for us to both to recall them, but also to create them.

[41:10]

And then let them operate on us. let them operate on our bodies and on our minds and find the liberation that's inherent in our abilities. So I think I want to stop there and take a few questions and I also want to observe the time limits we've been choosing to set. He realized that he was already free. That the freedom that he had been looking for was already there.

[42:16]

And it was nothing, but it had to be manifest by freedom of activity. I'm not sure that's a good answer, but to start. What do you think? everything, even in that state.

[43:31]

Am I wrong? No, I think that you're right. And I think it's a longer discussion about what that fear is, whether the fear is something biologically hardwired into us, or what was lost. Yes. It means, so let me read you the quotation. This was his words upon being awakened. I mean, I think it's, I alone beneath the sky and above the earth am the world

[44:45]

No, no, that's when he was born. Wait, let me... Right, that's when he was born. I'm sorry. It's here, on one of these pages, which are now horribly out of order. Two, three, all I need is page one. Come on, guys. Right, that's right. Here it is. Yes. Yes, I and all beings together are the Tathagata, which we're seeing, you know, is non-separation. We're seeing, I think, this gets back to Sojin's question. It comes back to Dogen's Shinjin Tatsuraku, [...] drop body and mind.

[45:58]

So dropping body and mind is not the state of, it's neither perception nor non-perception. Dropping body and mind means dropping into the great body of the whole universe. And I think that it was the experience that, you know, that he was that he was celebrating and, you know, that the universe celebrated with earthquakes and showers of flowers and, and all this stuff's like, in this moment, we're seeing our nature as all one. Yes, that imperturbability is a mark of

[47:10]

Well, if you read about the Jhanas, it's in the Jhanas that imperturbability is one of the characteristics that you, you know, I wouldn't say you attain it, I would say it's what emerges. I'll find out, yeah. I sort of feel like this also speaks to Gary's question about fear, because I think that there's some sense of I think that's actually a great question. It is. So let me tell you a story. I've got to be aware of the time. I sat sashimi with Ketagiri Roshi at Okioji in, I don't know, 86 or something like that. And we sat in, at the time there was no building actually.

[48:17]

It was almost like being outside. It was a tent. It was like being in a big sailing ship because the tent had lines holding it down and when the wind blew, you could hear the wind and the lines and the lines creaked and everything. It was really beautiful. this far into it one night, I just felt a kind of dissolving, if you will. And then there was an inner catch that said, oh. And I was afraid. And I, the anxiety drew me out of that experience of openness.

[49:18]

And the next day, by chance, Keri Durrishi lectured and he lectured about that kind of effect, that as we were approaching, kind of in a curve, as we were approaching some experience, some perception of openness, often there's a fear. You know, there's a fear that we're losing our body or we're losing ourself or our mind and we sort of draw back. And basically he said, there's nothing to be afraid of. And I I've tried to practice that ever since. And mostly I practice it as that kind of awareness comes up, I feel like there's a choice. And my choice is just breathe.

[50:20]

Because the way I visualize it is, you're just falling back into the arms of the Buddhas. And there's nothing unsafe that can happen there. So that's my suggestion. But I understand the fear. We have a reflexive fear of losing the self. Yeah, Karen. One more after this. We talked about generosity. We talked about giving physical gifts, giving the gift of the Dharma. And he said the greatest gift is So if you think about the Heart Sutra, which we chant every day, to me, the pivotal moment of the Heart Sutra is, without any hindrances, no fears exist.

[51:30]

That, to me, is the pivot point of the Sutra. And I think that's what you're talking about. We really need to end. We're going to honor our time. But thank you very much. And enjoy the limitless time that we have for the rest of sashimi. Yeah.

[51:58]

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