Good morning, everyone. Or good morning, Bodhisattvas. This is the greeting that Nyogen Senzaki used to use to begin his sessions with his students. He was one of the first Zen teachers in America. And we whether we realize it or not, we're all on the bodhisattva path and we're all inherently bodhisattvas. So I'm going to talk today about how you cultivate and manifest, how we cultivate and manifest our bodhisattva nature in our practice and also in our practice here in this wonderful room and also in our practice in the world, which are not two things.

[01:02]

So, the context of this, with so much blood in the streets and Such alarming public discourse based on fear, on separation of one group from another. I want to talk today about social justice, which is just our practice of turning towards the suffering of self and others. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. More recently, Cornel West said that justice is what love looks like in public.

[02:13]

And I might revise that a little to say that justice is what compassion looks like in public, in our society. So where I'm gonna go with this, actually, most of the talk is gonna be about a set of bodhisattva activities or practices that were spelled out something like 700, 800 years ago by our ancestor, Dogen Zenji. And I hope that I'll be able to leave time for discussion. I'm remembering several weeks ago after the shootings in the Orlando nightclub, dance club, Sojourner Roshi said, he made the point of saying that the world has always been like this, which is true.

[03:22]

You know, if you go back to the Hebrew scriptures, you go back to all of the ancient texts, you'll find this nation attacking this nation, people dividing and kind of postulating who are the real people and who are not, who can be killed and who cannot. And so the world has always been like this. And in a sense, then, we don't live in an extraordinary time. And yet, this is our time. So it's extraordinary to us. It's vivid. It's painful. And we struggle

[04:25]

to know what to do. In one version of interpretation of Buddhism, a book that many of us read when we're first trying to get an overview of Buddhism, by the Sri Lankan scholar Walpola Rahula, he wrote a book called What the Buddha Taught. Have any of you read that? Yeah, a lot of you. And so he writes, Buddhism arose in India as a spiritual force against social injustice, against degrading superstitious rights, ceremonies and sacrifices. It denounced the tyranny of the caste system and advocated the equality of all men. It emancipated women and gave her complete spiritual freedom. Now we can we can have arguments of the shades of meaning in the history, but really Buddhism from the beginning offered a radical alternative to a society or societies in Northern India and then spread throughout India and then throughout Asia that were very much socially determined that

[05:55]

your place in life was determined by your gender, by your caste, by your occupation, by your language and region, and your worth and value was gradated according to those standards. And what the Buddha said was, no. Actually, your value as a person is based on your thoughts, your words, and your actions. That one is not noble by virtue of birth, but by virtue of how you live. And so, when he spelled out the Eightfold Path, the Eightfold Path is a way to live. And it's a way to live that leads towards freedom. So as Buddhism developed, our Zen tradition is in the Mahayana school, which is basically the Bodhisattva archetype.

[07:16]

So it's the archetype by which we affirm our wider responsibility to all beings, that everybody may be liberated. And it's with that intention and that vow that we sit. And also just to remember that everybody includes you and me. We are not someone other than everybody. So in the scriptures, It says that the Bodhisattva resolves to take upon myself the burden of all suffering. I am resolved to do so. I will endure it. And why? At all costs, I might bear the burden of all beings, the whole world of living beings.

[08:21]

I must rescue from the terrors of birth, old age, of sickness and death. And so the question that I want to investigate with you is, how do I do this? How do I act as a bodhisattva in this world that we have? So to belabor the obvious, in recent weeks, the last couple of months we've seen We've witnessed the mass murder of gay people, primarily gay people, in Orlando. The police shootings of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge and Philando Castile in Saint Paul. The terrible killings of police officers in Dallas and, again, in Baton Rouge.

[09:24]

Today, there was a slaughter of people in Kabul, Afghanistan, one branch of religion killing another. Yesterday, there was a mass shooting in Munich. We've seen murders in Nice and Baghdad, Medina, Bangladesh, and around the world. I will say as a kind of sidelight that every one of those is facilitated by the incredibly easy opportunity to obtain high-capacity automatic weapons. We can talk about that later. And then this week, I watched portions of the Republican Convention and finally heard an implacably dark narrative of our nation in time that played, it worked, you know, it played on my fears, played on fears about race and crime and immigration and more, even though I kind of knew better, I knew I was being manipulated.

[10:44]

But my question here today is not about Republican or Democrat or politics as such. It's about how you and I can carry our practice, the composure and effort and the patience of Zazen from this room into the world. How can we cultivate our ability to plant seeds of peace to replace seeds of violence, of greed and delusion that we actually all have within us to transform them. So the teaching that I want to rely on here, I've talked about a number of times before, and I'm just gonna, I'm gonna sketch it, because I want to, I'd really like to leave time for discussion.

[11:51]

But this is an important teaching, I think, one of the most accessible teachings by our ancestor Dogen Zenji. It's chapter 28 of his Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, and it's, in Japanese, it's the Bodhisattva Shishobo, which I have translated as the Bodhisattva's Four Embracing Actions. So let me tell you what these four are. The first is generosity or giving. The second is loving or kind speech. Third is beneficial action. And the fourth, which is maybe at the heart of what I want to explore is something that's called identity action, which I'll have to unpack the meaning of that. So generosity, loving speech, beneficial action, identity action.

[13:01]

These are the ways in which a bodhisattva goes forth in the world. These are ways that one can operate. And I would say that these are the natural functioning of an awakened Bodhisattva. They are also, because they are practices, they are ways that we can cultivate our Bodhisattva nature. to develop that, to give birth to the bodhisattva within us by living in these ways, by returning to these practices, particularly when things are hard or things are going wrong. So I've sort of reduced the text.

[14:03]

The text you can find, by the way, in Kastanahashi's collection of Dogon called Munida Dewdrop. It's called the Bodhisattva's Four Methods of Guidance there. It's also in my book, The Bodhisattva's Embrace, which is kind of named after this fascicle. And there's a translation there that I had the opportunity to do with Shohaku Okamura. Basically, very similar, a little difference in the translation. So he starts by talking about generosity, or Dana. And this is, each one of these methods is both, includes all of the others, and is also circular, you can start anywhere. So giving means not to be greedy. And not to be greedy means not to covet.

[15:07]

Even if we rule the four continents, in order to teach, in order to offer the teachings of the true way, we must simply and unfailingly not be greedy. And then there's beautiful lines here, he says, it's like offering treasures we are about to discard to those we do not know. We give flowers blooming on the distant mountains to the Tathagata, and we offer treasures accumulated in past lives to living beings. In his time, to give flowers blooming in the distant mountains, you know, is to give the Buddhists something they already had, flowers just bloomed. In our time, we actually have to make an effort to sustain those flowers, because what we are doing on our mountains

[16:17]

is stripping them for timber, strip mining them for coal, developing them for housing projects. So there's no room for the flowers to bloom in many places. So for us to give flowers on the distant mountain to the Tathagata, to the Buddha, actually calls for a serious effort or serious intention. and that's in the spirit of giving. And then at the heart of this section on giving, Togan writes, we offer ourselves to ourselves and we offer others to others. That's to me the a turning line. We offer ourselves to ourselves. In other words, we allow ourselves to be as we are, to be as our true selves, not necessarily as our narrow selves or small selves, but to be as free and open as we can.

[17:39]

to hold this posture when we offer ourselves to ourselves. That's what we're doing when we're sitting Zazen. The posture of our Zazen is a strong back and a soft front. It's an openness. So We offer ourselves to ourselves. That self is larger than what is contained in this bag of skin. That self right now is this whole room. And so is yours to the extent that you make it so. And to offer others to others means to let them be their best self. to create an environment in which they can be free as well, which is the bodhisattva activity.

[18:43]

And this is very hard. Both of them are hard. It's hard to offer ourselves to ourselves, you know, because somewhere in our mind, in the back of our minds, there's also a self that has you know, that's plagued by crushing self-doubt. You know, it's like, who am I? What do I really know? Am I really good at this? You know, whether it's Zazen or my job or whatever, or my raising my family or saving the world. God, I can't do that. But you do, if you can offer yourself to yourself, you can. to offer others to others, I really tried. As I was watching the convention, there were so many things that really disturbed me.

[19:50]

But then I looked at the stadium full of people and Those people were not all crazy. They were not all evil. Some of them, they just, well, I don't know, all of them looked like people, you know, which means they are, at essence, bodhisattvas. How does that change? How do I, what does it mean I can't give others to others, but what does it mean to create the space for them to realize themselves? I do not have the answer to that, but this is what our teachers tried to convince us of.

[20:53]

And he says, Dogen follows up saying, the karma of giving pervades the heavens above and the human world alike. Whether we give or receive, we connect ourselves with all beings throughout the world, not just the ones we like. You know. But he does say then, when a person who practices dana, or generosity, comes into an assembly, other people watch that person with admiration. We should know that the mind of such a person quietly reaches others. So this is our aspiration, that if we can settle our own mind, if we can endure the difficulties that we encounter with ourselves just in facing the wall and facing ourselves in Zazen and settle our minds, then when we move into the world, it affects and it reaches, quietly reaches others.

[22:06]

So the second of these four embracing actions is loving speech. And he says, loving speech means, first of all, to arouse compassionate mind when meeting with living beings. To arouse compassionate mind means, often what it means is like don't immediately stake out your position to challenge or oppose them, but actually listen. And then he says, it's interesting, because there's a qualifier for that. He says, in general, we should not use any violent or harmful words, which leaves a little opening for that sometimes there might be a need for strong speech.

[23:16]

Not necessarily harmful, but strong speech. When your child is about to step off the curb into traffic, you have to speak strongly. You may have to do things to you may have to exercise that strength to help people, but in general, not. And then he says, to speak with a mind that compassionately cares for living beings as if they were our own children. That's loving speech. Whether subduing a deadly enemy or making peace, Loving speech is fundamental. I would say loving speech is one translation. Often, I think Cos might use the translation kind speech, which is maybe a bit better. Loving has maybe a, can have a sort of mushy quality for us.

[24:23]

But kind speech means that the principle that you're articulating is I see you and you are a living being of equal, what can I say, equal right, equal validity, equality with me, which means I talk with you, I try to talk with you with respect. When a person hears kind speech directly, that person's face brightens and the mind becomes joyful. It's a beautiful, the next line is really beautiful. He says, when a person hears of someone else's kind speech, that person inscribes it in their heart and soul. We should know that kind speech arises from a loving mind. and that the seed of a loving mind is a compassionate heart. We should study how kind speech has the power to transform the world.

[25:28]

There is precious little of that going around in the political discourse that I've been hearing already for the last four or five months. And I'm sure we all know We're just beginning. It's not likely to get a lot better in the next six months, but we can. We can figure out how we want to express ourselves. The third principle is beneficial action. Beneficial action means creating skillful means to benefit living beings, whether they are noble or humble. Skillful means is the Bodhisattva's tool. These are upaya. That's what is translated as skillful means. And then Dogen says, we should benefit friends and foes alike.

[26:36]

We should benefit self and others alike. So basically, in a sense, what he's saying is, we are all one being. And so how we treat our friends should not be different from how we treat those we are in opposition to. We may use different language. We may use a different approach. But we have to recognize there's a fundamental human connection that we have. Fundamentally, we are all expressions of this big mind. And this is the way we treat ourselves. We should benefit ourselves and others alike. When I'm sitting in Zazen, there are so-called pleasant and so-called unpleasant, so-called critical and so-called affirming thoughts that arise in my mind.

[27:45]

The practice is to meet them all respectfully and let them walk away. If we push them away, if we react to them, they will hang around and they will push back. So this dynamic of contention is what we feed by our reactivity. So we should benefit friends and foes alike. We should benefit self and others alike. And then, Dogen expands it even wider. He says, because beneficial actions never regress, if we attain this mind, we can perform beneficial actions even for grass, trees, wind, and water. This is the wide vision of Dogen, of Chinese and Japanese Zen.

[28:55]

It's like, it's all alive. Everything's alive. And so it's not just about me, it's not just about my family, it's about the entire world that we inhabit. So the fourth point is identity action. And here, the metaphor that he uses, that we'll go into is really applicable to our present societal and political situation because he uses the metaphor of the wise ruler and the people. So there what Dogen is doing is he's really delving into his confusion roots, which is really the roots of, it's one of the really rich roots of Chinese and Japanese Buddhism.

[30:04]

And this is a very common metaphor of the wise ruler and the people. So what he says is, identity action. So that means, identity action means, sometimes it's translated as co-operation. and sometimes as sameness. Identity meaning being, it's not like identity politics. It's actually being in identity with all that you encounter, with everyone that you encounter. So it's identity, meaning we're all part of one large identity. So what he says is identity action means not to be different. neither different from self nor from others. So, you know, in a sense, what that means in terms of self is like, am I, do I, well, see, am I, do I have an integral sense of myself?

[31:09]

Do I have it together? You know, where I include, as Suzuki Roshi often talked, include everything as part of myself rather than separate off this and this and this and compartmentalize it and try to push this in the basement and stick this one up in the attic and put this one forward so people can see it. It's actually to be not different from all that one is. Not different from self nor not different from others, which means to recognize this fundamental oneness of being. And he says, the ocean does not refuse water, therefore it is able to achieve vastness. It just takes all the water, as much water as you want to give, it takes and it'll be as big as it needs to be. The mountains do not refuse earth, therefore they are able to become tall. Then wise rulers do not weary of people, therefore they form a large nation.

[32:18]

So we can look at this wise ruler and nation business in its kind of. Kind of on a literal level, if we like, looking at it sort of in social and political terms, uh, and seeing it. Seeing it, how does the nation function? How does society function? And it also refers, I believe, to oneself. So in the nation of Alan, I've got the lung people, and the liver people, and the brain person, and the eyes, and the heart. All of those are part of the nation. and they cooperate. And if they don't cooperate, they've got big problems. So you can look at it in the micro level as well.

[33:23]

But it works on both levels. And I think, I really feel like Dogen is shifting back and forth among them. So he writes, because wise rulers do not weary of their people, they attract many people. Many people means a nation. A wise ruler does not weary of their people. That does not mean that they fail to offer rewards and punishments, but they never tire of their people. Although people always desire to form a nation and to find a wise ruler, few of them fully understand the reason why a wise ruler is wise. They are simply glad to be embraced by the wise ruler. they don't realize that they themselves are embracing a wise ruler. Thus, the principle of identity action exists both in the wise ruler and in the people.

[34:28]

Does that make some sense? So, in a political sense, those who have been looking at theories of change, whether it's nonviolent or maybe active resistance, realize that a society exists on the basis of our willingness to go along with it. And that means You know, sometimes we go along with because we're privileged by it. Sometimes we go along with it because there's a gun held to our heads. Sometimes we go along with it for what we perceive to be our children's sake. But it's always about a society exists on the basis of cooperation.

[35:31]

And when that cooperation is withdrawn, then societies change. And this is how things changed. Often in China, what you would have in history, what you'd have would be a sort of conflation of natural disasters, which were probably going on all the time, but people would see, they would notice these natural disasters and then say, oh, it's time for us to withdraw our support for this ruler because he's not wise anymore and we need to find a new one. But it's about this dynamic and the only way a ruler can continue is with either the willing or the coerced cooperation of the people. So Identity action means sameness, and this is what Dogen says here.

[36:35]

He says, the principle of identity action exists both in the wise ruler and the people. This is why identity action is the practice and vow of a bodhisattva. We should simply face all beings with a gentle expression. This is what, when you read of the archetype of Avalokiteshvara, Guan Yin. I can't see which I'm looking at, but oh, there, the bronze figure on the altar. Guan Yin is one who sees, there's a synesthesia here, sees the cries of the world. And what she does is she meets every being in the form that they would recognize as like themselves.

[37:39]

Can I do that? Can I meet people whose views seem diametrically opposed to mine? and listen to them and create an atmosphere where I can present mine. This is highly idealistic. But it's the best thing that I know how to do. And it's how, it's what I'm working with, basically, when I'm sitting with Zaz, what I'm working with is can I meet myself? Can I meet the parts of myself that are deeply troubling to me and just accept them as, you know, part of the whole catastrophe. And if I, as I develop the capacity to do that, then my ability to include others becomes broader and then

[38:52]

One is bringing forth one's bodhisattva nature. There's so much that I haven't spoken of. I haven't spoken of the intensity of pain and grief that I feel around the racial divisions in this country. But to me this is all, the responsibility is incumbent upon me as a bodhisattva to include everything, to include all the injustices that I perceive and to try to conduct myself in such a way as to make peace.

[40:06]

And that's what I wish for each of us. And that's what I think, at the deepest level, our practice is about. So I will stop there and leave some time for comments, questions, thoughts. Thank you. if I'm getting it correctly, is about who is there, who you're encountering, who you are encountering in yourself, and what's going on in that moment. You can never do away with, that's, I mean, you can never do away with historical element.

[41:11]

So you can never do away, the seeds of one's experience are planted very deep in us. We have to We have to be able to see those seeds. The seeds are what get transformed. And that's a whole other very complex dynamic. But I think we have to see what's there. We have to see. This is what's very difficult. What's very difficult is to see our conditioning and to recognize that our perception is affected by our conditioning. which is why we need to keep asking people, what do you see? Because they're going to see something different, and we may learn a lot there. So, thank you. Judy? Thank you. You responded to part of my question, but I'll ask the two-parter anyway, because there's probably something there.

[42:16]

Could you say something about fellowship in not knowing and attachment to outcome. Yeah, fellowship in not knowing. Well, there's fellowship, you know, there's there's society, there's this sangha. This is really important to me now. It's also. There's also I could say, what was it, a book by Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism? That exists as well, right? We can be mass deluded. So you can't even entirely believe in the feedback that you're getting from your society or your community. But that may be the best we can do.

[43:17]

And to keep opening, So, and to keep the principle of not knowing is really, I know it's important to, it's important to me and it's important to you and to many of us. Not knowing doesn't mean knowing nothing. You know, it's not a, it's an activity which means, it's completely, it's the same as beginner's mind. In the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities. In the expert mind, there are few. That's all it means. It just means don't think you've figured out what's going on. Always leave, you have to do something. So that's the question, then that's the second part. You don't have a goal, but actually you have an intention. There's a difference between a goal and an intention. And the intention should be infused with wholeness rather than separation.

[44:23]

So those are principles, but these are abstract. And when it comes right down to it, it's sometimes very hard to know what to do. Gary. You know, in listening to that identity action, it seemed like Dogen was really speaking to leaders. Because if you think about it, what you said about the first thing, not to be greedy, and identity action, almost seem the same. Well, they are. To me, those two are brackets for the whole thing. But let me give you some just brief historical context. In 1233, I think, Dogen had, I think that was a year, he'd been about eight or 10 years in Kyoto and had built a beautiful temple.

[45:30]

And within six or eight months, he left and he went to the area that's now Eheji, which was kind of the wild, West, you know, and there was nothing there. It was really wilderness. And he did it very suddenly, and nobody knows exactly why. And this fascicle was written a couple of months before he left. And so my feeling is that he was actually writing this to his community. He was saying, you know, I think there was something very intense going on there, and there was probably intense, you know, inter-religious literally warfare going on among the different Buddhist sects in Kyoto. They get violent about their beliefs. And he had decided, hey, we're going to leave this behind and we're going to go. So I think he was talking to his community, not just to his society.

[46:37]

That's what I think, anyway. A couple more. Peter. Yeah, I think what that actually means in practical terms is you keep your friends close, but you want to be able to see what your enemies are doing so you can protect yourself against. I think that's what it actually means. But you're turning it inside out. Right. Once enemies, if you will, or opponents, first of all, This is what Martin Luther King said about enemies. He said, love your enemies. Don't like what they do.

[47:38]

You don't have to like what they do, but you have to love them as humans. I think for us, the way we would go further, that when you see someone that you identify as an opponent or an enemy, there's probably something of that in you. There's probably something, for me, it's like when I see that, I'd say, okay, where is that in me? And so, in the terms that Mahayana Buddhists would say, that person is your teacher, so you should love them as being your teacher, because they can teach you something essential about yourself, about your deluded nature. So perhaps that's a good gloss on it. One more, Katie. I was just thinking that, for me, the greatest temptation to strengthen these kinds of principles comes when I feel like, on an interpersonal or a social level, the person I'm engaging with or confronted by does not respect, does not hate, does not respect those principles.

[48:56]

And it's so easy to feel like, oh, well, now the gloves have to come off, or something like, it's not going Yeah, so I was thinking about whether to sing a song or not, which I'm not going to do. But in the song that I often sing that Greg Fane wrote, Our Hero, which is from the Lotus Sutra, There's a verse, I think it's, he never read or recited the scriptures much, he only liked to practice respect. But the monks and nuns of his time, they didn't treat it like he might expect. They cursed him, they reviled him, they wished that he would go. Oh no, it's another verse. That one ends, they all had self-esteem issues like everybody else I know, which is pretty good. But there's another one where he said, he would run off to a safe distance.

[49:58]

And they turned around and said, so this matter of embracing, you know, it's like you don't have to throw your arms and you don't have to stay as close. You don't have to keep your enemies really close. You might need to step back. So I think when I feel that way, when I feel, and which means the gorge is arising, right? I try to step back. I may literally step back or I may literally leave, but I also know we're not done. I can come back to this, but I may not be capable of coming back to it right now because I'm triggered. We have no choice. This is what we do in Zazen. We try to sit. We try to meet ourselves.

[51:00]

We fail. We come back. We fail. We come back. So the act, the principal act of Zazen is returning. And so I don't have an opportunity to step back from the society or the world that we live in. I can pretend that it's not there for some amount of time, but my vow, the bodhisattva vow, is to keep coming back. Literally, to keep coming, but to keep being reborn in this realm of suffering until everybody can get across. And on a very practical level, I think that's what we have to do in this society. And it is, I do not, idealize that in any way. And I do not pretend that that it's easy, but I think it's, it's what one has to do so we can talk more outside.

[52:02]

Thank you very much.

[52:04]

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