Good morning, everyone. Thank you for coming to our third session on the Faces of Compassion. This is Diane Mischel-Hamilton on the line, and I really want to welcome you to the call. As I like to mention, it's such a privilege to be able to put together a virtual temple and receive Dharma talks from teachers in different places in the world. And as you know, our guiding teacher is Taigan Dan Layton, who is One of, as I've said to you many times, he's one of my favorite voices in contemporary Zen. He's the author of a number of books. He's a scholar and a translator. He's an authorized teacher in Suzuki Roshi's Soto Zen lineage. And he is also the founder of the Ancient Dragon Zen Gate in Chicago. And his book, Faces of Compassion, really outlines and clarifies the Bodhisattva ideal, as well as giving us a, you know, a look more deeply into, you know, the nature of these Bodhisattvas as they arise in mind and they arise in culture.

[01:10]

So welcome to the call, and Taigan, take it away. Hey, thank you very much, Diane. So I'm very happy to be here again, and welcome everyone. So this is the third of these meetings, and just to put it in context, the first time we talked about the Bodhisattva idea, and the idea of these different Bodhisattva figures as kind of archetypal approaches to Bodhisattva practice and Bodhisattva awareness and activity and responsiveness. And then also about Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of insider wisdom as kind of the teacher of all Bodhisattvas, the introduction to all Bodhisattvas representing wisdom and insight. Last time we talked about three different bodhisattvas who represent a kind of expression of that wisdom or insight in the world. Samantabhadra, the devotional, active bodhisattva.

[02:13]

Kanon or Kanzeon or Guanyin, Navaratri Tushvara, the multi-aspect bodhisattva who is compassion represents skillful means and the immediacy of that response, as opposed to Samantabhadra's more maybe programmatic, deliberate response. And then Jizo, who's the witness to beings in difficult situations in hellish realms, the earth womb bodhisattva. Today, we will conclude with two more bodhisattvas, and then I want to take time to talk about how these stories of bodhisattvas apply to our own practice and our own life and help us see our own selves in as Bodhisattva practitioners. And I want to spend the most time on Maitreya, the next future Buddha as Bodhisattva. Very, very complex figure. So I'm going to spend the most time on Maitreya, but also talk about the Malakirti as Bodhisattva and then take some time to talk generally.

[03:22]

Starting in on Maitreya, Maitreya is the Sanskrit name Metaya in Pali. This figure was one of the earliest Bodhisattvas, almost as early as Shakyamuni himself, and appears in the Pali literature. And so a very, very complex figure of many different aspects. But basically, this was the, there are many different stories about it, but this was, he is the figure who was predicted by Shakyamuni Buddha to be the next future Buddha. And that means in some distant future age, he will be the next future Buddha. And this is based on the traditional idea of there being one Buddha for each Buddha realm. So we've already talked in terms of, well, with Samantabhadra in terms of there being many Buddhas and many Bodhisattvas in many dimensions with Buddhas everywhere. But in terms of the traditional worldview of Buddhism. There's one Buddha, Shakyamuni, who I talked about the first week is the Buddha of our Buddha realm, the realm of endurance, very challenging place to practice.

[04:33]

So congratulations, you're all practicing in this wonderful, challenging world of endurance that's very difficult and develops patience. Maitreya will be the next one. And so Maitreya represents many different qualities. First of all, loving-kindness, and the name Maitreya or Maitreya comes from Maitri or Metta, which means loving-kindness, and there's a particular practice of Metta or loving-kindness. So that's one, so each of these figures represents a particular aspect of meditation, as I've said, and this one, so Metta or meditation is one kind of, can be one kind of meditation. There's another aspect of Maitreya meditation also I'll get to. But loving kindness is one aspect of, primary aspect of this Bodhisattva. Another is temporality, time itself, because we don't know how long it will be before Maitreya will be the next future Buddha.

[05:42]

And maybe we could say another, Well, one aspect of His Loving Kindness is kind of foolishness, and there's that side of Maitreya, too. But also, there's the side of consciousness study. So in terms, so I talked about how each one of these seven bodhisattvas represents particular schools and sutras within the range of Buddhism. So seeing all seven of these, and the bodhisattva chart that you have, gives you a rundown of all those, but each one of, seeing all seven of these gives a way of seeing the range of Buddha's teaching. Maitreya is particularly associated with the Yogacara teaching, which is sometimes called consciousness only. This developed, well, I'll come back to that. I'll come back to how Maitreya is the particular Buddha of the Yogacara's a branch of early Indian Mahayana or Bodhisattva Buddhism and the study of consciousness.

[06:52]

So, very complex figure. Many different aspects to this Bodhisattva in terms of archetypal qualities or strategies or approaches to Bodhisattva activity. But going back to the beginning, Monmaitreya, the story goes, Ashita was one name that is given to the disciple of Buddha who was predicted to be the next future Buddha. And the story about that goes that all the other disciples were very surprised. This was not a particularly wise or studious or skillful disciple. He was kind of thought of as sort of foolish, in fact. And so they were all very, very surprised that This Bodhisattva was predicted to be the next future Buddha by Shakyamuni. The one quality, though, that stood out was that he was very kind.

[07:54]

So that's very interesting, and there are various stories about how he proved himself in various ways to actually be more a little more special than the other disciples had thought. But at any rate, there's this side of him that's associated with his loving-kindness that's also considered kind of foolish, kind of silly even. So that's one aspect of his loving-kindness. So there's a metta sutta that we sometimes chant at our temple. kind of adapted from the earlier Pali version, or Theravada version, but a little bit towards the end, but basically it focuses on the line, may all beings be happy. Basic wish, may all beings be happy, is one quality of this loving kindness practice.

[09:02]

And there are various versions of actual practice of loving-kindness as a meditation practice itself. So, one version I think is popular in America, based on a Tibetan variation, is to inhale suffering of a particular being and then exhale loving-kindness to them, to think of a particular person or group of beings, someone you feel close to, and wish them well. So that's a particular kind of meditation one can do. Or one can more generally just wish may all beings be happy. You can even use that as a mantra. May all beings be happy in your meditation. In doing the more directed practice, when you get more skillful at that, associating it with the breath, you can think of people you aren't as close to and gradually even think of people

[10:05]

who you might have difficulty with, but to develop a kind of sense of, may all beings be happy. That's one kind of meditation associated with Maitreya. Another has to do with visualization. So one of the things about Maitreya being predicted to be the next future Buddha is that you don't know when he will be the next future Buddha. There are various different versions of that. one version in one scripture says something like year 4,300 in our time scale. Which, you know, is a little ways away, but, you know, we can imagine, maybe. There's another version that says in 560,000 years after Shakyamuni. So, in the meantime, Maitreya, so sometimes Maitreya is depicted as a Buddha. Our images of him as a Buddha. One way to tell if it's Maitreya, by the way, is that often, not always, sometimes he's sitting cross-legged, but sometimes as a Buddha or as a Bodhisattva waiting to become a Buddha, he's sitting with his legs down, what we might call Western-style, like in a chair.

[11:19]

So that's one, you know, if you see images like that, that usually is Maitreya. They're very, probably the most famous Japanese Buddhists Buddha's sculpture is the Koryu-ji Maitreya Bodhisattva, where he's sitting with his fingers to his chin, kind of contemplating the suffering of the world, this very sensitive face. I have a picture of it in front of me. But the idea is that now, till he becomes the Buddha, he's sitting up in the meditation heavens, Tushita heavens, considering how to save all sentient beings. And he knows that he will be the next future Buddha, But he's not now. Now he's just a bodhisattva. He's a mere shadow of his future self. And he's considering how to become the next Buddha and considering the suffering of beings. And that leads into the study of consciousness and how he is associated with the Yogacara school, which studies different aspects of consciousness.

[12:28]

But before I get to that, just this aspect of Maitreya waiting for a very, very long time, and he doesn't know when. So there's, I don't know what happened to him, but there was a guy in London who claimed to be Maitreya. Maybe he is, we don't know. And all through Chinese history, Chinese history particularly, there were people who claimed to be Maitreya, or who claimed to be people who are preparing the way for Maitreya. So Maitreya is very important in Chinese Buddhist history, and he's very, very important in Korea. He was important in early Japanese Buddhism, less so now, not as prominent in Japanese Zen temples, although he's still part of the meal chants that we do. But the point is that he considers the future, and he considers time, and so all kinds of questions about

[13:30]

the nature of time come up when we think about Maitreya, and I think this is important because we don't know what time is. And part of the Bodhisattva idea is to see things in this very long time frame. We also sometimes must see things in terms of the urgency of the need to respond when people are suffering, but also to see this range of time gives us maybe a deeper sense of our place in the world and in the realm of Buddhism, Bodhisattvas, and the kind of steadiness from which to respond. There are many teachings in Zen and in Buddhism about time, and Dogen's being time, and the sense of time is moving in many directions, and all of that comes up in considering Maitreya, because Maitreya himself doesn't know when he will be the next Buddha.

[14:42]

But issues of time are part of that. I particularly find myself of the Huayen school, which is from Samantabhadra and the Flower Ornament Sutra, and they have a teaching of ten times. There's the time, there's the past, present, and future of the past, and the past, present, and future of the present, and the past, present, and future of the future, and all nine of those together. Anyway, time is moving in many directions, as Stogen says. And for Maitreya, he sits up there patiently waiting in the meditation heaven to become the next Buddha. In Chinese Buddhist history, there were many people who called on Maitreya and the powers that be, the various imperial dynasties throughout Chinese history always did not think well of people who venerated Maitreya because to call on the future Buddha implies some disenchantment with things as they are now.

[15:50]

So a lot of these Maitreyan, these were sort of outside the official social structures of China and were very egalitarian and were very, they had women leaders which was scandalous in patriarchal China and also had both monks and lay people and we can see this in modern China too, the Falun Gong which is a kind of I think they do Tai Chi and herbal medicine. So anyway, a lot of, most of these Maitreyan groups were very peaceful and involved in healing. One of them though, one of these Maitreyan groups actually was involved in overthrowing the Yuan Dynasty and the founder of the Ming Dynasty actually had been a Maitreyan devotee. And as soon as he became the emperor, he outlawed Maitreyan veneration because he knew how dangerous it was. So, anyway, there's this quality of Maitreya that's kind of looking towards some possibility in the future.

[17:01]

And throughout the Himalayas, Maitreya is very popular in Tibet, too. There are graffiti, kind of, or mantras scrolled, written on rocks, come Maitreya, come, this kind of looking forward to the future Buddha. And there are various stories about how and when Maitreya will come. So this kind of call towards the future is part of Maitreya. But again, there's this foolishness of Maitreya as well, this loving kindness, this basic sense of may all beings be happy. Just to mention one other kind of meditation associated with Maitreya, various of these bodhisattvas, in addition to most of them have mantras associated with them, and most of them have sacred places, sacred mountains. I've mentioned that once or twice, but there's also visualization practices. So most of Buddhist devotion, up until, oh, I don't know, around the 10, around 1000 or so, was focused on Maitreya, and gradually it came to be focused more on Amida Buddha, Amitabha Buddha,

[18:17]

So the Pure Land Buddhism of Japan, now the most popular form of Buddhism, is focused on Amida Buddha, but it used to be more on Maitreya. One practice was to visualize Maitreya's future Buddha field, or to visualize Maitreya sitting in meditation heaven. So there's a story about Xuanzang, the great pilgrim from China to India, who spent 17 years as a pilgrim going to India and became a teacher at Nalanda in India. This was in the, around the 900s, I think, or earlier. Anyway, he was once, it was a very difficult journey from India to, from China to India. And he managed to come back with many, many sutras, but he was once attacked by pirates. And he, they were going to sacrifice him to their god, and he said, oh, please let me meditate first so I'm ready and can be a good sacrifice, and he visualized Maitreya, and this great storm came, and while he was peacefully meditating, and anyway, due to this visualization, they were converted to Buddhism.

[19:34]

Anyway, the story's like that, speaking of folklore. So two more things, just to say a little bit more about about this loving-kindness, and then I want to say a little bit about Yogacara that Maitreya is concerned with. As I've said, in various of the Bodhisattvas, there have been historical figures who've been considered to be incarnations of these particular archetypal Bodhisattvas, just as His Holiness the Dalai Lama is now officially considered to be an incarnation of Chenrezig or Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. There was in, I think, the 1000s, 900s, a Chan monk who you've all seen if you've been to a Chinese restaurant. You've all seen images of him. The fat, jolly, laughing Buddha. Roughy figure who's based on a historical Chan monk in China.

[20:41]

and the story about him is that he used to walk around, usually barefoot unless it was going to rain, because he knew, and carrying a big sack of candy or toys for children, and just kind of very silly, jolly old fellow, and kind of like a Buddhist Santa Claus. His name in Chinese was Budai, or in Japanese, Hotei. There are many depictions of him in Zen. He was considered to be an incarnation of Maitreya, so much so that in Chinese Buddhist temples, in China and Chinese Buddhist temples in America and elsewhere, if you see statues of him often as a Buddha, this fat, jolly, laughing Buddha, it doesn't say his name, it just says Milofo, which is Chinese for Maitreya. So he's considered to be Maitreya. There are other stories of Maitreya's loving kindness.

[21:44]

One complicated story is about, as a kind of segue to talking about Yogacara, the Yogacara branch of Buddhism. One of the great teachers of Yogacara in India, so again, Yogacara was the branch of Buddhism that developed as a kind of counter to the Madhyamaka school of branch. There weren't schools exactly, but branches of Mahayana, Bodhisattva Buddhism, the Madhyamaka emphasized emptiness and teaching, and that's what Nagarjuna taught in the Heart Sutra, and that whole perfection of wisdom branch of Buddhism that talks about emptiness. And just as we in the West hear emptiness and we think that means nothingness, which of course it's not. It's not nothingness, it's just not somethingness. It's just a way of cutting through, like Manjushri does, cutting through all delusions. But it kind of has a negational quality, and Yogacara presents something much more positive, this sense of suchness, or looking at the phenomenology of consciousness.

[22:55]

So I'm going to come back to that, but one of the great early figures in the history of Yogacara in India was named Asanga. He and his brother Vasubandhu were great scholars and monks and teachers in early Indian Buddhism. There's a story about a Sangha which is interesting in terms of Maitreya energy. One of the things about the loving kindness of Maitreya is also that many stories about him involve his vegetarianism and kindness to animals and to small creatures. There's a story about Asanga that he went to a cave to meditate and to try and visualize Maitreya. He wanted to see Maitreya in his meditation heaven. So, again, Asanga is known today as a great scholar, but he was also

[24:02]

Great practitioner. So this is the bottom of 248 for those of you who have books. He spent 12 years in solitary meditation in a cave in the Himalayas, doing practices involving visualization over devotion to Maitreya. After 12 years of intense practice without any evident result, the Sangha departed his cave feeling discouraged. As he approached the town, he encountered a dog whose lower body was being eaten by worms. Struck with sympathetic concern, Asanga realized that removing the worms would kill them, but that leaving them would lead to the dog's death. So immediately, Asanga decided to cut some flesh from his own body to feed the worms and remove them from the dog. He went to the town and traded his monk staff for a knife and returned to the dog. After cutting some flesh from his thigh, Asanga thought that if he picked the worms off the dog with his hands, they might also die. So he determined to remove the worms from the dog with his tongue. At the moment he was about to proceed, the dog vanished, transformed into Maitreya in all his radiance.

[25:11]

Overwhelmed with tears, Asanga asked, why Maitreya appeared now when Asanga had abandoned hope of seeing him and had never manifested? Through all of Asanga's meditative exertions, Maitreya answered that he had been near Asanga from the beginning. Asanga's conditioning had made him unable to see. Thanks to Asanga's kindness to the dog and the worms, he was now able to behold Maitreya. Maitreya asked Asanga to carry him on his shoulders into the town, Asanga did so gladly, although the townspeople could only see Asanga carrying a smelly, infested mongrel. Asanga was then offered any wish by the brightly glowing Maitreya, and Asanga asked for guidance on how to disseminate the Mahayana teachings, and then Asanga was transported up to Maitreya's meditation heaven and studied with Maitreya and So a lot of the teachings that Asanga and later his brother Vasubandhu wrote down about Yogacara, they attribute to Maitreya. Some scholars think there was some teacher who took the name Maitreya.

[26:14]

Anyway, this is a rather extreme story, but it shows this kind of extreme loving kindness that's sometimes associated with Maitreya. So again, there's many different aspects to this Maitreya figure. And who knows when, you know, maybe he's around now and Maitreya Buddha will appear, we don't know. We can certainly, you know, use the Buddha's coming whenever. But let me say a little more about Yogacara. So this is one of the major branches of Buddhist Mahayana thinking and important to, very important to Zen. So all of this background of the Bodhisattva teachings appears in the Zen koans. It appears in the Zen teachings. It's, you know, often it's disguised in kind of colloquial talk or Zen poetry, but it's there. So, without going into a lot of detail, and there's a good bibliography in the back of Faces of Compassion, broken down into chapters, so you can see other things to read about this, but one of the things that Yogacara talks about is the eight consciousnesses.

[27:23]

So, The first six are the sense consciousnesses. So, eye consciousness, awareness of sights, and then smell, and awareness of smell, and touch, and hearing, and so forth. So, our five senses. And then the sixth consciousness is pretty interesting. It's the awareness of thoughts as a kind of consciousness. So from sitting Zazen, you know that sometimes there are lots of thoughts that appear. The awareness of those is considered to be a sense consciousness, just like the awareness of smell or sounds. So that's the sixth. The seventh is the faculty of C, that which separates us from all those senses, that sense of self that's separate from the other. is called Manas, and that's the seventh consciousness that sees all that stuff as outside and ourself as a separate entity.

[28:31]

So the sense of estrangement of ourself from everything around us is from the seventh consciousness. And then the eighth consciousness is the alaya-vijnana. Vijnana means discriminating consciousness, one of the many Sanskrit words for mind, or different kinds of consciousness. But this alaya-vijnana is the kind of Storehouse, translated often as storehouse consciousness, and it's the repository for all kinds of tendencies that we may have, and so all of our karmic dispositions. It's a good way of explaining how karma works. All of the qualities or dispositions that we have developed, the habits of thinking and seeing and responding, are stored as potentialities in this. These are not like parts of the brain, but metaphorical aspects of our consciousness. And this eighth alaya-vijnana stores those, and then we can become aware of that, and one aspect of practice is to encourage the positive, wholesome, helpful aspects, and to discourage

[29:48]

are habits that are harmful and negative. So anyway, this is a system, there are many other aspects of Yogacara teaching, but this is a system of a study of the phenomenology of consciousness that's associated with Maitreya. Now, this kind of sophisticated sense of Buddhist psychology might seem contrary to the aspect of Maitreya as foolish, but This comes from this image of Maitreya sitting up in the meditation heavens, um, really studying mind, studying his own mind, studying the quality of how, of awareness and how it is that suffering is created. So, uh, that's a lot of different, different aspects of this Maitreya figure. Again, he's sometimes depicted as a Buddha, but more often as a Bodhisattva waiting to become the Buddha. So many different aspects there.

[30:50]

Sometimes it's hard to see how they hang together. But at the end of each chapter, I talk about, I kind of speculate about culture figures who exemplify aspects of each of these archetypal figures as an approach to bodhisattva activity. So for Maitreya, I include Well, the 60s energy of the Beats and the Hippies going off to make Love Not War and some of them specifically, people like Carl Jung thinking about consciousness, but also John Chapman, who some of you may know more as Johnny Appleseed. He's a very clear Maitreya figure looking to the future, planting apple orchards, on the frontiers, being friendly with the Native peoples, but actually apples were more important then as a source of sugar and alcohol rather than just food.

[32:01]

Anyway, and the historical John Chapman was also kind of a scruffy fellow like Ote. So that's a little bit about Maitreya. There's, you know, a very fascinating complex figure, but as a An approach to bodhisattva activity represents a complex of aspects. So, I want to pause now before going on to the Malakirti and before having more discussion at the end just to ask if there are comments or questions about Maitreya. So, Diane, maybe you can call on people and I guess people can, what is it, press one if you're, interested in asking a question or making a comment, and please do. Yeah. So, if you're online, as Tycan just mentioned, press one on your handheld. And I'm going to just ask the group that's live here in Torrey whether there's anyone who has a question. Questions about Maitreya?

[33:04]

Yes. Maya. Thank you. My question is about to what degree has Maitreya as the future Buddha, room for our creativity and our unfolding of Buddhism? How much room is there for him to receive what we are creating here in the West? Oh, excellent question. And I've spoken about this a little bit with some of the others, but for all of these Bodhisattva archetypal figures, uh... they've always it you know all of these big but i mentioned these seven figures that i talk about in the book are the ones that are most prominent in east asian uh... there are others that are more that are more prominent in tibetan buddhism and there are many many others in sutras that are studied in east asian buddhism but these are the seven most prominent and they change from culture to culture how they how they change you know from moving from india to

[34:14]

China to Japan, all seven of these are in Tibet also. And they're also changing as they move into the West. So yeah, it's up to us, very much so, how we want to see them. So the way they're depicted by Western Buddhist artists, for example, as their form is changing a little bit. One great example of this, I will read from the book again, Do any of you know who Lew Welch was? I hope so. Yeah, the poet. Lew Welch is the... Well, I associate him with the Beats. I don't know if he technically was a Beat poet. Oh yeah, he was very much part of the Beats. He was a good friend of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder and my old friend Philip Whelan, who was a Zen teacher. Most of you know Lew Welch's stepson, who's a rock and roll star. Um, Huey Lewis, um, was his stepson.

[35:18]

Oh, is that his stepson? I didn't know that. Anyway, he, uh, Lou Welch is a fascinating figure who gave himself to the vultures of Mount Tamalpais in the late 60s. Anyway, he wrote a poem, and this was written in 1967, so you have to put it in that context. But this is a Western poem about Maitreya written during the Vietnam War. It's called Maitreya Poem. At last in America, Maitreya, the coming Buddha, will be our leader and at last will not be powerful and will not be alone. Take it as a simple prophecy. Look into the cleared eyes of so many thousands young and think, maybe that one, that one, that one. Look out. The secret is looking out. And never forgetting there are phony ones, and lost ones, and foolish ones, know this. Patrea walks our streets right now.

[36:25]

Each one is one. There are many of them. Look out for him, for her, for them, for these will break America as Christ cracked Rome. And just tonight, another one got bored. But that was during the time of the hippies and the Vietnam War. So that was Lew Welch's version of Maitreya. And part of the energy of Maitreya is that we don't know when Maitreya is coming. It could be any time now. So yeah, very much so. Good question. All of these bodhisattvas are available for you to use to inform your own practice, but also our practice as Sangha in the West. So another question, Brian Busudo-Turner. Yeah, I have a, almost I think you ended with the question that I had that we hear a lot about that the next Buddha is the Sangha.

[37:33]

And I wonder how that fit with Maitreya archetype. Um, well, I think that's, that's good. Yeah. Uh, I partly, well, I think song is very important, uh, now, especially, uh, how do we work together towards, uh, we don't know how to, how to, how to fix all the problems in the world now, certainly. And so developing community is an important part of that. And, uh, um, In terms of the Maitreya stories, just seeing that the next Buddha could be anyone, could be the most foolish-seeming person in the Sangha, is one way to look at it. But yeah, I agree with you. So there's a couple more hands up. Diane, do you want to call on someone? Yeah, how about Mike? You had your hand up, go ahead.

[38:35]

Yeah, well, I think you kind of answered what I had raised my hand for, which is I was thinking as I was looking at the sort of seditious quality of Maitreya and that he undermines, you know, the present order in a way. I was wondering why he hadn't been given more prominence in, um, Western then, particularly in the 16th, 17th, and 18th. Of course, you're saying, I guess, that he was, although I'd never heard of that before. He seems someone who deserves more attention by us, simply because we're non-conformists. Yes, I agree. So please, you know, well, I think there are Hotai statues in many Western temples. So, uh, Hote is Maitreya, so, you know, think of it that way. Uh, and, uh, you know, you can, uh, start talking about, uh, about Maitreya at two hours.

[39:37]

That's great. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Jennifer Carlson, good morning. Good morning. My question is, uh, you've said a few times you've described Maitreya as having a foolish quality to him. Yes. Can you expand on that a little bit more of how you're seeing that, or maybe examples just to help me wrap my mind around it? Well, it's just in the tradition, you know, that he, that the disciple who was chosen by Maitreya, who was predicted by Shakyamuni as Maitreya was to be the next future Buddha, was someone who was not very, not a good meditator particularly, not very studious, not very and you know not intelligent in the usual way, but just very kind. But there are other stories, and there are other stories about, you know, so other figures that I think of as Maitreyan are like Ryokan, who's the Soto monk in the early 1800s in Japan, who has called himself Great Fool.

[40:48]

There's just a lot of the stories, well the Asanga story about the dog is another one. But there are many stories about Maitreya where he's considered simple and foolish. Foolish in worldly terms. Foolish in terms of worldly gain. Foolish from the point of view of consumerism and accumulating wealth. You know, foolish and simple and ragged and, you know, not the, you know, in those terms also. But very kind. So. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you for the question. So maybe we should take a little bit of time on the Malakirti. And I want to open this up at the end to just lots of discussion. But the Malakirti is not as important in terms of ideology or schools or sutras.

[41:58]

There's one sutra about him. There's a good translation by Robert Thurman from the Tibetan version of it. There's also translations from the Chinese version. But the sutra was very popular in China and in Japan because The Malakirti is depicted as a great enlightened layman at the time of Buddha, a student of the Buddha, and he is depicted as being completely in the world, in every realm of the world. He's not a monk. He's active in all kinds of worldly realms, and he So he's a businessman, he goes into taverns, he goes into brothels, he's an educator, he teaches in schools, he's just in all kinds of worldly realms, and in each of those realms he educates people to awakening truth, to Buddhist truth.

[43:06]

So he was popular in China and Japan because of lay practitioners government officials, poets, literati, all saw him as an example of a non-L.A. person who could be also very enlightened. And in the stories about, so in that sense, he became very popular. And he's also popular in America amongst many practitioners for that reason. Just briefly going over the stories about him, the sutra begins with the news that he is sick. And Shakyamuni tells his assembly that the Malakirti is very ill, and asks his disciples and some of his bodhisattvas to go call on him, which is a thing that, you know, religious people do. They call on people who are sick. And one by one, the great disciples of the Buddha and then some of the bodhisattvas all that all expressed their reluctance to go call on Vimalakirti, and they each tell a story about how the last time that they encountered Vimalakirti, he kind of showed them up and kind of shamed them, particularly in the area that they were supposed to be most skillful at.

[44:31]

So he's a kind of critic of of monks and of, you know, religious specialists. He's, you know, very much in the world. Eventually, Manjushri, the fearless bodhisattva of wisdom, says, okay, I'll go call on Damalakirti, at which point all of the other disciples and bodhisattvas want to go and witness this discussion between Damalakirti and Manjushri. So just to say, in terms of the Malakirti and how he fits with the other ones, in some sense he represents this wisdom teaching of Manjushri and that emptiness kind of teaching, but in another sense he represents sort of a combination of Manjushri and Samantabhadra in a certain way, because he represents these inconceivable displays of interconnectedness, like the wonderful Samadhi visions of Samantabhadra.

[45:35]

Uh, what happens is that, uh, the Manjushri and all the other Bodhisattvas and disciples and many other beings go to, you know, go to call on, on, um, the Malakirti in his sick room. And, uh, and he's, and he's got this very small room and a very small house and he's emptied the room, um, of all ornaments. And they wonder how they're going to fit in there, but somehow they all miraculously fit in the room. And, um, Shariputra, who's particularly the kind of fall guy for a lot of the Malakirti's jibes at the disciples, at the monastic disciples, at some point wonders where they're all going to sit. And the Malakirti knows he's thinking that and says, did you come here for the dharma or did you come here for a chair? And then he asked Manjushri, who's been to all the Buddha realms everywhere, where do they have the most wonderful chairs, and in which Buddha realm?

[46:40]

And Manjushri said, oh, well, there's this Buddha realm many light years distance, and then points to one of the directions. And the Malakirti instantly gathers chairs from there, and these chairs are many miles high, and anyway, they all fit in this room. So part of what the Malakirti represents is this kind of teaching of the inconceivable, a trickster who dispels our usual ways of seeing the world. So many things happen. At the end of this discussion, so just one of the things that Amal Kirti's story is famous for is that at the end of this discussion, oh, the magistrate asks him why he's sick and how long he'll be sick, and Amal Kirti says something like, well, I'm sick, because of all the suffering of all sentient beings, and as long as the sentient beings are suffering, I'll be suffering. So he uses the thickness as a kind of teaching, and I see that as part of the archetypal quality of the Malakirti.

[47:45]

But beyond that, in the end, they have this long dialogue between Manjushri and the Malakirti, and it's very entertaining and full of all this Dharma stuff. Manjushri says, well, you know, all of the, no, he calls on the other bodhisattvas to say how they got through, how they sought through duality, the trick of duality. And different bodhisattvas say wonderful things about seeing through the duality of birth and death, or the duality of good and bad, or the duality of all kinds of different dualities, pure and impure, nirvana and samsara. At the end of which, Manjushri, who we talked about a couple weeks ago as using language to cut through the discrimination of language, Manjushri says, well, all that was wonderful, but actually, you know, all of what you said was kind of dualistic because you were using language. Malakirti, can you please tell us how do you see through duality?

[48:48]

And Malakirti? is referred to, and it appears in some of the Koan collections, as the great thunderous silence of the Malakirti. So silence is part of the Malakirti thing. But there's also these, along with the chairs and everybody fitting into the room, there's various other displays of inconceivability, where the Malakirti kind of undoes the usual way of seeing things. Just a couple of examples. Oh, one thing about the room that's important in Zen is that, you know, in Indian Buddhism, they didn't really, they weren't concerned about history or, you know, they understood that these teachings were metaphorical. They were not fundamentalist about it. But the Chinese were very concerned about history, so the Chinese emperor who read the Master Malakirti sent an emissary to India to find out how big this room was that was filled with all these great chairs and all these thousands and thousands and thousands of disciples and bodhisattvas and so forth.

[50:04]

So the emissary went to this town of Vaishali and asked the locals where did this great Malakirti live. You know, this was hundreds of years later, and the natives all looked at him like he was crazy, but sent him to some place. That was where Fumalikete lived, and he measured it, and it was 10 feet square, which is, in Japanese, hojo. Anyway, he went back and reported this to the emperor, and that's how, and ever since then, Abbott's quarters are referred to as the Hojo, for 10 feet squared. Of course, many Abbott's quarters are much larger than that, but that's how, and actually in China and Japan, the Abbott is often referred to as the Hojo, based on the story about the Molokittis Room. Anyway, so just a couple of stories about things that happen, these examples of inconceivability.

[51:12]

One of them is that there's this goddess who's hanging out in the Malakirti's room. She's described as a friend of the Malakirti. They never give her name. They don't give the names of the women in a lot of these stories, which is just deplorable. But anyway, we don't know much about her except that she was very, very skillful. And Shariputra, again, who's this kind of- Thanks for mentioning that. Yeah. Thanks for the shout-out. Yeah, well, and I recommend the book Hidden Lamp, which is a wonderful, wonderful book about all the great women teachers in India, China, Japan, and it's got commentary by the hundred stories, and it's got commentaries by all the wonderful, wonderful women teachers that are around now in Buddhism, including a commentary by Diane Michelle Hamilton about a friend of mine named uh... mary scott anyway so i i recommend that hidden lamp book to correct that but i don't know if there's a commentary on the goddess of the market you got a story in there yet but uh... anyway the goddess uh... so got to get into the dialogue with which i think it is considered the great one of the ten major disciples of of sharp shocking money and is known for his wisdom and they get into this dialogue and uh...

[52:35]

And at some point, and I won't go into all the detail about it, it's fascinating, it's very, you know, there's more in the Faces of Compassion book, and I recommend Robert Thurman's translation of the Holy Teachings of the Malachite, but at some point, Shariputra's just totally wowed by this goddess, and says, well, gee, you're really brilliant, you know. And then he asks her this question, which you know, I don't recommend for cocktail conversation, he says, how come you don't transform into a man? Now, in early Buddhism, that would be a kind of, you know, there's this idea that only men could become fully enlightened Buddhas. I mean, how silly, but anyway, and the goddess says, well, you know, I don't see any particular femaleness, but then she, or maleness here, but then she does this magical, inconceivable display and she does this kind of instant double sex change operation where she transforms Shariputra into a female body and she takes on a male body and Shariputra, of course, is just totally freaked out to suddenly find himself a woman.

[53:59]

Poor guy. So, anyway, it's very funny. So, you know, we might think of the Malakirti or his goddess, anyway, as the transgender Bodhisattva. Anyway, eventually, Sariputra admits that he can't find any essential femaleness or maleness. So, as I said before, as archetypes of Bodhisattvas, these archetypes are not like the archetypal gods and goddesses in Greek mythology who are archetypes of male-ness and female-ness. These are archetypes of spirituality. But anyway, that's one example of this trickster quality of the Malachite, or in this case of his Scottish friend. Another one is that at some point later on, as a magical display, the Malachite picks up a galaxy and tosses it around the universe and lands back in his hand.

[55:04]

And he does this just to show people how their usual view of things is tentative and not total. But when he does this, the only people who can see it are the people who would be benefited by seeing it. Nobody else is harmed by this event. So, you know, which reminds me of one of my favorite American Buddhist movies, Men in Black, where the galaxy is on Orion's belt, and I won't say much more about that in case you haven't seen it, but Men in Black is a wonderful Buddhist movie for many reasons. Anyway, that's a little bit about the Malakirti, but as a great lay enlightened layman, He's certainly an encouragement to Western Buddhists.

[56:06]

So if there's one or two comments about the Malakirti, we could do that. And then I want to talk about the Bodhisattvas generally and talk about how studying these Bodhisattvas relates to our own practice. Any specific comments or questions about the Molokirti? Just one or two. Diane, maybe you can call on people. Yeah, Lisa, your hand is up. I don't know if you intend for it to be or not. Do you have a question? I think that was one of my children putting my hand up. No, I don't have a question. I'm enjoying the... the lay quality of Malakirti. It feels very connected to my own life in many ways. So, yeah, I'm just appreciating his expression. Great. And, yeah, that would include, you know, having children and playing with children, although a number of these Bodhisattvas have relationships to children, Jizo and Maitreya certainly.

[57:09]

So, yeah, great. Any other comments or questions just about the Malakirti before we open this up to a general discussion about Bodhisattvas? Looks like everybody's pretty happy. Anybody online? They're all sitting there like little Buddhists. I've gone through all this material today and in the previous classes somewhat quickly. please uh... you know you can take time to look at it more carefully in the face of compassion book or uh... you know i think that that you should there's a bibliography at the end with uh... the information with the stories about where this where the sources are for each of these figures and uh... and also about the you know various exemplars that i'd suggested that michael has his hand up michael yeah well i've

[58:13]

studying Zen, I always felt a lot of affinity for Lakerte because he's, in my mind, he's subversive of the priestly order and of the, you know, the insistence that, you know, hierarchy and traditional Zen Structure is important that the you know It's only the high people that really are awakened and really know what the hell they're talking about So that part of him. I've always found him to be the subversive one never Yeah, well, I would say that you know Yeah, actually in some ways They each have their subversive qualities, but yes The volatility certainly is subversive to the to the hierarchical monastic institutional aspect of Buddhism, for sure. Yes, I find it rather surprising that the former Chief Justice keeps raising subversiveness as the quality of bodhisattvas, but that's a great polarity for us to work with.

[59:29]

Okay, so you were going to open it up to a broader discussion. Yeah, well, So the point about, so we've looked at now seven of these Bodhisattva figures and really each one of the seven is a collection of various stories and imagery, iconography, folklore, particular sutras or schools that some of them represent, most of them represent So again, it's a way of seeing the range of all the different Buddhist teachings. But also, these stories relate to aspects of ourself and our own practice. And the point of studying this, so in this Soto tradition that I'm from, and in general, I think in Zen, and I would say in Buddhism generally, the point of

[60:33]

study is to inform our practice. This is true in Vajrayana as well, that the point isn't just learning, and I say this as an academic teacher and scholar as well, but the point of studying this background is to allow it to inform how we put it into practice and how we express our awareness and this practice in our lives and in the world and to deepen our practice on our cushions and off our cushions. So I think these stories have, you know, give us a way of seeing, give us different ways of seeing our own practice, give us different ways of seeing how to express our practice in our lives, in our everyday lives, and in our response to issues in the world.

[61:36]

So, you know, we can talk, we can respond to that in a few different ways. One is the way I did in the book of, you know, thinking about exemplars of each of these Bodhisattvas in our, you know, in our own lives or also in our culture, but also to think of the stories we tell about ourselves. So each of us has a self, a provisional, conventional self. We have, you know, social security numbers and addresses and, you know, all of these things we identify as a self. And also we have, you know, so these stories can be informed by these other stories. We can change the past, you know, by, you know, and Maitreyi emphasizes that quality, by telling different stories about stuff that's happened. And so these stories are ways of seeing our own stories differently. So that's my kind of introduction to this. But I really want to hear from any of you, all of you, just your response to any of these bodhisattvas and how

[62:47]

So one question was just which of these bodhisattvas could be more than one? Which of them you respond to particularly in terms of your own practice or aspirations? And we could start there. So I just want to open this up to general discussion. And Diane, if you would call on people, please. I'll try and keep my responses brief because I want to hear from you. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we've talked a lot. this week about the last week when we were in formal session and then this week we've been doing more embodied practice and also relational work and we've talked about how within the Mahayana tradition that the recognition of the absolute and the expression of skillful means and of compassion are seen as one thing and that our practice really is our life and you know that there's this possibility of conducting ourselves with much more generosity and to some degree goodness and freedom.

[63:53]

That's a reality. And I've been asking people to consider their own practice life this week with the stories of the Bodhisattvas and also just to contemplate the beneficence. You know, we talk about the robe of liberation, a formless field of benefaction. So those are some of the ways we've been talking about the Bodhisattva ideal. So does anybody have anything related to your own life in terms of these figures and how they might... I'm thinking of you, Marcia, whether you might want to comment about the people who you've mentioned to me have served you this week as Bodhisattvas. Is that something you might like to do? Yeah. in just the way people have shown up in particular moments to support one another. Yeah. So, yeah.

[64:55]

I guess for me, the Bodhisattva was just a concept before the two weeks of retreat. And now I have a better sense of how each people can represent in our lives any or different kinds of energies and challenges and supports in a way that they all show up as Bodhisattvas in each of our lives. And this is really a really precious learning for me from this week. Well, I wanted to ask if there were any So, you know, any of the Bodhisattvas in particular could be more than one who you particularly related to? Well, um... I just forgot the layman Bodhisattva name.

[66:03]

Vimalakirti. Vimalakirti? Well, I will name, for example, Julia, who is like a magician who brings all the things for us, you know, in this retreat, in our lives, and in this Sangha. So, she feels like really a magician, because I don't know how she does all that, for example. Great. Good. Other people, comments, or responses, or anything about the Bodhisattva? Yeah, anyone online? Mark or Tish? Carla, I want to give you a moment to say something if you'd like. So just press one on your handheld. Hey, Julia, would you like to share?

[67:15]

Well, I certainly appreciate Marcia Xinko's characterization of me as a magician. I certainly don't feel very magical most of the time. At least I don't throw universes around like Frisbees. But as I've been working with this, I've really felt so much that these archetypes, these images, and these characters are such powerful medicine. So I have a way of being that has a very Vajra energy, and I can be very intelligent and very quick, but I can also be very sharp, and sometimes not very kind. And so when I hear and really feel into the possibility of Maitreya's just the fullness of kindness, and how intelligent and how enlivening and how complete just simple kindness can be. I feel so supported in actually letting go of some of that connection or feeling like I have to always be so damn smart.

[68:30]

You know, but I actually can be a little bit more of a fool and let kindness And actually let kindness be the moment, what's really called forth in the moment. So I find that really helpful. Yeah, that's interesting. You know, I talked in the first couple of classes about balance and the balance of Manjushri's wisdom and then the various modes of expression of the three bodhisattvas last week. And I think there are various kinds of balance. So there's a lot of overlap between these seven. But there's also a kind of balancing that we can see. And I hadn't thought of it exactly that way, but Maitreya's loving-kindness is a kind of balance to Manjushri's sharpness, for example. I mean, Maitreya is also, you know, has this kind of deep sensitivity and intelligence about consciousness and mind and phenomenology, if you will. But there's this kind of basic

[69:32]

sense of spaciousness of time and of loving-kindness there. So, yeah, so sometimes we can relate to a particular bodhisattva or bodhisattva energy or approach in terms of our own practice, but then, you know, hearing the other stories can help us in terms of a balance to that. So that's good. Thank you very much, Julia. There's another hand up? Yeah, Mark Broussard. Go ahead, Mark. Hello, everybody. Yeah, just one quick comment I'd like to make in terms of working with these seven bodhisattvas and similar to what Rob McNamara said the other day in terms of Robert Keegan's evolution of adult consciousness and how working with these different seven archetypes is related to working with polarities in terms of developing higher consciousness for adult development. I see how it relates to Robert Keegan.

[70:36]

It's very similar to your work with these bodhisattvas. And for me personally, like I've been in a whirlwind recently, having worked wilderness for several years and went back to grad school and now a practicing social worker working on a crisis team in New Orleans. working with a severely mental ill and suicidal and drug-addicted and witnessing very much like Jizo, which I never really got to know this dude, but I can relate to him. And like meeting these people, you know, these beings and how they teach me so much. And it's like, they're so, you know, so much a bodhisattva themselves, you know? And I choose to say who's sick or what's right or what's wrong. in terms of the story, inside of the story, on top of the story, and how, is it really just all an illusion, or is there really a story to this story? And that really gets me juiced.

[71:37]

Interesting, yeah. That's, you know, that's a, you're bringing up an important point, is that in terms of knowing, you know, so having some familiarity with these different figures gives us a way of seeing how our own practice changes in different modes, and we, you know, our life changes and we go from one realm to another, one area to another, and we can see how, you know, at different times in our life we might be more involved in one style of practice, one archetypal approach to practice than another, and knowing about these different qualities kind of can help support us. I heard at the very end there that you had a question sort of about history and whether there's some I'm not sure if I, you know, so I think the main point of these is that they are figures that speak, you know, archetypally, as Jung would have it, to the aspects of people's approach to practice over long periods of time through different cultures.

[72:45]

But yeah, I mean, I think there are, there have been speculations about historical figures who may be inspired some aspects of these figures. So I don't know. That's we don't really know. But we don't know that there was a historical disciple of the Buddha who, by trade, is patterned after. Maybe, maybe not. There's speculation. Certainly Shakyamuni Buddha was a historical figure. Although, you know, what we think we know about him, we don't really know. We don't really know what he said there. We don't have the You don't have the videotapes of those talks he gave, you know? So, anyway. That's great. Just a clarifying comment. What Mark was talking about in the beginning of his comment when he was talking about Robert Keegan, who is an adult development professor at Harvard who's written a number of books about higher levels of adult development.

[73:46]

One is called in over our heads, and another one's called the evolving self. And one of the comments, well, I guess one of his observations from his research is that as the human beings develop in their ability to take more and more perspectives, they begin to think more often in terms of sets of opposites rather than in black and white thinking. So an example of that would be that in Michael's case, he thinks about the social order as part of his work. all the time and therefore subversiveness arises simultaneously. So rather than simply thinking about order or thinking about rebellion, you see these two in a dynamic process with one another. So what I heard also in Mark's comment is that the social worker becomes the one receiving help and that that polarity of who it is who's giving and receiving help and who's actually teaching, that's a polarity that arises in consciousness and it's no longer one person you know, on top or bottom, so to speak.

[74:48]

Yeah, and actually, when we talked about Jizo last week, I did not mention the aspect of Jizo that's kind of the wounded healer and that, you know, that anybody in healing work is also being helped. And so, yeah, there's that reciprocity and, yeah. Speaking of Michael, I think he's got his hand up. Yeah, go ahead, Mike. Well, I was just asking, you know, overall, how do the Bodhisattvas, how do we experience them? And I think, personally, I always find that there's a tendency in any religious system or philosophical system to think there's a right way. You know, there's There's the right way and the wrong way and the thing about the treatment you've given these bodhisattvas in the book and the way you've talked about them here has a nice quality of eroding the notion that there's a right way or a wrong way or a correct perspective going back to what Diane's just talking about with Keegan.

[75:53]

There's infinite perspectives and there's no center. And I think the way you talk about the bodhisattvas gives people a sense of legitimizing various parts of themselves, various ways they approach their lives and their practice. So I think it's very valuable and it's been very helpful. Yeah, I do have some response to that, although, you know, as soon as I see another hand up, I'm going to shut up. But, you know, I think that's very important that a lot of the damage done by religion in the world comes back to literalist views and fundamentalism. And I love what Thich Nhat Hanh says about right view in his first order, first precept in his order of inner being, that to hold on to any particular view is you know, it's a disservice, and not even to try and, you know, educate, to try and coerce others, or even suggest to others that they should have some particular view.

[76:58]

To listen is the point. And so, yeah, part of a mature way of seeing spiritual practice and teaching and life is to is, you know, there's the side of meditative practice, which is settling and finding inner peace and calm, but there's also the opening side and the spacious side of developing awareness that allows wider options. And so, yeah, to be open and sensitive is part of, you know, the point of our practice. And that's how we can see new ways of thinking that allow us to respond to problems of injustice or climate or all the things that are difficulties in our world and that need help. So trying to hold on to some one right view of what to do is not helpful.

[78:05]

And also going back to talking about these seven bodhisattvas as a Punjab as a way of classifying the teachings and for us Westerners is looking at the range of all these different Buddhist teachings. This is a way of looking at them that's not hierarchical where like, you know, in the early Chinese Buddhist schools where they included all the different teachings but they picked their own sutra as the best, you know, and we can look at these seven bodhisattvas and say, you know, all they each, you know, are helpful in some way. And so, I think being respectful of the range of approaches is really important. So, other... Yeah. I think we need to wrap up on our end. Oh, okay. And I just want to really appreciate you again for your depth and your practice and your writing.

[79:07]

and your ability to articulate and to help us enter the world of these Bodhisattvas. And just for those of you on the line who are listening, Taigen has a new book that will be coming out next year and we're hoping to organize another course around the content of that new book. And so, you know, pay attention and we'll alert you. Yeah, go ahead, Taigen. The new book is coming out from Shambhala in sometime around March, it's called Just This Is It, Dongshan and the Practice of Suchness. So it's about the Chinese master Dongshan from the 9th century. He was the founder of what became the Sato Zen lineage. So it's about, mostly it's about his stories and koans. Anyway, that's the next one. Wonderful, wonderful. So thank you again, Taigan. Goodbye, everybody. Thank you so much for taking time out to do this this morning.

[80:07]

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