Good morning, everyone. Today is the day every year that we commemorate the power and nirvana of Shakyamuni Buddha, who 2,500 years ago passed away into nirvana around this time in the year. we have this statue of the Buddha on the altar in front of Manjushri reclining. So the conventional story is that about this is that the Buddha Well, there are different stories. One is that he ate some bad mushrooms. Another is that he ate some bad pork that was given to him by a donor. Anyway, when it was time for him to pass away, he reclined in this position on his right side.

[01:11]

between two twin sala trees. These were trees, each of which had two trunks, and doing the jhana practice that was the Indian meditation practice that preceded the Buddha entered into parinirvana, which means that he passed away into nirvana, not to be reborn. So, The various stories about this, there's the Theravada and Nirvana Sutra about this. There's the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, the Mahayana Sutra that's very important. in our Bodhisattva and Sotosen tradition, a number of things about this. One is that the story about him receiving eating donation, and he praised the donor and said this was just his time, but traditional Buddhist dietary practices favor

[02:25]

lean towards vegetarianism, but there's also the practice of monks going out and just taking, receiving whatever's given. And so it's possible that he might have eaten bad meat. Anyway, there's different approaches in Buddhism to dietary practice. And the story about his passing away is that, one story is that he said to the monks assembled, and there are pictures of the assembly around the Buddha reclining like that. There's a famous statue in Bangkok of a huge, long, long statue of him reclining like that. And also actually in monasteries in Asia where the monks sleep in the meditation hall, the practice is to sleep in that position on one's right side and I think there are yogic reasons for that and anatomical reasons for that and why it's considered healthy.

[03:35]

But anyway, one story is that the monks were gathered and he said that now after I pass away you should treat the dharma as my body and study the dharma, the teachings. There's another story that says, be a lamp unto yourselves. You need to now become the guide for yourself, since I will not be here. But I wanted to read a different modern twist on that, which I like a lot, from the wonderful contemporary American poet Mary Oliver. She has a poem called The Buddha's Last Instruction. And she reads that last instruction, be a light unto yourself, is how it's often translated, implying become your own guide now that the Buddha has passed away.

[04:42]

And again, there are images of the disciples and many others in the Buddha assemblies, all kinds of magical beings, kind of very sad and weeping around the Buddha as he's passing away. Mary Oliver reads it as, make of yourself a light. Become a light. implying for all beings. So she has a poem, and I'll read the whole poem. The Buddha's Last Instruction. Make of yourself a light, said the Buddha before he died. I think of this every morning. As the east begins to tear off its many clouds of darkness to send up the first signal, a white fan streaked with pink and violet, even green, An old man, he lay down between two solid trees, and he might have said anything, knowing it was his final hour. The light burns upward.

[05:45]

It thickens and settles over the fields. Around him, the villagers gathered and stretched forward to listen, even before the sun itself hangs, disattached in the blue air. I am touched everywhere by its ocean of yellow waves. No doubt he thought of everything that had happened in his difficult life. And then I feel the sun itself as it blazes over the hills like a million flowers on fire. Clearly I'm not needed, yet I feel myself turning into something of inexplicable value. Slowly beneath the branches, he raised his head. he looked into the faces of that frightened crowd. That's where the poem ends, but it sort of goes back to the beginning then. Make of yourself a light. So we celebrate today the Buddha's passing away, and traditionally it's his passing away into nirvana, never to be reborn.

[06:54]

So nirvana in the old, in the early Buddhist tradition, nirvana literally means cessation. And it was the goal in the early Buddhist tradition of the arhat, the one who passes away never to be reborn, and ends the cycle of birth and death and of rebirths. So nirvana is a kind of cessation. No more birth, no more death. Getting free from samsara. Samsara is kind of like the opposite of nirvana. Samsara is the wheel of cause and effect of gain and loss, the wheel of suffering, the usual conventional world that we all live in. And the traditional idea of nirvana was to be free of that, to never be reborn again. So this Mahaparinirvana is this sense that the Buddha passed away into nirvana.

[07:59]

And that's one definition of what a Buddha is. They're never going to be reborn. In the practice we do in Zen Buddhism, in the Mahayana practice, the Bodhisattva practice of North Asia, which Zen is included in, the Bodhisattva practice is about universal awakening. So we don't practice just for ourselves. Of course, doing this practice of sitting upright, being present, paying attention, of course, helps us personally to settle and be calm and to be more open, to have a sense of spaciousness. It has, you know, we could say personal benefits, but we don't sit alone. Everybody we've ever known is part of what is happening on our seat right now.

[09:00]

So there's this other idea of nirvana, Although I remember when I first started sitting many years ago with a Japanese Soto Zen priest in New York, after I'd been sitting a little while, I asked him, oh, how do I achieve nirvana? And he said, you just die. So that's this traditional idea of nirvana is passing away. And actually, in Japan, When someone dies, there are many different versions of what happens and where the person who's passed away goes. But one of them is that anybody who dies is called Hotoke, which means Buddha. So when you die, you become a Buddha. That's one of the many things that may happen. But anyway, in the Mahayana, the Bodhisattva idea, nirvana is not separate from samsara.

[10:03]

We find this freedom from samsara, we find our liberation right in the middle of this difficult world. Right in the middle of the world of gain and loss and fame and gain and all of our problems. There's a kind of edge to this Mahaparinirvana. And it comes through, one place it comes through is the Lotus Sutra. And we've studied this here, the idea of the inconceivable lifespan of the Buddha. So we chant this sometimes. And in this important Bodhisattva Sutra, The Buddha reveals in the middle of the Lotus Sutra that

[11:10]

Even though it seems like he has passed away into nirvana, he says in the section we sometimes chant, since I attained Buddhahood, the number of kalpas that have passed is incalculable, hundreds, thousands, myriads, and billions of long eons. Constantly I have voiced the Dharma, teaching countless millions living beings so that they enter the Buddha way. All this for immeasurable ages. He says, ever making this my thought, how can I cause living beings to gain entry into the unsurpassed way and promptly embody Buddha? So in the Lotus Sutra, the Buddha says that he appears to pass away into nirvana, but actually he does, well, he does that because for some beings, if they thought that the Buddha was still here, They think that they didn't need to practice. Let Buddha take care of it.

[12:14]

So for some people, we need to hear, Buddha's gone. He passed away. Oh, no. Oh, no, Buddha's gone. Oh, it's so sad. It really is. And so we have to practice hard ourselves. And we do. But for others, you know, he says, oh, you know, Buddha has this very, he's not infinite, the way it says in the Lotus Sutra, but he lives for a very, [...] very long lifespan. And he reveals this in the middle of the Lotus Sutra. So we sometimes chant about that and chant a part of that chapter. So what does this mean? that in some way Buddha is still alive? This is the question, and it comes up on Mahaparinirvana Day. So there's an old Zen koan where the student goes with the teacher to pay a

[13:28]

sympathy call on a parishioner who's passed away and the student pounds on the casket and says, alive or dead? And the teacher says, I won't say alive, I won't say dead. And the student gets very upset about this. Alive or dead? I won't say, I won't say, says the teacher. So, where is Buddha today, on this Mahaparinirvana day, 2017? Is that right? Yeah. So, Dogen struggled with this. Dogen is the founder of this Soto Zen tradition in Japan. in the 1200s. So he gave a number of talks on this occasion of the Mahaparinirvana day. So I'm going to just read bits from some of them.

[14:35]

In 1252, this was the year before he passed, Dogen himself passed away, he said, this night Buddha entered Nirvana under the twin Sala trees, and yet it is said that he always abides on Vulture Peak, where the Lotus Sutra was preached. When can we meet our compassionate father? Alone and poor, we vainly remain in this world amid love and yearning. What can this confused son do? I wish to stop these red tears and join in wholesome action. So, So for Dogen, he saw that the way to get past the sadness of the Buddha is gone is to join in wholesome action, to continue practicing, to continue the work of Shakyamuni Buddha, to help relieve suffering and bring joy, to help beings awaken in this world, in the world he was in. In another talk on this occasion, this was in 1250, a couple years before this, he said, all beings are sad with longing and their tears overflow.

[15:47]

Although we trust his words that he always resides on Vulture Peak. So Dogen very much revered the Lotus Sutra and knew this teaching about this very long lifespan. He says, although we trust his words that he always resides on Vulture Peak, how can we not be sorry about the coldness at the Twin Solitrees? So he both remembers the enduring presence from the Lotus Sutra, but also honors the human sadness. So both sides. How do we keep Buddha alive, and how do we also remember the sadness of the loss from Buddha passing away? Both sides. Our practice is not just to feel like, oh, everything's wonderful because Buddha is still here. We know human loss and sadness.

[16:49]

We practice with that. We face negative emotions. We face loss. We face the sadness of the world. But also, there's some way in which Buddha is still here. What is that? How do we take care of that? That's up to us. Another time on this occasion, this was in 1246, a little earlier, Dogen says, now our original teacher, great master Shakyamuni, is passing away into parinirvana. Entering nirvana. Why is this only about Shakyamuni Buddha? All Buddhas in the 10 directions in the past, future, and present enter nirvana tonight at midnight. Those who do not enter nirvana tonight at midnight are not Buddha ancestors and are not capable of maintaining the teaching. Those who have already entered nirvana tonight at midnight are capable of maintaining the teaching. So this is not just about something that happened 2,500 years ago.

[17:56]

All the Buddhas in the past, present, and the future on this day pass away into nirvana. we're going to say. And this passing away in nirvana persists into the future. And if we haven't already passed away in nirvana, we can't be Buddhists. So this is interesting. This Buddha reclining peacefully, calmly, he's done his work. We know that because here we are doing this practice. According to the story of Buddha's inconceivable lifespan, Buddha persists with and as all Buddhas. The willingness to pass away for the sake of those who would benefit or simply to face human mortality is exactly Buddha's enduring lifespan.

[19:07]

Later in the same talk, he says, with full exertion, lift up this single stone and call it the lifespan of as many ages as the atoms in 500 worlds. So he honors Buddha's passing away by bringing it here. So there's a tension in this. I won't say alive, I won't say dead. In 1247, in the talk given on this day, Dogen said, if you say Shakyamuni is extinguished, you are not his disciple. If you say he's not extinguished, your words don't hit the mark. Having reached this day, how do you respond? Do you want to see the Buddha's life vain? offer incense, make prostrations, return to the meditation hall.

[20:13]

So our practice is how we honor this tension. The Buddha's passed away, the Buddha's right here. Right here. How do we take care of this? So our practice is just to sit still, be present, enjoy our breathing. There's a tension here and there's a vitality. Something happens when we are willing to just be still for a while. Our true life comes from this stillness.

[21:19]

Our true vitality comes from willingness to face this death. So there are many expressions of that in Zen. One of the chants we do, the song of the Jomare Samadhi says, the wooden man begins to sing, the stone woman gets up to dance. When we settle, when we stop running around, trying to get more of this, and get rid of that, and manipulate the world, and fix things, and get stuff that I want, and get rid of the stuff I don't want, and just stop, and face the wall, and face ourselves. Well, you know, it looks like maybe we're just, you know, there was one famous meditation hall in China, they called it the dead stump hall.

[22:29]

And the monks there sat very still. But there's this way in which the Buddha is still alive. How is that? How do we know that? The wooden man begins to sing, the stone woman gets up to dance. It says that this is not reached by feelings or discriminations. I'll read it from that. It's not reached by feelings or consciousness. How could it involve deliberation? This isn't something we figure out. This is some organic, this is this organic process of the vitality that comes out of stillness, that comes out of being willing to stop and just face this deep vitality and energy. as well as facing the difficulty and sadness of our life.

[23:35]

The wooden man begins to sing, the stone woman gets up to dance. And there are many other sayings like this. The plum blossoms on the same withered branch as last year. So we're having this strange winter now. I've been in Chicago ten years last week and So I'm just a novice to Chicago, but already I know this is an unusual winter. It's going to be 60 degrees, they say, next Sunday. And I haven't seen any snow this winter. I was away in December when we had some snow. So this is kind of nice for us. Our new Secretary of State from ExxonMobil has created this unusual weather. But soon, you know, sooner than usual maybe, the plum will blossom on the same withered branches last year.

[24:49]

There are many sayings like this in Zen. They also say, a dragon howls on a withered tree. Sometimes a dragon sings in a withered tree. Again, this is about this relationship of vitality and energy and stillness or death. And so we celebrate the Buddha's passing away today. We celebrate the Buddha's death. And the Buddha's life. And where is the Buddha's life? And how do we bring Buddha to life today? So this is an interesting time in our world and in our society. I can see that in some ways I came to Buddhist practice myself because it had, as I explored it and saw the principles of Buddhist values,

[26:03]

and particularly in the Bodhisattva tradition, I felt like, oh, those are the same principles that I cherish in my own, you know, values in my own country. Principles of liberty and justice for all, and government of, by, and for the people, of including all people, of welcoming all people. And our Buddhist precepts, our Bodhisattva precepts, talk about benefiting all beings and not killing but helping, helping rather than harming. So Buddhism is about ahimsa, not harming, and helping others not to harm, and being helpful, and being respectful. So... Now we have this strange time where we have government of the billionaires, by the billionaires, for the billionaires, and much of what I, maybe we've never enacted our fine principles in this country exactly.

[27:23]

We have this, what's happening isn't exactly new. We've had racism and slavery and destruction of the Native American people's cultures and their lives. But we've had these principles. And... So I feel like I have to speak of what's going on this week and this last month. I feel a responsibility to talk about this, to mention it, and some of us are trying to trying to see what we can do to resist this, to resist the destruction, the destruction of public education, the destruction of the Environmental Protection Agency and turning it into the Environmental Poison Agency. So forth, the ending of the melting pot, and I guess this last weekend, deporting many people, immigrants who were welcome here previously.

[28:36]

And the president saying that he was not subject to the rule of law and the rules of the courts. So it's a dangerous time. And yet, you know, this rhythm of life and vitality and energy coming from death also shows us that new energy of, in this case, resistance and support of life and support of positive values is also happening in the face of this. So I don't have any answers. I don't know how to... Well, I just know that we need to uphold positive values. Values of generosity and of kindness and of love. So... This is all interesting on Mahaparinirvana Day and celebrating, celebrating Buddha's passing away and celebrating that Buddha is still here and that we still commemorate the life and passing of Buddha and somehow Buddha is still here.

[30:01]

So maybe that's enough for me to say today. Comments, questions, responses, or just questions about Shakyamuni Buddha. Yes. Yeah. So in the Lotus Sutra, the Buddha says, I'll just elaborate on that story. In that sutra, in that scripture, that's one of the most important Sutra means, is a scripture, the name of a scripture, the word for scripture in Buddhism, and these are supposed to be the words of the Buddha. And in the Bodhisattva Sutras, the sutras of Northern Buddhism, Mahayana Buddhism, dedicated to universal liberation.

[31:11]

And that's in the story, in the first half of that sutra, the Buddha keeps asking, the first half uh... yes various groups of people who will comments in the future evil age and uh... keep alive these teachings from this letter sutra after i passed away and a lot of citrus was to be one teachings given by the, by Shakyamuni Buddha, the historical Buddha before he passes away. So he was, Shakyamuni is the name of the Buddha who lived 2,500 years ago in what's now northeastern India. And he asks various people and eventually a group of bodhisattvas who've been visiting from a distant world system, maybe a distant solar system or galaxy very distant in the northeast, say, oh, we'll come back in the future. And so I'm giving the longer version of the story now. And the Buddha said, oh, actually, you don't need to do that.

[32:13]

And then from out of the earth, from out of the open space under the earth, many, many, many, many Bodhisattvas, ancient Bodhisattvas, spring forth, and they are ready to come forth and In the future evil age, which traditionally many people have identified as their current time. In Dogen's time, people thought this was the future evil age. Of course, now we can think this is the future evil age. I can give you nuclear weapons and nuclear waste and war and dictators and so forth. Anyway, these bodhisattvas spring out of the earth. So this is an image of the fertility of the earth. And for helping beings awaken, they say they will come. And then the regular bodhisattvas, the ones that we know about, who have been there through Buddha's teachings, say, well, where are those

[33:15]

bodhisattvas come from, we never heard of them, and then the buddha said, oh, I taught them. And the other bodhisattvas say, well, gee, you know, we never saw them. How could you have done that? We know that you left the palace where you were living and became the buddhas, you know, 40 years ago. And that's when the Buddha says, well, okay, I'll tell you the truth now. Actually, since I became a Buddha, since I was a Bodhisattva, and since I became a Buddha, it's a very, very, very long time, incalculable ages. I've been around teaching and helping beings. I've been a Buddha for, and he gives this astronomical metaphor of how long it's been, like for as many, as many planets as there are. Anyway, he gives these wonderful Indian cosmological metaphors. So that's where the story comes from, that the Buddha says he's been actually around and teaching and helping beings for a very, very long time.

[34:21]

And he will continue for twice that long into the future. So that's the story in the middle of the Lotus Sutra, that the Buddha actually, he says he pretends to pass away, to be born and then leave the palace and become a Buddha and enter into Nirvana for the sake of beings who would be helped by hearing that story. So that's the story in the Lotus Sutra. And that's not something that all Buddhists believe. But it's important in East Asian Buddhism. There are some branches of Buddhism that chant the name of the Lotus Sutra, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. You may have heard that. Some branches of Buddhism in Japan follow that. But Dogen in Soto Zen, Dogen also cites the Lotus Sutra a lot. And so we chant that sometimes. So that's just one story. There are lots of stories about what Buddha is or who Buddha is. And many of the Zen koans or teaching stories are about, well, who's Buddha?

[35:25]

What's Buddha? And Buddha just means the awakened one. So what does it mean to be awake? And that's really the question for us. How do we be awake in our place, in our time? What does it mean for us to... And then there are all kinds of different teachings about practices of awakeness, of kindness, of generosity, discipline, patience, which is very important. And how do we pay attention when we don't know what to do? But how do we stay ready to be helpful when we see something to be helpful, some way to be helpful? So practices of skillful means and practices of commitment. So that's a little bit. Do you have a follow-up question? OK. So that's a little bit longer description. Anybody else, questions? Yes, Chris.

[36:27]

So I have been reading the Five Remembrances every morning, pretty much since Katie Dudzik gave that talk before she left. She's back. And now she's back. And the third one, or no, it's the fourth one I struggle with the most, where it says something along the lines of, everyone I love and everything I know is subject to change. I cannot escape being separated from them. Right. You know, initially when I, you know, like everybody, you come to Buddhism with a whole bunch of thoughts about like, this is what reincarnation is, this is what nirvana is, you know, what have you. And lately, I've been having more of this feeling of, you know, as Thich Nhat Hanh has said sometimes, that we're never really born and that we never really die. But then there's also like the fundamental paradox that like children are born every day and my parents are someday going to die and I'm going to die too. So, how do you, to me, it strikes me as something that perhaps shouldn't really be attempted to fathom with the intellectual, conceptual mind, but.

[37:40]

Yep. How can you understand, I mean, I have this feeling that like, it's very true that, you know, like the Diamond Sutra, like, nothing's created and nothing's destroyed, and yet in the mundane world, like, everything is created and everything's destroyed. Yes, so is there a question there? Could you comment on that? Yeah, so part of, you know, a big part of our practice is just sitting and being present and recognizing the reality that a loss of sadness and grief So we're having a speaker tomorrow evening about this. That, yeah, that everything passes away. And practically speaking, you know, this is, we have to face this.

[38:48]

We have to face our own difficulties. And yet, in the facing of this. So the first noble truth is the truth of suffering or of dissatisfactoriness. But I think it's a noble truth is when we can actually sit present and upright and face it, face the sadness. There's something noble about that. Doesn't mean it's not sad. Doesn't mean we don't grieve. but that we can face it. We don't have to hide from it. We don't have to run away from it. We don't have to run away from reality. And we can be helpful to ourselves and each other in the face of the difficulties and problems of the world and of the sadness and of loss. And we can do our best to be helpful and kind to each other and to ourselves in the middle of that.

[39:54]

And that's not to say that you know, our loved ones won't pass away, and that the Buddha didn't pass away, but something, there's some way we can, we call it practice sometimes, there's some way, there's something we can engage that is, we sometimes call the Buddha's way, that is about being awake in the middle of that, and that is helpful and makes a difference, even in the middle of whatever difficulty, personal or communal, societal. Time for one more comment or question. Response. Yes, David. Buddha recognizes her attachments and is willing to face her attachments and not be caught by them. So we all have preferences, we all have dislikes, but we don't have to be pushed around by them.

[40:58]

So non-attachment doesn't mean we don't care. Part of what's difficult about this practice of just sitting and being present and upright is that we We see our own greed and anger and confusion. So all the difficulties of our society are not separate from our own grasping. I mean, we don't, you know, I mean, I guess it seems like billionaires think they need to have more and more and more. We can be satisfied with, you know, and content with less, but we still have desires. We still have anger. And maybe sometimes it's appropriate, but we don't have to be caught by it. And when we sit and see our stuff, to use the technical term, coming up again and again and again, we can know it and not act on it and not react based on it so much and stop causing harm to ourselves and others based on it.

[42:07]

So it's not about not having feelings and not having attachments. not being caught or obsessed, causing harm based on what I would say. So thank you all. Happy Parinirvana Day.

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