There are different ways of thinking about Buddhist life. And one way is just the kind of historical events. Which are very interesting because it's one of the very oldest biographies anywhere. And then another way is to look at it as an archetypal journey. How does Buddha's life recapitulate the story, the journey of our own way-seeking minds? And one of the handouts that you have is from Seeking the Heart, the chapter on the life of Buddha from Seeking the Heart of Wisdom by Goldstein and Kornfield.

[01:04]

And this also, I didn't put it on the recommended reading list, but this is a wonderful, wonderfully available, clear book that is, I think, should be in everybody's library also. You can keep just referring back and back to it. So I'm not, he, I think it's Kornfield who's written the chapter on Buddha's life, which is one of the, the life of the seven, the thin life of Buddha there. And it's nice because it covers, it's a synopsis of the whole story in just a few pages, and that part of it is helpful and it's well-written and it talks about how our journeys and Buddha's life coincide.

[02:11]

There are the great events of Buddha's life. As Cornfield says, first of all the birth, the call to destiny, you know, as our little body minds come together and we're newly born out of the karmic circumstances that are our families. Already there's some kind of karmic, we're imprinted in some way, each of us. And there's some destiny, there's some kind of the problem, the some kind of journey that already we're launched on. And then there is the, as we get older, there is the recognition of the suffering aspect of our life. One of my sons, when he was five, often children around five or six, death hits them.

[03:19]

we've gone to Italy and I guess there was something about being in an old country and one night he just began to weep and he said, everybody dies and I'm going to die too, am I? So we begin to catch on and get the particular experiences of suffering that our life brings to us. We all have our own suffering stories and how we encounter it and how we meet it and so on. So that's the second aspect of Buddha's life when he acknowledges that there is, he's been very comfortable and then he acknowledges there is suffering. We may get to that tonight. And then the third step is the renunciation. that understanding that there is suffering the determination that one is going to do more than live buffeted by the winds of pleasure and aversion that one is going to go deeper and discover what the underlying issues are

[04:46]

and find some kind of meaning that addresses the issues of suffering. And so that's the renunciation, the leaving home, leaving the habits of personality and the karmic fruits and making the vow to live by practice that's when practice begins the strong when the intention of living by vow rather than by karma when that intention arises then we have stepped into the realm of practice and something gets left behind so that's the that's that stage.

[05:49]

And in fact most of us, Mel talked about this recently in a lecture, since most of us are not Buddhists by birth but Buddhists by choice, becoming Buddhists means culturally leaving something behind. And we have the matter to integrate of what we leave behind and what we take culturally. And then there is the struggle with delusion that you have made the determination to live by vow and live by practice and that's a different way that's a different grid of reality and so all the delusions and temptations and the what you have not looked at clearly before arise and that's a Buddha's

[07:14]

the years, the five or six years between the time that Buddha left home and the time that he actually sat down under the Bodhi tree. And then in our journeys, there is the stage of understanding, of manifesting the enlightenment that's there. You know, it's misleading to talk about a linear journey. That's a way of describing it, but it's not so true to our experience. Our experience is that these stages repeat themselves and repeat themselves. So, we struggle with delusion and then we have some understanding. and it is unlikely that it's as complete and profound as Buddha's but get some understanding and then the next stage is our development and how we work with that understanding and how we develop it and how we learn and how we teach and what we do with our lives based on that understanding how we cultivate it

[08:35]

and then finally there is the end and how do we meet the end and what meaning is there for us in our death so those are our stages and we will be reading in this life how Buddha went through So I think it's evident that I hope in this class that we will be doing a lot of work integrating material and looking at ourselves and talking about our experiences in our own lives as well as in Buddha's life. And as I go along, if anyone has questions, that's fine.

[09:39]

So, who is Buddha? Buddha is this historical figure who lived 2,500 years ago. And this is also our sense of the living Buddha, of the qualities in ourselves and others that are awakened, our awakeness. and we don't know where that came from exactly and we can't describe it but it is a very important part of our existence and this is where the alone with others comes in in a nice way Batchelor talks about our worlds as having two major qualities our experience has two major qualities one is the experience of having that we have our body minds and our names and our stories and the people in our lives and our possessions and we have this material

[11:13]

existence that we're implanted in and that's the kind of horizontal and then we also are involved in the non-time axis of being that we just are and that our Buddha knowledge Our awakened knowledge is, if this is a cross between having and being, our understanding of the awakeness of each moment is right at the crux of the cross where the having meets the being. I'm just going to read one couple of paragraphs to give you a flavor of what this book, this thesis is like. He's been talking a lot about having and the many different aspects of having, which includes having a religion and having a belief system and identifying with being a Buddhist.

[12:31]

all that is having. The point that cannot be sufficiently emphasized today is that authentic religious consciousness is not another extension of the horizontal dimension of having, but an awakening to the presence of the vertical dimension of being. As such, its inception must take place in a radical reorientation of one's entire existence. Similarly, any evaluation or criticism of religion is meaningless when delivered from a horizontal outlook. That is, if you're just talking about a religion and you're just describing the belief system and what it is, and you're not addressing the spirit within it, it's meaningless. With the discovery of the dimension of being, the aim and meaning of life is seen within the framework of an entirely new set of values.

[13:34]

The principle of which is, instead of living in order to have more abundantly, it is necessary to live in order to be more abundantly. Religion should not be considered as an optional extra to life that we can either adopt or discard at will. In its true sense, religion is the outcome of life itself. Thus, the essential dynamic of religion can never be reduced to or identified with a particular system of beliefs or dogmas and so on. So, you know our experience in Zazen is that we sit down and usually mind is quite occupied and quite filled with all the stuff that we have our ideas that we have and relationships that we have and projects that we have and so on and so on and so we sit and there's this having, this cloud of having that little by little

[14:52]

settles down and little by little the just being aspect of it begins to be more clear and we feel very good at that point, you know, we begin really to feel the settled-ness of life that we've been missing. So this awakened quality, I mean, one can go on and on. There's a 17th century Zen teacher called Banke, who goes on and on and on about one point, which is this point of the awakened quality that we all have. And he tells a story of suppose we are all together here,

[15:55]

And a car goes by, a noisy car goes by, and I say, oh, what a beautiful bird singing. And you kind of look at me. But you'd know that a car had gone by. You'd all know it. And so that's the kind of thing that we all know. what's going on, but we frame it differently sometimes, usually. As soon as we begin to talk about it, we frame it differently, but it's there, we all know it. So, the awakened quality that sees things as they really are, that's what Buddha's journey is about. Oh, well, I came upon a little paper, so now we could start.

[17:22]

Oh, well, a little bit about background, a little bit about background. I found a little paper that talked about a very recent excavation at Lumbini, where they discovered definitely that Buddha was born in Lumbini. It's a very nice little, very concrete description of the excavation and they found a statue and it just is true. How did they know? that Buddha was born at Numbidini? Because so many... because... what is it? There's a statue that 200 years later King Ashoka put... well, I don't know, but there was a statue that they found there that commemorated the site. And it just tunes... Close enough to the time. Close enough to the time and there are a lot of cues that archaeologists could put together and feel quite sure about it. So, this event happened sometime in the 6th century B.C., about 2,500 years ago.

[18:32]

And somebody just told me that the oldest tree in the world is 3,000 years old. Well, they claim in Sri Lanka to have a cutting of the original Bodhi tree. So, there was some kind of physical reality and our oldest tree is older than it. And he was born into an aristocratic republic in northern India. And it was a time of a lot of upheaval that an agrarian society was moving into a more merchant-oriented society.

[19:41]

And money was replacing barter. So there was a lot going on. And the chief science of the day was astronomy. Astrology. Astronomy. And there were a lot of beliefs that there were just great cycles of cosmoses that would come into existence and then evaporate. And there were two There were two main philosophical schools. One was the Vedic that came from the old Indian Vedic, I don't know what they are, documents, that described the old religious practices and the old rituals.

[20:41]

And then there was another school of philosophy that was more interested in attunement and the samanas, sama being sane, how to bring yourself into harmony with the cosmic forces. So there was a lot of philosophical discussion going on and the big issues were around What happens to life after death? Does life continue? And how does life continue? And then, related to that, issues about free will, whether one is free, whether from moment to moment one is free, or if everything is entirely fated.

[21:49]

so that was the background and Buddha's discovery discoveries are embedded in that background and that's very complicated so that's all I'm going to say about that. So let's begin with the text. And what I want to do is to just follow the text along. On page two, See, there's this system of narrators to give some kind of continuity to the material.

[23:01]

How is that explained? There's the narrator one, who's a commentator. who introduces the others. And then there's narrator two, who supplies the historical and traditional information. And then there's the first voice, which is the voice of Ananda and so on. So we begin on page two. Well, Buddha's names. For a long time, I got very confused. There's so many names. There's so many names applied to Buddha. His first name was Gautama. No, his first name was Siddhartha. And his second name was Gautama. And he belonged to the Shakya tribe. So those are his worldly names.

[24:04]

essentially. So on page two, the narrative begins with the first voice, thus I heard, and that means that's Ananda's voice. Most of the sutras begin with Ananda, who remembered them all, saying thus I have heard. On one occasion, the Blessed One was living at Savatthi in Jetha's Grove at Anathapindika's Park when a number of bhikkhus were waiting in the assembly hall where they had met together on return from their alms round after their meal was over. Meanwhile, it was being said amongst them, it is wonderful, friends, it is marvelous how the Perfect One's power and might enable him to know of past Buddhas who attained the complete extinction of defilement, cut the tangle, broke the circle, ended the round, surmounted all suffering.

[25:15]

Such were those Blessed One's births, their names, their clans, such their virtue, such their concentration, such their understanding, such their abiding. such the manner of their deliverance. So you see, here is this background already of the previous births, this cycle. And Buddha was on very ancient ground. You know, Buddha had, Buddha, as this paragraph suggests, was one, is one of the past Buddhas. You never know where the Buddha begins. In our lineage, when we chant the ancestors chant, we begin with the seven Buddhas before Buddha. And here there just are the past Buddhas. So, there's a kind of, there's a very ancient truth that Shakyamuni Buddha discovered it was there and he uncovered it.

[26:24]

It was always there. And... Historically we don't know who those were. Sometimes we know and sometimes we don't. Yeah. I mean, our tradition names them. and the Mahayana is full of names of previous Buddhas, but they're not usually named. I don't know that they're named in the Theravada. So, the scene opens, this interpersonal scene opens with monks discussing who this Buddha, coming out of the life of the past Buddha, was. And when this was said, the Venerable Ananda told the bhikkhus, perfect ones are wonderful friends and have wonderful qualities. Perfect ones are marvelous and have marvelous qualities. However, their talk, meanwhile, was left unfinished, for now it was already evening.

[27:26]

And the Blessed One, who had risen from retreat, came to the assembly hall and sat down in the seat and made ready. And then he asked the Bhikkhus, Bhikkhus, for what talk are you gathered together here now? What was your talk? Meanwhile, it was left unfinished. So, the teaching for this evening now is going to begin. What the Bhikkhus and the Venerable Ananda had said was related, and they added, Lord, this was our talk. Meanwhile, it was left unfinished, for the Blessed One arrived. And then the Blessed One returned to the Venerable Ananda. That being so, Ananda, explain the Perfect One's wonderful and marvelous qualities more fully. It's a nice thing to be a Buddha. I heard and learned this, Lord, from the Blessed One's own lips. Mindful and fully aware the Bodhisattva, the being dedicated to the Enlightenment, appeared in the heaven of the contented.

[28:29]

And I remember that is a wonderful and marvelous quality. I remember that is a wonderful and marvelous quality of the Blessed One. So before Buddha was enlightened, he's called a Bodhisattva. Because a Bodhisattva is an enlightening being who nevertheless has a desire to be enlightened. And since a Buddha is enlightened, there's no longer any desire. So, this suggests, oh I heard and learned this from the Buddha's own life, but the whole of that life span, the Bodhisattva remained in the heaven of the contented. So you see, Shakyamuni Buddha has been circulating in these different realms and spent a lifetime in the realm of the contented kind of ripening and then Mindful and fully aware, the Bodhisattva passed away from the heaven of the contented and descended into his mother's womb.

[29:38]

So now we have the Buddhist version of the Immaculate Conception. When the Bodhisattva had passed away from the heaven of the contented and entered his mother's womb, a great measureless light, surpassing the splendor of the gods, appeared in the world with its deities, its Maras, and its Brahma divinities. in this generation with its monks and Brahmas, with its princes and men." So there's this world as it is known and unknown and now suddenly there's a great light in it. And even in those abysmal world interspaces of vacancy, gloom, and utter darkness where the moon and sun, powerful and mighty as they are, cannot make their light prevail, There, too, a great measureless light, surpassing the splendor of the gods, appeared, and the creatures born there perceived each other by that light.

[30:40]

So it seems that other creatures have appeared here, and this ten thousand world system shook and quaked and trembled, and there, too, a great measureless light, surpassing the splendor of the gods, appeared." So, this metaphor of light and what happens how everything is seen differently when it's seen in this light and what a radical change happens when Things are seen in this light which pervades everywhere. And then the earthquake, the resonance of the teaching. When the Bodhisattva had descended into his mother's womb, four deities came to guard him from the four quarters so that no human or non-human beings or anyone at all should harm him or his mother.

[31:55]

how the immaculate one is protected and how this Buddha understanding, this Buddha knowledge cannot be defiled, cannot be stained. When the Buddha had descended into his mother's womb, she became intrinsically pure, refraining by necessity from killing living beings, from taking what is not given, from unchastity, from false speech, and from indulgence in wine, liquor, and fermented brews. What are these five? The precepts. The precepts, right. She just could not help herself. Fell into the five. precepts. And then on the next page we have more assurance that there's nothing sexual or... When the Bodhisattva had descended into his mother's womb, no thought of man associated with the five strands of sensual desires came at all, came to her at all, and she was inaccessible to any man with a lustful mind.

[33:15]

Ah, et cetera. And no kind of affliction arose in her. Ah, as though a blue, yellow, red, or white, or brown thread were strung through a fine-barreled gem of purest water, eight-faceted and well-cut, so that a man with sound eyes taking in his hands might review it thus. This is a fine-barreled gem of purest water, eight-faceted and well-cut, and through it is strung a blue, yellow, red, white, or brown thread. So, too, the bodhisattva's mother saw him within her womb, with all his limbs, lacking no faculty. Seven days after the Bodhisattva was born, his mother died and was reborn in the heaven of the contented. There's something kind of safe about that too.

[34:20]

Other women giving birth after carrying the child in the womb for nine or ten months, but not so the Bodhisattva's mother. She gave birth to him after carrying him in her womb for exactly ten months. Other women gave birth seated or lying down, but not so the Bodhisattva's mother. She gave birth to him standing up. When the Bodhisattva came forth from his mother's womb Now it's interesting because this text does not say that he came out of her side. Rebecca undoubtedly is going to show us films of the mother leaning on the tree and the Buddha coming out of her side. So there's no sexual organ involved either. But this text doesn't mention that. When the Bodhisattva came forth from his mother's womb, just as if a gem were placed on a Benares cloth, the gem would not smear the cloth or the cloth the gem.

[35:26]

Why not? Because both are pure. So too, the Bodhisattva came forth from his mother's womb unsullied, unsmeared by water or humors or blood or any sort of impurity, clean and sullied. and unsullied, I'm sorry. When the Bodhisattva came forth from his mother's womb, two jets of water appeared to pour from the sky, one cool, one warm, for bathing the Bodhisattva and his mother. As soon as the Bodhisattva was born, he stood firmly with his feet on the ground. Then he took seven steps to the north. And with a white sunshade held over him, he surveyed each quarter. He uttered the words of the leader of the herd. I am the highest in the world. I am the best in the world. I am the foremost in the world. This is the last birth. Now there is no more renewal of being in future lives.

[36:27]

So this is the birth destiny. It's very clear. And in our tradition, you know, when it's Buddha's birthday, we pour tea over the decorated altar of the baby Buddha. And recall that he said, in our tradition, the words are, I alone am the world honored one, as he takes step and steps to the north. So, I alone am the world honored one. And that alone can be thought of as being all one. that this statement which if you read it in a literal way sounds very inflated is actually a statement about completeness about the being whole just simply whole as he is

[37:49]

Does anyone else have anything to comment on this? I have something from the previous page. Since the question of purity and which I read, I think it speaks somewhat to our own practice. It's the one after the paragraph that says, she had no desires for men at all. She was an accessible turning man with a lustful mind. The next one says, when the Bodhisattva had descended into his mother's womb, she at the same time possessed the five strands of sensual desires, and being endowed and furnished with them, she was gratified in them. wasn't sexual or desirous, it's just that she was satisfied in them.

[38:57]

She didn't have to satisfy them from without, just the very having of them was gratifying. Yeah, that's very nice that you pointed that out, and it does, it adds background to I alone in the world honored one, this feeling of completeness. that she had and she saw the Buddha, the Bodhisattva in her womb also very clearly and then he has this sense of completeness yeah it's not so puritanical yeah, yeah, yeah so it's all kind of metaphorical too, right? That this kind of knowing which is very important and very resonant and very illuminating and can't be distorted

[40:16]

So it's... Are there strands of Buddhism where this kind of literal acceptance of this, you know, like the virgin birth, is kind of a big sticking point for people? Oh, you know, belief is... I don't know. I don't know the answer to that question, because what do I know about all the different schools of Buddhism? But we are never asked, and that will be a big theme of this class, to believe anything which isn't in our own experience. So, you know, we can read these stories and enjoy them, but we never have to recite them as a kind of creed. Is that what you're asking? Yes, that seemed kind of implicit and almost also in the way you were reading it, like, and get this, you know.

[41:23]

They even said this, you know, but I just wondered if there were some, if there were strands where it was a kind of point of, a big point of, yeah, respect and belonging to say, yeah, it was like this. This is literally true. I just wondered. Probably. Probably. I'm sure there are. Weren't these fables intended really to bring in the sheep? There must have been competition for believers and it was a way to seduce them. You kind of have a luck and good story. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it would entice people in and there are stories, you know, in the Lotus Sutra about that being a skillful means of give people entertainment and that will draw them in and then they'll begin to be interested in the real stuff.

[42:37]

Yeah, I think all of that is in play. So then more about the light and then all these things I heard and learned from the Blessed Ones own lips and I remember them as wonderful and marvelous qualities of the Blessed Ones. Yes, it's very emphatic and repeated and detailed. That being so, Ananda, remember also this as a wonderful and marvelous quality of a Perfect One. A Perfect One's feelings of pleasure, pain, or equanimity are known to Him as they arise, known to Him as they are present, known to Him as they subside. His perceptions are known to Him as they arise, known to Him as they are present.

[43:39]

as they subside. His thoughts are known to him as they arise, known to him as they are present, known to him as they subside. And that also, I remember, Lord, is a wonderful and marvelous quality of the Blessed One." That is what the Venerable Ananda said. The Master approved. The bhikkhus were satisfied. And they delighted in the Venerable Ananda's words. So it's a One feels the pleasure of the Dharma in this. In this narrative here, is this Shakyamuni Buddha who is present asking these questions of Ananda? No, Shakyamuni who... The monks were sitting around and talking about the Blessed One. And then Shakyamuni comes in and says, what were you talking about? And Ananda gives the teacher.

[44:44]

Didn't it say that they were gathered after he had retained nirvana? Yeah. After he had retained nirvana? No. After they had eaten their meal, is what it said. No, I think... No. On the bottom of page two. Waiting in an assembly hall where they had met together on return from their on-ground after their meal was over. Yeah. And they're just talking. They're just talking. There isn't the possibility of retreat and come to the Assembly Hall. And then on page 8, narrator 1.

[45:57]

Though literature of a later date supplies many details of the early years, the Triptika itself has very little to say about them. The Triptika, that's the three baskets. The Sutras, and the Vinaya, the rules, and the Abhidharma, the psychology. Those are the three main categories of Buddhist study. There's not much said about the early years. There is, in fact, only reference to two incidents. Firstly, the reminiscence of the meditation under the rose apple tree while the Bodhisattva's father was working during the ceremonial plowing at the opening of the sowing season. The commentary says, which we will come to later. This is an episode while he's a child that he has an insight while he's a child, watching his father, watching his father working in the field, which is odd.

[47:08]

Where are you reading from? I'm reading on page eight, narrator one, that his father should be working in the field. It's a little odd. But anyway, he was he had, the young bodhisattva had a kind of insight at that point and we'll come to that when we, probably next week, when we read about the experience of enlightenment. And secondly, the other part of the early years the only other part of the early years, which is in this... I don't know what that means. So, now we come to the first voice, which is Ananda's voice, telling about Buddha's experience, first experience of suffering.

[48:13]

The first voice. I was delicate, most delicate, supremely delicate. Lily pools were made for me at my father's house, solely for my benefit. This almost has a quality of psalms about it, doesn't it? Blue lilies flowered in one, white lilies in another, red lilies in a third. I used no sandalwood that was not from Benares. My turban, tunic, lower garments, and cloak were all made of Benares cloth. A white sunshade was held over me day and night so that no cold or heat or dust or grit or dew might inconvenience me. I had three palaces, one for the winter, one for the summer, one for the rains. In the reins palace I was entertained by minstrels with no men among them. For the four months of the reins I never went down to the lower palace. Though meals of broken rice with lentil soup were given to the servants and retainers in other people's houses, in my father's house white rice and meat was given to them.

[49:20]

Whilst I had such power and good fortune, yet I thought, When an untaught, ordinary man who is subject to aging, not safe from aging, sees another who is aged, he is shocked, humiliated, and disgusted, for he forgets that he himself is no exception. But I too am subject to aging, not safe from aging, and so it cannot befit me to be shocked, humiliated, and disgusted on seeing another who is aging. When I considered this, the vanity of youth entirely left me. I thought, when an untaught ordinary man who is subject to sickness, not safe from sickness, sees another who is sick, he is shocked, humiliated, and disgusted, for he forgets that he himself is no exception, but I too am subject to sickness. So on. When I considered this, the vanity of health

[50:24]

entirely left me. And then I thought, when an untaught, ordinary man who is subject to death, not safe from death, sees another who is dead, he is shocked, humiliated, and disgusted. But I too am subject to death, not safe from death, and so it cannot befit me to be shocked, humiliated, and disgusted on seeing another who is dead. When I considered this, the vanity of life entirely left me. So now we have come to the second stage of awareness of the suffering of the world. of pleasure, pain, and a perfect one's perceptions and a perfect one's thoughts arise in these with them and they pass.

[51:31]

He's free of clinging to... That's right. Yes. Yes. And because he's free of clinging, he can know them completely. As they arise. As they arise. Because we are attached, usually, we can't completely know them. We overlook this or that. And then that person looks different to us, so it makes it look like it's free of all that stuff you just said, right? It looks like it's all so perfect. And all so simple. And seamless. Just that smile. Yeah. [...] I guess. Yeah, well it's always simple and not simple.

[53:21]

It's so simple it's hard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's always stuck in my mind that Suzuki Roshi said that he was in great pain before he died. I know that my suffering is only as a drop in the suffering of Buddha. And here's this man who days before he died of this terrible disease was smiling. Yeah, the simple, the peaceful and the suffering and somehow the way they come together.

[54:27]

There's a story about the Karmapa that the regent, you know, Chögyam Trungpa's successor, And in such a difficult way, you had AIDS and so on. Anyway, he was at the Karmapa's death and he was with the Karmapa in the hospital. and the Karmapa was dying of cancer and had not taken pain pills and the doctors couldn't understand how anybody who they knew had to be in such pain was so serene and he had been practicing this, oh what is it when you breathe out Tonglen. He'd been doing this Tonglen practice and just was completely present. And the disciple was standing at the bedside and was kind of overcome and put his head down on the Karmapa's clasped hands.

[55:34]

And when he looked up, the Karmapa was smiling and said to him, there's nothing Yeah. How do you understand vanity in the last slide? The vanity of life returning back to me? Oh, that... I'm not... I'm not engaged with it. I'm not attached to it. That life... I know that life is just going to go. kind of story in Sylvia Borstein's book, It's Easier Than You Think.

[57:07]

She talks about her father dying and she had this whole thing that she was reading to him, you know, about the clear light. It's like in Jack Cornfield's book, Remember the Clear Light from the Tibetan Tradition. And every time her father seemed to be on the verge and was kind of Lucidity said to her, it's really not such a big deal, you know. That's the same. That's very nice. Would you stop with the clear line already? I remember, I don't remember exactly what age, but I remember my disgust with, as a child, unseen illness and age.

[58:28]

You know, frailty. It shocked, and I was shocked. And I remember seeing my first husband's grandmother when she died. I was, you know, shocked. It was as if no one had ever... I had never been prepared for this. No one talks to you when you're a kid, unless you have someone in the family, you know, that's close by, you have a chance to talk about it. But I was never... I never had an opportunity to talk to anybody, or no one took the opportunity. to say, you know, a place to stand in terms of looking at age, illness, death. And kids want to know about that stuff. How do you, you know, the Dharma school talk is going to be on, or it's going to be on the topic of what do you do when you're angry, what do you do about

[59:34]

What do kids have to go to talk about? Especially in this society, nobody dies at home. Yeah. Unless you're Jacqueline Kennedy. Right. But I mean, most people, all people are just... There's an often nursing home and a hospital. Yeah, well, and this was so many years ago, there must have been a lot more evidence of death and old age around then.

[60:56]

You're right. There's a very funny part in Annie Dillard's book on American childhood where she talks about looking at her grandfather's hand and how when you pinch the skin together it just stays up on the hand. And just wondering how people, when they got older, could like stand the disgustingness of their bodies. And, you know, looking at her own hand where the skin lay so flat. But just this is really great way of how even not something as big as death, but just that kind of, you know, how can they even stand it? Yeah. Yeah, we all probably have memories like that. I was just reading, I was just listening. I went to Arcata and I get books on tape. Driving back, I listened to The Living by Annie Delbert, which is a wonderful novel about the frontier in British Columbia. I mean, Washington, Puget Sound and that era.

[61:58]

And people just died and died and died and died. And children just had experience of death. So many children died. So many children died. And everybody died. Yeah. Yeah. Very different. It's a novel? It's a novel. It's an historical novel. By? By Annie Dillard. Wonderful to listen to. Getting back to Buddha's birth, we seem to be dwelling on it instead. But I had never heard or read of this first story before, this Immaculate Conception, and he walked right away and said, I'm the greatest or something. And I have to say, I find this all rather disappointing because I always thought of Buddha as being just a regular person. I just envisioned him, you know, I knew that he was born into a noble family, but all this other stuff, it doesn't seem to go at all with just

[63:02]

the archetype of finding your way through life, not being born into this special place, but finding your way. I thought the whole point was finding your way, not being born the perfect one, walking and talking already. So, it was a surprise for me to read this. Was he toiletry? Yeah. Yeah. Anyone have a response to that? Well, every religion does that, too. I mean, it's a way of metaphorically saying that this person, yes, they were human, but they were more than where we are. I mean, it's like calling him the world-honored one. I mean, it's a way of setting the person apart from... Yeah. Every religion has those kinds of stories.

[64:16]

At least ones that date from that period. I mean, it can't be. No connection with it.

[65:48]

Well, I think we do have a connection with it. I mean, every time we chant the names of the ancestors, this whole practice is that we do have a time. We don't know if they existed or didn't exist. I mean, you hear an invention of each of us inventing Well, we're getting into the whole issue of beliefs. I mean, every religion has a certain having element. It has its stories, and it has its rituals, and it has its beliefs. It's a scripture, in a way. And it's presented in a bath of light, in a way. Suffering is mentioned here. But it isn't the main thrust of what they're saying. I mean, I think it's a... What's being conveyed, if you are willing to accept it, is a kind of imbuing that this can give someone who's willing to be imbued.

[67:02]

Because it's scripture. And, you know, you can tell it to the kids or, you know... Is there not a parallel kind of historical story as well as a mythological account that says he was born in this palace to these parents and spoiled rotten and that doesn't, isn't there a kind of except, or is this the only account? It's the same story, isn't it? Well, I just, I don't know, I'm just asking. I thought there was a story that was, that didn't have the quite such a mythological element, or this is it? Well there's no one, this is pulled, this story is culled from I don't know how many, in the beginning it tells how many different sutras. So they're all, you know, the teller of it can pick and choose what the teller wants to choose. To me there's a whole symbolic side of it too, it's like, since the Buddha is us, that

[68:04]

You know, we come into the world as these perfect little beings, and that, you know, we spend our time in practice sort of taking off the layers of muck to rediscover what's already there. So it's like a nice metaphor, that story, for ourselves as well. What response to Julie? But in the Mahayana tradition, we have all these other stories. We have, you know, we have the father who wants to make sure he's a world leader rather than a spiritual leader. And there's that father. I mean, maybe he's just like Joseph, I don't know. But we have, you know, the wife that he left behind and the son that later become his, you know, that come and ask for their inheritance. And he gives them as their inheritance, they become his disciples, you know, so his teaching becomes.

[69:12]

So in that, with all these stories that aren't in the Southeast Asia traditions so much, we do have this kind of, you know, here's a life where this guy had to make a decision, he had a kid, the kid, you know, grows up and becomes an Arhat, he's the youngest Arhat. So there is all this stuff going on. But I think that parts of it can annoy us. Well, it reminded me when you said credo, because I sing, I've sung a lot, a lot of masses, and there's a credo as part of every mass. I've been singing these things since I was a kid, and every time I think about what I'm singing, not every time, sometimes I get a little annoyed at the whole business. I was under the impression that Buddhism didn't have the same type of almost mindless, I'm not saying this is, but mindless repeating at the cradle, this is what happened, this is what we need, this is.

[70:19]

And now I see the same kind of thing here. Well, I don't, would it ever have taken root if it hadn't been, come from America? got a foothold unless it presented something extraordinary, miraculous, divine, and established uncanny credentials of the founder. Well, I think that this is a very good theme just to hold because it will be addressed a great deal.

[71:22]

I think that the Buddha's main point is that The truth has to be experienced. And that's the fundamental ground. And he does have miraculous powers and extraordinary earthquakes and this and that happen here and there. But where do we find the center of the teaching? part of it, and then there's the practice part. And, I mean, there are people for whom the devotional is what comforts them or whatever. I mean, that's true in all religions. And then there is the core of the philosophic teaching, which in virtually every religion really has this kernel of truth that you can get to and try to

[72:27]

guide your life. Most adherents may not approach it that way, but a lot of people do, and they write about it, fortunately. And so we can benefit from that, and just not get hung up in that devotional thought that's there for another purpose. Right. And there are levels and levels of development, developmental levels that are addressed in different people. I think also in response to Julie's disappointment with what you just said, to me what's wonderful pages and pages of how he was surrounded by a harem and given every manner of sensual pleasure he could possibly want just to keep him from experiencing anything unpleasant.

[73:37]

And so once again it seems like this wonderful thing but it turns out to be the very thing that causes him to leave and seek because this wonderful wonderful your birth is and all this and your upbringing. Well, that's a good place to pause.

[75:12]

And I hope that in this, I would like to ask for written homework, I guess. I would like during the weeks, the intervening weeks, for each person to make some response to what has happened this evening and write three sentences or a paragraph or make a picture or develop some other kind of response when you go home and think about the material and maybe look at it again or what was it that caught your attention and what can you make out of that and bring it to the next class and according to the bulk of it we can decide how we share it

[76:22]

whether we share. It doesn't have to be shared, but it's a good way to do a little something. It helps each person integrate, and also it's a very rich kind of sharing. So, thank you. That wasn't too good at all. And then, one other thing, I had what I thought was going to be a very serious automobile accident. I saw this thing coming up at me, and I thought, this is it, I'm going to die. But, I didn't die. The car was, you know, total. It was one of these terrible rainstorms about eight years ago, and it was the freeway, and there was a car stalled ahead of me.

[77:24]

And because there was so much water on the road, the brakes didn't work, and here I was, you know, hurtling at this other car at 60 miles an hour. And I know, you know, that you can't survive that sort of thing. But the amazing thing was that there was the giant puddle of water just before this stopped car in front of me. And the car hit the water and slowed to about 20. And I hit the other car and, you know, I was okay. Nothing happened. So I felt, you know, But I wasn't really too concerned about it. I wasn't really upset. I thought, well, OK, here it is. This is how it's going to happen. Only I was wrong. Funny stuff.

[78:35]

My name is Dolly. I think I think about death rather often. I remember a time many years ago, I'm 64, will soon be 64, and I must have been in my 20s maybe, when I, for the first time in my mature life, realized I was going to die. And I remember being absolutely terrified for a long time when it would come up and I couldn't get it out of my mind. It was just, I was terrorized by the thought. And then that passed. Now maybe it was that big river in Egypt But somewhat, I suppose that's true, but I'm not sure that it's entirely that I'm denying my death.

[79:52]

My mother reminds me. My mother is going to be 89 this year. Every time we speak on Sunday, she lives in Ohio, and we speak weekly, that she may not be here next Sunday when I call. But she's been saying that for a long time now. That's her manner. That's her way of wishing to be graceful, make a graceful exit. But she wants you to keep trying. Yes, but I have said to her once or twice, many times in my own mind, I may not be calling you mother. And that makes a point that is important to me, which is that we don't know. I don't know. People say, well, I'm only in my 20s. I'm certainly not going to take a class on death. But people in their 20s have been known to die. And I want to say one or two things more.

[80:54]

I don't want to take much more time, but I'm sure this is true of all of us who've ever taken an airplane, that every time one of those goes down, I find myself, that's when this terrible stomach and anxious feeling comes up when I think of the people in the plane. And I was reading the New York Times about this very recent, and I do this when, you know, 17 seconds from the time the plane tipped at 40 degrees and could no longer write, 17 seconds, and I counted them off and thought, what would, you know, sitting there, thrown forward, backwards, screams, what, how would I, how would any of us, how would I be in that situation knowing just die, but be smeared over the landscape in pieces.

[81:56]

I mean, those airplane crash deaths are... Well, anyway, so this notion of any time, any moment, earthquakes, we can be sure, you know, of... And another thing I want to say in this context, the Bible says, Lord, spare me a sudden death. And I feel this way, too. I would rather not die suddenly, such as you hurtling, thinking this is it in two seconds. Yeah, that was pretty good. I didn't mind it at all. But of course, a lingering death, which I work in the hospice, too, and lingering deaths can be pretty awful. But spare me from a sudden death anyway. So I'm here to think about it some more and talk about it. hear myself talk about it and learn from other people. I'm Wendy, and I think essentially I am drawn to be here for the opportunity of this subject.

[83:07]

It's really the question that brought me to sitting And I'm so full of hearing everyone's stories. I'll just read what I've jotted down here. There's a spiral shape, which represents I keep coming back to this issue again and again, over time, with different experiences, and different points. There's always a coming back. Impermanence, great question. teacher, arrow, preparing our mind for the moment and opportunity of death, arrow, attachment. Essentially, I have felt that this is the essential gem of Buddhism, this teaching, and it's worth revisiting.

[84:18]

Well, I have so many things to say. I hope I can say them all. I'm here because I welcome the opportunity to talk to other people about this subject because it's something that's been a very big subject for me throughout my entire life. And several incidents have happened over time. And I'm very fascinated by the subject. I think about it every day. I think I was about 10 years old, and people used to lie in state in their houses. I don't remember anybody really talking about death in my family up to that point, but there was a family across the street, and I didn't know them, and I heard that there was a body lying there. I just went over there. They didn't know me, and they kept saying, whose child is that? And I was peering into the coffin and looking at the face,

[85:28]

you know, just trying to figure out what it all meant. So that was really interesting. And the other thing is, there was no context for it all, but from as far back as I can possibly remember, I believed in reincarnation. I just knew that it was true somehow. Nobody ever talked to me about it. It certainly wasn't talked about in my neighborhood or anything like that. I had a brush with death when I was about... I'm trying to remember how old I was. I guess I was eight. And I spent the summers at my grandmother's house and spent all day at the beach in Atlantic City. And one day I pulled out an undertow. And, you know, I realized that I was probably going to drown. And there was this moment of panic, but then there was this peaceful thing where I just sort of surrendered and just started to observe what was happening. And I just was floating. And someone saw me, obviously, go down.

[86:32]

A man saw me go down. And he came and he got me and he put me on the shore. And that's when the fear set in, you know, afterwards. And, you know, it happened. So that happened. And, you know, these things kind of stood out. And then I had a crisis, somewhat like dying, when I was in my twenties. The fear of death was so overwhelming, the anxiety was so big for me that I thought that if I ate, that if I ate I was going to choke to death. And so I stopped eating. And I would try to eat and I would try to get over it. It got really, you know, I'd lost a lot of weight. I finally had to be committed to a hospital. I was just totally terrified of dying. And it got to the point where I was afraid to go out because I thought I would die. I was afraid to stay in because I thought I would die. I was afraid to stay awake because I thought I would die.

[87:33]

I was afraid to go to sleep because I thought I would die. It was like absolutely astounding. And somehow I got over that. You know, it was a hell of an experience. As I got older, the next big thing that happened was the revolution of the 60s. this is how I got into meditation because a lot of us believed that we were going to die and one of the things that we believed was that they were going to round up all the third world people and put them in concentration camps and that we would die in there and that was a big fear for us and for me in particular and I heard about meditation and I thought that's what I've been looking for my whole life because I want to transcend the experience of being attached to the body. And that's what got me into meditation. As I went along, other things happened.

[88:37]

You know, my father died, I guess about three or four years ago. And that was really interesting. To have a parent die is a very interesting experience. Just allowing yourself to grieve for it And it was awful because it happened so suddenly, and the diagnosis was on the weekend. The prognosis was somewhere like by Friday or Saturday. He wasn't going to have much time. I rushed to get on the plane. I heard about the prognosis Saturday. They said he wasn't going to be long. I get on the plane Sunday, and I'm going to New York. And by the time I get there, he died right before I got there. which was just devastating to me because I wanted to see him before he left, you know, but he had a very peaceful death according to the nurse that was with him when he died. And he was ready for it, you know, I knew he was ready for it because I talked to him on the phone before I got there.

[89:38]

Then along comes, you know, I have a teenage daughter, along comes the big gang business, you know, and she had a lot of friends that were just, hundreds of friends that were killed somehow help her see through that. Her perspective about life was just really skewed because everybody was dying. And so that was heavy. Everybody's talking about people recently dying. So I've had a very close friend of mine that I've known for 25 years die on Christmas Eve. her in the hospital. I didn't know she was close to death. I knew she was very ill. And she had some kind of weird thing going on because she had respiratory stuff off and on. And in the course of doing thoracic surgery for her, they found out she had this very rare form of cancer.

[90:45]

So I went and I spent a couple of hours with her. And it was an inspiration to me because they gave her six months to a year, and she said she wasn't ready to go yet. And she was kind of excited about dealing with the whole thing. And that's just how she was. She wasn't afraid. She wasn't afraid at all. And so I sat there with her, and I didn't realize. I thought she was going to go home from the hospital that night. I didn't realize that they never let her out of the hospital. And the way that I heard about her death was absolutely shocking because my ex-husband, who was a big denial person, just sort of laid it on me. He didn't, I think he didn't realize, you know, how symbolic it was for me. But he just called and he said, oh, here's this event. Oh, and yes, Suying died. You know, and it was a shock. That was shocking. And I went to her memorial service last week.

[91:48]

It was absolutely beautiful because I got to see... It was great because here was a person that transcended all kinds of classifications of race and class and age and everything in terms of how she related to the world. So the service was full of people from all kinds of backgrounds who were sharing their experience of a person's life. And, you know, I thought, well, that's really wonderful. So I think about these things, and I think about them every day, and I do care about the way I die. I want to be absolutely conscious. You know, I had another death experience where someone pulled a gun and stuck it to my head. And I remember not being afraid for some reason. I don't know why. My mother was shot a few years ago and, you know, that was, you know, that was a confrontation with death. It was a very weird experience.

[92:49]

You know, somebody was knocking on the door, asking for directions. She came, she was in a weird outfit. She came three times, you know, my stepfather kept going to the door. And finally my mother went to the door and a woman just opened up on her, you know, just BAM! And so I think about my mother a lot because I just can't imagine my mother not being here. You know, she's had a heart attack. She's a very healthy, alive person in spite. I call her the unsinkable Molly Brown because she just is incredible in terms of energy. But thinking about her dying is heavy for me. Thinking about losing her. I have had spiritual experiences where I have experienced my own death. Three or four times where I've actually experienced it. And one was like I was shooting through the tunnel, you know, that whole thing was happening. It was like just, just catapulting, you know, the energy. It was real. It was actually happening. And I remember saying, I am not ready. I'm not ready, you know.

[93:50]

And I was thrown back in my body and I was like, I had to really catch my breath. I was like, because the breath had been going. surrender to it. Maybe it wasn't an actual physical death. Maybe it was a spiritual death. I mean, I don't know what it was, but it wasn't my imagination. I was sleeping, but when this happened, I was awake. I mean, I was awake to what was happening. It was not a dream. And I have had spiritual experiences where I have been outside of my body looking at it. So I have experienced that, but I still fear death. You know, you cling to your body. And every time that I try to become detached, I realize that this is practice. Practice to let go of the body. Like a surrender, you know, like when you give up things, the ultimate surrender in giving up is giving up your life.

[94:51]

And I just, I'm real curious about what happens. I've read a lot about these people that have had these after-death experiences. I've studied it really a lot. And that's real interesting to me, too. So I'm glad to be here, and I'm glad we're talking about this. Thank you. Well, it's late, and I'm going to resist telling my story. I'll put it over. There's a lot that's happened. A lot of what we've spoken about touches on direct experiences of my own. And I think it'll come up next week when we talk about fear and clinging. And maybe Guy has more to tell as well.

[95:37]

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