wisdom or Prajnaparamita we say. Then there's also commitment or vow and skillful means and powers using ability beneficially to help beings and then knowledge, using knowledge of the world to help beings. But each of these seven figures specializes in certain of those. Then at the end of each chapter, I also talk about them in terms of modern culture figures who in some way represent aspects of that spiritual energy in the world. So these bodhisattvas are kind of cosmic, maybe you could say mythological figures throughout Asia. Some of them are based on hysterical, hysterical, historical, sometimes hysterical persons. And sometimes very wild. But they They're in the world and they're also within us. So how do we find our support in the world with the Bodhisattva figures supporting us and how do we find our own expression of our own deepest Buddha nature, our own way of expressing what the Bodhisattva is about?

[01:11]

So I talk about particular culture figures and do some stretching from Einstein and Dylan and Gloria Steinem to Jimmy Carter and Clint Eastwood and Muhammad Ali, along with Gandhi and King and Mother Teresa and more usual suspects. The point is that bodhisattvas are in the world helping, usually in very anonymous ways. And they're also aspects of our own spiritual dispositions. So just to name the seven, Shakyamuni Buddha, the historical Buddha, not so hysterical, whose figure is in the altar there, the brass figure, the smaller figure, the historical Buddha who Before his awakening and becoming the awakened one, or the Buddha, was a Bodhisattva, Siddhartha Gautama, a prince who chose to take on spiritual effort and to help alleviate the problem of suffering. The second one is Manjushri, who's in the center, the larger figure on the altar there.

[02:17]

The Green Gold Manjushri is carrying a teaching scepter, but often they carry a sword to cut through delusion. Manjushri often also rides a lion, very fierce embodiment of wisdom. The next one is the one I'm going to talk about most today. His name is Samantabhadra, and he is the Bodhisattva who puts the wisdom of Manjushri, the teaching of emptiness, the wisdom of the Buddhas into practice in the world. who activates this wisdom, who functions in the world to bring the Buddhist teaching into the world. And we'll come back to him. Then Avalokiteshvara, Kanon, Guanyin, many names, many forms, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, who hears the sounds of the world and responds. Then Jizo, Jizo Bodhisattva, whose statue is next to me, who I'm also going to talk about a little bit, the Earth Mother monk. And then the last two are Maitreya, the future Buddha, the Bodhisattva who's predicted to be the next future Buddha sometime in the perhaps very distant future.

[03:26]

I've heard that he's around now. I don't know. Have any of you seen Maitreya? Anyway, then the last one is Vimalakirti, the great enlightened layman who was more enlightened than all of Buddha's disciples and was kind of a trickster. So anyway, each of these figures is very colorful and complex. character in the Buddhist literature and represents various aspects of the project of the Bodhisattva, the awakening work of the Bodhisattva. Today I want to concentrate on Samantabhadra. In Japanese he's called Fugen. probably you haven't seen so many of them. Samantabhadra is not as often on the altars of Buddhist temples as the other figures. There's a reason for that because he's everywhere in the world in ordinary situations acting to help benefit beings. Usually anonymous, just in the world taking on projects that help alleviate the suffering of the world.

[04:35]

When we do see Samantabhadra images, he rides on a white elephant. So often he's paired with Manjushri on either side of Shakyamuni Buddha. Manjushri, the great teacher of wisdom, rides a lion. Samantabhadra rides this white elephant. And usually Samantabhadra's you know, not too expressive, just kind of ordinary bodhisattva, very, you know, fully adorned, beautiful, dignified presence. And sometimes the elephant is Very interesting, sometimes laughing hysterically. If you've ever seen an elephant laugh, it's quite amazing. This is not an ordinary elephant. He rides on a white elephant with six tusks and sometimes seven legs. And this elephant, as it's walking around with Samantabhadra on his back, with each step, as he places his foot on the ground, a lotus grows out of the ground to meet the foot of the elephant. There are a few aspects of Samantabhadra I want to talk about.

[05:42]

First of all, I see him as the activist bodhisattva, the engaged bodhisattva, acting in the world to help beings, taking on projects in the world, addressing the systematic causes of suffering and confusion and delusion. There's also this aspect of great dignified presence that I feel on Samantabhadra. Samantabhadra inspires and encourages others to also take on this work of awakening all beings. So one of the things that Samantabhadra is famous for is a series of ten vows. Usually at the end of service we chant the four bodhisattva vows to free all beings, to end all delusion, to enter all dharma gates, to embody Buddhahood. But Samantabhadra takes on a particular set of vows. So I'll start with that. So six of them actually are kind of devotional.

[06:50]

There's a devotional quality to Samantabhadra. So he venerates and praises and makes offerings to Buddhas. He spreads the word about Buddhas. He celebrates Buddhas. He also asks Buddhas to teach. So in Buddhism, one needs to ask for teaching. One needs to make oneself available for teaching. He asks Buddhas not to check out into Parinirvana. Parinirvana is when a Buddha dies, he's supposed to leave the cycle of rebirth and cycle of worldly affairs. The Bodhisattvas, on the other hand, make it a point to stay in the world, to stay with beings, to be right in the middle of the problems and the confusion of the world. There's this sense in which Samantabhadra is very devoted, very sincere. So just one point about this that is a little different from our Western sense of devotion.

[07:53]

One of the main devotional practices in all of Buddhism is to do prostrations, full prostrations, as I did to the Buddha and Manjushri Bodhisattva when I came in. And we touch our head to the ground. This is very difficult for when people first come to a Buddhist center with our Western background because of the first Judeo-Christian commandment not to commit idolatry, not to worship images. So I just wanted to say a little bit about that. The spirit of this devotion, this praising and venerating of Buddhas that Samantabhadra does is that we bow to a Buddha statue and it means that we're bowing to the Buddha within all beings, within ourselves, within beings in the world. So this is the devotion and commitment and dedication of Samantabhadra. And I think we need to pay attention to this particularly as Westerners because I think this commandment in the Judeo-Christian tradition is maybe necessary for the Western psyche we have a tendency to.

[09:01]

want perfect masters or to want idols, to want great heroic figures. So the Time Magazine article about the American fascination with Buddhism featured a picture on the cover of Brad Pitt, which maybe has more to do with the American fascination with celebrity. Anyway, In the book, I mention various famous figures as examples of these bodhisattvas. And I do that just because we know some of them in common. But actually, bodhisattvas, again, are anonymous in the world, in many places in the world. So the other vows of Samantabhadra, one is to share the Dharma, to share the teaching with others, to study the teaching and share it with others. And this could mean the formal teaching, but it's also the teaching that comes up in our practice, the teaching of being involved in everyday activity, being involved in trying to help ourselves and others. And how do we share that with others?

[10:04]

This is a way that what Samantabhadra works. Then there's the vow to rejoice in the happiness of others and to really appreciate the virtues of others, to see others as Buddhas. That seems natural that we would be happy when someone has something good happen to them, but we should also look at the way in which we might have a tendency to say, why did that happen to them? I'm better than that person. Why don't I get any of that stuff? So Samantabhadra also confesses his own misdeeds, his own craving and confusion and aversion. So that's another one of his vows. And then there's the two last vows. The last one is to transfer the merit of practice to others. So we do a dedication chant at the end of any practice activity. because there's some power, some merit, some virtue that arises in that. So we share that with everyone. We don't try and hold on to that for ourselves.

[11:08]

Then there's this vow of benefiting beings. Another way to translate that is to be in accord with beings. to be together with beings, to see how we work together as sangha, as awakening beings together. So I see this benefiting beings of Samantabhadra as the vow that I see Samantabhadra taking in the world to take on the work of the world and try to help the world and doing this with a dignified presence, with devotion and with spiritual vision. So I think of figures like Gandhi and Dr. King as exemplifying Samantabhadra, taking on the troubles of the world with this kind of spiritual vision or this wonderful woman Aung San Suu Kyi who's under house arrest in Burma. basically should be the president of Burma. She was elected and the military dictators who were in power there confined her and tortured and killed many of her fellow activists there.

[12:17]

So there are many people in the world who are taking on projects in the world, trying to help, trying to oppose oppression, but with spiritual vision, without confrontation, but trying to educate and inspire and encourage liberation and freedom. So another basic aspect of Samantabhadra is this vision of our interconnectedness, this vision of our relatedness. So Samantabhadra is particularly the Bodhisattva associated with the Flower Ornament Sutra, which is this very long, very lofty, exalted, very psychedelic vision of the activity of bodhisattvas and the development of bodhisattvas in the world and how they work and what their life is like. So there are various images from the Sutra of how we are interconnected. One of them that you may have heard of is Indra's net.

[13:20]

And Indra's net is basically a description of the universe, of the whole world. And the whole world is this multidimensional net, and at each place where the meshes of the net meet, there's a jewel. And each jewel reflects the light of the jewels around it. and the light reflected in them of the jewels around them and so forth forever. So that actually each jewel, each thing, each one of us in some way reflects the light of the whole universe. There's another, actually in this sutra there are many descriptions of this holographic consciousness of Samantabhadra. Another one is called the imminent body of the illuminator of thusness. And in this, samadhi or concentration or meditation state, Samantabhadra enters this and this samadhi is described as being in all awakened ones and containing all worlds in the universe and producing all other concentration states.

[14:27]

It contains the teachings and liberations of all Buddhas and the knowledge of all Bodhisattvas and develops enlightening virtues and vows. And how this is described is that at the time that Samantabhadra enters this samadhi, this meditation state, he sees in many worlds, in all directions, Buddhas everywhere and in all atoms of all those worlds he sees Buddhas. And in front of each of those Buddhas sit other Samantabhadra Bodhisattvas. And the Buddha speaks to Samantabhadra and imparts great knowledge and wisdom and powers to help beings, to help awaken and liberate beings. And at the same time that the Buddha does that to Samantabhadra, all the other Buddhas do this to all the other Samantabhadra Bodhisattvas in all these different realms and in all atoms of those realms. And then the Buddha praises Samantabhadra and then reaches out and pats Samantabhadra on the head.

[15:30]

And at this time, Samantabhadra Bodhisattva sees that all the other Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, the same thing is happening. And in fact, all of the Buddhas reach out and pat all of the Samantabhadra Bodhisattvas on the head. So this is kind of a mind boggling vision of how interconnected we are and the way in which this universe seen from the Bodhisattva perspective is this glorious wondrous affair. So this vision of Samantabhadra of the world and the universe as this great interconnected system with Buddhas and Bodhisattvas everywhere is a way of talking about how the world is interrelated. So I spoke in a class a little earlier about Samantabhadra as the environmental bodhisattva. The bodhisattva who sees the connections of all things in the world and doesn't just see them, but also sees the need to, this is not just a kind of description, but it's also a prescription.

[16:36]

So Samantabhadra takes on the practices of taking care of this beautiful, wondrous, interconnected world. So I want to speak about the aesthetic element of this. Samantabhadra's name means universal virtue or goodness, but he is not an ineffectual goody-goody or naive do-gooder just trying to be a good boy for its own sake or out of some sense of obligation. The aesthetic wondrous quality of his vision illustrates that Samantabhadra performs bodhisattva activity because it is beautiful. To be in accord with enlightened truth, aligned with all Buddhism bodhisattvas, is simply the most pleasing and joyful of lifestyles for Samantabhadra. His ongoing effort is to further adorn and beautify the bodhisattva path, helping others find the calm, deep radiance within which enlightening, helpful work is not a chore, but the most splendid way of living.

[17:37]

So to see this world as an interconnected system, we can appreciate the world in all its part and all the elements of nature. We can appreciate that damage to the environment will cause harm in various ways. If the Amazon rainforests are cut down, we lose the benefits of the medicinal plants, which may have been discovered otherwise in a year or 10 that will no longer be there. but also we appreciate that each element in the world is alive. the grasses and trees, the plants and animals, even the rocks and the water and the mountains. In some ways, the world is alive and interacting in this way. This is the vision of Samantabhadra. And in each part of this world, in each, the tip of each blade of grass are Buddhas and Bodhisattvas taking on this project, uprightly taking care of the world. helping in the world.

[18:43]

So I talk about various exemplars of this Bodhisattva Samantabhadra. A good one to start with is Rachel Carson as the mother of environmentalism. So she not only saw as a marine biologist, she saw the beauty and the interconnectedness of the oceans and talked about that in her book, The Sea Around Us, but she also saw her obligation to take care of it. talked about pesticides in the silent spring. Even though she was vilified by chemical companies, she awakened us to seeing the problems of pollution in the world. Another example that I talk about in the book is Pete Seeger, singing songs from different cultures and encouraging everyone to sing along. and to act in various ways to help further freedom and justice.

[19:46]

But also, he was inspired by Rachel Carson to take on a particular project of pollution. So he's been sailing up and down the Hudson River for some time now in his boat. has developed a community of people who have actually succeeded in a specific vow of cleaning up the Hudson. So there are parts of the Hudson now, north of New York, where you can actually swim in the river, which was not true when he started. Then closer to home, in Northern California, there's this woman, Julia Butterfly. Have you heard about her? She's sitting up in a large old-growth tree in the Headwaters Forest, and I heard earlier from Wendy how the trees around her are being cut down, and she witnessed to the way in which, when this happened, this huge old-growth tree that she's sitting up on the top of started ... emitting sap, weeping for the other trees. But in many places in the world, we can see people taking on projects of suffering.

[20:54]

So I talk about Jackie Robinson as a baseball player, really inspiring desegregation in our society. Mayumi Oda, who lives down the road in Muir Beach, has painted many pictures of the Bodhisattvas as goddesses. So I have some of her pictures in the book. But she also was inspired to take on the nuclear pollution that's happening in Japan and the spread of plutonium and started an organization called Plutonium Free Future. So again, this aesthetic quality, that's equally with the activist aspect. I think of Vincent van Gogh's paintings as showing us the way in which expressing his way of seeing the world as alive, those landscapes where the brushstrokes are so vibrant and vital. And we see his orchards and wheat fields and skies as dynamic and alive.

[21:56]

And I even have, maybe this is a little bit of a stretch, but another marine resident, George Lucas, in his Star Wars movie, giving us a vision of the force and the struggle for good, intergalactically, multidimensionally. So that's a little bit about Sumantabhadra. Again, Sumantabhadra appears mostly anonymously in the world in many different roles, taking on projects to help beings and expressing the beauty and the wondrousness of the world and of being alive and of the vitality of the world, and then acting to to vowing and acting to help beings. So I want to also talk a little bit about another Bodhisattva, Jizo Bodhisattva. In Sanskrit, his name is Kshitagarbha. In Japanese, Jizo. And he's very, very popular in Japan and was in China too.

[23:03]

almost as popular as the Bodhisattva of Compassion, Kanon. So I see each of these different Bodhisattva figures as aspects of our own awakening nature. And Jizo is a very interesting figure. He does not represent particular aspects of the doctrine or sutras or schools of Buddhism so much, but more kind of the popular feeling of Buddhism. So he always appears, as this statue, as a shaved head monk. And this is pretty typical in terms of the iconography. He often carries a monk's staff and a wish-fulfilling gem in his left hand. So if you go up to Jizo and ask him, he can grant you whatever wish you have with this jewel. This is the story about Jizo. And Jizo's main practice is to be present in difficult places. So in one system of Buddhist cosmology, there are six realms. The human realm is just one of them.

[24:07]

There's heavenly realms, and animal realms, and hellish realms, and realms of hungry ghosts, insatiable beings. And Jizo is present in all of them. And particularly, he's present trying to help in whatever way he can with beings in the hell realms. And there's a story about him, there's a little sutra about Jizo from China in which it talks about some of Jizo's past lives before he became this great Bodhisattva. And in two of those stories, Jizo was a woman whose mother died and went to hell. The daughter knew this because she knew her mother and she journeyed down to hell because she loved her mother and tried very diligently to save her mother from the torments of hell.

[25:10]

So in the Buddhist system, it's not like Judeo-Christian heaven and hell where that's kind of a final destiny. One can be in one of the hell realms in Buddhism You may be there for a very long time, but at some point, that may end and you may become an animal or a human. This teaching of these different realms is not just about different realms and different lives, but even within our own human life. I think maybe some of you have experienced hellish states and some of you maybe have experienced heavenly blissful states. So this is something that we all experience in some ways. Being human is not easy. So anyway, in this story, the daughter goes down and due to her practice, saves not just the mother but all of the beings in hell at that time and then vows to be present in the world and all the realms and help beings and thus becomes eventually Jizo Bodhisattva.

[26:14]

So Jizo, Japanese name Jizo, Koshita Garba in Sanskrit, means literally earth womb or earth storehouse. And there are various ways in which Jizo is very related to the earth, very down to earth. There are many stories about Jizo and his work in the world being present and close to the earth and close to common people. All over Japan, there are still these little stone Jizos with a shaved head on crossroads or in the middle of cities and in the countryside. And there are stories about, for example, a farmer with a particularly difficult harvest praying to Jizo to help, and the next morning waking up and finding a major part of the harvest done, and going and looking at the neighborhood Jizo statue and seeing the stone Jizo statue's legs all muddy. There's another story from one of the sacred mountains in Japan, Koyasan, Mount Koya, where there was a laborer who worked and the abbot asked him to clear away all the snow from the Jizo Hall, where the Jizo statue was.

[27:29]

Because each morning, Jizo goes out and helps beings who are having trouble. this laborer had to clear the snow away very early in the morning and one morning he said, I wish just once that Jizo would clear up the snow himself. The next morning he gets up and goes out and the snow is shoveled and he looks in the Jizo hole and there are wet tracks back to the Jizo station. So there's lots of stories like that and stories of Jizo as protector of women and children and travelers and especially, protect her in the afterlife. So Jizo is this kind of shamanic figure who guides beings in the afterlife, helps beings on their way to whatever realm, and stays with them, and does what he can to help. So I see Jizo as, in our modern times, as kind of a witness to hells. one who stays present and helps beings in hells.

[28:34]

So I talk about Elie Wiesel talking about the Holocaust and talking about what he saw as a teenager in Buchenwald in Auschwitz, and Toni Morrison writing her wonderful novels about the effects of racism and slavery. and the hells that have come out of that and that still affect us. There's her wonderful novel Beloved. Have any of you read that? Particularly, it talks about mothers and daughters haunting each other. So there's a way in which this, Daughter going down just to save the mother is a reversal of the Demeter-Persephone myth from Greek mythology. And particularly this Earth Mother quality of Jizo, even though Jizo always appears as a male monk, There were statues of Jizo in medieval Japan and nunneries that had, instead of a carved robe, had a cloth robe that was sewed over, and some modern scholars who weren't ashamed, I guess, took off those robes and saw that they were anatomically female underneath some of these Jizos.

[29:45]

So there's a way in which Jizo was the monk as Earth Mother. Anyway, I also talk about various beings with kind of monkish commitment to witnessing to the hells of the world. So I have a little section on Coltrane and the great jazz monks, not only Thelonious. And then this thing about what the monk is, I have a section on Thomas Merton, and I want to read a little bit of this, because I think he really nails what What is this monkishness which is part of this archetype of Jizo? So Thomas Merton talks about the archetypal monk as basically kind of marginal on the outskirts of society. He says, the marginal person accepts the basic irrelevance of the human condition, an irrelevance which is manifested above all by the fact of death. The marginal person, the monk, the displaced person, the prisoner, all these people live in the presence of death, which calls into question the meaning of life.

[30:54]

The office of the monk or the marginal person, the meditative person, the poet, is to go beyond death even in this life, to go beyond the dichotomy of life and death and to be therefore a witness to life. So Merton's monk is marginal on the fringes outside and irrelevant to the common stream of social goals and conventions, just as Jizo stays present in the rounds of the six destinies without being caught by any of them. So Jizo Bodhisattva appears as a monk because, as Merton clarifies, a monk's job is to stand witness to all life and death from a place that transcends their boundaries. Merton also clarifies the essential humility of the monk. Monks are not better than ordinary people in the world. Monks do not possess an unusual capacity to love others greatly. They understand that our capacity for love is limited. and it has to be completed with the capacity to be loved, to accept love from others, to want to be loved by others, to admit our loneliness and to live with our loneliness because everybody is lonely.

[31:58]

So this humility of the archetypal monk shows the humble aspect of Jizo Bodhisattva and why Jizo is down to earth quality, is very beloved in Asia and increasingly now in America. And I also think of the work of some modern Zen students doing hospice work, taking care of the dying is the work of Jizo, or trying to help the homeless or the poor or the marginal people disenfranchised everywhere. So I wanted to invite you to a celebration. I've been involved the last couple of years with the Moraine Interfaith Homeless Chaplaincy, which has a chaplain who ministers to the homeless in San Rafael. Through that, I've connected up with recent efforts to keep St. Vincent's Dining Room in San Rafael available to people downtown, and the homeless, and not just homeless, but the elderly, poor, and frail, and other poor people there.

[33:06]

And out of that effort, which seems to have succeeded, there's going to be an event two Saturdays from now, June 6th. And it kind of started out as a civil rights march for the homeless, but it's become something much more inclusive. So I wanted to invite you to join if you care to. It's going to be a Dignity Day celebration. So it'll be Saturday, June 6th, 11 a.m. We'll meet in downtown San Rafael at 4th and Tamil Pais, and there'll be a walk to Albert Park on B Street, and then a celebration picnic and speakers. The theme is, how do we find our dignity as the community of people in Marin County? Of course, you can come even if you don't live in Marin County. How do we find dignity for all beings, the homeless and the affluent? How do we find our own inner dignity and celebrate that together? So a number of us have gotten together and have been working on this.

[34:08]

There are flyers out on the tables outside. And for me, this is very evocative of our practice here. And in fact, Green Gulch Farm is one of the sponsors of this event. Because when we do this meditation, this upright sitting with Sazen, Part of what we're doing, a big part of what we're doing is just expressing and celebrating our own inner Buddha nature, our own dignity, our own deepest self, which is connected with all selves. So I feel like this Dignity Day, which came out of this campaign for the homeless and witnesses, connected both with Jizo and Samantabhadra. And so please come in and join with us and have a good time. So I want to close by talking about these Bodhisattva archetypes in terms of going beyond the archetypal. So all of these seven different figures who are so central to our Buddhist tradition show us different aspects of the Bodhisattva work.

[35:13]

But really the point is even if we see in our own activities some aspect of Kanon or of Jizo or of the Bodhisattva Maitreya looking towards the future, or of Manjushri's seeing into the essence, into the wisdom in each thing, The basic point of this practice is to go beyond the Bodhisattva stories, to use these stories to find our own story, to express our own deepest story, to find our self that's not separate from others. our own inner dignity. So I want to read a little bit in conclusion about going beyond the archetypal. Beyond all the archetypal patterns, the life of the bodhisattva is in ordinary everyday activity. In simple acts of kindness and gestures of cheerfulness, bodhisattvas are functioning everywhere, not as special saintly beings, but in helpful ways we may barely recognize. The bodhisattvas are not glorified, exotic, unnatural beings, but simply our own best qualities in full flower.

[36:22]

Bodhisattvas are not merely archetypes. Bodhisattvas are great cosmic beings helping us all to become bodhisattvas. Bodhisattvas are not who we think they are. Bodhisattvas are simply ordinary beings making their way back to Buddha. Bodhisattvas appear in the nooks and crannies of your life. Soon you may start seeing them more clearly. Bodhisattvas are just around the corner. Bodhisattvas are extraordinary, wondrous beings bestowing blessings on all wretched, confused, petty creatures. Bodhisattvas are living in your neighborhood waiting to say good morning to you. Bodhisattvas are just like you and me. Bodhisattvas are kind and gentle. Bodhisattvas are not who we think they are. Bodhisattvas are tough and indefatigable. Bodhisattvas are not limited to a handful of amazing figures or famous people. Bodhisattvas are not limited by what we say they are or are not. We are all bodhisattvas.

[37:35]

Bodhisattvas are not who we think they are. We cannot understand how wonderful bodhisattvas are. We are all bodhisattvas. Thank you all. Both of those are true. So I was talking today, hello, testing 578. I was talking today more about the side of, you could say good works, or just the function of Bodhisattva wisdom in the world. But what you said initially is, and that's kind of Manjushri and Shakyamuni's work, this is a world of illusion. And I don't think you, so we need to, it's not that you're not concerned, but we need to turn away from our habitual conditioned way of being concerned with the world and see the way in which, yes, we are just, all the jewels, all the beings are just working out their karma and it's okay just the way it is.

[39:00]

And what it's okay just the way it is means is that then we also have to come back and see that because of that we care for suffering beings. So there's no Buddhas and Bodhisattvas without suffering beings. Buddha appears in the world because they're suffering beings. So if there was no suffering beings, there would be no need for any Buddha to appear and everything would just be the way it is. But because most of us a good deal of the time actually are caught up in our conditioning and in the conditions of the world. So we need Buddhism, Bodhisattvas, and we need to do that work. The Buddha sees the bodhisattva, so Manjushri is kind of the teacher of all Buddhism bodhisattvas. So we see through the illusions of the world. But that's the only place where we see through the illusions of the world is in the realm of the world where there are these illusions. So nirvana, in Mahayana Buddhism, nirvana is not apart from samsara.

[40:04]

Emptiness does not exist somewhere outside of form. The pure land or the Buddha realm is not some other realm of enlightenment except for this world here. So we express it in this realm of illusions and conditioning and difficulties and suffering and craving and rages. But there's these two sides, the wisdom and the compassion, and they work together. You have more questions? When you're seeing the wholeness of all things, you don't forget about beings who are suffering and don't see it. When you're seeing the suffering of the world and immersed in that, whether it's yourself or others or all of it, you also... The part of you holds that sense of seeing through, the sense of the emptiness of it.

[41:13]

But it's not, they're not separate. So sometimes there's some oscillation or we go back and forth between the side of things that's whole and the side of things that's caught in suffering. So monastic practice is about turning within and focusing on cutting through, seeing through, seeing into the essence. But then in Buddhism, you don't enter the monastery forever. You go in for three months or three years, or you go sit at Sashin for seven days, or you do meditate for 30 minutes or 40 minutes in the morning, and then you go back out and you're in the world, and they work together. So we need both. If you try and be compassionate and do helpful work, social work or whatever, without that wisdom, without that perspective of seeing into the essence, then it's very easy to get burnt out.

[42:14]

It's very easy to get into sentimental compassion. and lose your energy and feel overwhelmed. But if you have the perspective of the time range and space range and depth of wisdom teachings, then you have the perspective to, like Samantabhadra writing his elephant, one step at a time, slowly and steadily, to take on whatever it is that your work in the world is. And that can be as varied as there are people. No, it's not like a commandment and it's not good deeds. It's just how do you express that wisdom in the world. It doesn't mean necessarily going out and working with homeless people. It might be by raising children well, by taking care of your relationships in your work situation,

[43:22]

enjoying being a musician or an artist or a runner or whatever it is that you do to do that with that spirit of bringing that perspective to the world. So Samantabhadra of all of them is particularly kind of, there's an element anyway of Samantabhadra that's particularly kind of involved in social activity, although not necessarily. Samantabhadra can also be just kind of very devoted, expressing the interconnectedness of the world, but that's just one mode. Other comments, questions about any of the other bodhisattvas or anything? Thank you very much for your talk. You're welcome. trying to help in many different ways. Something that came to my mind was the word religion.

[44:28]

When you were describing different passages, I was raised Catholic and then departed from the Catholic religion because of situations with priests I was raised in a Catholic school. But then through my practice in Buddhism, I was able to reconcile with the Catholic Church and I've been able So now I'm not afraid of religion, but I was wondering if Buddhism is religion or is a way of life, because I am someplace in there, because if you look at the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path and different teachings of Buddha is a way of life, it's a way, it's a philosophy. So, unfortunately, I don't have my dictionary here to see what means the word religion, but as you talk through passages, which I understand now their vision to see inside all these stories that you are telling, so I see that.

[45:38]

But is Buddhism religion or as a way of life or philosophy? Yes. So there's this historical accident that, I don't know if it's an accident, but I think Zen particularly was first introduced to the West in the 50s. A lot of the people who first came to Buddhist practice and particularly Zen practice, were, as you described, reacting against Western religions and our feeling that we didn't get real spiritual nourishment there. So there was a way in which people like D.T. Suzuki and Alan Watts presented Zen in particular and Buddhism in general as kind of a philosophy or way of life, and yes, that's true. So I'm reminded of Tsukiroshi saying that if you want to be a good Buddhist, talking to Americans, if you want to be a good Buddhist, you should also be a good Christian.

[46:39]

I think it's difficult for some of us, but I think when we see the depth of practice, so I would say it's also a religion. Maybe not in the way that we're used to thinking of that word. That word kind of stinks a little bit. Yeah, but one of the reasons I wanted to talk about the Bodhisattvas in this book is because I felt like there's an aspect of what I saw as Buddhist practice and lifestyle and way of life and philosophy in Asia after living in Japan for two years. that hasn't really been transmitted yet in American Zen are starting to arise naturally out of practice. And maybe we call that religious, or mystical, or magical, or I don't know, there's an aspect of, or devotional, there's an aspect of how, it's not all of

[47:52]

Buddhism maybe, but there's a strong aspect that when we take on Buddhist practice, whether it's chanting or meditation or in study, that there's something that comes up that has to do with a sense of appreciation and wonder and gratitude for our life and for the world. And so Samantabhadra and his visions of interconnectedness is about this. So I think to hear about the Bodhisattvas and hear this folklore and these stories and these visions is an aspect of our practice, and I can unpack it in psychological terms and talk about it in terms of how it's aspects of our consciousness and so forth. But there's a way in which it's religion too, and I think religion, the root of religion, has something to do with the same etymology as ritual. There's a kind of a rule, and it's not like, so the forms in Buddhism, whether it's Zen or any other kind, it's not regulations. We tend to think of it in terms of regulations and something restricting us, but it's more like a tool. It's more like the forms are ways of connecting with something that's also within us when we take up, when we appreciate the world and then

[49:05]

act from that appreciation. And again, acting from that appreciation can take social action forms or it can take very simple everyday forms of kindness and caring and consideration and like that. So yeah, there's a religious side. Hi. None. Zen is Buddhism. Zen is a form of Buddhism. There's no Zen, it's just Buddhism. Zen is just a historical name for a series, for one's complex lineage within Buddhism. So in Japan there's these various sects, you know, and there's this, the Japanese are very into lineage and these different sectarian differences, and even in you know, Japanese martial arts or tea arts or, you know, there are these lineages and sects and so forth. In China, the Chan tradition, which focuses on meditation and the actual experience, you know, so Zen is about the experience of the teaching.

[50:15]

And in China, that Chan tradition completely re-emerged with the devotional tradition that's, in Japan, has become the Pure Land schools hundreds of years ago. 300, 400 years ago. So it's just Buddhism. Buddhism isn't Buddhism. Buddhism is just, how do we awaken our, the ism part of it is something for historians or scholars to look at, but really it's just about how do we awaken our own deepest self, how do we express our own our own inner dignity in the world. How do we first meet that and see that? Maybe through meditation practices, there are other ways. And then how do we find a way to share that and express that with each other? Yes.

[51:24]

Absolutely. I'll read you what I wrote about Coltrane. So I have him in the Jizo chapter, but you know, a lot of these people could be in more than one chapter, or they have different aspects, you know. And all the Bodhisattvas share Shakyamuni's story of this choice to pursue spiritual life rather than worldly, and this home-leaving and deeper homecoming. Anyway, Coltrane I think of, though particularly in terms of Well, I'll just read you what I have here. Jizo Bodhisattva's monkish commitment and vow to witness to the suffering of beings has been embodied in various ways, not only by formally or officially ordained monks. An example of the modern monk in our own North American culture is the dedication and intensity of the great jazz musicians. I'm most deeply inspired by the work of John Coltrane, but a large number of other jazz adepts, such as Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Lester Young, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, McCoy Tyner, Pharoah Saunders, to name only a few, exemplify Jizo in their monk-like commitment to their art and its spirit, so that monk aspect of Jizo.

[52:38]

Marginal to much of mainstream culture and working amidst an often hellish milieu of racial discrimination, poverty, and all too frequently, drug addiction, These pioneers have extracted music from inner realms to testify powerfully to spiritual truth and beauty. Coltrane, a great master in this tradition, persevered through lack of critical appreciation and his own demons, including use of heroin and alcohol, to create a pioneering application of harmonics and rhythm in highly visionary music, inspired by African and Asian musical traditions, as well as readings ranging from Islam to Kabbalah and from Plato to Krishnamurti. Coltrane sang his own inner heart and glory, for example, in his classic hymn, A Love Supreme. His music can be considered as a unique expression of universal vision and wonder, more in the mode of Samantabhadra archetype. So Coltrane is actually in sort of both of the ones I talked about today, but I have more in the Jizo chapter. However, the inner depths that Coltrane explored to bring forth the spiritual sense of sound with its ferociously energetic angular improvisations reflect as well the dedication of Jizo to persistent witness of the truth and raw beauty of awakening arising even out of the hellish.

[53:50]

Coltrane was concerned with, quote, new sounds to imagine, new feelings to get at, so that we can see more clearly what we are. In that way, we can give those who listen the essence, the best of what we are. So this thing in Cicero about witnessing, you know, I mentioned Elie Wiesel, he talks about how in the concentration camps, the people in the concentration camps were concerned about witnessing and talked about whoever survives has to remember this and tell people. The sense of being in hell and being there and witnessing to that state and being present and dignified in the middle of it. So in medieval Japan, there are pictures of people being tortured in the hell realms, and often there'll be a picture of Jesus somewhere in the background being present and witnessing. He was definitely a student of religion.

[55:06]

He studied spirituality in various forms. Amen. Well, there's a tremendous energy and creativity and freshness about American Buddhism.

[56:22]

I mean, there has to be because it's brand new. I mean, even though it's been, I don't know, three or four decades. It's entering the culture, particularly in California. But, you know, there are ways in which if you go to an Asian culture and live in a temple or near a temple where people have been doing spiritual practice for many centuries, There were temples that I lived next to that were 1,000 years old or more. And you can feel that there's some maturity. I mean, this space itself has some depth. So we're like babies, you know. But that's OK. That's good. I think for young people in Japan, Buddhism is pretty stale.

[57:23]

and some of them actually do come to Buddhism and to spiritual, I mean there are Buddhists in Japan. So I think we have a lot to learn from each other. I think one of the greatest failings in Euro-American Buddhism, which is what we do here, is our lack of connection with Asian-American Buddhism. So I don't know how we make that connection exactly, but Japanese American and Chinese American and Vietnamese American communities, there's some maturity there. So if you have an opportunity to hang out in some of those places, that might be helpful. Yes? Yeah, I think I think of I like the word spirituality myself, but religion is okay too, but what we're involved in anyway, whatever we call it, is coming home to that deeper quality of being, that deeper aspect of ourself and our relationship to the world.

[59:03]

So, coming together, yeah. Jack, did you get down to, Wednesday night to the concert? Tuesday night. Today's Bob Dylan's birthday, so homage to Manjushri. How was the concert? Excellent. Good. I'm not sure which surrogate I might put Frank Sinatra in, but I don't know. Yes. I just wanted to comment. Yeah, thank you for mentioning that.

[60:20]

Again, I think it's really central to Mahayana Buddhism, the idea of skillful means and expediences and inclusiveness. In Mahayana and the Lotus Sutra, they talk about one vehicle, ekayana. So all of the different forms, we each are very different. You know, we see Buddha together, we practice together, but we each express and see Buddha in our own way, unique way. So honoring the diversity of different kinds of folks and honoring the diversity of how we approach spiritual life is really important. And we do get stuck. And that's okay, you know, it's okay to follow one way and really wholeheartedly do that, but just have a sense of that you know, this way of doing it isn't the only way. You know, one of the problems historically with religion is the kind of self-righteousness about this is the way and everybody's got to do it this way and everybody else, you know, is a heretic or should be burned to the stake or whatever, you know.

[61:25]

So just to appreciate the diversity of different approaches and different styles and different postures and different ways of practicing is really important. Yes? I mean, it's just hell. Like, you've got a boss, a mean Jew, or a wife, or a husband. I mean, it's just, you run into this kind of stuff outside the temple. How do you deal with it? Inside the temple, too, sometimes. How do you deal with that? Or, like, the Tibetan Buddhists all got murdered by the Chinese. Well, it's funny. We don't understand what's going on. Just in your last, this is a little bit of a digression, but the Chinese have been torturing and killing Tibetans, but as a result of their invasion, we have wonderful Tibetan teachers all over the world now. So we don't understand how things work. We can't figure it out.

[62:26]

How is it that suddenly the Soviet Union dissolved with comparatively little violence or the Berlin Wall fell or apartheid ended? We just don't know how things will shift. So that's important because how we work in the world has its effect and power that we don't necessarily, we can't figure out or predict how transformation will happen. So if you're in hell, the thing is just to be there and be in hell. So this idea of witness that Jizo offers I think is important. The easiest way to stay in hell is to try and fight and struggle to get out of it. So if you can be present and be in hell and just accept being in hell, at some point even that changes. To be upright in the middle of hell, that's what Jizo does. So there's the other thing about heavenly beings. You know, if you're, you know, if you have a, If you live in the deva realm, then you live in the clouds and have beautiful houses and swimming pools and wonderful vehicles and very pleasant existence.

[63:33]

The story about the heavenly beings, though, is that one day, and for the devas it might be after millennia, but one day a heavenly being looks in the mirror and sees a gray hair. And this, or a wrinkle, and this is very tragic because at some point then even in these, you know, very lofty heavenly realms that people reach from doing good works or being whatever, you know, that at some point even that will end. And then the heavenly being may, now sometimes that beings enter heaven, enter pure lands, enter positive states to help fortify them to do bodhisattva practice. Often, if you're in the heavenly realm and you start to see a wrinkle or you see the fading of that. You make a straight to hell from a heavenly realm because if you fight to stay in the heavenly realm, you know, that leads to hell.

[64:36]

So it's very sad when heavenly beings suddenly, you know, quickly, relatively quickly age and die and then they may end up in hell. So all of these, we don't know how these things will shift, but I think if you're in hell just to be there and to be upright and breathe and be dignified and accept that you're in hell and that too will change. I did appreciate you bringing Tisa into the relationship to the female, the mother, the birth. Jesus is all about, you know, Jesus is very much about, well it's about the earth daughter, maybe more than the earth mother. In Japan, Jizo is very popular with women, particularly, and a protector of children, and particularly in the afterlife realm, guides children who die to a good destiny.

[65:39]

And now there's these mizuko ceremonies which are very popular in Japan for aborted fetuses. So I think Yvonne Ran does these here for Jizo to help guide that spirit. But yeah, she's a very important part of Jizo. But you know, I didn't talk about this and I meant to, but all of these archetypes can be male or female. These are not archetypes of men or women. They're archetypes of humans in spiritual path. So there's an example of Samantabhadra in Japanese folklore. And it was one of the things I cut out of the book, because I had to cut a lot out. But there's a story in... 12th century Japan of Samantabhadra appearing as a courtesan named Eguchi who lived in part of Osaka. There's no play about her, but anyway, she's pictured as a geisha sitting on a white elephant. And this is Samantabhadra using the passions to help awaken beings, men, I guess, more.

[66:45]

So anyway, all of these bodhisattvas, all of these archetypal bodhisattvas can have male or female aspects. Some, more specifically, some than others. So Guanyin, the bodhisattva of compassion, is almost exclusively feminine in China. But in Japan, Kannon can be male or female. Chenrezig, the Tibetan form of this bodhisattva of compassion is male and then Tara came from a tear from Ambalakitesvara and is the female form of compassion, compassionate bodhisattva. So I also talk about some of the other figures who were associated with these main archetypes like Tara or Prajnaparamita, the goddess of bodhisattva of wisdom is associated with Manjushri. But in China, Guan Yin was, And Tara is just one of the 33 forms of Kuan Yin. Yeah. Okay. Free me, grab reality, hatred like a fight reality, with illusion.

[68:16]

So there's this story about heaven and hell that I tell in the book, which probably many of you have heard about the difference between heaven and hell. Hell is a place where you go in and there's this big table with a banquet piled up in the middle of it. Have you heard this story? Okay, one person hasn't heard it. So in hell there's this big round table with this food piled up on it and all the most wonderful delicacies you can imagine, just whatever your favorite food is there. And the beings around this table in hell. are sitting around the table and just look miserable and emaciated and they're all sitting there with four foot long forks and spoons strapped to their forearms and they can't get the food into their mouths. In heaven, on the other hand, there's this table that's piled up with all these wonderful foods and all these wonderful delicacies and the being sitting around this table in heaven all look very happy and well nourished.

[69:49]

They have, sitting there with four foot long forks and spoons strapped to their forearms, and they're feeding each other across the table. So anyway, that's another story about heaven and hell. Somebody else, yes. Did you find any parallels or any other parallels with world mythologies, other archetypes like, you know, Well, I did mention Demeter and Persephone. Yeah, I think there are, you know, I mean, the archetypal stuff, there's lots of similarities. But I don't know, none jumped to mind. On some level, just in some ways, just to take the forms as they are is, I don't know. I mean, Shakyamuni is about home leaving and homecoming. And so there are images of that in wandering. So Odysseus' homecoming is maybe, there's analogies to.

[70:53]

Oh, one of my favorite stories that relates to Manjushri, though. Manjushri is the Bodhisattva up there, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom. of insight and intuitive wisdom. And he's often depicted as a 16-year-old. He's, you know, very youthful. He's not, this is not the wisdom of experience and learning and all of that. This is the wisdom that we already have that Manjushri is very aware of. And there's a story, a European story or fable or myth by Hans Christian Andersen called The Emperor's New Clothes, which I think is very illuminating of Manjushri. Do you all know that story? Does anybody not know it? Okay, so the child is the only one who can see through the fabrications of the supposed wonderful clothes of the emperor and see the nakedness. And it's only the child who can see through and actually say it. So this is a good example of Manjushri.

[72:00]

So that's a little example. Yes, Hermes, yes. Yeah, definitely. So Jizo is in all liminal spaces, all the transitional spaces. He's a shaman also. Jizo resonates with lots of mythology in that way. Yeah, he travels to the afterlife. and I'm sure there are other parallels, I don't know, if you think of any, let me know. Yeah, yeah, you know what they do, I lived in the middle of a couple of cemeteries in Kyoto, and when they forget, so cemeteries are a little different there, they actually, feel that the spirit is there and people go to the cemeteries and people know where, you know, because it's a traditional society unlike, you know, we are always moving around from generation to generation in America.

[73:08]

But they identify with the temple. and with the school of Buddhism based on where their ancestral tombs are, so people know, people go to those cemeteries and leave offerings, you know, for the spirits of their ancestors. But stones that people have forgotten or that nobody's making offerings to anymore, that people don't know who it was, they pile up in these pyramids. They have these kind of little pyramids of, not so little pyramids of old Buddhist stones and Jesus, yeah. Yes? I went this last year and the beginning of this year through various different kind of losses that affect me mentally and produce a physical illness in me, sort of chronic.

[74:10]

And I'm sort of aware that it's something produced by the mind. and I've been through different retreats, and I heard two separate things that I believe that is helping me. One is to be spacious, to be spacious. So I think that maybe that is meaning about allowing to be in that state and be present in that state, but I'm not 100% sure. And the second thing that sort of also impacted me is about, that is related with the topic that we had today, is about taking care of myself, taking care of myself, not to the little self that I'm concerned, that I'm sick, that I don't have energy to do the work or this and that, but to take care of myself, so take vitamins or whatever, to be able to help other beings.

[75:12]

And so I got the feeling that is an advice about taking care of this body in a way that is not selfish, but thinking of the good that I can do to other beings. And I think that this is a little dial about how to focus things. tweak that dial, though, is it's not that you take care of yourself so that you can go out and help others, you know? I mean, in a way, okay, that's fine, but it's more like just by taking care of yourself, that helps others. You don't have to take care of yourself and get better, and then you can go help others. Just by taking care of yourself, by finding your own wholeness together with others, doing that does help others. So it's very subtle the way in which we see ourselves separate from the world. It's very subtle. It's endlessly subtle.

[76:15]

But really, your being happy and whole and healthy affects everybody around you without you doing anything else, without you going out and then going and trying to do some good. Now, you may naturally do that as part of your helping yourself, but don't help others You know, helping others is helping yourself. Helping yourself is helping others. You don't have to, you know, do one first and then do the other. Just to take care of yourself is helpful. So, and it relates to, you were talking about the sense of spaciousness. In space, we're connected in various ways. Our awareness, our presence, how we express our own inner dignity or possibilities or Buddha nature, whatever word you want to use, how we express that in our own concern, in our own confusion. It's not separate from that. It's not like just good stuff. How we express our own delusion, how we work with our own wanting to escape from reality, as Jack was saying, you know, our delusion about

[77:20]

there being something other than reality. We're always in process in all of this. So Buddhism is about alignment. We're aligning with our deeper nature and we're always a little off. Dogen, the founder of our school, said that his life was one continuous mistake. So we're always a little bit off and we're continually rebalancing and we get off balance this way or off balance that way. The point isn't to be perfect. Forget that. Perfect doesn't mean being perfect. In Buddhism, it means... Yes, this is the practice of perfection. So just this, the wholeness of the circle is just to be in each imperfection to be wholly there, to be just completely to be there and to take care of yourself as best you can. And that's not separate at all from taking care of the world as best you can. But the thing that maybe I'm not explaining myself is that to take care of yourself, not for myself, but so if I am well, I can help other beings.

[78:26]

If you're ill, you can help other beings. Being sick is a way to help other beings. So Vimalakirti, I didn't mention, talk about much. Vimalakirti is the seventh of these figures, and he's the great, greatly enlightened lay disciple of Shakyamuni. And Vimalakirti is very complex. He's a trickster and he's a kind of critic of religious pretension. There's a lot of aspects of Vimalakirti. He's a magician and demonstrates inconceivable teaching, but also he's an invalid. He starts off by being sick, and in being sick, he uses that to teach, to do spiritual teachings. He talks about how he's sick because of the sickness of the world. You think you're sick because of something you did? You think you're sick because, I mean, your sickness totally expresses this sickness of our society and of the human condition and of all of history.

[79:27]

So how do we use our sickness to express Buddhist teaching? So I use as examples of that Christopher Reeve who had a spinal injury and is using that to help support research in spinal injury work. Helen Keller, who was actually an amazing person that her history has been kind of whitewashed. She was, of course we know that she was blind and deaf and dumb and she recovered from that and went on to be a great spokesperson for disabled people and to be a great writer and teacher. She was also a suffragette and marched in the front of suffrage rallies. She was an incredible radical. She was a wobbly She was a socialist. In her research of disability, she discovered the relationship to class, and she helped union organizers back early in the century, and went down into mines, and she said smelled the suffering there.

[80:33]

So that part of her story hasn't been told so much. But she used her sickness to demonstrate how we can be whole and express our dignity, even if we're blind, deaf, and dumb, or whatever. And I also have as an example of this in the book, and this is maybe a little bit of a stretch, but Clint Eastwood, in his most recent films, showing dignity in aging, or dignity in aging. working with the problem of aging and trying to find dignity in the middle of that, even for an aging police officer or an old Western gunslinger. So how do we, in the middle of being sick, how do we express the dharma? It's not about getting rid of, it's not about, don't worry about getting cured. Just be sick. Thank you. It's okay if you get cured, but... Other comments or questions, or questions about any of the other bodhisattvas, or anybody who hasn't said anything yet?

[81:48]

Yeah, we're all, you know, sick of greed, hate, and delusion. We're all sick from greed, hate, and delusion. We're all deluded beings demonstrating the Bodhisattva way by awakening in the midst of our delusion. So there's also this wonderful statement by Dogen that Deluded people are deluded about enlightenment, have delusions about enlightenment. Enlightened people are enlightened about their delusions. So part of the point about looking at these bodhisattvas again is how do we see in our own life aspects of these different figures?

[83:09]

you know, famous characters at the end of the chapter, but who is it that you respect who maybe fits into these, you know, who is it who you see expressing Samantabhadra or Jizo? Or, and not just famous people, who, you know, amongst, you know, people you've known, people in your life, express the, you know, at least in part some aspect of this. And then, you know, how can that be an encouragement to you to more fully express, you know, the way in which you express Jizo or Manjushri or Jamalakirti? So if there's no more comments or questions, Sonia? Yes, could everybody please help put away the folding chairs? So fold them up. And what about zabutons? Okay, so we can all do the bodhisattva work of putting this ender back together. Thank you.

[84:09]

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