Good morning, Bodhisattvas. I was just recently reading something of Aitken Roshi's, and he reminded me that this is the way one of his teachers always greeted his students. And especially today, after the Bodhisattva ceremony, it seems more than usually appropriate, after we've taken our vows, And our friend Mei Li reminded me to say something about the Bodhisattva ceremony before I begin my other comments. Recently somebody asked me about the repentance vows and said, why if we're born forgiven Do we say these?

[01:02]

Why do we say, all my ancient twisted karma from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion, born through body, speech, and mind, I now fully avow? And it's never seemed to me like that was asking forgiveness. It was just announcing that I recognize these, that we, as a sangha, recognize them as we go on. And then the next thing that comes, that I just love, is the bowing. And I realized that in my mind, I think of it as offering gratitude. Offering gratitude to the Buddhas, to the Bodhisattvas, and to the whole succession of ancestors. And this morning, about 4.30 in the morning, I thought, well, what does homage mean?

[02:05]

And I looked it up, and it comes from the word man, or the same root as homo sapiens. And it was the offering, often in public, of the vassal or the serf to his lord, of their relationship, the relationship that the lord has for the serf and the serf has for the lord. Well, I sometimes find I have a little trouble with those words. And I wish I was a great scholar and that I could translate that more accurately. And I found myself wanting it to come from different words in the Japanese or the Sanskrit or whatever level it came from. But no matter what the words are and what the root of those I still feel when we do it and when we bow together and we raise our hands like that, that, and we chant with our head down, it's as if that chant and the gratitude are going down to the center of the earth, that we're offering it.

[03:23]

Today I was especially aware of it because I tend, when I get to the end, when my head is down, to sort of mutter into the ground. But today I was surrounded by strong chanters, by Susan, by Stan, and I don't know where she is. Anyway. We, I was, felt surrounded in the strength of the chanting, really felt wonderful, like we were really offering gratitude to the earth we stand on. Then we renew our vows and we take refuge. And we go through the precepts over and over again, at least once a month. Last month, I don't remember why, but I think I forgot actually that it was the full moon day, the bodhisattva day. And it turned out to be a wonderful experience because instead, though I missed it and forgot to be here with this sangha, I went with Andrea and Tim.

[04:34]

And we went to Steve Stuckey's little Zendo in Marin County and did it there. And I think there were just the three of us and Steve. So I was very, very glad to be there. But to take the vows together with the Sangha seems very strong. And right now, I'm in a very fortunate position to think about this, because I'm working with the people who are sewing their robes now, their Buddhist robes, and will be ready soon. I counted there's only one more Bodhisattva ceremony until then, before all these good people will be taking their precepts formally and getting their Buddhist robe, their lay robe. So, it's nice to be here on this day.

[05:41]

And today, I would like to talk about Prajnaparamita. And I would like to talk about Prajnaparamita in two ways, mainly. And one is the actual image, the images we make of Prajnaparamita, the images people for many hundreds of years have made of Prajnaparamita in different parts of the world, and my practice of making those images and what it means to me. And then of what happened two thousand years ago, the beginning, at least according as we recognize with Christ's birth through the years, of the first millennium, the beginning of the first millennium. But to begin with, I'd like to chant this.

[06:52]

And you'll have to forgive me, there are a lot of people here who do much better at chanting this, but this is the thing we chant to dedicate the heart sutra one morning a week. Homage to the perfection of wisdom, the lovely, the holy. The perfection of wisdom gives light unstained. The entire world cannot stain her. She is a source of light. And from everyone in the triple world, she removes darkness. Most excellent are her works. She brings light so that all fear and distress may be forsaken, and disperses the gloom and darkness of delusion.

[08:05]

She herself is an organ of vision. She has a clear knowledge of the own being of all dharmas, for she does not stray away from it. The perfection of wisdom of the Buddhas, the Lord set in motion the wheel of the Dharma. sort of a heavy thing to try to be making an image of someone who is represented by all that. And I think about it all the time that I'm working. Before I say any more, I want to step backwards a moment and say that

[09:20]

And I've said this recently in morning talks, that I've been trying to work on the edge of my practice to extend the we, the thing that I think of as we, all the things, the plants, the animals, the people, to extend it to keep including and watching for those things that I find, and people, and plants, and everything else, even the poison ivy, to include it in the we and remove it from the they or that thing, but to include it, not just include it in the we, but to include it with compassion. And so I think today this is sort of a wonderful time to talk about Prajnaparamita because we're right here between Earth Day and Mother's Day and our own day of doing our Bodhisattva ceremony.

[10:43]

And I've been listening a lot, and I don't know if Shannon Hickey is here today, but she gave, mentioned something that was just wonderful, and I have been listening to over and over again as I work in my studio on these Prajnaparamitas, and that is Joanne Macy's talk, which was given in this series for the Edge of the millennia, and I'll talk about that a little more. But I'd like to talk about the Prajnaparamita image and my other practice of working with clay on images, and that is to teach people how to make Buddhist own Buddhist image, and having, whether it's a Buddha or a Prajnaparamita, or often a GSO image, but to make the image that's important to them.

[11:58]

And I began making Prajnaparamitas, and some of you were here then, and some of you weren't, and some of you were actually on a committee that had some troubles. When we were looking for a female image for the Zendo, And I've made several since then, and now I'm making actually 13 for different teachers. And it's such a gift to be able to know that they're going to these people who I consider as teachers. They're all people who are speaking in this series of lectures for the Millennium. There's something so intimate, and I don't know how to explain it, but there's something so intimate about working in clay. And for me, it's like, in working on an image of this kind, because you're both questing yourself all the time.

[13:07]

And to make an image that's, that is in any way acceptable seems beyond and that can embody all these things seems beyond anyone's ability. And yet there are those out there all over the world. The place that the images are most common is in Cambodia. And there she's very clearly represented as a maternal figure. Big breasted, staunch standing, almost like a farm woman, yet a goddess. And she is clearly there, represented and connected to the mother of all Buddhas. And is adored as such. often unlike some later places in Java, Indonesia, or Tibet, she doesn't come with crowns and things.

[14:20]

She just comes there naked to the waist with a type of skirt on, usually standing. And I'm told that the way the jewelry in a way became introduced was as people made offerings and brought jewelry, whether they were wreaths of flowers or other things, to her, and then eventually they became incorporated of the making of the jewelry in the image. One of my favorite images is one, a quite small one, that includes Prajna Paramita, is in the De Young Museum in the Asian collection. And it's not very large. A lot of the beautiful images there, if you show them in slides, they're quite big, but it may only be four inches tall. But this image is about 16, 18 inches tall.

[15:26]

And in the middle is Shakyamuni sitting with Mukulinda. The coiled snake is his throne and the heads, the nine heads. Is it nine or seven? I think I just made a mistake. Anyway, the heads that come over to shade him. And on one side is Avalokiteshvara. Very simple, four-armed Avalokiteshvara. And on the other side is Prajnaparamita. And she's touching out, reaching out in the most intimate way you can imagine, and touching Buddha's knee and throne. It gives me such a feeling of closeness to her and to him, this sort of familiar feeling with the three of these images together. And what happens is,

[16:30]

Depending on where you are, and it seems to go in a circle, where you are in the Buddhist world, people look at, and it seems to be a fine circle to me, that prajnaparamita arises from compassion. In other ways, compassion arises from prajnaparamita. And when you look at the list of paramitas, of perfections. And you get to Prajnaparamita who is the perfection of wisdom or wisdom gone beyond because beyond beyond is another way of looking at Paramita. You find then that Prajnaparamita is the sixth Paramita and the next one becomes compassion after that. And I do know that we now have ten Paramitas, and there used to be six. But to see that, those two reversed, that circle seems to me to be very, very important.

[17:38]

And I think about that as I'm making these things. Right now it's exciting for me because the last images I made were very large. And I really had only room to work on one of them in my studio. The last one was made in several pieces then to be put together. And now I'm making these 13. I've started seven of them. Little Prajnaparamitas. And one large one for the altar at Tassajara. One larger one. Not large, but larger. And it's so wonderful to see each of these grow, and each of them different, and yet each of them the same. When I'm lucky, it seems like they're just growing there, and I just have to find them where they are. When I'm not, I'm not. That's the best I can say about it. So the other side of this practice, which I was fortunate to be able to do last weekend, was to go and work with Catherine Thanes' Sangha and help her Sangha make Buddhist images.

[19:00]

And they were absolutely wonderful. I just could not believe how, what takes me weeks to struggle through and do and to worry over, people are making in a few hours. We see some slides and I talk about some things about them and then people choose what they want to make. And this morning, and somehow they all become teachings for me, not the images and the energy and the fearlessness with people just start making these things. And some of you, I think, know Joan Larkey. And she was one of the people who was at this workshop in Carmel. And she's been a set designer, and also I practiced at Tassajara for many years, and a lighting designer. And the only physical representation of the seven Buddhas before Buddha that I have ever seen is a very small one, again at the Diyan.

[20:10]

which you can easily miss, and it looks like a menorah. Basically, it's seven little things that are barely recognizable as shadows of Buddha. And of course, the seventh Buddha is Buddha himself, is Shakyamuni, the historical Buddha. But she made this thing, and you can see her stage training and her light training, And it's about this big, and it was like a cave. And Shakyamuni is sitting in the center. And you don't even know, you can tell right away. I mean, there's no signs that that's who it is. But because he's so central, our historical Buddha, that in all of these, it's sort of like a cliff, a cave cliff. And in all these different places are these Shakyamunis, these, I'm sorry, these Buddhas before Buddha sitting there, these six Buddhas on little ledges looking down and surrounding Shakyamuni in the middle.

[21:11]

And when we were chanting today, that certainly, that image was right there with me. Another thing we had, in Tara, is also, she is considered sometimes the wife of Avalokiteshvara in Tibetan Buddhism. And the different aspects, some of the different aspects are considered to be the same as Prajnaparamita. They'll have the same symbolism with them. I'll say something about that in a minute. But there was this most wonderful Tara, clearly a Tara that came, And she was just as pregnant as she could be. She was definitely in the ninth month. That baby had dropped. So, you never know what, and then, another absolutely wonderful image was of a Buddha.

[22:15]

And it was done by, some of you probably know, Jane Schneider. who's an artist, usually a painter, but she made this Buddha that looked like it had come out of the stone, though it was out of clay. And not only did it look, it had the compactness of something, of a stone carving, but it looked like it had been sitting in the rain, in the elements, being slowly melted away for probably 2,000 years. And yet the surface of it was just like, at the same time, the surface was like velvet. So, it's really, I don't know, people love these, and always tell me how grateful they are, these workshops, but I come away feeling so grateful for having the experience of being able to work with these people.

[23:18]

that reminded me of was some of the symbolism of the Prajnaparamita that I hadn't spoken of. And usually, in many countries, the Prajnaparamita is accompanied by the lotus in full bloom, the lotus in bud. That's neat. Blood? Bud. And the lotus in seed form. And these represent, some say, the Buddhas of the past, the present, and the future. Some say the transiency of life. But at the same time, you're thinking of the transiency of life, you're thinking of the constant renewal, the thing that comes to full bloom and then produces the seed then the bod comes back and back again.

[24:25]

And that to me is just a wonderful continuous symbolism. Well, I didn't know, it just happened about a week ago, and something, to see a photograph from above, of the lotus. And you see that seed pod full there, it's becoming hard and the little holes in it for the seeds. So you see them all at the same time, at times, in its evolution. I've been listening to this tape over and over again, in parts, and taking notes on it. And she starts by talking in a better way than I can put in words.

[25:32]

And I've tried to encapsulate it about what happened 2,000 years ago, about when the Prajnaparamita Sutras first started to appear, and the idea of Buddhism changed, or maybe not changed, but maybe went back to where it had been in Buddha's time. In the 300 years from the time Buddha was born, the Abhidharma The study of the Abhidharma became more and more refined, more and more academic, and in that they looked at the experience of people, of practice, and divided it up into heaps and numbers, and even measured the length of the time each experience would take.

[26:39]

Of course, a lot of this is in the Heart Sutra when we chant. It refers back to these heaps and skandhas and piles and we name them. But there became this sort of, throughout a lot of this time, the importance of the arhat, the individual enlightenment, the enlightenment of the individual. And then suddenly comes on the scene the whole wealth of the Prajnaparamitas. And as I understand it, the first one that comes before the Heart Sutra or the others is the Prajnaparamita Sutra in 8,000 lines. And it has some wonderful parts to it. I mean, I'm sure the whole thing is wonderful, but I cannot begin to fathom a lot of it.

[27:42]

But some of it touches something that if I don't fully understand, I recognize. I recognize some glimpse of, and I truly believe is true, even though I may not be able to realize it with any completeness. So, in that time, with these sutras, one of the things that enters is the Bodhisattva. And the only Bodhisattva we've really seen till this time, 2,000 years ago, are the stories of Buddha and the Bodhisattva. Those stories, the Jataka tales, the tale and himself as Prince Siddhartha, but before he becomes the fully realized Buddha.

[28:44]

So, one of the things that happens with these sutras is we, what you keep, we keep through looking at the Abhidharma, realizing the emptiness of self, that the self is sort of a bunch of these things together. But then with these sutras, what comes is more of the interconnectedness of all things. And the way it comes is because we realize not only these dharmas, This is the dharma with the small d. Not only are all these dharmas there, but they themselves are empty. So we don't just look at them. It's not just the self that is empty, but the dharmas themselves that are empty, which sort of frees something.

[29:55]

There's a connectedness now, but what is this freedom? This freedom is like the thing in the, when we talk about standing at the top of the thousand foot, or how many thousand foot, or ten foot, or however you envision it, post, where you have to jump off. And at the same time as all this is happening, the world view becomes altered because it's no longer that there's samsara on this side and nirvana on that side that you're going from one and escaping to the other as you enter enlightenment but you're staying there. The bodhisattva is is the, I don't know, I think of the word enlightener, is the agent of enlightenment. He stays there, he doesn't leave.

[31:08]

He stays on this side. He stays with us. And he stays here, or she, as she was called at the beginning of these sutras, she stays here to help heal the world. And those are Joanne Macy's words, and she says that sometimes those are transferred translated as enlightening all sentient beings, enlightening with all sentient beings. But she's here to heal the world. These sutras are here and offer healing of the world. when we realize, when we're set free, that not only, that all these dharmas are empty. She also uses language. She says, when I go out and speak, I speak about, I say, these are, I'm coming from a Buddhist tradition, these are for Buddhist ways, but I often use different language that is, I think is sometimes for people who have not come from this, and I'm quoting her,

[32:18]

to accept, and she talks about the ecological self, which I think is just wonderful. It's instead of the self as we, as self, as ego, but the ecological self is a way of explaining that self that is connected to all things, that is part of the flow, the interconnectedness of all life, the part that includes everything in the we and does not leave anything out. I forgot to look at my time. I don't know when we end. So you don't know when we end. I think we end at 11, right? Somebody has to know. Alan, when do we end? Anyway, I struggle through this part, and I noticed that in listening to this tape, Joanne Macy struggles through it.

[33:32]

She keeps going back and saying, wait, I have a better way of explaining that. So I apologize for my struggling, but my struggling is sincere, and I feel this is important enough. So she says, what do you do? What do you do? when you have nothing to stand on, when even the dharmas are empty, what do you do? She says, you fly. You fly and what holds you up? What holds you up? Prajnaparamita holds you up. The wisdom beyond wisdom. The wisdom that leads to compassion. It transforms the very ground. You do not reject this world, but you're here, you stay, you transform it. And she talks about... She talks about a way which could be used as a meditation

[34:46]

And it has four steps. She says, first you see, the Bodhisattva sees all beings of all time and all beings, all that have ever lived. All that have ever lived. And she says, if you want to try this, it's better to shut your eyes. But I did go once to hear the Dalai Lama in a big auditorium in San Jose. And he said, just vision. Bodhisattvas, as far as you can see, and as far as I could see was inside of this auditorium, being surrounded by people who had come to practice with the Dalai Lama and who had come to listen to him and had just, I felt in ways, been transformed by his words. And so there was this feeling that one didn't really have to work very hard as one looked out to visualize this infinite world of bodhisattvas.

[35:57]

And then the next thing you know, the second thing that you meditate in, is there has never been a life, a living thing, a sentient being, a human that has never performed at least one act of merit, no matter how depraved, no matter how impoverished, no matter how lacking in skills or in... that has not created one positive act of merit. And I forgot to say when we were talking about the images, that creating, a thing that has always been very important to me, that the creating of images is a very important act of merit, and that Enku, who is one of my heroes, who was a wandering monk and priest in a time when most people were

[37:05]

tied to their land as serfs, who could not, well, not serfs, maybe vassals, I don't know, but could not leave, could not go out from their land to wander, that the people who could were these monks, some monks who could go from place to place. And Enku was one of these monks, and he vowed to make thousands and thousands of images. And he carved these wonderful images. He was born in the earlier part, I think 1642 is the number that arises to mind, and carved these ax-hewn images that are very rough. And he went from place to place, begging wood, even carving them out of a living tree, of then taking these chips and carving each chip into a Buddha. And if you ever get to Nagoya, or go to Nagoya, or plan to go there, you can see a lot of these, including bags of these little chips, each one that has been carved to a Buddha.

[38:14]

They sort of remind me of children's old clothespin dolls, much smaller. And there are also, there's also the practice in Buddhism of stamping over and over making wood carvings or different carvings of images of Buddha or of different bodhisattvas and then sometimes they're used as themselves but sometimes they are used as the background for writing sutras and they're quite beautiful and I feel guilty right now because I promised to make a copy of one of these for Catherine who's looking right at me and I never got a good copy for her. Anyway, so someone, even by making a little chip Buddha, it's an act of merit. And then the third thing to remember is the world is so interconnected.

[39:18]

None of these acts of merit, nothing is ever lost. And we take them and we sweep all these things, all these things that are good, all these, and we sweep them together. And then out of them, a great ball is formed. A great ball of merit is formed. And it is out of this ball of merit, it transforms into the healing of our whole world. And Joanne also mentions when she is talking that one of the things she learned when she was working on the nuclear guardianship and working to turn the places of nuclear waste into places of spiritual growth where people can protect these so that the people who come

[40:29]

will know where this poison, the poisons that will last for thousands of years, I don't know how many thousands of years, will be recognized and will be known. We won't have to say, the people of the future won't have to say, is it in the sea? Is it going to poison all of us? Where is it? But these places will be designated. And she said she learned from working on this project that not only are all the Buddhas of the past and all the Bodhisattvas and all the ancestors, all our personal ancestors and all our genes working on this healing of the world, but also those who are born to be born are working. there on this healing of the world and we'll be working on it so that we not alone in working to heal the world and to save it from what she calls I've lost the words but

[41:54]

to being the victim of the industrial growth and the need of industrial wealth. But there's all this, so that even whatever we do helps. If we're not Joanne Macy, if we're not Alan Sanaki and all of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, if we're not all of these people, that every little bit we do to help joins with the others, the letter you write, the one demonstration you go to, each thing helps in that healing and helps to stop the loss. And sometimes for each of us, we pick one thing, whether it's nuclear disarmament or whether it's... or the thing that hits to our roots. Right now I think the thing that frightens me in a way more than anything is this whole business of patenting seeds and developing these seeds that will not reproduce themselves so that the people have to buy them over and over again.

[43:15]

This has been happening in the United States for quite a while so that the farmer has to go out and buy expensive seeds again instead of just picking up the seeds from that continuous life that we see in the continuity of the lotus on Prashna Paramita. But these people are going out to the corners of the world, to the small villages and collecting these seeds and buying the rights to them from impoverished people. and patenting the very seeds that feed our planet. Anyway, I'm getting close to that time. I did want to talk about, on a more personal level, for a minute, on bodhisattvas that I know. And I think we see bodhisattvas in everyone sometimes, but I've been lucky to have taught for a lot of years.

[44:22]

and to keep knowing some of those people that I taught. And one of the people that always stands out in my mind is a child named Halima Olatunde who came to me when she was in nursery school. I grew up with her in a way teaching because I taught her when she was in nursery school and then I kept moving to higher and higher grades and she was still with me at third grade. She still writes to me or comes to see me. And one day, I noticed that Halima was always picking up little shards of glass. And when I was a child, I picked up little shards of colored glass that I found on the street because I thought they were so beautiful. And I asked Halima, Halima, why are you picking up those little shards of glass off the street? And she said, Rebecca, Rebecca, you know, I am only a very little child.

[45:29]

I am only a very young child, and picking up this glass is the only way I have to save the world. Let's stay with me. That's a great teaching. Not to give up in despair, but to think of whatever way, small ways, that I can offer. The other thing about Halima, which I just have to share again, well, she was a very brave person. And one day we were walking up to, I mean, she was fearless. in things that most children are afraid of. We were walking up from our school to the film archives, where some of your children go to now. I see some people smiling out there to see a film. And on the way, we saw someone who was a person of very short stature, known by some as a dwarf.

[46:35]

The kids started to laugh, and I sat them down on a point at this person. I sat them down, and we talked about growth hormones. And then we proceeded off to this movie, which turned out to be The Wizard of Oz, where we see all the munchkins. And just as you are laughing now, They come on and the kids are very happy, they're dancing, and the kids in the audience are laughing. And Halima, in the dark, we're sitting in the front, because we were late, because we had stopped to talk about growth hormones, gets up, faces Stop laughing, it's just hormones, you know, that's all hormones you have. And she has grown up to be an absolutely wonderful person. And the other person from the same group who stayed with me through this class, I had the pleasure of just staying with in Carmel, staying there overnight.

[47:49]

She drove me down, she is a bodhisattva, and she stayed with me all through Sunday when we had to hollow out all these wonderful sculptures that were made, and helped me do that, and then drove me back, because by then I was in no state to drive. But anyway, I stayed with Emily, you all, and I don't know how people start out this way. I know I didn't. When Emily was little, when she was in nursery school, if there was another child out there who had no one to play with or looked unhappy, Emily, who was always surrounded by friends, would turn to them and say, let's go play with her. She needs someone to play with. And... This just seems to me to be an outstanding characteristic at that age. What you want, especially girls, they want their friend, where boys tend to play in larger groups.

[48:57]

And today Emily is working with the Institute for Nonproliferation, I hope I've said that word right, of atomic materials. and in the institute in Mont in Carmel and will be going back soon to Afghanistan to work there. She's going to be married and then go back there where she had a very difficult time. They were molested, almost raped by groups of extremists. Their rooms were broken into by these people. And she chose to go to Afghanistan because she's half Asian. She wanted to live in a place where she looked like the people, to be a person who felt like they were in the majority for once.

[50:05]

And she was then really accosted with this business, really balled out more than the people, other people she was with. because how can an Afghanistan girl like you hang out with these white people? Anyway, and one more. While listening to KQED radio, which I'm addicted to, I heard a woman speak and she, I don't know her color, but she did have an accent that I associate with people. of color, people who come from our black community. And she spoke about the difference of being a mother and being a mama. And a mother raises her children. And a mother can do a very good job of it. But a mama, now a mama can look like anyone.

[51:10]

A mama can put her curls up in paper and be a mama while she's out there on the street while her hair is wound up in paper. And her mama can look like, well, one of those women who doesn't come to church, who does other things. And a mama, but a mama is there in all of us. All of us have been raised by mamas, whether they be our neighbors or our cousins. or our aunts, or our grandmothers. Sometimes we're lucky enough to have a mother. But luckily in this world, somehow there are enough mamas out there for all of us. And so when I heard this, and as I've been thinking about Prajna Paramita, I thought, wow, we've got the mama of all mamas.

[52:02]

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