Good morning. Good morning. So today is, as it is celebrated in East Asia, Enlightenment Day. A day that we commemorate as the day of the enlightenment of Shakyamuni Buddha, 2400 some years ago. So I wanted to speak today about what does that mean? What does it mean that he became the Buddha, that he was enlightened? And I wanted to speak about it from the perspective, or at least one perspective, from two of my favorite sutras. The first of which is the Avatamsaka, or Flower Ornament Sutra. uh... was inspiration for the great chinese way in school and uh... want to site case sixty seven of the book of serenity and which is about called the flower of inscriptions wisdom and

[01:29]

According to one passage in the Flower Ornament Sutra, this koan says, the case says, when Buddha was enlightened, what he saw and what he said was, ah, now I see. All sentient beings everywhere fully possess the wisdom and virtues of the enlightened ones. But because of false conceptions and attachments, they don't realize it. So this is one pretty clear statement of what it is that, what it means that Buddha was enlightened. He saw that all sentient beings everywhere completely are endowed with the wisdom and virtues of the awakened ones. And there's a whole discussion starting in Chinese Buddhism and in East Asian Buddhism, and it's particularly important in the Soto school, about what this word sentient beings means in this case.

[02:51]

So later on in China and for Dogen, that included everything. It included the nature of reality. Fences and walls, tiles and pebbles, as well as grasses and trees. At any rate, the Buddha saw that all sentient beings everywhere completely, that all of, according to Dogen, that all space everywhere completely is awakening. And he proceeded to present the Avatamsaka or Flower Ornament Sutra. 1600 or so pages in Tom Cleary's English translation. Kind of rhapsodizing about how wonderful all of this was. This vision of this omnipresent nature of awakening.

[03:55]

So this is a very lofty visionary, I call it psychedelic sutra. And the story is that it was so kind of beyond and out there that nobody basically at the time and not many people since could kind of deal with it. Although there are people in this room who've read it. It's not impossible to read through it, or one can read a little bit of it and get a taste of this wonder that the Buddha felt, and yet he also, and the sutra also includes this, he saw he did not fail to recognize the fact of our human nature that because of false conceptions and attachments, they do not realize. So these false conceptions and attachments are very important.

[05:07]

In the commentary to this case in the Book of Serenity, it talks about one of the, the founder of the Chinese Huayen school, talking about the flowering of sutra, called it the opening up of the causal nature. the opening up, and it says in the commentary on the practice and vows of Samantabhadra, he calls it, opening up the source of the nature of beings. So, this enlightenment is understood in our school as the nature of reality, and the Buddha is just the one who wakes up to it. and again in the sutra there are many very lofty and visionary and beautiful passages talking about this nature culminating at the end of the sutra with his vision of the castle of maitreya bodhisattva who is the next future buddha which is as vast as the universe and the pilgrim sudhana walks in inside it and sees that within it there are also as

[06:22]

innumerable castles, each also as vast as the universe, and they don't kind of interfere with each other or bother each other. And so it's this kind of mind-boggling, mind-crackling, mind-deconstructing vision of how wonderful reality is. But of course, we all know that there is also sadness and suffering and confusion and wars and corruption and pain and cruelty and, you know, this first noble truth, things are not in line with the vision of the Flower Ornament Sutra. And this also Buddha realized, he said, Ordinary people conceive illusions.

[07:25]

Those of the lesser and provisional Mahayana have attachments. There's error in both. If they give up false conceptions, then omniscience, spontaneous knowledge, and unhindered wisdom can become manifest. And furthermore, upon Realizing this awakening, seeing the morning star and expounding this vast sutra, Buddha also observed all of the beings of the cosmos with his pure, unobstructed eye of wisdom and said, how wonderful. And then he said, how is it that these beings all have the wisdom of the enlightened ones, yet in their folly and delusion do not know or see it? I should teach them the right path to make them abandon illusion and attachment forever so that they can perceive the vast wisdom of the enlightened ones within their own bodies and be no different from the Buddha.

[08:42]

So this is kind of our job as zen students to see first of all and sitting for a day or a period or a week or whatever in our zazen practice we have a chance as we settle as the thoughts go rumbling around and as we kind of settle beneath that or feel spaces between it or are able to be present in this body and mind and just face the wall, just face ourselves, we have a chance to glimpse the openness and vastness and radiance of this vision and view of the nature of reality. This possibility of openness And the Buddha work, the job of the Buddhas is, oh, but people have illusions, false conceptions and attachments.

[10:06]

And so they don't see this. And when we say people, of course we refer to all the people in our society and in our city and who you know could benefit by the practice and are caught up in false conceptions and attachments and also all the beings on our Kushner chair right now so part of part of maybe all of the point of our practice is these two sides to open up to the depths and possibilities and wonder. This beyondness, it's a bit strange. It's not, doesn't fit, you know, what we were taught in school, doesn't fit the ideas of ourself that we've developed in the course of our lives and yet there is this nature of reality and

[11:18]

So we can maybe glimpse that and enjoy that, and breathe into it and breathe out from it. And also, what Dogen calls studying the self. There is this endless, or practically speaking, endless. Maybe the Buddha saw through all of his own illusions and attachments at that moment. But anyway, for us, we can kind of bend and open and kind of not hold on so tightly to our views of things and not hold on so tightly to the things we are attached to. So it doesn't mean to get rid of your conceptualizing mind or even necessarily to get rid of your preferences, but see what your preferences are. See how we get caught in those. see how they're not necessarily as, you know, if you like, you know, vanilla ice cream, you know, you might decide that you also could like chocolate ice cream or vice versa.

[12:30]

To see that our attachments are flexible. Or at least to see that we don't have to kind of go out into the world and act to, you know, kind of collect all the vanilla ice cream in the world from me. So there's two sides here of a Buddha's work. And partly it's to show that, hey, this world is wonderful, this life is wonderful. We can breathe, we can just enjoy this Inhale and exhale right now. We can feel this in our mind and body. We can be here. And also then to see as our illusions and attachments get in the way. There's some other things in this case that are interesting.

[13:50]

One teacher, Yangshan, criticized the great Xiangyan and said, I grant you understand the Chan, the Zen of the Buddhas, but you haven't even dreamed of the Zen of the ancestral teachers. So maybe this is a kind of tension. I think it's okay to just do the Zen of the Buddhas, Buddhism. But this sometimes called ancestral teacher Zen is that we also feel the responsibility to take this on, to share with others, to convey somehow, to make this awareness available, make this practice available, make this kind of yogic study available. So we're doing that together, opening up a new center to try and make it more available.

[14:58]

This is ancestral teacher, Chan. But part of what we want to do by making it more available is to make a place where people could come and just enjoy Buddhism. Just see for themselves how it is. That all beings are fully endowed with the wisdom and the virtues of the awakened ones. That this Buddha nature is something that even people we don't get along with well have some part of that this Buddha nature is not just ours but dogs and cats also and the grasses and trees along the lake shore and the waves and the water along the lake shore and the sand and rocks

[16:04]

all partake of this. So this is the, this vision of what it means that today's enlightenment day. This is the vision of the flower ornament. Sutra, oh, one more comment from the comment to the commentary on this case. because it's about Zhaozhou who we've been studying in the Koan class last year. A monk asked Zhaozhou, what is the mystery within the mystery? Zhaozhou said, how long have you been mystified? The monk said, I've been into this mystery for a long time. Zhaozhou said, anyone but me might have been mystified to death. So, we can hold this mystery lightly.

[17:08]

Part of our job, again, as the Harmony of Difference and Sameness ends, those who study the mystery don't waste time. So this is, again, our practice is just studying this mystery, studying how it is that all all beings, really are endowed with this wisdom and virtue, but also how it is that we don't see it. So this is called the Buddha work and I wanted to turn to, and we can come back to the Flower Ornament Sutra, but I wanted to turn to another favorite sutra of mine, the Lotus Sutra. And one of the teachings in the Lotus Sutra about this enlightenment of the Buddha has to do with this omnipresence of the Buddha.

[18:23]

So we will chant at midday service, the chant about the inconceivable lifespan of the Buddha. But first, just in the skillful means chapter, it says it presents the single great cause for all Buddhas to appear in the world. And it's very much like what the Flower Ornament Sutra says. It says that the one reason why Buddhas appear in the world is to help beings to enter the path of awakening. That's all, that's simple. Just to help beings enter the path of awakening. Not to get to the end of the path, even. And maybe the path is endless in some ways, as endless as sentient beings and galaxies. It's a lifetime path. But to make this path available, just to step into the path,

[19:27]

with all of our confusion and illusions and attachments and grasping and so forth, just to enter into the path, to enter the gateway to Buddha's wisdom and virtue. To step through the Zen gate or maybe just to step under the gate and just hang out there in the gateway. to be on the path to seeing this wisdom and virtue everywhere, and also seeing how illusions and attachments get in the way. So this is the Lotus Sutra's version of what a Buddha is, why a Buddha appears in the world, and the Buddha appearing in the world is what we celebrate today. Shakyamuni Buddha awakening and becoming the Buddha and appearing in the world.

[20:29]

And at first he taught the Flower Ornament Sutra, which nobody could even hear him talk about at that time. And then he taught the Four Noble Truths, of suffering, and the cause of that, and the end of it, and the path, the path, entering into the path. And then he taught many, many other teachings, aside from the Eightfold Path, the Six Paramitas, and the Ten Paramitas, and the Precepts, and many other descriptions of how it is that we can enter into this gateway, this path, towards appreciating the wisdom and virtues of the awakened ones. And in the middle of the Lotus Sutra,

[21:42]

The Buddha reveals that, well, you know, it seemed like there was a time when I left the palace and started out and did all this arduous practice and then stopped and took some nourishment and sat down under the Bodhi tree and awakened and then went off and taught. But actually, he reveals that since I attained Buddhahood, the number of kalpas that have passed is incalculable, hundreds, thousands, myriads. billions of long eons, and for all that time constantly, I have voiced the Dharma, the teaching, to countless million living beings so that they would enter into this path, into the Buddha way. you know we don't have to pin this down scientifically or anything there are various descriptions of what buddha is how buddha is what that means but in this one he says oh i've been it's been a very very long time since i first awakened as a bodhisattva and then became a buddha and it will be twice that long into the future that i will continue doing this buddha work

[23:05]

except that people might think well i don't have to practice his boot is around so i pretend to pass away into nirvana and so forth so so it's important that actually what what he's saying is uh... you see that buddha is part of this world when you see this possibility each of us enters into the path as we all here have done by virtue of showing up here today we're all on this path in some way engaged in looking at our life looking at reality trying to awaken to uh... the wholeness of that and help to awaken others to help them enter into the gateway or path so he says when When beings have become sincerely faithful, honest and upright with gentle intention, wholeheartedly wishing to behold the Buddha, not begrudging their own lives, then I and the assembled sangha appear together on sacred vulture peak and I tell the living beings that in this world I exist without end.

[24:23]

By the power of skillful means appearing to be extinct or not. So, you're ready to hear this. that Buddha is here today in the world. Buddha is here today in your own efforts to be present on this path and see how wonderful this wisdom and virtue is and see also how these illusions and attachments get in the way. Our illusions and attachments. And, of course, we're connected to the illusions and attachments of the whole world. We're not separate. So, I know that many of you, maybe most of you, maybe all of you, kind of have heard all this before.

[25:30]

In some ways, you all know this already. We all know this. and yet enlightenment day is an opportunity to remind ourselves what it is we're doing so the Buddha ends the verse on the inconceivable lifespan at the end of that chapter, the end of it, what we'll chant is at midday. He says, ever I make it my thought, how can I cause living beings to gain entry into the unsurpassed way and promptly embody Buddha? This is what the Buddha thinks. How can I help living beings find the gateway, the Zen gate, to the path of awakening, the endless ongoing Buddha going beyond Buddha, Buddha endlessly awakening.

[26:33]

This path where we express and embody and enact Buddha, where we see Buddha in our bodies, in our painful knees sometimes, in our shoulders, in our lower back very much, in our breathing. How do we see this possibility of upright awakening? How do we help living beings to enter in this path? So this is our project and our practice. So again, what does it mean that Buddha is still around in some way? What does that mean? We have the historical record that the man, Siddhartha Gautama, who became Shakyamuni Buddha, passed away and we commemorate that usually in February, that's the day it's commemorated, that he lay down on his right side and passed away into nirvana.

[27:39]

And yet here, the Lotus Sutra says, oh, Buddha pretends to pass away, pretends to awaken to become the Buddha for the first time. Buddha is here. So some comments from our great ancestor Dogen about this presence of the Buddha. So in his essay, Awakening to the Bodhi Mind, Hatsubo Daishin and Shobo Genzo, Dogen discusses bodhicitta, the first arousal of the thought of universal awakening. And he considers this of utmost importance, mysterious, in some sense equivalent to the whole of a Buddha's enlightenment. So this first thought of enlightenment is precious, mysterious, wondrous. Can you remember when you first thought, oh, enlightenment, awakening, what is that?

[28:46]

That sounds really cool. I want to know something about that. I want to kind of get into that. That first aspiration, that first thought, it's why it's very important when people first come to sit with us that we welcome them. Even if they just have a school assignment, somehow they took, something brought them to take that course and to follow that assignment to this gateway. So this is very precious. In some sense equivalent to the whole of the Buddha's enlightenment. So, in this essay then, Dogen quotes the Buddha's statement at the end of chapter 16 that I just read about. Ever making it my thought how to help living beings gain entry into this unsurpassed way. And then he says, I've always, Dogen says, I've always given thought to how I could cause all creatures to enter the highest supreme way and quickly become Buddhas.

[29:49]

This statement is the Tathagata's lifetime and lifespan itself. Buddha's establishment of the mind, training and experience of the effects are like this. So for Dogen, this inconceivable lifespan, the Lotus Sutra attributes to Buddha, is exactly this intention to help all beings awaken, which mysteriously creates the ongoing life of the Buddha. As long as this vow and direction to universal awakening persists in the world and has the potential to spring forth in current practitioners, Dogen says, then Buddha is alive. So Buddha's continuing life is in our very efforts to help make available this practice to others, to help make this practice ongoingly available to us. It's not others at the expense of self or vice versa.

[30:51]

Others are us. Self is others. So the Buddha didn't stop awakening when he became the Buddha. He continued sitting zazen every day. He continued awakening. Dogen calls this Buddha going beyond Buddha. So all of you have been here for a day long sitting before, and here you've returned. Same thing. It's not enough to just, well, maybe it's pretty wonderful for people who just sit one day in their lives and maybe go to one session. Actually, it's wonderful. What Buddha is, is to see that, oh, this practice of awakening, this experience of awakening, this study of illusions and attachments and this glimpsing into this mystery of the wisdom and virtues is endless.

[32:00]

As our life changes, as everything changes, as our world changes, as we go through you know, wonderful changes in our world and horrible changes in the world as we, as our economy collapses, as we get new presidents, as the winter comes, as the snow thaws at some point, sometime. In each situation, there is a new gateway. There is a new aspect of the path to enter into. There is a new opportunity to Wake up. Express Buddha here today. That's what we are celebrating today in this noble, upright, traditional practice of just sitting. Dogen also talks about Shakyamuni's lifespan

[33:05]

In another essay from Shobo Genzo, Meeting Buddha, Kenbutsu, which also includes references to the Slotha Sutra, Soto Gen here quotes the discussion of the Buddha just appearing to be born, awaken, and pass away as merely a skillful means. and the Buddha's statement that when beings with unified or undivided mind desire to meet Buddha without attaching to their own body and life, at that time he appears for the assembly at Vulture Peak and expounds Lotus Sutra. And Dogen comments, when each present individual secretly arouses the desire to meet Buddha, we are desiring to meet Buddha through concentration of the Vulture Peak mind. So this undivided mind is Vulture Peak itself. How could the undivided body of Buddha not appear together with the mind?

[34:09]

So this idea of this unified undivided mind as Buddha's lifespan itself Of course, we can see that our mind, this mind, as we sit this morning, maybe we can see it as divided. There's this thought and then this thought. There's inhale, then exhale. But also, we can see the way in which this mind, this heart, sitting upright on our cushions or chairs is whole, unified, undivided. can we bring our undivided attention to just this? This is the basic suttas and practice of just sitting, and it's pretty challenging and pretty lofty. Many schools consider it a very advanced practice to advance, to let beginners know about, to just be present with our experience and bring our undivided mind to that.

[35:20]

And sometimes it's challenging. So we have, you know, skillful means, please count your breaths at the end of each exhale, silently. One. Two. And so forth. Or just pay attention to your breath, or sit with some koan, some phrase. Could be a phrase from any of our chants, those who study the mystery, that's enough. What does it mean to study the mystery? Or, gāte, gāte, paragate, parasamgate, bodhisattva, just say that mantra or just how does it feel being here? So we have all of these ways to help us bring together and bring forth undivided mind. Dogen says that this undivided mind is itself Buddha's enduring lifespan.

[36:22]

So, you know, some periods of Zazen, we have to confess, we feel really scattered. We feel sleepy, we feel lots of thoughts. Somewhere even in those periods of Zazen, though, there's some moments of undivided mind. Can you feel that? Or can you feel the undivided mind that's there even with your underneath, I don't know, I don't know what preposition to use, what topology to use, but somehow, in the midst of confusion, there is this undivided mind. And then there's some periods of satsang where we actually feel like that. The thoughts sort of fade away or they don't bother us so much. We can just be present with the wall, with our body, with our breathing. and enjoy undivided mind. Buddha gave us that on this day, 2400 years ago, and continues to.

[37:26]

One other comment from Dogen about this idea of Buddha's being alive, Buddha's enlightenment being alive right now. So this is from one of my favorite essays in Shobo Genzo, Yobutsu Igi, The Awesome Presence of Active Buddhas. And Dogen uses this image of the enduring Buddha to show the present moment as the dynamic process inclusive of all times. So he says, know that Buddhas in the Buddha way do not wait for awakening. So awakening is not something that will happen if you sit enough sessions later on. Awakening is in the room right now. Awakening is somewhere around your cushion or chair right now.

[38:32]

Buddha's in the Buddha way on this pathway. Do not wait for awakening. Active Buddhas simply fully experience the vital process on the path of going beyond Buddha. So, a number of you have heard me talk about this line before. It's one of my favorite lines from Dogen. if you remember this and use it as a mantra that will be very helpful to many beings. Active Buddhas simply fully experience the vital process on the path of going beyond Buddha. When Buddha awakened 2400 some years ago today, as we say, he realized this path of going beyond Buddha. he realized that he had a full lifetime of teaching to present this going beyond Buddha and to continue enjoying this awakening that he experienced and expressed in the Flower Ornament Sutra.

[39:46]

So awakening is not something that can occur in some future that's not here now. It's a dynamic process that happens in the present experience of practice but without excluding past or future or any other aspect of this time of going beyond any fixed time. This going beyond Buddha is that, and this ongoing practice is that, yeah, you might have some dynamic awakening experience three sessions from now, but that's also partly not just partly, that is also deeply related to your zazen today. It's not outside of your zazen today. This is a dynamic process that happens in the present experience of practice without excluding past or future or any other aspect of this time of going beyond any fixed time.

[40:51]

Dogen says, it's not that the lifespan of the Buddha has prevailed only in the past, but that what is called vast numbers of years and lives is a total inclusive attachment. What is called still now is the total lifespan. So in another essay, the whole body of the Buddha, Dogen quotes from another chapter in the Lotus Sutra, for countless eons, Shakyamuni has practiced difficult and painful practices, accumulated merits, and sought the way of the Bodhisattva. And thus, even though he is now a Buddha, he still practices diligently. And Dogen adds, the long eons of difficult and painful practices are the activity of the womb of Buddha. When it is said that these practices have not ceased even for a second, It means that even though he is perfectly enlightened, he still practices vigorously and he continues forever, even though he converts the whole universe.

[41:53]

This activity is the whole body of the Buddha. So, because you are here now, I know that each of you has in many ways practiced diligently. for many years. In Buddhism, we would say for many lifetimes. You can take that literally or metaphorically, but I know all of you have struggled to find out how to be the person you are today. All of you have worked hard. All of you have sought for this practice and come to this practice and practice diligently, sometimes with fits and starts, but still, here you are. So this long, hard work of awakening is what we celebrate today.

[43:06]

Buddha did it 2,400 some years ago. We're doing it today. We're making available this practice of Buddha's body, this upright sitting. We will be working in the next year to try and find how to continue to make it available and more available to people here in Chicago. in our town. And also for each of us to continue to find a way to sustain this practice, to continue paying attention to how is this life? How can I be helpful? How can I help others to enter into this path, this gateway, this unsurpassed way? so that they, together with us, can embody Buddha, express Buddha.

[44:15]

So, thank you all very much for being here. This practice is, what can I say? It's wonderful, it's noble, it's Challenging, it's difficult. Give yourself credit for that. The Buddha world gives you credit and merit and all of that. And yet, we have to keep sustaining this in a way that works, in a way that we don't feel exhausted or burned out, but that we can continue. So, thank you very much.

[44:57]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ