I bow to taste the truth of what the planet has for us. Hi, kids. Or should I say, good morning, children. What do you like better, kids or children? Kids. Kids. Okay. Well, I kind of waved at you, huh? I used my hand. I'm going to show you a picture and ask you if you can tell what it is. Not the words, just the picture. Any of you know what this is? You all should know what it is. Oh, maybe not what it means. Isn't this somebody's hand? Yeah, you have hands, too, huh?

[01:04]

So this hand is together in a certain way, though. This is the hand of somebody who's meditating. He's doing Zazen, which that's what we do here. That's what your mom and pop do here, probably. Now, this hand position, of course, you can't see my hands, but I do that a lot. And there's a name for this type of hand position. It's in an ancient language called Sanskrit. It started way, way back in India. And this sign is called Mudra. A hand position signifying something is called a Mudra. And so we can tell, because everybody agreed, that when you do the hands like this, that means that the person is meditating. So if you look up on the altar here, you'll see a statue of the founder of this practice, Buddhism. That's a statue of Shakyamuni Buddha. And look at his hands.

[02:06]

You see what the hands are doing? Something like that, huh? So when we see a statue or a painting with the hands like that, then we can tell that's a statue of who. That means that's somebody who's meditating. Now, you have hands, right? And when I sat down here, I went like that. I said, hi. So we all know that kind of stuff. If you want to shake hands, okay. And then if you watch the sports or anything, a lot of the baseball players and football players, when they do something good, they go, hey! And they give the high five, they hit hands. That's happy hands, right? So there's empty hands. Sometimes, you know, you might say, do you have any candy? Sorry, it's all gone. So that's the hands, the hand signs, mudra. And they're kind of interesting. There's another one here. This statue of another Buddha. And see the hands are doing this.

[03:08]

And that's a statue of Amida Buddha. And Amida lives in a beautiful place called the Pure Land. And someday, you may all go there if you're really good. And this guy, Amida, will be waiting for you. He'll give you this sign. He'll say, hi, here you are. And I have something for you. So he says, I have something to give you. And the other hand says, don't be afraid of me. I have nothing in this hand. I'm not going to hurt you. Something like that. So all these signs that mean something. And if you look around, you see paintings of Buddhas and other Bodhisattvas. I think Tara is doing something, too, over there. See her hands? Tara is another helper, help people become Buddhas. And her hand is doing something else there. So all these Buddhas do these different signs. You can tell who they are. Oh, Nathan just threw it. That's one other one, yeah. That means victory. And the other way we want to talk about it, if you go this way. In Britain, I think.

[04:09]

Are there any British people here? I won't get into that. But there are some, most signs that mean nice things. And some signs don't mean nice things. I won't get into the ones that aren't so nice. You'll find that out soon enough. Anyway, as you go along, you see these paintings and statues of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. Look at their hands. And you may find out something. But don't ask me, because I probably won't know what they mean. There's a lot of signs and they're kind of hard to learn. But anyway, it's interesting to look at. And maybe, do any of you like to draw? Do you draw? Yeah? Well, maybe you can try to start out by drawing your own hand. I used to do that. It's very easy when you trace your hand. And then look at your hand and you try to draw them. And then look at some of the paintings and see if you can draw some of these things like this. See how you can do it. So, I think maybe I'll make a short one for you guys so that you can get out of here and go draw.

[05:09]

Draw some pictures and give the Hi sign to each other. So, thank you very much. High five. Thank you. Thank you. Now, hi guys. Big guys. Hi. So, I'm going to show you this picture again.

[06:12]

Does anyone notice anything different about it? We all know we're big people. We know what this is. Does anyone notice anything different? Yeah. So, what happened in the process of printing this flyer, the photographic negative got flopped. And I said, oh, it's a mistake. And then I look at it and this makes it turn out to be as if this was your mudra and you were looking in the mirror. This is how it would look. And I thought, wow, I wonder if they did that intentionally. Because that's kind of cool, right? Because that's what we talk about. Our practice is the study of the self. So, you get a mudra that's facing you. It's your mudra. You're looking at it. And, hmm, but actually I found out that it was just a mistake. But sometimes mistakes are kind of, you learn from mistakes. And they can be, what's that word, serendipity, serendipity.

[07:15]

Something that wasn't supposed to happen and it's really great. Something like, wow, that's wonderful. So, this thing is turning into a wonderful poster for me. I keep looking at it and say, uh-huh, uh-huh. Anyway. But, um, and I should talk about this poster anyway. When Paul asked me to talk, give the talk today, and I make this practice now and somebody asks me something like that, I don't hesitate. Yeah, sure. And the next day someone said, you know, it's the kids' lecture. Oh! Paul tricked me. And, no, I like kids. I mean, I sometimes seem like a W.C. Field person, but, little boy, get away from me, you bother me, you know. But, anyway, no, kids are great. They're so great that you can't fool them. I can probably fool you guys, you know, but the kids you can't fool. Anyway. But, anyway, back to this.

[08:16]

So, when I was thinking about it, I said to Paul, when I said, yeah, sure, and then I said, wait a minute, Ken. My position here is ino, and that's a Japanese word that means I'm the person who cares for the Buddha Hall and the meditation hall, the zendo. So I have to do scheduling and see that people are on the job and stuff like that. And another job of the ino is, as you probably noticed after the lecture, I sit over there and I get up and make announcements, right? So I said, oh, I make announcements. I said, well, what am I going to talk about today? Well, I think I'll just give announcements for an hour and a half. And it'll be a nice long lecture. Fill up the time, and I'll give you the next two years' schedule, what's going to go on here. Well, the next thing that's going to happen will be next week, and that's what this post is. I would make this pitch anyway. This is the 60th anniversary of Sokoji, and that's the Zen Buddhist temple, Soto temple,

[09:19]

that Suzuki Roshi came to back in the 50s. And it's still over there. The building is still there on Bush Street. If you ever go by there, Bush and around Laguna, between Laguna and Octavia. It's a very old building, and it's still standing. The only thing going on in it right now is the San Francisco Goal Club is in there. If you want to play go, go over there. Go all over there, and they'll show you how. Anyway, since then, they've built a new one, which is now at the corner of Laguna and Sutter, and it's a very beautiful, very classical, traditional temple. But it's the 60 years that that temple, they came over to San Francisco and settled in on the one up on Bush Street. And I thought that was amazing, that 60 years, that 1934. And there was a Zen priest that was sent over from the headquarters to be with the Japanese community. In those days, Japanese immigrants would leave and come to the land of milk and honey,

[10:27]

like the Chinese came before them in the gold rush days. And they came over and worked, a lot of them worked in the fields. The work that's being done today by the Mexican-Americans. And so they were getting lonely for their home, their country, of course, when you're away from home. So they sent over to Japan to have them send a priest over. And not only the Soto Zen people, but also the Jodo Shinshu people who practice, that's the Pure Land, those who repeat this Buddha's name, Amida Buddha. And they also sent over people, please come over. And so they started sending priests over to be with the people, to make them not be so lonely and sad. And so I think that's why Sokoji came over that early, 34. Actually, the Jodo Shinshu came even in the 20s. And they started going to Hawaii first. That was the first one, there was a Soto Zen temple in Hawaii before here.

[11:31]

And then, of course, they went to Los Angeles. And it's still going on. So I forgot what the announcement was. Next Saturday, October 8th, at 1 p.m. in the Kamuki Theater, that's, you know, where they just posted a film, they're going to show, in celebration of the 60 years, they're going to show a film about Eheiji Temple. That's Dogen's temple where Soto Zen was established in Japan. And it's called The Snowy Season of Eheiji Temple. And it says, Winner of the Italian Film Festival, 1977. It must be good if we got an Italian award. They make a lot of good movies. I don't really know. But I'm sure it's a documentary. I don't think it's some kind of a ninja type movie or something. But anyway, I'm sure it'll be beautiful. It's done by Japanese television. And they do very beautiful work.

[12:33]

So it's worth giving a take a see. And you can go over there and help celebrate the 60th anniversary of Suzuki Roshi's first temple here in San Francisco. And where this place really started, when Westerners started sitting with Suzuki Roshi, you know that story. And we ended up here. So Sukoshi always has a feeling to me, that warm feeling. And I know the current priest, Reverend Hosokawa. He's a wonderful person. Sometimes he comes around here. You might see him and not know who he is. But I wish he'll be present. He invited some teacher from Japan. And I forget his name. Do you remember it, Michael? I don't know. But he's going to give a talk. It says it's going to be a Zen talk. And I read a little bit about this guy. Oh, here it is. Suji. Jungen Suji. He's going to give a lecture. And I read a little bit about him. There's a flyer. And it says he believes we should do Zazen in chairs. So all you people back there should really go listen to this guy. He says Zazen is for chairs.

[13:35]

Chairs are for Zazen or something. And he's going to give a talk. I don't know whether it's before or after the movie. And then there's going to be a taiko performance with big drums by a group called Zendeko. Anyway, it should be a nice afternoon. It only costs $5. And this way you can all go over and help celebrate the 60th anniversary of Sokoji. Soko is the word for it, which just means San Francisco. Also, sometimes it says it means gold mountain. But I think it's just a word that Japanese say. San Francisco. Soko. Like the Soko hardware in Japan on the corner of a post in Buchanan. And then it's Sokoji. And it's still over there. Anyway, I recommend it. Tickets are for sale in the front office here, if you're interested. I'm sure they'll be for sale at the box office also. Well, I did have some sort of a scene for this talk.

[14:38]

Besides, I'll give the rest of the announcements. Don't forget to bring the chairs back to the dining room. Take the cushions down to the Zendo, please. There'll be tea and cookies available, as usual, by the stairs. The bookstore will be open with Mr. Howell down there taking care of it. And today, I guess I'll be in the back of the dining room, if I have the nerve to show my face after this. Unless you throw things at me or something. And open lunch. The lunch is open today. If you'd like to stay for lunch, you're welcome to. There's a $5 donation charge. I asked Michael to make the announcements. I'm doing all his work for him. How do you lecture? I have notes. Actually, I have notes. I can't believe it. I never make notes for a lecture. I won't be able to read them.

[15:40]

Anyway, if there was a theme, like some people would call up in the office and say, is there a talk? Yes. What are they going to talk about? What's the title? We have Zen. Something about Buddhism. You know how churches sometimes have an announcement board and you say, today's lecture or today's talk, the book so-and-so talk is on this. Compassion. Well, if I had it, we have it. I probably would put down the word mudra for today's talk, since I started with the kids with that. And I started looking up books on it. And it's immense how many different hand signs there are involved, because they started in India. So like this, someone mentioned about this being reversed or being wrong. Well, you can't exactly say things are wrong, but most of the mudras of the meditation, the left hand is on top. But there are a couple where the right hand will be on top. So every time you read these things and you say something, I've taught art classes, I'm always very careful when I say something that is not absolute.

[16:48]

Now, you may find something different. You may say, this is always a meditation movement. No, you'll find another one this way. And it just depends. You get into this thing here. But there are some pretty well said. And one of the things that is said is putting the fingers together for this type of mudra. It's called the Dhyana Mudra. And in Chinese, it's called Ting Yin. And in Japanese, it's called Zhou Yin. So Dhyana is Sanskrit. Dhyana Mudra, Ting Yin in Chinese, and Zhou Yin in Japanese. When I wrote that Zhou Yin down, and there's like a dash between the O and the I. But if you just take away the dash, it says, what does it say? J-O-I-N, Zhou Yin. Whoa. Anyway, what does that mean?

[17:51]

I like magic and stuff, you know, mystical things. So looking at this mudra, a lot of this stuff is used in the Shingon type of Buddhism. I think it's too loud, Michael, because of the ringing sound. But now it's gone. Now the sound is gone. Good. We didn't always have a microphone here for talks. In fact, I was the first one to use this microphone, I believe. Michael used to always say I mumbled, and I still do, even with a microphone. So I have a microphone. Anyway, so the Shingon, right? So looking up this book, there's a book called Mudra. And it's by somebody, it's a Bollingen series. And the person's name is Saunders. And it's very scholarly and very, very, a lot of stuff. Like the opening pages. Have this.

[18:54]

Two pages. And there's more. So there's a lot of mudras. And they all have some kind of meaning. But it's used, we don't use them so much. We use, of course, the one, you know, what we use. But mostly in the Shingon, there's a lot of sort of magical stuff and incantations. So they do all these kind of hand signs when they're meditating. And this is to get their mind on whatever the deity they're concentrating on. Like this one, actually, is what we talk about sometimes, we say compassion and wisdom. That's a basic one. We put the compassion on top of wisdom and join them together. And together you can get to help everybody with that compassion and wisdom. If you learn how to use compassion and wisdom completely, you can do a lot of good. But there's also a lot more in this, the right and left hand.

[19:59]

Also it says there's a, the right hand is the world of Buddhas. And the left hand is the world of sentient beings. So you put sentient beings in the world of Buddhas. Again, you're helping. So when you do these hand signs, that helps you in your meditation. Not that we say don't think, and think not thinking, and all that. But once in a while, you know, you think when you sit down, you're settling down, with the Zazen and your Vajra. And then you finally, I always do the last thing, I put my hands together. So it's not bad to say sentient beings and Buddha. And then you start your Zazen. So, but it goes on and on. I'm not about to get into this book. That was a little bit I found in the book. If anyone's interested in this very vast field of mudra, the book is in the library, it's Bhojan, and I really recommend it. It's quite thorough. And it gets into a lot of stuff like that.

[21:02]

But then the interesting thing, I talked about the sums. And I just didn't know, or I forgot. And so we always say bring the sums together, barely touching. And that's all we say. I say when I give Zazen instruction too, that the sums, if you look down at the sums, they would be directly over the middle of fingers. Because I go around sometimes in the Zen Dojo, I'm supposed to check postures and things, and see if everybody starts falling asleep. Anyway. So sometimes I'll look at people's mudras. And I see a great variety of them. A very vast variety of them. I see some that are, the sums are pressed really hard. We say it's just barely touching. I see them pressed like this, you know. That usually means the person is getting really tense or thinking about something, you know. So just, we keep saying very lightly, very lightly. And then sometimes I see their hands turn this way, and I say this way, or flop completely apart, you know.

[22:06]

And so, there was one Zazen, I'm sorry if you've heard me say this before, but I like to repeat it, that I was in. And I just concentrated on my mudra the whole time, the whole seven days. You know, we tell you to check your posture, check your breath a lot. This time I just kept seeing how my thumbs, are they touching together? Barely. And I just kept going back to it. You know, not like this the whole time, but I would come back when I would start to drift. I'd say, how are my thumbs touching? And it was a very unusual session for me. It was a mudra session. So mudras are really important, and you can work on them. And this is just one. I'll touch on it a little bit. But going back to the thumbs, one of the meanings that they have, they have a mudra where they deliberately have to, and we say to make the mudra more like an oval. You look at it like an oval here. But there's another one that you make it into a triangle.

[23:10]

Now, I'm not saying that to do this. If you want to study, it's okay. But I will still say hold your thumbs like this. But just to show the significance and the slight change in the mudra, when it's a triangle, it has a different significance. And when the people who do this type of practice deliberately hold the triangle at mudra, it's referring to the triple treasure, Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. So that's kind of neat. That's just an example of how little movement of the thumb, and you change the whole meaning of your meditation. Sort of like, you know, that's a good thing to meditate on too, Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. This practice period, we're concentrating on Sangha. So I don't know, maybe this mudra would be more Sangha because it's not a triangle. Anyway. But that triple treasure, they call it another Sanskrit word, the tri-ratna, the triangle. And it's a very ancient symbol.

[24:14]

Again, from my study of Buddhist arts, I've learned these things. And it goes way, way, way back, way, way back prehistory, way, way, way back. This trident shows up a lot in the early Buddhist art trident, you know, three-three form, like was Neptune has one, and so does Shiva, Michael. But anyway, it was kept, a lot of the things that when Buddhism started forming, they didn't just throw Hinduism out the door, you know, the baby with the bathwater. They kept a lot of things that were useful to them. And this was one because then they started having the concept of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. So in the early stupas, you would see this trident sitting there kind of predominantly showing somewhere around the railing. And that was representing the triple treasure. So that's so much for that. I'll go a little bit more about

[25:18]

the different mudras. One I really like is is Vairamachana's mudra. I don't really know why I like it, but it's grabbing this finger and holding it like this. And so that's how, you know, a lot of this stuff, you learn to identify statues. You go to the young museum and you see this statue. What is that? Well, if you see this one, it's almost completely sure that it's Shakyamuni. Everybody agrees on that. Now if you see one sitting like this, that's Vairamachana Buddha. Vairamachana Buddha, we say the name of that name every meal we have in the Zen dome. We say homage to the Dharmakaya, Vairamachana Buddha. And this is again, the Vairamachana Buddha is the Buddha of the Shingon Buddhism. Shingon is, sometimes it's called Esoteric Buddhism, but it's also the Japanese style of Tibetan Buddhism. It's the Vajrayana,

[26:19]

how it came to Japan and became that kind of practice and was brought over there by this priest called Kobo Daishi, also known as Kukai, who was very important in Japanese culture. Anyway, he did a lot to help Buddhism and he founded the Shingon. One of the other ones you usually see a lot of is turning the wheel of the Dharma and it's just, you might say, Buddha's first sermon. And usually the hands are in a kind of a, I can't get it into too well, but it kind of looks like it's actually turning the wheel. So if you see a statue or a painting and the Buddha is like this, that's pretty sure that represents the first, the first talk that Buddha gave after enlightenment at Sarnath, the Deer Park. And that's representational of that. Another one you see a lot, I already mentioned this one, but also turning the wheel of the Dharma is done this way too.

[27:20]

You make a wheel with your hands. It also means giving gifts, but it represents, because when you put the thumb and index finger together you form a circle and the circle represents completeness. It also is a circle, the wheel of the teaching, the wheel of Dharma. So when the statues are doing this, you can generally say that it's a teaching or offering a teaching or saying, here's the law, the Dharma, the Dharma wheel. So, another one that I kind of, one of my favorites is, you'll see the statue sitting, you see these a lot in Southeast Asia and you'll see a statue of a Buddha and the hand was in the mudra of meditation, but the other hand, the right hand has left it. This one's still staying there and it's touching the ground. And that represents, a lot of times the title will say the temptation of Mara. And the story of this was when Shakyamuni was getting very close to enlightenment and this Mara is sometimes,

[28:25]

I won't get into too much, you go into detail too long, but Mara was kind of like the, well, I don't use the word devil, but it's sometimes called the evil one and it's the person, the Mara is the one who likes to keep the wheel of rebirth going, the wheel of suffering, makes Mara very happy. And he saw this person finding a way to get off that wheel, to get out of this, help people get off the world of suffering and he didn't like it. If this guy succeeds, I might have a job, basically speaking. I don't know if he used that word, but he probably spoke in Sanskrit or thought. And anyway, so he came over and his Buddha is sitting there and getting really close to it. So he's trying to tempt him to prevent him from doing that. So first he brought, he had very beautiful daughters and he brought them over to dance in front of the Lord. Then he brought the demons over

[29:26]

and tried to get them. They started shooting arrows at him and the arrows turned into flowers. There are wonderful paintings about this stuff. The Buddhist art is really fascinating. There's a lot of stuff like that goes on. But anyway, finally, Mara said, wow, he's getting really angry. And so he says, who do you think you are? What do you think you're doing here? And he says, I'm going to help people. And then he says, by what right do you have to do this? By what right do you have to do this? Bit? Bit? Bit. Uh-oh. How's that? Now you won't be able to understand my diction. Anyway, he said, by what right do you have to do this? And then he said, who says you can do this? Who is your witness? And the Shakyamuni put his hand down, touched the earth and said, the earth is my witness. And that bit it for Mara. And the earth started shaking.

[30:26]

He was defeated. Actually, Mara hung around and followed Buddha around and kept appearing in some of the old stories of the life of Buddha. He would be hanging there listening. And then at the end of this wonderful sermon, you see Mara walked away with his head hanging down. He still thought he could stop him. So anyway, that's that mudra there. Notes. They're no good. But anyway, that... I have actually wrote down the names of these things. That... the teaching mudra I was talking about, turning the wheel, is called temporen in Japanese, chuan fa lun yin in Chinese, and dharma chakra mudra. So... Well, I think I'm boring you enough with this.

[31:32]

If anybody's really interested in mudras, we could come and see me in the... Can you hear me? I'm mumbling again in the dining room. So I wanted to end with a... a quote. One of them is... Actually, I'm kind of skipping mudras, but I was dwelling on this, what you call iconography, identification of artwork. And... Mudras are a big part of it, but there's also many other ways to do it, too. I mean, I won't get into that. But this is what I want to read here. One is from the Western mode, and... and one is from the Eastern. The first one is actually about a young Native American woman in a Catholic mission chapel, looking at a statue and what she was trying to describe in it. She was perfect, made of finest French plaster,

[32:35]

dressed in the midday sky, a sequined satin robe and veil. She was cast in the act of stepping past the moon at its limit. Stars turned at her feet, which rested full weight on a lively serpent. The snake was bent to strike and colored a poison green. The virgin's foot was small, white and marvelously bare. Her blood was so pure that it would overcome the venom in any womb. How well she knew this. She scorned to look down. Her eyes were fixed on the place before her where sinners knelt, and her hands were open, offered to their anguish. In one palm, a drop of blood was painted. In the other, a yellow sun shone. She had a full figure, curving to a slim waist, broad hips. Her throat was strong and milky white, corded with straps of muscle. Her face was more than simply sainted or beautiful. The nose was large,

[33:37]

with a small bump to the left. Her lips were half-parted as though to blurt a secret. Her brows were thick and her eyes were light brown. And this strange, they held the same lively, curious suspension as the snakes. Now the next one is more describing a mandala from the Eastern tradition. This is all like instruction for a practice I believe from the Shingon, the Vajrayana type of practice. After that, from the nature of emptiness, imagine the four elements as Yam, Ram, Bam, Lam. From Sum arises Mount Meru. On it from Brum, a beautiful palace, expansive and ornamented. In the center of it is a lion throne, where Sita, not a lotus and sun, is the orange mother of the conquerors, her body golden, full-bodied with one face and four arms. Imagine that her two right hands

[34:40]

hold a vajra and bestow protection. Her two left hands hold texts and teach doctrine. She is endowed with ornaments of Sambhogakaya. In the east, on a lion throne, is a saw from which the conqueror Sakya Muni is created. He is in Nirmanakaya, the color of refined gold and has a crown protrusion. Imagine that in the west on a lotus and moon is a tree from which Lokshvara arises, very white and beautifully adorned. He sits in the cross-legged posture of Bodhisattva. Imagine that in the south from a mum is Sariputra. He is dressed as an ascetic. His body is light red. He is kneeling and the palms of the hands are joined. His body is very beautiful. In the north, create Ananda, born from Da. He is red, seated on a lotus in the mode of respecting the conqueror. Having thus completed the creation, light radiates from the at-one's heart, drawing forth the wisdom beings.

[35:40]

Make offerings through the Ja, Hum, Am, Ho. They enter the residence of the Mandala. The conquerors confer initiation on them with the Vairajana, Akshobhya, Ratnasambhava, Ananta, Jinatva and bless them with the three syllables. Homage to the Dharmakaya Vairajana Buddha, the Sambhogakaya Lodhsana Buddha, the Nirmanakaya Shakyamuni Buddha, the future Maitreya Buddha, all Buddhas past, present and future, the Mahayana Suddharmapundarika, Manjushri, perfect wisdom, Samvatabhadra, shining practice, Avalokiteshvara, infinite compassion, Padme Padamita. Thank you very much.

[36:20]

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