Good morning. This is interesting sitting up here. I'm used to sitting in the back on Sundays. Can you hear me okay back there? Let me know if you can't. So for some of us, giving these Sunday morning talks is part of our training, and this is my first Sunday talk. So it was suggested that I introduce myself. My name is Thay Gen. I began everyday Zazen, sitting meditation practice, nearly 20 years ago with a Japanese Soto Zen priest in New York City, and a few years later moved to San Francisco and continued my sitting at the San Francisco Zen Center, ended up working for several years at the

[01:02]

Tassajara Bakery in San Francisco, back when it was a very strong practice place, and lived a few years at Tassajara Monastery, our monastery back up in the mountains near Carmel. I received priest ordination from Rabbi Anderson in 1986, and was shuso or head monk at Tassajara in 1990. One year ago this weekend, I returned from more than two years of practice and study in Japan, and this past year, most of this past year, I've been enjoying working in the Green Gulch Kitchen. The past several years or so also, I've had the great good fortune of being able to take up as a practice working on translation of Chinese and Japanese, old Chinese and Japanese

[02:06]

Zen texts, a number of somewhat long texts, but recently I've been working on a short text called the Gate of Sweet Dew, and that's what I want to talk about today, the Gate of Sweet Dew. So in Japan, in many Zen temples and monasteries, the Gate of Sweet Dew is chanted every day. It's called Kanromon in Japanese. At a couple of the monasteries I practiced at in Japan, the Gate of Sweet Dew was chanted during evening service every day, along with the Daishin Dharani, the Dharani of Great Compassion, which we chant here in evening service. And here in America, at Zen Center, we chant the Gate of Sweet Dew just one time a year,

[03:08]

and that happens to be today. So at 5 o'clock this afternoon in the Zen Dojo, there will be a Sagaki ceremony, which is when we chant this Gate of Sweet Dew. Sagaki means to give food to the hungry ghosts. So you're all invited to come at 5 o'clock to this ceremony. It's one of the most colorful and interesting ceremonies we do here. You are all invited to come, and also we are going to invite various spirits to come, some dark spirits, some friendly spirits. We're going to invite them to come, and we're going to feed them and pacify them. So it's an unusual ceremony. Instead of the altar being back there as it usually is, it will be up here, reversed,

[04:11]

because we let in to the meditation hall on this occasion energies and spirits that usually don't come in here. They might be intimidated if they had to come take food from the main altar that we always bow to. So early in the ceremony, we use various Buddhist noisemakers and create a ruckus to invite them in. And then we offer them food and chanting, along with incense and flowers and light. So there are two different kinds of spirits that will be invited tonight. So as the text says, we invite all our departed ancestors going back to ancient times, dwelling in mountains, rivers, and earth, as well as rough demonic spirits from the wilderness to come and gather here.

[05:11]

So part of the ceremony is we read the names of departed loved ones, people who have passed away this year, and formerly, and departed teachers. So we read those names and invite them to come back and give them food to help them on their way. And also we invite these other strange, wild, demonic spirits, these hungry spirits, these hungry ghosts. So we do this, we chant this one time a year and do this ceremony, and we happen to chant it on, do this on Halloween, which turns out to be an extremely appropriate time to honor the weird and the unknown. I researched it a little bit, and Halloween actually derives from the Celtic New Year's Eve. So November 1st was Celtic New Year, and the night before was a ceremony to honor the Lord

[06:15]

of Death. And on this occasion, the Lord of Death allowed the souls of the dead to return for one evening. And all the normal hearth fires of all the families were extinguished, and there was a big bonfire lit to help welcome and pacify or dispel these spirits and souls of the dead. So it's quite similar in many ways. In Japan, they do the, they chant the Gators we do every day to feed the hungry ghosts, but also they do this special Sagaki ceremony in August during the Obon Festival. This is a time of year in Japan when the priests, all the Buddhist priests, are very, very busy. They go around to all the homes of all their parishioners and go to the home, house altars and chant the Gators we do and other chants for the benefit of the ancestors in those

[07:20]

houses. And then in Kyoto where I live, there are these big bonfires at the end of this period. It lasts about two weeks, but it's different times in different parts of Japan, so there's about a month of these spirits wandering around Japan, invited back. And then to end it, there are these big bonfires in various shapes of various Chinese characters lit up on the hills all around Kyoto. It's quite a big festival. So I wanted to talk a little about the Japanese Buddhist attitude and understanding of these spirits that we invite in this ceremony. So traditionally in Buddhism, there are six realms that we can be born into. There's heavenly realms, there are the realms of the titans or angry gods, ambitious gods,

[08:21]

and there's the realm of human beings where we are. Then there's the animal realm, then the realm of hungry ghosts, and the realm of hell. So those are the six realms. And in medieval Japanese Buddhist art, there are these very graphic and vivid pictures of what happens in hell and various tortures and fire and swords and various torturers torturing the creatures in hell. In the realm of hungry ghosts that we are particularly addressing today, the hungry ghosts are shown as having very, very narrow necks, like needles, and very big bellies, and they are always hungry. And when they try to eat anything, it turns to pus or blood in their mouth. It's a very sad fate.

[09:22]

So actually, all these realms have in them Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, but it's said that the human realm is by far the most fortunate because it's the most easy in which to hear the Dharma, to hear the teaching, to enter awakening. So most of the time I was living in Japan, I was living on a hill in the eastern part of Kyoto in between two huge old Buddhist temples. Each one had many sub-temples and a big pagoda and large cemeteries, and outside of my window I could look out on part of one of the cemeteries. And every weekend there'd be people coming to the cemetery making offerings to their family graves, and there'd be priests reciting services for their family graves.

[10:29]

And there were also, all the time, these big black crows that would help take care of the offerings later, and were very noisy and quite impressive. So Japanese people identify themselves as Buddhist based on, and identify with the Buddhist school and temple based on where their family burial place is. And they take this quite seriously still. So I really loved the cemeteries there. There were old, different kinds of old stones and old memorials and many statues of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, and some of them very old and faded. Some of these stones had been there literally a thousand years. So I found it quite a peaceful place to walk around, and a very peaceful feeling. So I'd walk around day and night, and come and go to my house passing through these tombstones. And one of the pagodas that was at the top of the hill, surrounded by many, many of these tombstones, and had a great view of Kyoto.

[11:32]

But Japanese people are afraid, not even only at night, but during the day, unless they're going to make an offering. They don't usually walk in these cemeteries. They take these spirits quite seriously. So in all the time that I walked around these cemeteries, I never myself saw a ghost. One of the things though I was doing in Japan also was teaching English, teaching college classes. And that was kind of, one of the things that was nice about that is you could do anything you wanted to as long as it was in English. So for some of the classes, I had them read these old Japanese ghost stories. There was a guy named Lafcadio Hearn, who came from America to Japan at the end of the 19th century, and he was kind of a weird guy.

[12:32]

He was interested in strange things, and he wrote a lot of stories in English about old Buddhist stories and old Japanese folklore, and a lot of old ghost stories. And these were all Japanese stories, and some that he heard about just from living in Japan. And I think actually the first, maybe one of my first contacts with Japanese Buddhism was through reading these strange old stories in high school. Anyway, I gave some of these stories to my classes to read, and I asked the students if they'd ever seen a ghost. So I'm not going to ask this audience if you've ever seen a ghost, you might be embarrassed, but I'll ask you, how many of you have yourself seen a ghost or know somebody who has seen a ghost? Anybody? Oh. Quite impressive. Yeah, I talked to about a dozen people in Kyoto who had seen, who had themselves seen

[13:37]

ghosts. Interestingly, most of them were women. Maybe women are more sensitive to this realm. But a couple of the stories were scary. One friend of mine actually had been attacked by a ghost and saw them regularly, and she was quite afraid of them. Some of the stories were not so scary. There was one girl who talked about coming home from school when she was about seven or eight, and she saw her grandmother, who lived with her family, sitting on the roof of their house and waving at her and smiling. And she waved back and smiled. And Japanese houses have these wonderful roofs. There are still many houses in Kyoto that are just one or two stories and beautiful roofs. Anyway, she was sitting up there on the roof, and the granddaughter was surprised because the grandmother had been pretty sick, and here she was up on the roof.

[14:39]

And she went in the house and found out that her grandmother had died earlier that morning. So, one of the things I feel from this whole event of Halloween, both Halloween and the Sagaki ceremony, is this unknown realm. This is an occasion when we honor the unknown, the weird, all the strange realms that we don't usually like to think of. So, part of this is that we don't know. We just don't know what happens after people die. No matter how much I study Buddhist teachings about this or how much they make sense to I don't know. I've heard that even the Dalai Lama, who's supposed to be the 14th incarnation, says

[15:42]

he doesn't remember events of his previous lives. So, we really don't know. And I feel like this not knowing is a very important part of our practice. So, one of my favorite stories about this from old China, there was a monk who was traveling around and went to visit a teacher and stayed a little while. And then he was leaving and went to say goodbye, and the teacher said to the monk, where are you going? And the monk said, I'm going around on pilgrimage. And the teacher said, what is the purpose of pilgrimage? And the monk said, I don't know. And the teacher said, not knowing is nearest. Or you could say not knowing is most intimate.

[16:45]

Not knowing is closest to reality. So, our faculties are limited. I cannot see the wall behind me. And those of you sitting up front here can't see Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, sitting on the altar. Also, we can't see ultraviolet light, infrared light. And most of the time we can't see ghosts. So, also, our intellectual faculties are limited, our spiritual faculties are limited. There is this whole realm that we don't know. So, a big part of our practice is opening up to this not knowing, letting go of the knowledge or understanding or views that we have, letting go of those fixed views.

[17:47]

It's okay to know things, but also we can't hold on to them. We can't grasp them. So, going beyond what we already know is what is called learning. So, we have to be able to let go of what we think we know, of what we think the world is, of what we think death is, of what we think spirit realms are, of who we think we are. We have to be willing to face that. But this not knowing is not kind of blankness or just voidness or walking around like a zombie, even on Halloween. So, I like to think of this not knowing as kind of sense of wonder.

[18:48]

So, wonder means to wonder about, a sense of inquiry or curiosity about the world, about ourselves, about what's going on. But wonder also means to appreciate, to have a feeling of awe. So, we all have some taste of that when we see a beautiful flower, when we look up and see the blueness of the sky or a beautiful sunset or a child smiling. Before I came over here, there was a hummingbird right outside my window, just fluttering so fast and going from blossom to blossom. Wonderful. And with this inquiry, with this wonder, and especially today, this wonder and inquiry into death and what has happened to the departed ones, with this wonder about death, we can more deeply appreciate our own life.

[19:50]

So, our Zazen practice, our meditation practice, is about opening us up to this wonder. It can give us a sense of appreciating just everyday stuff in our life. Give us the steadiness to face the unknown, to be willing to not know, to be willing to just try something, to be willing to hear something we never heard before or see something we never saw before. So, this sense of wonder and appreciation is, I feel, a big part of this gate of sweet dew. Sweet dew could also be translated as nectar or ambrosia. And it's said that this nectar refers to the nectar that is bestowed by the Bodhisattva of Compassion, Kanzayon.

[20:53]

She sometimes has a vase filled with this nectar and she can pour that out on us. And it's said that this nectar saves beings from hell. So they can leave hell. This nectar also technically refers to the nectar of nirvana. I went to a retreat that Thich Nhat Hanh did a few weeks ago and one of the interesting things he said is that nirvana is a tool or a technique for gaining awareness of reality. So nirvana means extinction. And in early Buddhism there was this goal of getting out of this round of birth and death and these six realms to try and become free from them. And that was called nirvana. And that was called nirvana.

[21:57]

And this nirvana is a way of kind of starting to see what reality is. But in reality there is no complete extinction. So our energy, the spiritual direction of our lives continues. And all of you who are coming to the ceremony this evening and who have given names of loved ones who have left, you know that their spiritual direction, their energy, their being continues in some way. So in this ceremony we don't only feed the spirits, we also ask them to feed others. It says, we sincerely wish for you to take advantage of these mantras and food to depart from suffering, be liberated, find birth in heaven and receive joy. With according intention may you travel freely through the pure lands in the ten directions and arouse Bodhi mind, the mind of awakening, practicing the Bodhi way and in the future definitely become a Buddha.

[23:04]

So the point of this is not just to put to rest these spirits but to help them on their way to helping all other beings, so all beings may enter awakening. At the end of the gate of sweet dew we say, by means of this practice of the assembly's good roots we repay the good roots of the assembly, and by means of this practice of the assembly's good roots At the end of the gate of sweet dew we say, by means of this practice of the assembly's good roots we repay the virtue of our parents' toil and trouble. May the living be blessed with joy and longevity without misery. May the dead part from suffering and be born into peaceful nurturing. So the point of this is not just to feed these hungry ghosts but to actually help them to feed others, to get to the point where they can also feed others. So in the gate of sweet dew there are two kinds of offerings

[24:13]

that are particularly mentioned. There's food, and we actually have a bowl of rice and sometimes other food that we offer on the altar to the hungry ghosts. And there are also dharani, which we chant. So dharani is kind of like mantra. It's something we say. Some are short, some are longer. And they are kind of magical spells which we chant. Partly they have meaning and partly they are just sounds that have some positive effect. The word dharani also refers to memory. So these dharani we chant are tools to remind us of our intention and to increase our positive orientation. Kind of like the power of positive thinking. So in this gate of sweet dew there are ten different dharani that we chant. Actually, one of them is for five different Buddhas,

[25:16]

each one of which has a particular dharani with a certain power or effect. So you could say there are fourteen different dharanis. So one of them is the dharani for summoning deceased spirits to the assembling. The dharani for breaking open a passageway through the gates of hell is another. The dharani for requesting Buddhas to supply and maintain food and drink. And the dharani of the deceased spirits is another. And the dharani of the deceased spirits is another. And the dharani of the deceased spirits is another. And the dharani of the different Buddhas have the effect of pouring the Dharma into body and mind, granting pleasure, or opening wide all throats, satisfying the hungry ghosts with food and drink. So you may have heard that in Zen, Zen magic is just ordinary everyday stuff. And that's right. Zen magic is just the ordinary everyday wonderful activities

[26:20]

of working and sitting and eating and being together. But because of that, we also bring dharani, these magical spells, into our everyday life. So here we chant the dharani for removing hindrances every other morning, and the dharani of great compassion, the daishin dharani, every evening. So part of Buddhist practice is to substitute positive habits for our conditioning. So we have various habits that prevent us from being fully here, to get in our way. So these dharanis are one of the Buddhist tools for dispelling these habits, these negative spells. We already have dharanis floating through our heads. All the time we have definitions of ourself and of the world. I'm this kind of person or that kind of person. We all have these spells that are in our heads.

[27:24]

And then there's all the popular songs, thousands of popular songs and lyrics and tunes that are floating through our heads. Some of those may be very positive and encourage your practice, and then you can use them as dharani, and some of them maybe not so. So these hungry ghosts are also in our own hearts. So one way of looking at these six different realms, there are realms that we can be born into, but also they're us. They're part of our experience. During the course of a month we might experience most of those six realms, or maybe during the course of a week or even a day, we might all have some sense of hell or hungry ghost or animal realm or heavenly realm and human realm. And particularly in our society, in the consumer society, we're trained very early to be insatiable. All the television commercials, we need this and we need that,

[28:27]

and what we have is not enough. So we've all received some training in being hungry ghosts. I remember I saw a documentary several years ago about Mother Teresa, and the story is she was riding on a train in northern India, and as they say, something happened. And she decided to give her life to feeding the poorest of the poor. And she was given the opportunity to give her life to feeding the poor. And she was given the opportunity to give her life to feeding the poor. And she gave her life to feeding the poor. And she gave her life to feeding the poorest of the poor. You probably all know that story. She went to Calcutta and started doing that, and taking care of all the people on the streets of Calcutta. And gradually people heard about her, and other nuns came, and she founded an order of nuns, and they established centers in other cities in India. Then at some point Mother Teresa established her order of nuns in Los Angeles,

[29:32]

and New York, and San Francisco, and other American cities. And some people got very upset. They said, what do you mean? America is not a third world country. Go to Calcutta where they're really the poorest. What are you doing here? And even more than that, of course, now we can go to any inner city in America and see plenty of homeless people, plenty of hungry people. So I feel part of this feeding the hungry ghosts is to remember the people, the humans and hungry ghost people who are wandering the streets of San Francisco now and other cities. So I've heard that if Americans ate just 50% less meat, that the savings in grain from the inefficient use of grain for feeding cattle, that that grain would be enough to feed all the world's hungry. But it's interesting, when Mother Teresa was asked about this,

[30:36]

what are you doing here in America, she didn't mention the homeless people. She didn't talk about that. I think Americans are starved for love. Americans are starved for kindness, starved for spiritual truth, starved for meaningfulness in their lives. So we all have this hungry ghost within us, and tonight when we feed these hungry ghosts, we should also feed ourselves. Even here in Marin County, which is very affluent, even here at Green Gulch where we have wonderful food and beautiful hills to hike in and a nice meditation hall and good friends to be with, we all have this hungry ghost within us. So there's an old Buddhist story about heaven and hell. Probably a lot of you have heard it, but I'll say it again.

[31:40]

So hell is this place where you go in and there's this big round table, and on top of the table are platters, and heaped on the platters are piles and piles of wonderful, delicious food, all the most delicious, nutritious food you can imagine. And sitting around this table in hell are these people, and they all look miserable and starved, and they're all sitting there and strapped to their forearms are these four feet long forks and spoons, and no matter how they try, they can't get the food into their mouths. So that's hell. Heaven is a place where you go in and there's this big round table, and on the table are platters, and on the platters are wonderful, delicious food and nutritious food and all the best foods you can imagine. And sitting around this table in heaven are all these people who look very happy and well fed, and strapped to their forearms are these four foot long spoons and forks, and they're feeding each other across the table.

[32:44]

So tonight when you give candy to the hungry children, remember your own inner child. And as we feed the hungry ghosts and spirits of the Sagaki ceremony today, let's all keep in mind how we can help feed each other and our own selves and find true satisfaction, appreciate the wonder we have already in our own lives. So, Happy Halloween. They are in... So, if anybody has something to say, comment or question. Please. I have a question. I liked your story at the end, I hadn't heard it before, about the Buddhist version of heaven and hell, but I have a hard time, having been raised as a Christian,

[33:59]

and I'm really tired of the concept of hell, and I have a hard time with that word in relationship to Buddhism. Can you tell us more about what that means beyond the story? Is it really such a realm? I don't know how to put this. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, so it's very different from Christian heaven and hell. So, in Christian heaven or hell, after you die you go to heaven or you go to hell and that's it, right? No, no, there's a third possibility. Or you go somewhere in between. Or you go to limbo if you're Catholic. No, I know, I was raised Catholic. You go to something that is called purgatory. Purgatory. And that's the possibility to go to heaven. Right. Right, okay. So, this is different. In Buddhism there's these six realms, and when you're reborn, you're reborn into one of them, and that doesn't mean that you stay there forever. In fact, it means that after a while, you go to another one. In the same life? If you're reborn? Well, no.

[35:02]

So, there's different levels of this, right? There's, you know, in the same day, any of us can experience any of these six realms. Although we're grounded in the human realm, hopefully. Most of you look like it. I'm serious. I'm serious. So, the way it works, though, the story is that you're reborn into one of these forms, and then at the end of that, then you may be reborn into the same form. You may be reborn as an animal for millions of ages, but it's possible to shift. Now, it's true, though, if you go to hell, it's hard to be reborn in heaven. I mean, it's not impossible, technically, but anyway, I don't know. But the teaching is this, the teaching is that you're reborn into one of these realms, and I guess in hell, you know, it's natural if you're being tortured, if somebody's cutting you up endlessly, or whatever, it's probably natural to resist,

[36:04]

and I would think that the way to get out of hell is to just kind of be patient and take it, and eventually, you know, anyway, or to help other beings in hell, you know, that would be kind of nice. The thing about heaven, though, heaven is kind of sad. And it's very blissful, and there are, you know, beautiful beings and beautiful jewel trees and, you know, anything nice you can think of. And you're up there in the clouds, and heavenly beings live a long time. So this is all according to Indian Buddhist cosmology, right? But then, eventually, something very sad happens. A heavenly being looks in the mirror and sees a wrinkle and they're starting to get old. And even though it might take a while, that's the beginning of the end, and eventually their wings fall off and they fall down to earth. When a heavenly being is going to die or starts to get sick, it's very sad,

[37:06]

because, you know, if you're in heaven, you want to stay there, right? So, it's most beneficial, it's said, to be born in our human realm, which is not always pleasant, but we have a chance to wake up. So anyway, it's very different from Christian heaven and hell. And the character, the Chinese character, I don't know about the Indian words, but the Chinese character for heaven also means sky, it also refers to the emperor. The character for hell in Japanese, Jigoku, means a prison under the earth, or an earth prison, literally. So they do have this idea and I don't know if that comes from the same place the Christian idea comes from. But anyway, it's different, it's not like you go to one place and that's it. It's a round of births and rebirths. Can you talk a little bit about the melting of emotions?

[38:08]

The melting of emotions? What do you mean? You said something to the effect of like, not something to get rid of, but something that's like... Oh, okay. Yeah, so during Zazen, well, not just during Zazen, but particularly this is talked about in relationship to meditation, that if you sit still for a while and watch what's happening, eventually, or maybe fairly soon, you will see that your mind is constantly going over this and that and the other, and all these thoughts and emotions come up. And we say in our meditation that it's important not to try and get rid of those thoughts and emotions. So it's a common mistake, common problem to think about.

[39:18]

But gradually, if you're just willing to sit there uprightly and face the scenery of your thoughts and emotions, they're spaces, and you can kind of recognize them and it loosens. But you're not trying to get rid of the thoughts and emotions. But it's possible to just be there with your breathing and not feel bad. That's like saying that the trees are bad or the table's bad or my hand's bad. It's just all the same kind of scenery. But we get caught by our thoughts and emotions, don't we? We take them very seriously and we think that if we notice we're angry we think we have to do something about it Yes? I'm interested in the whole notion that you brought up about being curious about

[40:21]

in relation to meditation practice. To get into the curiosity, could you talk a little bit more about relating that to meditation practice and being curious about and wonder? Hmm. Yeah, well, when we sit we watch what's happening. So we hear sounds and we see the wall in front of us and we particularly pay attention to our posture and we watch our... pay attention to our breathing, our inhale and exhale as part of that. And then we start to see these thoughts and emotions that come up. So, again, the attitude is not to try and get rid of them. The attitude is to just watch and to actually, not kind of to watch and to actually, kind of soft and gentle, but to really watch and appreciate whatever it is that's going on. So that includes

[41:24]

our own weird monkey minds. Does the inquiry come in at that point? Well, the inquiry is kind of just watching. By inquiry I don't mean like you're trying to do something. Our usual orientation to the world is trying to fix things, trying to solve problems, and some of these Buddhist practices I was mentioning, the Dharani, can be used as tools. So there are tools. But the basic orientation is not to try and do anything with it. So when I talked about inquiry, it's to look at it carefully, but not in a way of kind of trying to analyze it, but to actually physically be with it, to stay with it, whatever it is, just to stay with it. And watch it, watch it. When you talked about like tonight, inviting the spirits of dead people, I don't understand why any old spirit

[42:26]

is invited, too. I mean, isn't it all the while? I mean, like the bond ceremony in Japan, but for what you said. Well, it's not just for the dead people. We don't, you know, kind of say the spirit will let it and the spirit we don't let it. No. Does it bother people? You're concerned about the spirits of the dead people getting hurt by the spirits of... Yeah, I understand that concern. So yeah, that's a good question. But... So, you know, I have to say again, I don't know. I mean, those spirits are out there anyway. We're inviting all of them, we're feeding all of them, we're pacifying all of them. So if there are spirits of dead people wandering around that cemetery and there are also these wild spirits,

[43:28]

they probably have seen each other already, you know, or whatever, if they do that kind of thing. I mean, so, you know, I'm just guessing. But anyway, respect for ancestors is very important in China and Japan. And in Japanese Buddhism too. And, you know, they go to the cemeteries because they really pay attention to everybody. I mean, all Buddhists have an altar in their home, which means basically all Japanese people, almost all of them, have an altar in their home and there's a Buddha and there's some plaque with the names of ancestors. It's just what Japanese Buddhists do. And it's not... So in Japan, there's not so much people going and doing zazen or something like that. I mean, there are people who do that, but just the common, the people who are Buddhists in Japan,

[44:30]

the way American people are Christian, one of the things they do is have this altar in their home. And they may not pay much attention to it, but during that time of year, the priest comes and does some chant. Is it something like they have in Hawaii where the priest sends in someone to get things around and they send in... They do that in Japan too, don't they? Well, partly these dharanis are used in that way. But I think the Japanese Buddhist attitude is not necessarily that you can fix all those situations, but you make offerings and you say these chants. The Chinese is the same? The Chinese is the same, yeah. The Chinese also have the same time of year in August, in traditional China. Now, of course, most of mainland China doesn't follow this. It's New Year's. Well, no,

[45:33]

because Chinese New Year's is in February, isn't it? Yeah, but that's when they have their ceremonies. They do this ceremony, this Feeding the Hungry Ghost ceremony also in August. Well, excuse me, I said when she was asked this question particularly, she referred to our spiritual hunger more. The people there,

[46:43]

the women that work there. We started talking about the homeless. She told me something that she told me before. I'm glad to hear it again. She told me how she goes into San Francisco and she goes to the homeless and she talks to them and she says, and she brings food. And then she goes and then she'll bring clothes out of there, out of where they are. And she said, a lot of people are doing this. This week, maybe Monday, I went to San Francisco and at least five people asked me for money. And I said no. Everyone. And it was very stressful. It was very stressful to me to say no. And I realized I don't know how to say yes and I haven't known what to say. But just talking to this woman and I intend to go back to find out more about the homeless. It's encouraging to me. It is something that I can say

[47:45]

to a person about what can I do. Thank you for bringing that up. I don't get into downtown San Francisco anyway very much. But when I'm in that situation I always just, I try to give something, a quarter or something. It's not much. There's this feeling that this problem is so huge that what can you do? But still I think to do something, to just acknowledge the person there is really important. That's even more than giving money or food or clothing just to recognize there's a human being there. Maybe it's in the form of a hungry ghost or whatever for some of them in the hell realm. There's a young man, one of the children of one of our long-term residents who faced this problem and

[48:47]

he packs a bag lunch for himself and some other bag lunches and he goes into San Francisco and he gives them out. And he actually wrote about that in the Turning Wheel magazine a few months ago. And the way he came to that was very interesting. There's also this thing about giving charity. Sometimes it's hard for some of us to receive. So how do you give in a way that honors the person? It's really hard. And just I'll mention an experience that I had not by way of I hesitate to mention it because it might seem like I did something good but to me it was something for me. I received an insurance settlement some years ago and suddenly I had this money which I hadn't expected so I took $100 and put it into $5 bills and just walked down Market Street and gave it out and it was just wonderful. And it's a drop in the bucket.

[49:49]

I mean it could have been $1,000 and it would have been a drop in the bucket. But anyway just to go to somebody and just in some cases I just left $5 by the head of somebody lying in a doorway. So I think to be creative about it to see what can you do sometimes maybe you have to say no. Maybe after you've given five quarters away you don't have any more in your pockets. That's what I do actually if I don't have any more change in my pocket I say no. So sometimes maybe you have to say no. I don't know. There's no easy answer but to think about it to be aware of the hungry and to see well what can I do. I think that's really good. I don't know if we can bring this up but I've been in a position of offering substantial help and assistance to people that were homeless and in trouble and so forth and I've also had that turn into a very bad

[50:50]

experience for me of realizing that there's a very large population of people out there that will willingly just sit there and I've been in a position of being dragged down by people that were in this type of situation and suddenly saying to myself well why is it that I have the motivation to get out there and work or do whatever it is that I need to do to take care of myself and these people sit there with their hand out happily accepting from other people and putting these in their hands maybe there's a better way to help them and I certainly do believe that you need to give them love and I will walk down the street and give everybody a smile and love

[51:51]

and possibly food but money that maybe they're going to go out and buy alcohol with I don't know what is actually helpful I think there's the side of it that when you go to feed the hungry you have to be with yourself you have to watch your own hunger you have to see where you're coming from and you have to take care of yourself and maybe there are occasions when it's helpful to sacrifice yourself but also how can you sustain your to the world and to yourself but also to honor the hungry ghost in yourself to honor your own needs too as part of compassion but yeah I think what you're saying is right we need to just try different things and it's except maybe that there's not going to be a solution to the problem in the usual way we think

[52:52]

of solutions it's not a matter it's not a matter of trying to being aware yeah you had mentioned letting go of the dead I've been trying I guess to put it in terms of this morning trying to let spirits go that are definitely past their prime dead and gone and yet I went on to kind of raise yesterday this whole meditation ceremony this whole dead sort of release them and let go of it but granted I know this process is not going to happen overnight but I now feel like they are like that spirit is clean for life and you know

[53:53]

I don't I know I'm not feeding the spirits but by the same token if this one's supposed to go it's sort of like what he's talking about am I encouraging it to hang on by feeding it when it's supposed to go yeah the point isn't to feed them so that they'll keep coming back for more the point is to feed them so that they will go on with their path and you know sometimes there are spirits and hungry ghosts within us that you know it's just they just hang on a long time and we don't know when they're finally going to be able to move on and just don't know and what can you do you can and

[54:55]

appreciate that they still that they're they're still very much in the world in a certain way and even when they move on we don't have to forget them you know but I know you're talking about the part of them that's not letting go and I think it's very important to help them accept their own path and in all of this stuff there's one level that's actually spirits of people who we knew and actual spirits out there sort of and there's also the level of which we might call psychological which has to do with our I don't know if that's very helpful

[55:56]

yeah I think there's a slight confusion about spirits spirit to me and spirit being is life spirit is life without spirit so my spirit goes back to the body and also there seems to be a lot of confusion about how spirits are placed around their bodies that's where I see ghosts and stuff like that and I mean there's spirits around us all the time you know the cemetery and I'm just curious about that and also the funny thing is that I found for me I found heaven

[56:57]

in my suffering in my hell that's where I found heaven so it's like there's a bit of both in just about everything and it's just fascinating yeah we're spirits you know ghosts spirit also means like a spirited horse so vitality is spirit too or spirits is something that you drink to get some intoxication well there are various cosmologies in the Japanese Buddhist one there are also so some kinds of ghosts in Japan are ghosts of teapots ghosts of televisions you know they also have spirits

[57:58]

yeah they have spirits in that way too and there are different names for the different kinds of spirits and there are hungry ghost spirits and there are and in Indian cosmology Indian Buddhist cosmology there are various heavenly beings who are kind of like spirits too some of whom are associated with music and some of whom are associated with fragrance so you know how you understand this I think on some sense I take this sort of literally on another sense I don't know how to explain this to you but I do think that I do

[58:59]

think that I do [...]

[60:00]

think that I do [...] think you know, some total of all of you and, you know, my parents and my friends and everybody and the whole universe, and the same is true of all of us, and we're all totally connected. So there's no, there's no essence or spirit of you that goes to another body. In Tibetan Buddhism, they seem to almost talk of belief in that, I mean, there are, there

[61:04]

are the reincarnated lamas, you know, and so, but that's a, those are very rare beings, you know, but even there, it's not exactly like, you know, there was the 13th Dalai Lama and there was some, I don't know what, some little brain cell or something of his that entered the fort, you know, it's not like that. So you know, the spirit of your grandmother, I mean, it, I think what I understand anyway, and I don't, first of all, again, I want to make this universal disclaimer, I don't know, okay, so all I'm talking about is my sense of it from studying Buddhism, what the teaching is about it, my sense of it from thinking about it, and some experience of just how I am and how, you know, the world is that I see, so, you know, I don't, I'm not, I don't know what happens in rebirth, but what my sense of it is, my understanding of it is that it's, you know, like you were saying, it's much more complicated than we can think

[62:07]

of in terms of thinking of this becomes that and that becomes this, and it's more like there's some energy, there's some spiritual direction, there's some intention that lives on in the world and takes form in some other being, it's more like that, and in Buddhism they talk about it in terms of habits, actually, there are tendencies and kind of habitual ways of thinking and acting and kind of, some orientation, some mental orientation that has some, that continues on in some other body, but it's not like, you know, your grandmother died and then she became some other person, popularly in Buddhism and sometimes it's talked about in that way, but also this is not something that happens between life and death, this is something that happens every moment, you know, there was somebody who was giving some talk over there in that other building and then there's somebody else here and, you know, there's, we're just constantly changing, you know, so it's really beyond how we can, any

[63:10]

way we think about it, this is really, really the realm of the unknown, we don't, it's not something that is knowable in terms of the ways of knowing that we're used to thinking, so you know, I do think there is some kind of rebirth, I think there, I think that your grandmother, you know, the energy of how she was in the world continues in some way, it continues also in your remembrance of her, so if I think of my grandmother, you know, there's all these feelings and she's very much alive in me, both of them, but also, according to this teaching, there's some of that energy that was her continues somehow, so I don't know, this is very mysterious, one of the things I heard which helped me get beyond trying to make sense of it is a friend of mine's, told me this, one of his teachers told him that in your next life, you may not have the same past lives as you do in this life. Now that'll kind of, you know, bend your idea about this a little bit, I mean, try that,

[64:20]

try that one for a while, that might help. Before we go on, I wanted to, there are people here who, before I forget, there are people here who need rides back to San Francisco, is anybody going back to San Francisco who can offer a ride? Okay, so, yeah, so you can talk with this guy, yeah, thank you. Any other questions? Yeah, there are ways in which we can feel each other. Yeah, well, talk to this fellow over here.

[65:37]

Yeah. Okay, good, who else? Anybody going to the East Bay after lunch? Well, you know, wait a second, no, this is worth, so you can check down the dining room, but also there's, you know, there's a place down here on the driveway for rides to the Manzanita, there's a bus there at least, so that's, there's a bus, where? There's a bus. You can always get a bus to go to the city to take you to get a bar or wherever, there's always a bus. So, should we stand out on the driveway and hold the sign? Well, just notice, there's one place, there's one place, yeah, why don't you tell them? Yeah, Manzanita is a place where we have the carpool, where people come to, we can get picked up for carpooling, so there are people,

[66:44]

so there's a sign for people who want to ride back to Manzanita, but also there's a bus stop near there, and if you stand there, people will stop, and if you have a car, please do stop if you see somebody standing there, because we're trying to do this carpool thing, and, you know, hopefully you can find somebody who's going to the East Bay, but, you know, where it comes to, you can get to Barton, San Francisco. So, right down the... Yeah, walk down this driveway, a little past the main parking lot down there, just go around the bend, and there's a bench, and there's a sign. Yeah. Okay, thank you. Sure, yeah. Anybody else need a ride, or offering a ride, while we're doing this? I'm going for a ride. Maybe you, do you want to go before lunch or after? Okay, they're deciding. San Francisco, after the ceremony. So, yeah, the Sagake ceremony is at 5 o'clock, and it'll be over, close to 6, maybe. Well, after that one, you're leaving? So, around 3.34, there's a ride to San Francisco there, okay? So, talk to each other.

[67:52]

Okay, right back to San Francisco between 1.30 and 2. Talk to this guy here, okay? Anybody else need a ride or offering a ride? Okay. Anything else? PJ, did you... I was just going to make a comment on this last question that came up. Something that, it certainly doesn't give me any answers, but it's something that just helps me put this all in perspective, is that what we're used to in our normal realm of thought is what's called linear time. And as long as we're kind of stuck in linear time, then questions like, if somebody passes on, where do they go, when, what is a spirit, and all of that, become very difficult, and we can spend hours analyzing where things can go. But if we look at time not necessarily being linear, then a lot of this can just kind of fit into place.

[69:00]

And it's not that it's an answer, but that it opens up the possibilities. And so, on that realm, and possibly, as Mr. Elman mentioned, that his grandmother is speaking for her parents, and when we look at it linearly, of course that couldn't be possible, but if time isn't necessarily linear, and it's more of a whole, then the pieces can kind of fit together and flow together in some kind of interconnection. And I have no answers except that. That just leaves me a little bit more open, a little bit more comfortable with that whole continuum of birth, life, and death. So, Thich Nhat Hanh was talking about it in terms of historical dimension and ultimate dimension. There is this historical reality, I mean, there is this phenomenal world we have to take care of, that we have to deal with our karma in, in which, you know, there seems to be this sequence of past, present, and future, and things happen, and other things happen.

[70:22]

That's, that realm of reality definitely obtains, and we have to attend to it. And also, at the same time, all of time is, actually, if I start talking about time, well, I can start blabbing a long time, but in each time, there is past, present, and future. And also, of course, past is just a fiction. Past is what is no longer, so it doesn't really exist. Future doesn't exist, it's what is not yet. And present, it doesn't exist either, because by the time we even look at it, it's gone. So, you know, so, there's this way in which we are supposed to attend to what is present, but what is present is a fiction, and also what is present includes all this time. So, there's a past, present, and future of the past. Think of any particular time you imagine you experienced in the past. There was a past to that, there was a future to that, and there was a present to that. And the same is true of right now, and the same is true of the future.

[71:26]

And then there's all of those times together. So, yeah, time is this totally bendable thing. So, when we start to think about, you know, the spirit of somebody who we, you know, remember having lived, and where are they now, and where are they going, and who was that baby before, you know, and, you know, that's the wrong kind of understanding of time that we're bringing to. That time exists too. Time is really about putting yourself there. Time is about, you know, slapping your knee, eating your food, shaking your head. Time is about our activity. Time is about what are we doing right now, what is our intention right now, how are we helping all beings and ourselves and all the beings in us kind of wake up to that all time is right here. And then also, at the same time, taking care of just, you know, now it's ten after twelve, but yesterday, twenty-four hours ago, it was ten after eleven, and, you know, it's, you know, or was it ten after one? Did I get it backwards?

[72:31]

It's ten after one. Yes. Oh, right, it's ten after one, see? Somebody change that clock. Time really is confusing. Yeah, well, so particularly when we're talking about this unknown realm, we're talking about some intersection of this ultimate dimension and this historical dimension. So we are in this historical dimension, and we're in this ultimate dimension, and our friends who've gone on, and these weird spirits that we sense lurking out there, you know, they're in some other dimension, which is not the ultimate dimension, but it's not quite the historical dimension, and we don't know how it all fits together. But yet, we have to honor it. We have to honor the weirdness in ourselves, we have to honor, you know, these spirits that, this weirdness all around us, we have to honor, you know, all the people we know who've died, you know? And where are they now? Well, we still remember them, so they're not gone. I asked somebody who wrote earlier on a deck, which was sort of basically, what is the point of these odds, and we asked him. I knew he'd give me some interesting answer, but I didn't know quite what it would be.

[73:45]

Well, what did he say this time? Every time he says the same thing, but it's different. So he said, what did he say? He said, to be fully alive. And I didn't want to bug him too much, because so many people wanted to talk to him, so we sort of went up and talked about that. I was thinking of, I don't think he really meant, first of all, he explained that he didn't mean, you do Zazen in order to be fully alive. You do Zazen, that is being fully alive. And just, like that is, there's nowhere to get. And after Will and I were talking about this, I made a sort of conjecture, I sort of wanted to put to you, which is basically, I don't think he meant just sitting in that particular, or in a Zando, in the right posture, saying the right words. Would it really refer to living your life, or washing the dishes, or whatever you're doing, in the right posture? And being fully present to that, is really the same as sitting Zazen?

[74:47]

And that is being fully alive? I sort of thought I'd run that by you. I mean, yeah, we do take a certain posture to learn about Zazen, and we do. But basically, it's, yeah, like you said, just sitting, just being uprightly facing what is in front of us. You know, facing your life, being fully alive. Same thing. There are lots of names for it. But, you know, we have a particular form that helps us to enter that space. Like an exercise? Well, it's not like an exercise, it's more like a celebration. You know, we sit Zazen because we're fully alive. Oh boy. All right. Yeah. If I may, I'd like to take on what he's saying, is that because sitting is probably the easiest way to get ourselves centered, that it's therefore the easiest posture to practice being in that state, and then to take that attitude, or that space,

[75:50]

to, as he's saying, doing dishes, or doing your laundry, or whatever. But to take that, because sitting is just the most accessible form for everybody, without any sort of distractions. Yeah. You know, Jizo, the little statue. I had someone tell me, in Japan, they consider it real, which we don't here, and they said, they always put a glass of water in front of Jizo to show that it's real. Well, actually, we offer water. We don't offer water in our altars here, but in the cemeteries, they offer water in front of all the stones. On all? You offer water to all, you know. I think that's part of what we offer tonight. But you offer water for the thirsty spirits. Have you seen that in Japan? Oh, yeah. Where they put water in front of... Yeah, not just Jizo. Any... She specifically said Jizo. Yeah, Jizo too. Yeah.

[76:51]

So, Jizo is the... It shows it's real. It shows it's a real god, not just a... Well, yeah. I mean, they put offerings in front of the memorial markers in the cemetery, and they put food, and they put incense, and they put flowers, and they put water. And, yeah. So, Jizo is particularly relevant to this discussion, though. Jizo is one of the main bodhisattvas in Japanese Buddhism. And Jizo literally means earth womb or earth storehouse. And there's going to be a ceremony this afternoon that Yvonne Rand is doing in this room to Jizo for spirits of children who've died. So, Jizo, popularly in Japan, is considered the guardian of children, particularly of children who've died, guardian of travelers. But the background of Jizo... Jizo appears... Jizo means earth womb. And I actually think of Jizo as the earth mother bodhisattva, even though Jizo always appears as a monk with a shaved head

[77:54]

and carrying a staff and a wish-fulfilling jewel. But Jizo, particularly, is the bodhisattva who goes to hell and saves beings from hell. Other bodhisattvas do that too, of course. But Jizo, particularly, is very close to us and is in all six realms. So this is the story about this bodhisattva. And there's a Chinese sutra, maybe it comes from India, about this... This is just one of the many bodhisattvas in Mahayana Buddhism, but he's very, very popular in Japan. You see these little stone buddhas all over the place, by the roadside and just all over the place in the cities and in the countryside. And they put these little red bibs on Jizo, particularly. And that's kind of to honor the spirits of children who've died, so now they just put these bibs on all buddhists in Japan. But in this sutra about Jizo, they tell past life stories about Jizo, right? So I was saying before that they're not particular past lives,

[78:58]

but also in this sutra there are a few stories told about past lives of Jizo. And in two of them, he was a woman whose mother died and the daughter somehow knew that the mother was going to hell because of various activities. I think one of them maybe ate meat or something. Anyway, so this is in China and they were kind of strict, right? So in both these stories, the daughter goes down to hell and because of the diligence and intensity and sincerity of her practice, saves not only the mother but all the beings in hell. And then the subsequent life becomes Jizo, Bodhisattva, the earth womb, Bodhisattva. So yeah, Jizo is very popular in Japan, along with Kannon, Kanzeon, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. Two most popular. Yeah? Can you explain a little bit more about the legacy of the wish-fulfilling jewel?

[79:59]

Well, this is just one of the instruments or utensils that appear sometimes in Buddhist iconography. And that's what it is. It's a jewel. It's like the genius lamp or something. I don't know. I've never had one myself. But anyway, that's one of the things that Jizo often carries. So all the stuff we've been talking about today is this kind of shamanic side of Buddhism, right? So Jizo is this really neat word, psychopomp. Any of you ever heard of that? It's a technical religious term for somebody who goes down to hell to save beings. Psychopomp. P-O-M-P. Yeah, it's a technical term. So Jizo is a psychopomp. Jizo is a shaman who goes down and...

[80:50]

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