So today is a remarkable, auspicious day in all of East Asian Buddhism, Marigold Spray, in Chicago, in Mexico, and Canada. Today is celebrated as Chakyamuni Buddha's awakening day. 2,500 years ago, more or less, today or someday, like it, Satyagatama sat down under a tree. He was concerned about the suffering of the world. There were wars even back then. He was concerned about the suffering of the world.

[01:12]

Wanted to understand, feel how to overcome and respond and settle with reality of suffering. The first noble truth is, that he taught later, is that there is suffering, dissatisfaction, whatever you want to translate it. And this was the first noble truth. It's a noble truth because we can sit and face it. When we face the wall, we are facing the world. the whole world, everything, including all the stuff within this body-mind, all of everything.

[02:19]

At some point, he looked up and saw the morning star. And something happened, as they say. And he touched the ground, sat on the earth and touched the ground. And an unsurpassed, complete, perfect awakening arose. in his body, mind, and all the beings nearby and in the whole world around him. It's not that it wasn't there before, but he deeply realized it. So later in the 1200s, A. A. Dogen and Davi Rivara, the Japanese part of our lineage, our branch of Buddhism, of awakening, also said that the main point is just to respond to suffering, to the suffering of people in the world and in our own body and mind, and to bring joy.

[04:13]

Could you taste it a little bit? We sit silently, quietly here on the third day of our first jōhatsu, Sashin 2019. And it looks very serious and somber. But really, the point is just to play in the fields of Oregon. To witness this budding mind, this snarker, all the snarkers, just support each other to see how, to ask the question of how to respond to the suffering of the world. To do that, right? There are lots of stories about what happened next.

[05:18]

One story from the One Year Squirrel Order, the Tamsoka Sutra, which we've been reading for an hour and a half each month for three years. I don't know, two-thirds, three-quarters, we're on the way. The story, one story goes that he spent 49 days just settling into and enjoying this teaching. And at the end of that, he felt like nobody's going to get this.

[06:25]

Nobody's going to understand this. If you read the flower sutra, there's no instruction. There's no techniques. It's just an unfolding, an explosion of wonderment at how deep and wonderful reality is, in spite of, in context of, how do we take care of it? How do we take care of this world, this body, this mind? How do we take care of each other? But then he was persuaded to share this with of the beings. And then he, and he started with a book, a book of truth, truth of suffering, truth of cause of suffering, trying to grab the things you want.

[07:38]

Truth that there's an end to this, that we can't enjoy. Even this is a book of And then the Eightfold Path, which was the beginning of this description of how to do this. And then there were the precepts and some practices and this teaching expanded through Asia over centuries. Somehow, through the kindness and dedication of Suzuki Roshi. And he who came to California in modern terms. So, we've been looking at this Soto Zen expression of what it was that Buddha

[08:49]

saw and taught and appreciated in this text from the great disciple of our great founder in Japan, A. A. Dogen. So we've been playing with the womb of radiance, the body, settling into this sitting in awareness and breathing the air of this settlement into radiance. The primordial, the inconceivable, the ultimate, our sponsor, the background of all of this, that we can get some taste of communion with.

[10:01]

We had a wonderful discussion yesterday afternoon here, inspired by Asian's question on what was the use of this? All of this. [...] How does it help all of the difficulties in our world? So coordination of Jovian's disciple wrote this down. He also wrote down a lot of Jovian's teachings for us to listen to Jovian people. So I'm just going to take a few passages from the excerpt that we're chanting in the evening, but don't get so bored from this long text.

[11:14]

Just as a way of looking at, well, what's the point? How do we to kneel with this wonderful event, this awakening of Buddha, this reality that he awakened to. And it's important to say that when Buddha had this great awakening, touched the ground and the Earth's witness to him, That wasn't the end. So I don't like this word enlightenment. Try and stay awake because that's what it is. It's not something you can get. It's not something you can figure out, decipher, understand, or deeply experience. It's just being awake. Good morning.

[12:18]

Here we are. But I spent 40 or 45 years, must count, talking about this because people kept coming and asking me what's it all about. And so we had this huge body of teachers. And they're all wonderful in their own way. Anyway. So part of what Koronadjo wrote, inspired by Dogen writing a little bit about this Samadhi Greetings, Koronadjo said, I humbly say to people who are real seekers, who have the same aspiration, do not cling to one device or one state or technique.

[13:19]

Do not rely on intellectual understanding or brilliance. And then do not carry around what you learn by sitting. When we sit, we just sit. We sit and we bathe in this reality that is here even amid All of the arts and atrocities in our world. In response to that. It's not what I. Going to continue to plunge body and mind into the great treasury of radiance without looking back. Sit grandly under the eaves.

[14:25]

Sit grandly in this hall or wherever you are out there in the fields. Without seeking the living, without trying to get into the living, without aversion to the arising of thoughts. So, don't try and get rid of thoughts and feelings, please. But how do we respond to them? How do we enjoy them? How do we let them go or come back? Maybe they won't for a little while. Maybe you'll have this experience that is of being present with the humming under your own reality. Undeterred by the sounds of the car driving by. Undeterred by aches and pains or knees or backs or whatever.

[15:33]

It's not just a linear rock and play in samadhi. It doesn't mean you have to wiggle around or jump around for it. Here it is. Sitting calmly. And then the turbulence of thoughts and feelings occasionally. And as I said, say in the morning, enjoy your inhale and exhale. breathing is a wonderful conduit to this amazing wonder. It is an outgoing breath, an incoming breath, the essence of hearing and the essence of feeling, without conscious knowledge of subjective discrimination, are utterly shining light, shining radiance.

[16:47]

in which body and mind are one suchness. So, you know, we're trained and we have this habit of discriminating, of seeing this and that and good and bad and all of the different distinctions that our human-type consciousness is good at making. That keeps going on, you know. It's large. It's thinner. It's light. It's dark. We make these distinctions. And yet, we don't need to grasp after them. The shining radiance in which body and mind are one suchness It's right here.

[17:51]

We don't have to do anything about it. I mean, all of us here in this room actually made a point of showing up. So thank you. Here we are. How wonderful. You could be out doing all kinds of other things, I'm sure. But here we are. Crone Angel continues, therefore, when called, there is an immediate response. This is still important. Call and response, like we do in the Bodhisattva precept of Edward Steyer. Somebody calls out, teaching, the precept, or name of Buddha or Bodhisattva or whatever, and they respond.

[19:02]

Hey, Mike. Visibly responding. I'm sure some part of him is responding. So, you know, this business of how do we take care of the world, how do we take care of responding to all of the difficulties and suffering in our life and in our world, it's a matter of this kind of response, an appropriate response. And There's no easy way to figure that out. So, you know, the point of hearing about this wondrous, settling, smothering, a bloom of radiance, is just to connect with that. You know, Sukhirashi said, where we're all continuously losing our balance against the background of perfect balance. So Sashin does that as a time to just kind of connect to this background, the primordial, the inconceivable, the radiance.

[20:27]

You know, whatever we say about it isn't it. Let's just start talking. But something, something, something serves us in the background and serves all beings in the background. And we forget it and we get into hassling about this or that and make up wars, horrible things. But it's still there. Even when we forget it. Losing our balance against the background of perfect balance. So therefore, when called, there is an immediate response. Great Chinese master Yungman said, all of Buddha's teaching is just about an appropriate response. What's way of responding to whatever, present situation, then it's helpful.

[21:30]

Appropriate means it's helpful. And we struggle with this and we don't know. There's no instruction manual for this. It comes out of this deep, primordial, conceivable, radiant reality. And, you know, sometimes it doesn't look like it's helping at all. And we all know that we're in this climate chaos and mass extinctions and This world is changing. This world is a reality. It's in transformation. How do we continue to pay attention, maintain awareness to what we can see in our field of awareness, keep awakening like Chuck E. Lee Wood did every day? This is the radiance, as I just said, in which the ordinary and the sage, the deluded and the awakened are one substance.

[22:40]

So all those distinctions we make between whatever Palestinians and Israelis or whatever you want, oil barons and environmentalists, how do we support awesomeness, helpfulness, with all these distinctions. This is the radiance in which the ordinary and the sage that deluded and reawakened are one suchness. Even in the midst of activity is not hindered by activity. So we sometimes wonder what's the use of all this stuff we're doing? You know, Ms. Makiko Salve here, Shakyamuni Zenkei, could do it all one way. Many beings here are doing all kinds of wonderful things to help doctors and lawyers, social workers, shampoos, martial arts teachers, therapists,

[23:52]

How do we each find our way, our part in expressing this samadhi of the Luma radius? How do we share it in a way that we can alleviate the suffering, bring joy to the world And, you know, often when we are working to do that, it doesn't look like anything slow is happening, but each little pool of awakened communities, food district, otherwise, sends out ripples in the world. is true. People come and go, and sometimes there are some people we haven't seen in a while,

[25:21]

So, even in the midst of activity, Koanadjo says, it is not hindered by activity. The forests and flowers, the grasses and leaves, people and animals, great and small, long and short, square and round, all appear at once without depending on all the discriminations of your thoughts and intention. This is here, always, it's available. How do we commune with it? How do we find it as a resource for our lives? For our own world. For our enjoyment. So just a little bit more from Kronen Shod.

[26:36]

He says about this radiance, this inconceivable wonder, it is not more in Buddhism, not less in ordinary beings. This is the reality of Dhammakaya Buddha, the winking reality in the Chinese. When you die, the light is not extinguished. It is not more in goodness to not rest in ordinary beings. It is not lost in confusion. So, of course, we all... And it's not awakened by awakening. It was there before we were taking the word. It has no location, no appearance, no name. It's simply the totality of everything. It's hard to believe. If we start thinking about it, what? That's rubbish. What?

[27:39]

The totality of everything? It cannot be grasped. It cannot be rejected. It cannot be attained. while unattainable and inconceivable, it is in effect throughout the entire being. So this is what we're kind of playing with, settling into this shame and wondering about it, questioning it. What's it all about? How is it helpful? And those are all appropriate questions. and what is our response to the call of the small gradients? And it's different each day. Maybe it's different with each breath. It's different with each of us. And yet here we are doing it in the south.

[28:40]

We have a little more time for the people hearing session in the room or online, we'll have a discussion this afternoon. But if anybody has some comments, or thoughts, a question or reflection to share, as the kitchen needs to help feed us. Please feel free. online or in person, you can see people here and later you can help me see people online. How do we enjoy this? How do we play with this? How do we nail it? Thank you.

[29:45]

Otherwise, there's not really much to say about it. With all these discourses and all the... How many pages is the episode? Let's see how many stuff we have. Yeah. All those were... And our job as a she is just to open up to the question in response to this possibility of primordial gaze.

[30:54]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_82.91