This morning we have the children, so I thought we could begin with a little bit of meditation practice with the children, and you could all join in if you like. You guys ready for this? So, I thought we could do a bell meditation practice. In order to do this, you have to really forget about yourself and just concentrate on listening, so you really listen hard. Here's how it works. When I strike these little bells, you listen to the sound of the bell with as much attention as you can, and the sound of the bell is going to disappear and melt into silence.

[01:08]

When that happens, you raise your hand, so you have to listen for the silence. Listen to when the sound turns into silence and raise your hand. Okay? So you've got to really listen carefully. Are you ready? Is everybody ready? Okay, so listen for the disappearing sound. Are you ready? Once more, okay?

[02:38]

It's a little hard to tell exactly when it turns into silence, isn't it? Isn't it? It's hard to tell. Maybe we'd better try it one more time, see if we can get more exact. Maybe we can't, but let's see. One more time. I had my eyes closed. Did everybody raise their hand at exactly the same time? No. Some people hear it at different times. I wonder if it has to do with our ears. I don't know. Let's try it one more time and see if we can discover something. Did anybody raise their hand not when they heard the sound disappear,

[04:15]

but when they saw someone else raise their hand? Did that happen to anybody? That's interesting, isn't it? Sometimes we're afraid. Maybe we didn't get it right, so pay attention to what someone else is doing. Now, let's do a different meditation. Would you stand up? Now, there's a lot of ways to stand up and to be standing, but why don't you try to stand feeling the bottoms of your feet and really with a good, steady way of standing, really balanced. Sometimes you might have to shift your weight a little bit until you find a really good, steady way to stand.

[05:19]

Now, put your attention on your belly and feel how you breathe and let breathing and standing come together so you can really feel your whole body and your feet are like the roots of a tree, really rooted and balanced. Can you feel that? Now, this is a tree meditation. We're going to be trees. Trees, you know, breathe through their leaves. Did you know that? Trees breathe through their leaves. So, we're going to put our hands up over our heads and put our palms back a little bit like leaves of trees. Yeah, like that. Our palms turned up toward the sky like leaves of trees. And we're going to take a breath right in through the palms of our hands and feel the breath go all the way through our whole body down to our roots and back out again, breathing in through our leaves

[06:27]

all the way to the roots and breathing out, imagining our whole body like a tree. Now, everybody take three more breaths and when you're finished with three more breaths in and out, everybody sits down. Sit down.

[07:37]

Did you feel like a tree? Maybe just a little bit? Did you? Can you imagine trees do that all day long, day after day, maybe for hundreds of years? That's impressive, right? Yeah. So, now the next tree meditation we're going to do outside. I want you all to go outside and find a good tree and maybe like somehow get up around the tree and breathe with the tree and feel the tree breathing when you breathe. Okay? So try that and tell me what happens. Okay, see you. Good. Yeah.

[09:08]

Good morning again. Good morning. There's some grown-ups going to go and do the tree meditation. People need a lot of things to survive in this world. Traditionally, in Buddhism, we say we need four things. Food, clothing, shelter, and medicine. These are the things we need. But in addition to these things,

[10:24]

I think we probably need some other things. We probably need some companionship. We probably need some honest work. We probably don't really need money, although we think we do. But I think we probably do need some sense of purpose or direction in our lives, some sense of vision for our lives, some idea of where our lives are going, how we fit in with others around us, and where all of us as people are heading for. Perhaps we don't think we need this kind of vision, but I'm pretty sure that if we don't have a vision of this, we kind of drift in our life and we become a little bit confused with no sense of how and for what we're alive

[11:26]

and where we're headed. It's hard to stay alive creatively and lively, you know, day by day. So I think, actually, most of us do have this kind of sense of vision of our lives, but mostly this vision is quite unexamined. And most of us probably don't even realize we have such a vision for our lives. And if we do have such a vision, it's not something we've reflected on much. Mostly, for most people, this kind of vision is a habit or a received idea. And as time goes on, we're realizing that we receive this idea not so much from our family or from our community, but more and more, all the time, all over the world, we receive it from mass culture, which does not appeal to what's reflective in us, but appeals to what's reactive in us. So mostly, for most people, I think, nowadays,

[12:32]

the vision that we have of our lives is a kind of a slogan that we really didn't think about too much, like, oh, I want to be happy, or I want to raise my family, or I want to enjoy life. But how would we enjoy life? And why would we enjoy life? And what does that have to do with our deepest purpose as human beings? Why are we born? Why do we die? How should people live together? Who are we, really? It seems ridiculous to ask such questions. So we go on with our slogans. For a long time in Western culture, we had a twin vision behind our everyday unexamined slogans, a twin vision that was the source of how we thought about our life together as a society.

[13:33]

And I mean this twin vision, which we used to call capitalism and socialism. Remember that? This twin vision came out of our Judeo-Christian roots. It was a kind of transformation of the ideas of salvation and messianism into secular terms for a secular age. It seems almost funny to talk about it today because in a very short period of time, in the last few years really, this twin vision has nearly dissolved into thin air and we've all but forgotten about it. When I was young, people used to discuss and debate over capitalism and socialism. And ordinary people and intellectuals all over the world actually thought in these terms and were actually involved in what they thought was an important physical and intellectual struggle for the way people should live.

[14:35]

In those days, people actually had a sense that individuals and groups could make a difference in the way that society was going and that there was a right way and a wrong way to live and to organize ourselves. And in the case of socialism, there was even a sense that history had a shape and a direction and that socially people were moving along in a path toward greater sharing and greater cooperation and justice. In those days, there was a political left and there was a political right. They say there is now, but there isn't really. And there was a strong sense and belief that one's social vision was consequential and really mattered and you thought about it. But forget all that, because we don't have that anymore, pretty much, I think. Socialism sounds like an archaic word now. Even though, actually, as recently as 1980,

[15:37]

the American public elected Ronald Reagan as our presidential champion to combat the evil force of this all-powerful socialism. In 1908, only 15 years ago. And now, it's gone like smoke. Of course, it was gradual. It took a couple hundred years of it to lose steam little by little. But in 1990, remember 1990, when all the eastern communist countries that seemed eternally part of the Russian bloc, suddenly overnight, that stopped? And then, lo and behold, the Soviet Union, which was eternal, also disappeared in about a week. Remember that? Now, it feels like it's always been that way. You can hardly remember when it was otherwise. So, socialism has gone away.

[16:39]

And you would think that capitalism as an ideology won out, but actually, capitalism has never really amounted to a social vision. It's just always been a job. There's not much sense of vision and purpose, I think, in capitalism as a way of thought. Anyway, if there is any way of thought and vision in capitalism, it's pretty much gone into a merger with the entertainment industry. So, nobody is... I mean, I'm not that well-read in social thought, but as far as I can tell, nobody has really thought about this much. But in the last 15 years, you know, this 200-year-old social vision that came from a much older social vision just pretty much evaporated, and now we have movies and TV, and, you know, it's all gone. You know, that's the end of that.

[17:41]

And I think that we're suffering from a lack of such a vision. And I think it must be hard to be a young person, growing up. And if you look at youth culture, there's a lot of it that reflects confusion and hopelessness. So we have food and clothing and shelter and medicine, many of us do anyway. But we are lacking a sense of where we're going and what we're doing that has meaning for us. So today I want to talk about how what we call, usually, Buddhism has something to offer in terms of a social vision. Although Buddhism has mostly been understood as a private contemplative path,

[18:41]

which, of course, it is in part, it is also and has always been a very inspiring and active social vision about how we as people can live together and organize ourselves together. And we're only recently, you know, becoming clearer about this side of Buddhism, and I want to talk about that today. I want to talk about five different dimensions or aspects of Buddhadharma that constitute a social vision. First of all, the vision of the Bodhisattva ideal. Secondly, a liberating vision of space and time. Third, the notion of truth itself as being essentially all-inclusive and undefinable. Fourth, the idea of causes and conditions and mutual interdependence.

[19:44]

And finally, the vision of the powerful and potential importance within Buddhism of spiritual practice centers. So I'm going to, without being too boring, talk about these things one after the other because I think it's worth mentioning. So first let me talk about the Bodhisattva ideal. Now, you really have to appreciate the great Mahayana sutras, like the Lotus Sutra and the Avatamsaka Sutra and others, to get a feeling for what is meant by a Bodhisattva and what kind of spirit the Bodhisattva cultivates and encourages. These sutras are really extraordinary documents and I would really recommend that all of you read at least one page of one of these sutras sometime to get an idea of what I'm talking about. These sutras are nothing like anything you'll ever read and they're very different from the earlier Buddhist sutras.

[20:46]

In the earlier sutras, on the whole, things were pretty sober and practical and straightforward. It's true there's an occasional miracle and there's the odd deity or demon floating around, but mostly in those early sutras you get lists of practices and teachings and stories and advice about how to practice and how to carry this out and how to reduce one's suffering and pain. And this is, of course, a great thing. And I myself study these sutras a lot and find them very, very useful. They call the Mahayana sutras extended sutras because they're much, much, much, much longer than the early sutras and they go on and on and on in fits of enthusiasm and poetry full of impossibly long sentences and paragraphs full of miracles so extensive and mind-boggling and impossible that your head spins, you can't even keep track

[21:47]

of each miracle, it's so extensive and amazing. And the centerpiece of all this mind-boggling stuff is this ideal of the bodhisattva. The word bodhisattva means awakening being. The bodhisattva is the one who is totally dedicated to working forever on awakening which is the ultimate production of total and complete happiness and bliss. And this bodhisattva, this enlightening being is working tirelessly and enthusiastically not only for 5 or 10 or 20 or 50 years but through many, many lifetimes of work and not only here in the Bay Area but throughout huge countries and planets and world systems working many, many lifetimes for this. And this bodhisattva is working on this happiness

[22:52]

not only for himself but for everyone. When I say everyone I mean not only people but all creatures animate and inanimate in all these world systems throughout space and time. And this bodhisattva is making extravagant vows that he will never rest until all this is accomplished. And rather than feeling serious and grim and exhausted about all this insane commitment that he has made he is taking great joy in it and he is having a ball rushing around in all these world systems doing this work and trying to coax everyone to help him with it. Now in the early sutras, the word bodhisattva had a very different meaning. The word bodhisattva referred literally to Shakyamuni Buddha in his past lives. So there was one bodhisattva who was, you know, like a junior Buddha

[23:52]

in training. But in these Mahayana sutras there are billions and trillions of millions of trillions of bodhisattvas all of whom are running around night and day for many lives sacrificing themselves in numberless ways for the benefit of others and enjoying every minute of it and looking and scheming to find more and more ways of doing all this more and more extensively. Now these bodhisattvas are completely uninterested in finding peace and cooling out and entering nirvana. In fact, that is literally the last thing that they're interested in because they would like to get everyone else enlightened and everyone else to find peace and they're working tirelessly for this and it's only after every single being has attained peace and happiness that these bodhisattvas themselves will enter nirvana

[24:55]

and the last one will close the door behind her. As I say, they are absolutely tireless in this and furthermore they have magnificent skills in order to do this. In fact, in the Lotus Sutra there is introduced the concept in the Buddhism of a special power called skillful means that the bodhisattvas have in order to help people. Skillful means is the essence of the dharma. The idea of skillful means says that the dharma can't be limited to this or that particular thing. That the dharma will take any shape in any form necessary to help beings. So the dharma is ultimately flexible and chameleon-like. Not because it's wishy-washy but because the essence of the dharma is about bringing true happiness and peace to everyone

[25:58]

and whatever it takes to do that is what the dharma is. So it's not a preordained hard and fast kind of truth. So the bodhisattva is never standing on principle or orthodoxy. Whatever works is what works. What is the dharma? So the bodhisattva is kind of like these electric lights in this room here with a rheostat. First the bodhisattva works very hard to create the first spark of light and when she gives birth to this wish to work for the benefit of others a light spark comes on and then over these many, many lifetimes she turns the rheostat higher and higher and higher until the world multiverse is finally flooded with light and all the creatures in it are united and happy.

[27:01]

So this is the bodhisattva. And the virtue of our meditation practice in Zen and of all the practices we do really in Mahayana Buddhism is the virtue of this light of the bodhisattva to develop the light, to make it grow and to pass it on. And the point is that this light is not just a doctrine or a theory or an enthusiasm with our actual everyday effort in practice on our cushions and in our work and in our chanting and in our relationships with one another we make it real and concrete in our lives and we develop the skill of working with our own desires and emotions and transmuting them into love for others and the skill to benefit others. So that's the first aspect

[28:05]

of Buddhadharma that constitutes a social vision that we should all become bodhisattvas cultivate this spirit in our own lives. The second aspect of Buddhism as a social vision has to do with a particular understanding about space and time. Now you might think, what does that have to do with a social vision? But actually it's very important because if we're going to turn the world around we have to have a big, big, big patience to work on such a large scale without leaving anything out. So to develop that patience we really have to understand the nature of time, right? And the nature of space. Especially in the Avatamsaka Sutra we get a vision of this multidimensional universe in space and time. According to the Avatamsaka Sutra

[29:07]

which is thousands and thousands and thousands of pages long in the sutra it says that there are trillions of billions of world systems in all directions but here's the amazing part all of these world systems are included in each grain of sand on Mere Beach. So if you go to Mere Beach and pick up a grain of sand it's true that in that grain of sand are all the trillion and billions of universes that exist simultaneously extensively far and in each grain of sand. And in each one of these universes there are trillions of billions of Buddhas being born attaining enlightenment, teaching training disciples and passing into nirvana on each and every instant in each and every place, everywhere.

[30:08]

And within each pore of all of these Buddhas the skin of all these Buddhas there are also infinite numbers of Buddhas being born and becoming enlightened and teaching and training disciples and entering nirvana. And all of this is happening everywhere right now while I'm talking, not later on but right now while I'm talking. So it looks here like a converted barn with a bunch of people sitting in it is actually a seething pollating, fecund infinite Buddha birth machine. So don't be fooled by appearances. The infinitely far away and the infinitely close the infinitely large and the infinitely small and the whole career

[31:13]

of the Buddha path is happening all over our body in each moment of time. So this is a delightful idea of course but again it's not just literature. When we sit on our cushions for a long time letting go of our habitual conceptual mind that has different categories like yesterday and tomorrow and today and here and there and just allow ourselves to accept completely the mystery of this present moment as it is we get a real feeling for what these sutras are talking about. Time and space are categories of thought conveniences to help us

[32:16]

communicate easily so that we can move things around when we need to. When we understand this, when we have some experience of this there is a shift in our attitude toward the world and its problems. We find more spaciousness in our attitude. We find a little humor, we find a little opening for ease and enjoyment even as we recognize clearly the vastness of the suffering that exists and the hugeness of the job that we are undertaking as bodhisattvas. And we see that there is a dimension to even our tiniest action way beyond what we can know and understand. And we know that our vows and our efforts can be really transformative. The third aspect of the social vision of the Dharma

[33:17]

that I want to mention is its all-inclusiveness which comes from an understanding that Dharma is not something definable. See, Buddhism, so-called Buddhism is not really a religion or a doctrine. There aren't any articles of faith in Buddhism that can be defined. There's nothing that we would be needing to burn anyone at the stake for. There's nothing that we would need to go to war against anyone for. Because we understand that the true and essential meaning of Dharma is radically undefinable. There is truth and there is meaning. It's not that there's no truth and no meaning. It's just that whenever we limit the truth and the meaning to something particular, to a particular idea or a particular verbal expression or concept or a particular emotion or a particular faith therefore we are excluding something from it

[34:17]

and we're going to be wrong and limited in our viewpoint. And that's why there's no Buddhist ideology and there's no Buddhist creed. Wherever we find goodness and accuracy of vision and accuracy of heart we know that we are looking at the true Dharma. So we can be very inclusive. We can really have the spirit of joining everything and knowing that everyone, whether they are a Buddhist or not a Buddhist is practicing the way with us. And even when we see something that is not accurate and not wholesome and not happy or helpful and we feel we must oppose it we can do so without having to hate it or consider it somehow unholy or inferior or wrong. We know that in this complicated multiverse the Dharma will appear in many, many different ways

[35:21]

some ways that we should pick up and emphasize and other ways that we should let go of or oppose. That's the third Dharma as undefinable and all-inclusive. The fourth one is the Buddhist notion of cause and effect or karma or dependent co-arising or interdependence. This idea in Buddhism is a very full and developed idea and I'm not going to make any effort to discuss it in any detail but I want to just pull out a main point which is this that all our acts of body, speech and mind are indelibly effective. Good actions lead to good results

[36:25]

bad actions lead to bad results. This means that everything we do and think every large thing and every small thing everything we do with our bodies, every thought every word we say, every intention we have completely matters is completely consequential and that on every moment of our lives we have the ability to choose to do something that will have positive results. So this is a wonderful thing to know it means that on every moment we are fully empowered to act effectively in our lives. It means that whether we are from a conventional viewpoint influential or not influential whether we are from a conventional viewpoint successful or unsuccessful in our activities we will definitely produce positive results from positive actions if not right now, then later on.

[37:27]

So in other words just to be kind to one person just to be a little bit helpful to one person or even to have a thought of kindness or helpfulness has effects over time whether or not we can see these effects in the short run. And this teaching of cause and effect makes us appreciate that we arrive in the present moment as a result of an infinite number of factors many beings and events have come together to bring about this present moment in which we are all sitting here in this room and it really isn't our fault that we find ourselves in this present moment we don't need to feel guilty about the situation because we didn't do it ourselves knowing this about ourselves we know that others too arrive at the present moment of their lives

[38:32]

due to many many infinite unknowable causes and conditions and that these conditions condition and influence them very strongly so it never makes any sense to blame ourselves or to blame anyone about anything because we all arrive right here in total cooperation with the whole universe none of us are separate from anyone or anything else because all of everything and each of everyone has gotten together to produce this moment of our lives so we are all connected and implicated with each other and it isn't anyone's fault there's no use blaming anybody or disliking anybody any more than it makes any sense to blame or dislike ourselves because anyway self and others in this net of causality are pretty much the same thing yet at the same time having arrived here now with everything as co-creators of this moment each of us has the potential

[39:36]

and the responsibility in the present moment of turning our life around of totally changing the world and this turning around cannot be only for ourselves but for everyone since our lives in turn form a part of this infinite net of causality that conditions everything so we have a healthy respect for causes and conditions we don't underestimate them we see how extensive and inclusive they are and we have a great respect for each person's ability in every moment to be responsible to create a tremendous good in this world so we know that we should work to make better social causes and conditions for people that everyone should be fed and clothed and have the opportunity to be educated so on but at the same time we know that no one

[40:38]

can change our life for us no one can change someone else's life for them each person is empowered and responsible to do that for himself or herself this we understand through contemplating this great teaching of cause and effect and interdependence the fifth and last element of Buddhist social vision that I would like to speak of is this ancient tradition that began already in Buddhist time of establishing powerful practice centers which are for the purpose of taking all these four visions that I've already spoken of and making them actually realized in people's lives making them concrete and grounded for people on a personal

[41:42]

individual basis in Buddhist practice centers people through all their daily activity day and night work to develop these four visions the vision of the Bodhisattva spirit the vision of time and space that is beyond our tiny cramped limited ideas of time and space the vision of truth as being all-inclusive and undefinable and the vision of the net of causes and interdependence and mutual implication and inviolability of individual human empowerment these truths become everyday bread and butter everyday rolling up your sleeves and work in Buddhist practice centers that's what Buddhist practice centers are for and it's hard to do this so we have to set up special places where we can realize these things and practice communities

[42:45]

have always been for this purpose in Buddhism and in this sense they're a little bit subversive don't tell anybody but it's true practice centers are a little bit subversive because they were never intended to be you know, a world apart even in Buddhist time his practice communities were always nearby where people lived and they always were trying to influence and humanize the way people were maybe the practice centers can be remote maybe they're very quiet and very unworldly but even so their purpose is to exist as an energy source for society places of concentrated spirit and power to disseminate this vision of happiness and kindness through the power in the centers and also by sending people out here and there as co-conspirators

[43:48]

to subvert the world away from cruelty and lack of awareness to kindness and love and working together you never know, the person next to you anywhere you may be, maybe a fellow bodhisattva it's all very secret because bodhisattvas, you don't know what they look like you don't know how they will appear but they're everywhere sent out from this energy of the practice centers so we're all co-conspirators here trying to take on this gigantic job but not worried about completing it knowing that we will complete it eventually, right here and now and everywhere and all time knowing that we have each other

[44:51]

to support each other and I think this is really what all the practice centers are doing this practice center here, I believe is making that effort and Tassajara Monastery and our city temple and Spirit Rock and Vajrapani and Insight Meditation Center in the back east and hundreds and hundreds of other Buddhist centers and other centers that don't look like Buddhist centers but in the sense in which I'm talking about them are so with this kind of spirit we can look at our world without flinching and without underestimating our difficulties but have a good spirit to go forward taking care of ourselves and everyone else so I just wanted to mention at the end of my talk

[45:55]

that we are coming to the end here of a five day work time at Green Gulch that's why you see the fence coming in the road as you drive in and all kinds of little projects everywhere we've been opening the doors and welcoming people to join us for these five days to join this practice community and to see what it's like to roll up your sleeves and work for the benefit of all beings and we have been very inspired by their work and I want to thank all of them and our director I don't know if she's here she's probably out there working somewhere and Tayo, our maintenance chief for putting all this together Bodhisattvas work they are worker, enlightening beings so we've been enacting that

[46:57]

and the little bridge that was constructed is actually a bridge across the ocean of suffering to peacefulness and the fence, which looks like an ordinary fence is actually the fence that holds us on the path so we won't fall off and the roof over the garden shed which looks like just some plastic nailed onto two by fours is actually a roof preventing the rain of desire and misery to fall on our heads so that we can walk nice and dry so this is what we've been doing and I know that in the last five days you have been doing something like that too and I know that in the last five days so this is what we've been doing

[47:48]

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