to awaken together. But skillful means is about honoring and listening to and acknowledging how we're all different. So in Buddhism there are many, many different teachings, many different approaches, many techniques, many practices. And this is because we all have our own individual way of expressing this awakening nature, sometimes called Buddha nature. So the first principle is just to acknowledge how we're different, to be willing to see that. And the main text about this practice in Buddhism is called the Lotus Sutra, and in the Lotus Sutra it says that all of the different techniques, all of the different means, all of the different approaches to practice are really part of one vehicle, one way to Buddha. But we each have our own little bit different approach.

[01:00]

And so we need to find which teaching, which teacher, which practice, which meditation will be our way. So, first of all, just consideration for others, to really consider how we're different, to really look and listen and see the ways in which we are different. And there's a story about this in the Lotus Sutra, a parable about a man who comes home and finds his house burning down. And his children are inside. And he says, come out of the house, it's burning. And the children don't want to come out of the house because they're busy playing with their toys and they're having fun and they don't want to come out of the house. They don't recognize the need to get out of the burning house. So the man tells them, oh, I have these wonderful toys outside, and he describes all these different

[02:04]

kinds of carts and carriages and fancy cars and so forth, and each of them hears about one that they would like to get into, and so they run out of the house to come and play with these toys. And when they get out there, they find that there's just one vehicle, one big vehicle that everyone can get on board. So the Sutra makes a big point of saying that this man wasn't lying. He was just using what was expedient and skillful for each of those different children to get them out of the house, to save them from this burning house. And this story has a particular edge for us this week at Zen Center because we have had our own burning house. Maybe some of you have heard about the fire near Tassajara. So the good news is that the last I heard that everything is okay, and the fire that got within two miles of Tassajara, which is our monastery way back in the mountains east

[03:06]

of Big Sur, is under control or at least kind of contained, and I guess it's near the road so people can't go in and out of Tassajara, but the buildings and the zendo and the baths and all the wonderful pieces of Tassajara seem to be safe. I guess there's still maybe 80 firefighters from the National Forest Service there. And in the middle of the week, all of the students and all of the people who were there for the work practice that's going on had to be evacuated. So it was pretty close. It came pretty close to Tassajara. So there are fires burning that can come pretty close to our house. We have to be ready to use skillful means to free ourselves and others from fires. Anyway, I think right now everything is safe there. Good. So there are many aspects to the skillful means, and I want to try and talk about it

[04:11]

from the point of view of practice. So I think when we first hear about skillfulness, we think of what is effective. Our usual understanding is that something that's skillful is actually going to get us out of the burning house. We think about the efficacy of certain means or techniques and how they will work and will they do what we want them to do. So there's this aspect of skillfulness. What actually works? What will actually take care of the situation? What will help stop this fire or that fire or allow this flower to blossom? I think we appreciate the skillfulness, too, when we see it of people who are particularly skillful, people who are good at their craft. So if we see great performers, athletes or dancers, musicians, and they're very skilled

[05:18]

at what they do, it's beautiful, it's inspiring, an outfielder making a great catch. Or an ice skater gracefully moving along the ice. Or if we see somebody who is doing, if we are involved in some craft ourselves and we see somebody who is skillful at it, it may be actually very helpful in terms of our learning about techniques and ways to do our own practice more skillfully. So in some sense, skillfulness is inspiring to us and helps us that way. And then the question is, how do we find our own skillfulness in the middle of that? And I appreciate it myself, mostly because I feel my own awkwardness and clumsiness and lack of skill. So it's nice to see people who are very skillful and try and learn from that and try and feel like, OK, maybe I can become a little more skillful. So we want to become more skillful at what we do.

[06:23]

But there's some other edges to the skillful means. One is that it's practical and it's not some idea of skillfulness. So the point in practice is how do we sustain our practice? How do we find some practice, some way of being in the world, some way of being helpful in the world, some way of meditating, some way of doing our work, some way of taking care of our family and our situations that works, that actually works. And it's easy to get caught by some idea of what is skillful. So part of skillful means is to see that skillfulness is not our idea of skillfulness. In his writing about skillfulness, Dogen, Japanese Zen master, says, Realization does not come just as we expected. Reality is not what we expect. So when I thought about giving this talk here this morning, I have notes and I have an idea

[07:33]

of the space and I've given talks here before, but I could not possibly have known what this situation would be and exactly what I would say. So here we are in the middle of the situation that is not our expectation. So I don't know what you expected when you came to hear a talk this morning at Green Gulch, but it's probably not exactly what you expected. And in fact, it never is. So how do we stay open? How do we apply our skillfulness to this great unknown, this reality right in front of us that's not what we expected? So Dogen has another saying that enlightened people are enlightened about their delusions. Deluded people have delusions about enlightenment. So it's very easy to get caught by our delusions about enlightenment and our delusions about what is skillful. So skillfulness is not our idea of skillfulness and practice is not some ideal practice.

[08:38]

You know, we may have some image of great bodhisattvas or buddhas sitting up there and feel like that's what I need to be, that's how I will be. But actually it's about just being ourselves and not getting caught by our ideas. So one story about this is I was recalling my own first attempt to do zazen, to do this meditation practice we do. And this was 30 years ago and I was camped out in the summer in Colorado. And I'd read D.T. Suzuki books and Jack Kerouac books, I guess, and Alan Watts maybe. So I had all these ideas about Zen. And I didn't know that Suzuki Roshi was here in California. And I'd never met anybody who actually had meditated. And it was before Zen Mind Beginner's Mind came out. But there was one book then that was actually about practice,

[09:42]

how you practice zazen and talked about meditation. So I'd read that book and I decided I was going to do this. And so I think actually, as I recall, I think I was sitting in a tent and I was probably sitting, you know, it was pretty close to the way I'm sitting now. I think the instructions about the posture were pretty good. And I had some idea about, you know, sitting upright and breathing. And so I was going to do this meditation. I don't know if it was the book or my attitude. It's a book that I wouldn't recommend anymore. But something about this book. Anyway, it talked about how you should keep your eyes open, which is a part of our practice and part of the zazen instruction that we say here Sunday mornings. How many people, by the way, are here for the first time? Great. And how many of you had meditation instruction this morning? Great. So they probably said something about how in our practice we keep our eyes open. And there's important reasons for that because it's very easy to become sleepy.

[10:45]

And part of our practice is to be aware but restful and but also to be aware. So we are aware of the field of vision in front of us. We're aware of thoughts and feelings. We're aware of our posture. We are aware and enjoy our inhale and our exhale. But somehow, anyway, when I read that book and I saw keep your eyes open, I thought it meant that you had to not blink. I thought it meant that you just sat there for 40 minutes and kept your eyes open. So there I was in the mountains in Colorado sitting upright in this tent and I thought that I had to keep my eyes open. So I don't know if any of you have ever tried this. I blinked. Anyway, I tried very hard to do this. I really wanted to meditate and I thought this was what I had to do. And so I sat there and I kept my eyes open.

[11:46]

And finally this waterfall poured out of my eyes and it probably didn't take very long. I just could not keep my eyes open. And so I thought this is not for me and I gave up thinking about sitting meditation. Fortunately, a few years later, several years later, I met a Japanese Zen priest in New York City. I got his instruction and I've been doing everyday sitting since then. He was actually a human being who blinked his eyes and did normal human things. But it's very easy to get caught up by our ideas of what practice is and our ideas of what skillful means are. So how do we actually come to practice skillfulness? How do we actually come to practice a practice that we can sustain, where we can allow ourselves to blink when we need to and do the things that humans need to do? So one point is this. I mentioned this one vehicle.

[12:47]

And in the Lotus Sutra, it explains what the one vehicle is about. So in the Lotus Sutra, the Buddha Shakyamuni says that all Buddhas, all world-honored ones, for one great cause alone appear in the world. What do I mean? The Buddhas, the world-honored ones, for one great cause alone appear in the world? The Buddhas, the world-honored ones, appear in the world because they wish to cause the beings to hear of the Buddha's knowledge and insight and thus enable them to gain purity. They appear in the world because they wish to demonstrate the Buddha's knowledge and insight to the beings. They appear in the world because they wish to cause the beings to understand. They appear in the world because they wish to cause the beings to enter into the path of the Buddha's knowledge and insight. This is the one great cause for which the Buddhas appear in the world.

[13:53]

So, this one vehicle, this way towards Buddha that includes all the different kinds of skillful means is about helping suffering beings. It's about helping all beings to enter into the path to Buddha, the path to awakening. So, if there was not suffering, there would be no need for Buddhas. Buddhas only appear because we get confused and we get greedy and we get angry and we do bad things and get caught up in all of the results of that and have a hard time. So, we all have some problem and probably we'll always have some problem and if ever you don't have a problem, somebody will come and give you theirs. So, there's always going to be a problem. And this is why Buddhas are in the world because they're there to help everyone to find their own way to awakening. So, then what Buddhas

[14:55]

do and Bodhisattvas, the awakening beings who help Buddhas, is to find how to use appropriate skillful means to help different kinds of beings. But the purpose of all of the skillful means, the purpose of all that we could say provisional, tentative teachings about what Buddha is and what awakening is, are there because they can help someone, maybe me, maybe you, to find our own way to awakening. So, I'd said that this is the practice of, one of the Bodhisattvas are awakening beings who are dedicated to helping all beings awaken and there are particular archetypal Bodhisattvas. So, on the altar over there is Manjushri, the

[15:56]

large figure is the Bodhisattva of insight and wisdom who cuts through delusion and sees into emptiness, sees into wisdom and helps awaken everyone to that. And this is another archetypal Bodhisattva figure, Jizo, the earth womb or earth storehouse Bodhisattva, who helps folks who are having a really hard time. He goes into hell realms and he helps people who are wandering and suffering and witnesses to that. And there are a number of these different Bodhisattvas in Buddhist culture and the one who is most associated with skillful means is the Bodhisattva of compassion, Kanzeon we say in Japanese, or Avalokiteshvara or you've probably seen her at Chinese restaurants, Guan Yin, the little white porcelain goddess of mercy is one of the forms. And part of this Bodhisattva of compassion is that she does appear in many, many, many different forms. And this is because as the embodiment

[17:00]

of compassion, she recognizes that she needs to find skillful means for all the different kinds of beings. So again, skillful means is the practice of compassion. So one of the forms of this Bodhisattva, and by the way you can see her around Green Gulch, images of her as well as expressions of her maybe living, but if you wander down to the garden there's a nice stone Kanon Bodhisattva there. And in the Wheelwright House, in the Wheelwright Center in our meeting room and I think in the library there are images of this Bodhisattva of compassion. And she takes many different forms and one of the most interesting forms has many, many arms. So sometimes she has a thousand hands. Sometimes there are images where there's only like several hands on each side. Sometimes 25, I think it's 20 hands

[18:06]

on each side, each representing 25 different hands. Anyway, she has many hands and each of them has many different tools in them. So there are all kinds of things, Zafus and books and watches and even glasses of water. And she has many, many different forms of conch shells and lotuses and anyway, many different tools. And she uses them for the different kinds of beings. So the point is how do we use what's at hand to help skillfully with the situation in front of us. Oh, and not only does she have many hands, but each one of those hands has an eye in it. So she can see all the different kinds of beings with a thousand different eyes. So she is able to see from different perspectives, able to recognize and acknowledge all the different kinds, all the different troubles, all the different problems that we all have. And there's a story about this Bodhisattva.

[19:14]

One monk asked another, why does the Bodhisattva of compassion have so many hands and eyes? And the other monk said, it's like reaching back for your pillow in the middle of the night. So in the middle of the night when you're groggy and sleepy, where's that pillow? Just reaching back. So the way the Bodhisattva of compassion works is she has all these hands and all these tools and she just kind of responds, oh, where's the pillow? So this kind of skillful means is a little different from the techniques of a great cabinet maker or a great musician. This is just responding with whatever is at hand in the middle of the night, just reaching out, reaching back, unmediated. So this is about patience also.

[20:17]

So one of the things about this Bodhisattva is her name, Kanzeon, means the one who hears the sounds of the world, the one who hears the cries of the world, the one who hears the different kinds of beings. So maybe the main practice of compassion and the main practice of skillful means is just to listen. How do we just really hear each other? How do we acknowledge the differences? So if you've ever felt really heard, you know how wonderful that is. And skillful means may be just a matter of listening. So part of skillful means is patience, the practice of patience. So if you've ever wanted to give somebody some feedback, wanted to tell them something that they were doing that maybe was causing them problems, sometimes it's difficult. Sometimes they're not ready to hear. Sometimes you have to wait for a long time maybe before you can say something

[21:18]

that they can hear. So part of the practice of skillful means and of compassion is just waiting. But also maybe we have to wait because somebody is trying to give us some feedback and they haven't found the skillful means to tell us. So we have to wait and be patient and listen. This is an important part of skillful means. So Dogen says also, when hundreds, thousands or myriads of objects come all at once, what should be done? And the master answered, don't try to control them. So skillful means is not about controlling things and making things the way we think they should be, making things the way we want them to be. Skillful means is about recognizing what's right in front

[22:18]

of us and responding. This is an important aspect of this skillful means. So how do we find the skill to do that in an appropriate way? So there's a kind of question here, there's an edge here about the role of technique in skillful means. We can get caught by technique. We can think that if I only know, if I have these skills then I will be able to respond. And sometimes technique is helpful, so we shouldn't say no, don't have technique. But if we start to search for some blueprint, some perfect way to get what we want or what we think should be or what we think is good, some easy, how to become Buddha in 10 easy lessons. This is not going to be so helpful really because Buddha doesn't happen somewhere out there or up there or in the East Bay or in Japan. Buddha happens in our own lives. Buddha is about how do we bring our attention

[23:25]

and our awareness and our calm and our skill to what is happening in our own lives right now, this day, this week, this month, our own situation. So we should honor the techniques but not get caught by them. There's a story about this that a great teacher when he was a student asked his master, what is the way? And the teacher said ordinary mind is the way, just everyday ordinary mind. And the student said, oh, well, how do I get to that? And the teacher said, if you try and get there, you get further away from it. So we do try to find the way and we do want to know techniques, we do. People come to me and ask about what meditation should I do? We want techniques, we want to

[24:26]

know how to do something. And there are techniques, you know, there are libraries full of techniques of meditation in Buddhism. And I think it's particularly an issue for us, this question of skillfulness and technique in the meditation that we do here at Green Gulch in the Soto Zen tradition because we call this just sitting and we recommend that you just sit and be aware of what's in front of you and stay upright and stay aware and breathe and sit still in the middle of all the thoughts and feelings. And it's so simple that nobody wants to do that. We want to have particular techniques and there are lots of techniques. You can count your breath or you can say mantras. There are many, many techniques in Buddhism to help you settle into meditative awareness. And my own feeling is that even in the middle of this just sitting practice we do here, if there's some technique that helps you,

[25:31]

please do that. If mantras help you to just sit, that's great. But in some way, the practice we do is kind of from the mountaintop. We start with the highest form of meditation practice and then maybe naturally as we're sitting and as we're learning the craft of sitting, as we're becoming more skillful at being present and upright in the middle of our lives, there is some skillfulness there. And techniques might naturally come up to you or you might read about them and they may be helpful. But basically, this practice we do, this sitting upright, is kind of a leap of faith. We just leap right into, here I am, inhale, exhale. Thoughts and feelings are maybe flying by. We see our own anger, we see our own upset, we see our own greed or pettiness or whatever. And it's difficult and we want some techniques so we don't have to deal with that. And there are techniques.

[26:34]

But in some ways, I think skillful means maybe is more a matter of attitude than technique. How can we find the space in which we're willing to be upright and just face whatever it is, this situation right in front of us? So, in some sense, Zen is about how do we embody Buddha? How do we embody the spirit of moving towards Buddha? How do we make this real in our body and mind? You know, in the meditation hall but also in our ordinary activity. And of course, this is not easy. This requires a lot of skillful means, expedient practices. And there are many practices to help us. So, when the phone rings, do you answer it right away or maybe you could try

[27:37]

the practice of stopping and taking a breath, waiting for the second or third ring. If the other person hangs up before the third ring, then maybe you didn't need to talk to them anyway. There are many practices like this as we're moving around in the world. And the more we try to, as I just talked about not trying, but the more we open ourselves to seeing the differences and seeing each situation and practicing this practice of skillful means, the more experience we have, the more practice we have. Maybe we become a little better at it. But fundamentally, it's about this just leap of faith. Okay, here I am. I'm willing to face this situation right now. And we do that over and over again. And we have to listen and be patient and wait and hear what's happening and hear who the other person is and give them time to hear who we are. So, in some sense, all of the great teachings of Buddhism are just skillful means. Even

[28:56]

nirvana, you've probably all heard of nirvana. It's a rock group, right? Anyway, nirvana is the idea of this place where we will be free from our problems, free from samsara, free from all the troubles of the world, free from cause and effect. And in early Buddhism, they wanted to get nirvana. They wanted to get free from all of the confusion and anger and all the mental states that got in the way and all of the activity, all the kinds of conduct that got in the way of just being clear and seeing this kind of open space of nirvana. But as Buddhism developed, and in the Lotus Sutra, the Buddha says, well, nirvana is just an expedient means. Nirvana is not some place other than right here. So how do we see this possibility of openness, this possibility of calmness, this possibility

[30:01]

of willingness to just face our life right in the middle of the situation we're in now? This is skillful means, and this is the practice of meeting reality. So one example from Buddhist history of skillful means is that when Buddhism has entered new cultures, it always interacts with what's in the culture. So when Buddhism moved from India to Tibet and China and Japan, there were aspects of spiritual practice, aspects of spiritual belief present in those cultures, and Buddhism interacted with them and was willing to meet them. So, for example, in China, Buddhism adopted Taoist terms and expression and kind of value of harmony with nature, and in some ways Zen is the result of that interaction. But Buddhism was willing to meet with Taoism and hear it, and in some ways

[31:06]

Buddhism was changed by that. So when we're willing to listen, when we practice skillful means, not only are we able to give somebody some feedback, but we're also transformed ourselves. Skillful means is not about, you know, here I am and I have all this skillful technique and all this wonderful teaching to give to you. Skillful means is about being open to hearing from the other two. So it's a mutual practice. When Buddhism entered Japan, Buddhism interacted with all the wonderful aesthetic expressions and sensibilities of Japan, and Buddhism was changed, and things like the tea practice came into Buddhism. Now in America, Buddhism is interacting with science and psychology and Christianity and Judaism and all the aspects of how we approach spirit and how to live well. And in those cultures that Buddhism has moved to in the past, it's always taken

[32:11]

the native spirits and the native practices and the native traditions and been transformed by them and also taken them on as protectors of Buddhism. So in America, I think maybe Buddhism will really have arrived when we have as statues, we have statues as protectors of Dharma, maybe a statue of Sigmund Freud as a protector of Dharma. This will be the real American Buddhism. I guess we're a little ways away from that, but already American Buddhism has interacted a great deal with America, and in fact this is not Buddhism as it's practiced anywhere in Asia. So I appreciate this kind of interaction aspect of Buddhism, and I teach at Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, and I'm teaching the Lotus Sutra this semester and studying the Lotus Sutra. So trying to give this lecture here

[33:17]

at Green Gulch is a different kind of skillful means for me to learn about the Lotus Sutra and about skillful means. So I hope you'll come to the discussion period afterwards and give me feedback. When I teach it in Berkeley, most of my students, many of my students are Christian seminarians who are interested in Buddhism. So it's very interesting for me because they have a lot of experience with religious issues in the context of Christianity or sometimes Judaism, and not so much knowledge about Buddhism, but it makes for a very interesting class and I learn a lot about Buddhism. And speaking of that, I will get in my shameless plug for the workshop I'm leading here in two weeks, which is a Buddhist-Christian dialogue workshop, I think two Saturdays from yesterday. So I've been doing that for a while, working with Christian ministers, in this case it

[34:18]

will be a Methodist pastor, and we'll be talking together about Buddhist practice and Buddhist life and Christian practice and Christian life. So again, by listening to Christians I learn a lot about who I am as a Buddhist, and this kind of willingness to hear each other is, I think, one practice of skillful means. The particular workshop we're doing in two weeks, we usually take a particular topic, and this time we decided to talk about facing the millennial days. So right now we have as an opportunity of skillful means this funny thing that's going to happen to our clocks and our calendars in a few months, where we have all these zeros at the end, and in some ways it's kind of artificial. It's, what, 5760 in the Hebrew calendar and 25-something-or-other in the Buddhist calendar. There are different versions of that in different Buddhist countries.

[35:22]

But this Western calendar now seems to have conquered the world, and everybody's thinking this is the year 2000. So this has the real power, even though it's not connected with any astronomical event or any seasonal event or anything like that. But somehow we are all caught in a daze because of this impending end of the millennium. Never mind that actually Jesus was probably born in the year 4 BC, according to the latest scholarship. But even though it's artificial, in fact there seem to be some real difficulties happening. So in the workshop we'll talk about Buddhist teachings about coming new ages and Christian teachings about the Messianic, but it seems that really we're having a hard time. At least a lot of people I know are having a hard time, and if we look at the newspapers and what's

[36:24]

happening in the world, it's kind of weird and scary, and maybe it's always been this way, but massacres in Timor and in churches in Texas, and it's just a lot of horrible stuff happening. So how do we practice? How do we learn from Buddhist practices? How do we learn from Christian practices about how we face this situation of difficult times? So, my friend Joanna Macy says that we're very fortunate to be practicing in very difficult times. These are critical times to the future of the earth. Many terrible things happening, environmental devastation and so forth, you all know. But this means that we have a particular opportunity. Even the small things that we do to be kind, to be insightful, to listen, can have a great effect because things are so critical now. So when there's some problem,

[37:30]

do we see it as a problem and be overwhelmed by it, or do we see this as an opportunity to use, to try to use our skillful means, to try to listen, to try to respond with whatever tool is at hand to meet the situation and be helpful. So it's just a little shift between feeling like it's the end of the world and everything is desperate, and gee, this is a chance for me to contribute something and for us to help each other. So the last thing I want to say is about this chapter in the Lotus Sutra on expedient means. The Buddha begins by saying that he's been teaching all of these expedient teachings and expedient means, but really, only a Buddha together with a Buddha can understand, can fully understand, can fully get to the bottom of this wondrous reality that we're living in the middle of. Only a Buddha together with a Buddha. So we can take this as a kind of

[38:35]

exhortation to, we've got to move towards Buddha, we've got to move in that direction so that we can meet a Buddha and be willing to open up to the depths of this reality. But I think it also has this side that this awakening practice is something we do together. We can't be skillful by ourselves. We're skillful together with each other. We meet each other and in meeting each other we can find what Buddha is. We find what awakening is. So thank you all for coming and giving me this opportunity to try to practice skillful means and for listening so skillfully and for being willing to be present in this life and try to move towards what is spiritual life and what is spiritual practice and how

[39:40]

do we do this together and how do we find the way to awaken together, whether our eyes are wide open or wide shut or blinking or just to be present as I am in this life right here and to meet all of you and for each of us to meet each other and see what is the Buddha that can arise. Thank you very much.

[40:03]

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