I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good morning. This morning I'd like to talk about Shakyamuni Buddha, the historical Buddha. And the reason that I'd like to talk about this person is because as I thought about it, I realized that I have a hard time with the, not really a hard time, I have a vague feeling about the historical Buddha. that we talk so much about Shakyamuni Buddha, and we have so much imagery about this person, and we call what we're doing Buddhism.

[01:10]

But the actual person that established this practice for us becomes so shrouded in the or romanticism, that it's hard to kind of relate back to this person as a person. And, you know, in Buddhism there's three aspects of Buddha. And it's similar, but not identical, but it's similar to Catholicism, which also has three aspects of God. In Buddhism, we know we have the Trikaya, which is Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya, and Nirmanakaya. And there's three aspects of Buddha, and Dharmakaya is like the universal principle, Buddha nature without marks, something you can't point at and say, this is Buddha nature, unless you point at everything and say, this is Buddha nature.

[02:22]

And Sambhogakaya, described in a simplistic way, would be just that manifestation of that principle or that nature in our everyday life, how that manifests in our activities. And a third aspect is in Nirmanakaya, which is the historical Buddha who lived in a particular time and place and taught. And also in Catholicism they have the same kind of division. It's interesting. They have the father or the mother and the son or the daughter and the Holy Spirit. So you have these three different aspects in both religions. And the historical, the actual person is easiest for us to relate to.

[03:24]

But how can we relate to Buddha in a way that's fairly straightforward or clear, or that has some meaning to us? It isn't just something that you read about or some image on an altar. How does the historical Buddha, how does this person have some meaning to us personally? Or maybe he doesn't. Maybe it doesn't have any meaning to us personally. Maybe we just like to sit. And it's nice that Buddha was there, but it just doesn't mean that much to us. It could be somewhere in that spectrum. So I'd like to just briefly just outline Buddha's life. And it's not going to be like a Sunday school. class, but just briefly to go over the events of his life and to look at the events of his life in how we could relate to them, what the meaning of his life, or at least how I see it, how the meaning of his life is to us today.

[04:47]

So not so much all the details, and not so much all the legends, but more just taking the basic core of what we know or what has come down to us about his life. What do you make out of that? So there's a quote from Suzuki Roshi in Zen 9, Beginner's Mind, which I'd like to read. Just a short one. He says, Because Buddha was the founder of the teaching, people tentatively called his teaching Buddhism. But actually Buddhism is not some particular teaching. Buddhism is just truth, which includes various truths in it. Zazen practice is the practice which includes the various activities of life. So actually, we do not emphasize the sitting posture alone.

[05:53]

How to sit is how to act. We study how to act by sitting. And this is the most basic activity for us. That is why we practice zazen in this way. Even though we practice zazen, we should not call ourselves the zen school. We just practice Dazen, taking our example from Buddha. That is why we practice. Buddha taught us how to act through our practice. That is why we sit. So he's, in that, Those series of lectures that comprise that book, each talk that he gives is just amazingly succinct. And I'm sure there's some skillful editing involved as well.

[06:59]

But nevertheless, that little paragraph, very succinct way of describing Suzuki Roshi's understanding of part of our relationship to Buddha, the historical Buddha. So, you know, a good way to look at Buddha's life, a very simple way, is through our meal chant that we do when we have meals in the zunda. And the chant starts out, Buddha was born at Lumbini, enlightened at Bogaya, taught at Paranasi, and entered nirvana at Kusinagara. Very simple, four lines, takes about ten seconds to say, and comprises his entire life, the high points of his life. So, you know, Buddha was born at Lumbini as a starting point

[08:14]

Lumbini was a pretty thriving trade center at the foot of the Himalayan mountains, the edge of the Ganges plains, I think. And the legend has it that Buddha was a prince and lived in this magnificent palace and just enormous splendor. And if you read some of the literature, it really emphasizes how magnificent this setting was and it goes into all kinds of elaborations on it, which may be true, but may not be true. He also could have just been a member of a ruling family in that particular town, obviously well to do. but not necessarily with a huge, magnificent court in the way that's described. Could be, but maybe not. We don't really know. But what's clear is that he was generally in a well-off position and associated with a governing family and pretty well had it made in terms of his material life.

[09:23]

And I think that's a really, if you look at his life, at the beginning of his life, that's a really important aspect. However, whatever the actual details really were, the important thing for us, or for me, is that his life was really, in a materialistic sense, his life was ideal. He had most of what we want, you know, in terms of material things. He had plenty of money. He had a family, a nice family. He was well-educated. He had a certain amount of power. He had a function in life. He had pleasant living accommodations. Good chariot. But he still wasn't satisfied. And he got to the age of 26 and he realized that he just was not satisfied.

[10:31]

Even though he had everything, he wasn't satisfied. So, you know, if we put ourselves in that kind of position, you know, every one of us has all the things that we want. We'd like a better, you know, you name it, there's a better situation that we can think of that we'd like to have. Either we might want to be with another person, we might want to have a better house, a better car, more money, better education, different job. It's endless. But the lesson, it seems, in his early life is that even though you could get all that, if you were to get all that, you would still not be fundamentally satisfied. He wasn't. And so at the age of 26 he just gave it all up and left.

[11:36]

He left his wife and he left his son and he left all of his will. You may think it's irresponsible for him to do that, especially to leave his wife and son. I think it's hard to know what that was really like unless you had actually been there. But the point is he gave up all of his material world and took off. And, you know, in a sense there's some, I can see some parallel when we decide to pursue a spiritual practice that we do the same thing in a much more moderate version. But at some point the kind of materialistic striving that we tend to be born into in this society, at some point we can see that that doesn't work.

[12:40]

It may be early on, when we're very young, it may be later on, but at some point we see that there's more to life than just trying to accumulate perfect situations around us. And we turn to some kind of practice. So that's the point where Gautama, which was his name, his actual name was Gautama, that was the point where he decided that he wanted to leave, when he realized that. So he joined a band of ascetics and spent about six years in these really intensive practices, aesthetic practices and austerities, hardly eating, almost starving to death, sleeping on the ground, enduring intense cold, intense heat.

[13:52]

And in the process, he developed high states of concentration. He developed a lot of mental powers, high states of concentration. He lived an extremely moral kind of life, but it didn't work. So even though he was knocking himself out to be pure, and to free himself from his sense attachments, somehow it wasn't working. And in a way, he was engaged in a kind of materialism, only on the spiritual side, that he was trying to attain various higher states of consciousness, but he was going about it

[14:58]

in a materialistic way. So he could gain certain kinds of powers that way, but fundamentally he was still oriented towards himself. Fundamentally his self was still, his sense of his self was still at the core of his awareness. And, you know, I think that we also fall into that same kind of dilemma when we practice, particularly when we start out, particularly when we have a kind of an ideal sense, an idealism about what Zen practice is or what meditation practice is. We don't go as far as he did, but, and we don't necessarily practice ascetic practices,

[16:06]

But we have this idea that somehow we're going to get better, and that's really important, and I don't see actually how we would start off if we didn't have that idea. But as long as it's based on an idea of self-aggrandizement, it doesn't quite work. Although we can gain certain powers of concentration, And we can maybe become more mellow and various changes can occur. Just going through the form of practice isn't enough. So at this point, he leaves this band of ascetics that he's been associating with. Because it's just not working. And he remembers that when he was a little boy at a harvest festival, he went off away from everybody else, because he was generally the center of attention, being a kind of an up-and-coming young aristocrat.

[17:37]

He went off away from everybody else, and he just sat down underneath a tree as a boy. started following his breathing. Just almost spontaneously just sat and followed his breathing. And quickly attained several jhanic stages right off the bat on different levels of meditation, awareness, and concentration. And it was a powerful experience for him. And then he, you know, it faded away and he went back and joined everybody else and more or less forgot about it. So now after practicing all these austerities for six years, having completely abandoned his former life, he remembers this experience when he was a little boy. And decides that maybe it would be a good idea to go back to that as a starting point. And it's interesting, but I think that we also have some, oftentimes have experiences like that, where you can remember as a child, some experience that you had, it's like a kind of a mystical experience, some kind of experience where you became totally absorbed in what you were doing, and it was a shift in your awareness.

[19:01]

or you felt like you were really related to everything around you and it kind of came and went. Some dramatic kind of shift in your consciousness when you're younger. And then you maybe forget about it or don't pay any attention to it and then as an adult you remember back to that and you can You can understand it in a little different way than you could when you were younger. You can see that that was a pointer, that that experience was a pointer to you, pointing to something that you can actually begin to more actualize now that you're an adult. I think of it as a kind of a gift. It's a kind of a gift for you, for your wife later, to understand. So he decided to try this practice again, and he found a place that was very pleasant, near Bogaya.

[20:11]

The legend has that it was underneath a bow tree, but that may or may not be true. Basically, he found a place that was appealing to him, a pleasant spot, and sat down. They said there was a grass cutter, gave him some grass clippings, and he used that for his offering. Like that, I don't know if you have some special place, but it's interesting that you can find, one can find places in nature, a particular spot that you really feel comfortable in, that you really like a lot. And I think that's rather nice. I found a spot on the Eel River this summer that makes me feel very comfortable when I'm there. It's just as conducive to a state of being peaceful.

[21:16]

And I plan to go back there. So I think it's good to have a spot that you really like, and it may just be your backyard. On the other hand, it's also good to be able to like every spot, not to be hung up on any particular spot. But for the purposes of enlightenment, Buddha picked a particular spot that he liked and sat down. became enlightened rather quickly by simply sitting and following his breathing. So Buddha was born at Lumbini and after going through his ascetic

[22:22]

travails, enlightened at Boggaya. And then he had, incidentally, after he was enlightened, he spent several months kind of refining it, just continuing to sit. And then he, as a kind of follow-through, he moved away from the tree that he was sitting under and spent a whole other week just staring at the tree. as a kind of appreciation for the tree, which I think is an interesting kind of follow-through. And then he had to decide what to do next. What's he going to do? Now you're enlightened, what are you going to do next? The obvious thing would be to help other people and to teach other people, but at first he was reluctant because he didn't think people would be receptive.

[23:29]

That we're so attached to our sensory world that the teaching of Buddhism, which points more inwardly and not so much depending on the senses, he didn't think people would be willing to swallow that. But the story has it that a spirit came down and kind of convinced him that he should do it. Whatever happened, he became convinced that he should really become a teacher. So he did. And then he spent the next 50 years of his life teaching. In a sense, the sequence of this life is very dramatic and very ideal, but you can find yourself in it if you just don't make it so grand. If you just take your own plain life, you can see aspects of your life which are similar. So, we may not be enlightened or we may not realize our enlightenment,

[24:34]

But we still have something to offer the world, and so what are we going to do with it? So Buddha had this wonderful Dharma to present. So what we have to offer may not seem to be that grand, but we all have something to offer. From a teaching point of view, if you look at his life, he offered himself to the world for the rest of his life, to whatever he had, which happened to be a presentation of the Dharma. He offered it and spent his life making it available. A parent raising a child or children would be the same. So then it says, taught at Paranasi, which we used to say Benares.

[25:37]

So taught at Benares, Paranasi. He oriented himself towards this city, which was a really cosmopolitan type city. A lot of culture in this city and a lot of open-mindedness, education. And for the next 50 years based himself in the city and basically was an urban kind of a teacher. Would travel around India, but mostly presenting the Dharma in urban situations. Not exclusively, but mostly. And always coming back to Parnassi as a base. And continued for 50 years this way. Until he got to be about 80 and was going to die and wound up in this little out-of-the-way village, this backwater called Kusunagara.

[26:39]

And he told his followers that he was about ready to die and they tried to persuade him to go back to Paranasi or some place that had more status. If he was going to die, he might as well die in a place that was had a better reputation than this little village. But he said, no, this is fine. And in fact, this village used to be a great city eons ago, but now it's just a small village, but it's fine. It would be like, you know, after teaching in San Francisco or being born in New York, being enlightened in New Orleans, he dies in Turlock. And I don't know if, I'm sure you all have read the newsletter this month.

[27:43]

In it, Suzuki Roshi's lecture, he mentions a Zen teacher who was going to die and his disciples wanted to erect a huge monument to him. And they couldn't, you know, they wanted to make it huge. They wanted to make it as huge as the whole country because they had such loyalty and admiration for their teacher and they wanted to make some monument that would represent that feeling. And so the teacher says, no, a small stone is fine. A small stone is as good as a big stone. It doesn't matter. Actually, a small stone is better because you can move it around more easily. So that was, you know, if you look at Buddha's death, that's interesting, that he chose a small village to die in, and a small stone was as good as a big stone. And if we look at our own death, if we try to imagine what our own death would be like, what kind of image we have of our dying, what's it going to be like?

[28:59]

Is it going to be a grand experience? How will it be? And here is this great teacher, one of the greatest teachers that the world has ever known, dies in a very small, humble village. So, Buddha was born at Lumbini, enlightened at Bogaya, taught at Parnassi, and entered nirvana at Kusumangara. So after all that, what kind of What kind of image do you have of Shakyamuni Buddha? Or what does his life mean to you?

[30:00]

Not what it's supposed to mean, or what the books say it means, or what I just said it means, but what does it mean to you? If I have to distill one quality that it means to me, some example that I see in the historical Buddha's life, it would be one of, it would be transformation. That what really impresses me is that his whole life that this person was transforming. And that I see his life story as a life, as a story about transformation. and transformation that required practice and effort. So the fact that he was enlightened is wonderful, and the fact that he was compassionate and just beyond comprehension in terms of his being is wonderful.

[31:12]

But to me, the thing that inspires me more than any of that is the transformational aspects of that life story. Because it means that that's something that I can do. Maybe I will not realize enlightenment in my lifetime. Maybe I will not be able to live as moral a life as you did. or be as ardent as he was. But the possibility of growing, the possibility of growing is always present. And that's what I see in his life. And that's the voice that I guess that he speaks to me with.

[32:21]

So I'd be curious what your images of Buddha are and what meaning the historical Buddha has to you. Or if it has no meaning, I'd like to hear that too. That'd also be interesting. One thing I thought of while we were talking, which I've always thought had a negative feeling about, but now seems positive in some way to me, is that he didn't think women should practice and had to be convinced of this by his disciple Ananda. And what that says to me is that there is someone who can be still bound in some way by the

[33:24]

the cultural circumstances and upbringings, but still understand a really important truth and be able to offer that to people. That he wasn't omniscient and perfect in some sense, that there was some way he was still culturally grounded. At the same time, there's this amazing Can you think of anything else in his life that was like that? I don't know that much about his life. I haven't met him. Does anybody else know any mistakes he made? You? No. Obviously they're not going to play them up too much in the oral tradition, right?

[34:27]

Yeah, and then the milkmaid, I guess there was some kind of interaction, I don't know the exact circumstances, but I think that's very, that's a powerful circumstance. I don't know if, you know, is this legend or historically so, but it's an interesting piece of information. So what do you take from that? So what do you make out of that? What I understand is that in asceticism there's a continuum and it's possible to take it to an extreme. Perhaps there's even a middle way in asceticism. I didn't mention it when I was talking, but that's the middle way is a really important teaching.

[36:20]

At the point of his enlightenment, at the point of abandoning the ascetic practices and just sitting down and sitting, he really realized the middle way as being important and between extremes of overindulgence and overdeprivation. To me it's just a matter, it's an affirmation of balance. You know, what he's saying is balance. And in this particular case between indulgence and maybe repression, not repression but deprivation. But more important than that to me is just the sense of balance that he's conveying, is that be careful that You know, because we're always going off to one side or the other. And he's just saying, be careful about going off, way off to one side or the other. Always watch. Well, I really have a view of him from your talk as a teacher in a way that I hadn't before.

[37:29]

And I really appreciate what you said. It made it very accessible in his life. And I was thinking about their enlightenment of their insights. He has vast expansion. But you never know, either. Well, you never know, yes. You have children, right?

[38:30]

Yes. And there are also people that know you. You don't know exactly what you're conveying or what influence you have. I wonder if he did. What? I wonder if he did. I think he did. Yeah, thank you. Lois? When you first stopped talking, I had one thought, and listening to people, it feels like flowers have, you know, the flowers you put in water that are opening, and I could start to talk around you. So long, there's so many feelings and thoughts. The grace with which you told that story has really affected me. The thing that struck me originally, I think, is the sense of loyalty and faith that he affected me with following the path, despite the holds and temptations, that he remained loyal to whatever he perceived

[39:42]

And it's very striking. So it helps you feel a sense of faith, but what about his life did that, does that? His moving through time without letting time and space deter him from staying in touch with something more infinite. And that's what I feel pushing through, the grabbing of the immediate world, and even the vision of history kind of pulling, keeping me from feeling connected to or not connected to something that goes through all that, and the temptation So I think that ties into what you were saying about transformation.

[41:45]

We live our life in a certain way and then we discover a better way. And so it's not a mistake, it's just we discover, we make progress. Yeah, mistake is a loaded word. It's a good word, but I think you're right. That's not such a good way to use it. He took enormous risks. society at that time, even today. That's for sure. And I think the example of someone who could do that, to follow his sense of his own truth, despite what anyone might say or do or think, takes tremendous courage. I think you're bringing out the aspect of transformation is tremendously important and valuable for each of us because we're all capable of transformation and growth in our life.

[43:02]

I think that's what's in it. He extended a teaching that was remarkably free of dogma. He didn't say, and read the sutras. Wait till they come out on paper. At least. Well, the thing about the Buddha Veda, the strongest sense I get is that here is an individual who lived 2,500 years ago in a place far away from where I live and in a context. And today, when we think about the Buddha, like when you talked about, I guess, the Trikaya and the three embodiments or manifestations, and how from a person, in a place, in a particular context, Buddha is now conceived in a totally universal, incomprehensible,

[44:26]

And in some sense I feel like, well, what does an Indian aristocrat from the 5th century B.C. have to do with me? And I'm sure that as an Indian aristocrat then, my feeling is that it couldn't be that his only mistake was that women couldn't practice. Today's notions of what is virtue or what is wisdom, things about It's a task for nothing.

[45:33]

You can, you know, if you want to. But what I'm trying to say is that I wrestle with the integration of the Buddha, and how real for me is that integration. And so when you ask, well does the Buddha mean anything to you, does the historical Buddha mean anything to you, I think that then this is an absolutely astonishing accomplishment for a human being and something that really displays the magnificence of the practice.

[46:55]

Yes, yes. So, yeah. Yeah, for me the other possibility is that historical person started I grew up in a place where these Buddha figures are all over, I mean, temples and everywhere.

[48:14]

And to me, somehow, I didn't have any sort of, couldn't make any connection. I mean, it was like museum pieces or something. I don't even know this. temples of the famous ones, you know, national treasures. You know, some of them maybe I think of as a beautiful aesthetic figure, you know, and when I took Rebecca's class, I still couldn't sort of connect with some of Buddha in the original historical figure. And I was in Zen center this past summer during a session, one Zen center, and they had a beautiful rock on the altar, and I could really sort of feel that. And for me, somehow Buddha, to me, instead of 20, 50 years it started this teaching 2,500 years ago, this teaching,

[49:22]

So that was somehow evolved and traveled, I don't know, 10,000 miles across the ocean and in a continent where, which Buddha's time probably didn't exist in people's mind, still exists in Berkeley. And here you are, hooping out in this practice for one year, one of the oldest ones, right? 20 years that you've been doing that? And watching you doing the work practice, especially reading, and watching you at the session, reading how many people, 30 people doing this and that, that you're all so calm and seems to know exactly what's happening and just that. I mean, that's more to me than reading Buddha. Historical Buddha living right in front of my eyes through you, observing you, that's what it means to me. That's a very good answer. Thank you.

[50:30]

Could you put a dot on that eye on your garbage can lid? The one that says tin doesn't have a dot on the eye. I didn't. I practiced. One night I practiced. I always made a dot and I forgot. In Japanese dharma figures, in Japan, they have dharmas. The dolls? Dolls, yeah. And when you start, as a good luck, when you start a store, They come with the eyeless. And then when you succeed and you accomplish, you're supposed to fill in the eyes. It's like that. I don't know. Okay. Well, I'll remember then. Maybe six months from now.

[51:31]

Yeah, when people catch on with that, yeah. Right, yeah, when the can is full. So one more. Alan, did you have one more? What strikes me about historical Buddha and makes a distinction between this practice and others is that we're talking about a human being who was tempted as we are by all the material things around. And the teaching is so simple. It's kind of like, I think of it as like simultaneous.

[52:57]

That there is some meaning in this idealization. You can't just dismiss it as being ridiculous. There is some meaning in that. But at the same time, that's only part of it. And the other part is just the direct human quality which stumbles.

[53:16]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ