Good morning, everyone. I want to speak this morning about how Zen practice and teaching is interrelated with the way of the bodhisattvas, or awakening beings. Actually, we talk about bodhisattva practice a lot here, so this may be fairly obvious, but I think, especially for people who read Zen, books about Zen, and for a lot of Zen teaching, the relationship may not always be so obvious. And I'm happy to have a few people here this morning who've sat their first period of Zazen here. That's wonderful for all of us. But I think it's when we read books about Zen, and actually a lot of what I talk about has to do with Zen meditation, Zazen, and settling into Zazen and the aspects of Zazen.

[01:06]

Maybe I tend to talk about that more during our monthly sittings, day long or sometimes three day. but also focusing on Zen meditation practice, we settle into this space where we open up our relationship to the ultimate or to the universal aspect of this practice and of our teaching. unfold that and unfold, I hesitate to use the word enlightenment because it's so misleading, but unfold this aspect of awakening that has to do with the experience that we get in longer sittings but actually also in doing regular sittings throughout the week where we face the wall and face ourselves and unfold and deepen our relationship and understanding and

[02:18]

with understanding our real experience and physical sensation of this ultimate truth. So this is an important part of Zen teaching and Zen practice. How do we start to feel and express this deeper awareness? And also in Zen books and Zen teaching, and I also talk a lot about the old Zen stories, the koans, the sometimes enigmatic-seeming often dialogues between teachers and students. A lot of them are attributed to teachers going back to 9th century China or around there. And there are various ways to study them, and we talk about them here, not as historical artifacts, but as ways of seeing aspects of our own Zen practice, of our own relationship to awakening, of our own unfolding of awakened awareness.

[03:42]

And I think for some Zen people hearing or reading about some Zen teachings, it may not be so obvious why this is connected with the way of the Bodhisattvas. In Mahayana Buddhism, the Buddhism that developed several centuries after the Buddha lived, and that emphasizes the practice of the bodhisattva or enlightening being. And we will chant the four bodhisattva vows at the end of this morning, and we talk about that a lot, their particular practices. But I think it's not always obvious how that's related to this Zen we talk about. So just historically, of course, the Chan and Chinese or Zen and Japanese Buddhism developed in China.

[04:56]

Supposedly the founder was Bodhidharma, who's on our altar to my left side, who came from India to China. And Chan or Zen developed very much out of the teachings of Mahayana Buddhism and the aspects of Bodhisattva philosophy and practice. And it developed in a particular way in terms of emphasizing our own experiential relationship to those teachings, and also the stories, the Zen teaching stories, the koans and others, and the teaching verses that we chant on our services, usually Monday evenings. emphasize this kind of everyday expression of these bodhisattva teachings in sometimes very colloquial or colorful manner.

[06:00]

But all of this comes out of what happens in our zazen. So basically what we're about here is just giving people a chance to experience Zazen, this Zen meditation, this upright sitting in which we can face our lives and the world and stop and see what it's like to be this body and mind on a Kushner chair, now. And when we do that, One of the things that happens, and there are various aspects of Mahayana philosophy that go into the details of how this works, but also in our own experience, we start to see through our idea of the self. So we all have stories about ourself and the world, and how we see and define that.

[07:07]

But the more we sit, the more we soak in this experience of just being present and upright, this body and mind, along with all the thoughts and feelings and sensations and sometimes discomfort of this sitting practice, we start to see this deep interconnectedness. So this ultimate truth I was speaking of has to do with the fact that who we are, each of us, and collectively and our world is a product of many causes and conditions. There is no separate self sitting on your cushion or chair right now. Of course, we have stories about that and we can all probably, you know, recite our addresses and our social security numbers and various aspects of personal history. We have lots of stories about who this is sitting on a Kushner chair.

[08:14]

And yet, the more we do this practice, the more we see how tentative that is, how ephemeral that is, that everything is changing, that we are actually deeply interconnected with many beings. So as I sometimes say, right now, sitting on your cushion or chair, is everybody you've ever met. Everybody you, you know, high school and grade school teachers, friends, roommates, co-workers, in the past, former lovers or friends, family members, everybody is there, here, now, on our cushions and chairs, whether or not we're thinking about them. Who we are is impacted and interacted and appreciated by many beings. So it's impossible to identify really a separate self. On some level, of course, we recognize that conventionally each of us has separate qualities.

[09:23]

We each have particular experience and patterns of reacting and responding and personal history even and all of that. So on some level there is this separation and particularity to each of us and yet that's not ultimately true. So this upright sitting gives us this view into how there is no constant, fixed, separate self to any of us or to anything in the world, anything you point to. So, taking that wonderful example, if I hold this up, can you see the clouds? Can you see the nitrogen in the soil? Can you see the logger who cut down the tree and the trucker who drove it to the mill and then the stroller I bought the paper in? Anyway, there's, you know, and it's endless. So particularly in the Bodhisattva way, we emphasize that this non-self is not just true of me personally, or Dawn, or any of us, but actually of everything.

[10:31]

Everything is interconnected. And part of the power of this practice, and doing it regularly, and sometimes some of us doing it be all day or intensively, is that we soak in this reality and we start to really feel it in our phones and in our life. And so what is the implication of that? Going back to these koans or enigmatic teaching stories, what they're about is actually showing particular aspects of this interconnectedness and unfolding and deeper awareness, and how then we can express that, each of us in our own way. What this comes down to, though, is what we call bodhisattva practice. So Zen, even though some Zen books and some Zen teachings and teachers even may emphasize in these stories, there are often some dramatic, flashy awakening experience.

[11:42]

And in the books of intricate discussion of Mahayana philosophy or psychology, we can get deeper understandings of this. And it's not that dramatic experiences of awakening or understanding of how awakening works. It's not that there's anything wrong with that. That's not exactly the point of our practice. Those experiences and those understandings may in fact be helpful to us in our practice. But really what this practice is about, what it comes down to is, again, way of the bodhisattvas, the awakening beings, and we have various teachings about how that works. We have bodhisattva precepts, guidelines to how to conduct ourselves when we get up from our cushion and are interacting in the world.

[12:48]

And so some of you here have formally taken ceremonies to take those Bodhisattva precepts, or are preparing to do so. But all of us, as we sit, are connected with those basic precepts of turning to Buddha and Dharma and Sangha, of not killing but supporting life, of not intoxicating body and mind of self or other, but instead supporting awareness. So there are these precepts. There's also bodhisattva practices called paramitas in Sanskrit, transcendent practices. We're going to be talking about those more. We're having a two-month practice commitment period in April and May, and we'll be talking about those practices more, especially focusing on that during that time, but practices of generosity, of ethical conduct, of patience, very important, maybe the most important, of effort or enthusiasm, of meditative settling, of prajnaparamita, insider wisdom, of skillful means, of vow, of powers and using ability, and of knowledge.

[14:07]

So these are particular practices that bodhisattvas do. What this has to do with, these bodhisattva practices, is seeing how once we start to feel the way that our cherished selves are really ephemeral, are really interactive with everything else, then how do we work towards unfolding that ultimate truth of liberation, not just for us, but how do we work towards universal liberation? So that's the goal of Mahayana teaching and practice, and of Zen teaching and practice, universal liberation. So this practice is not just about you or me. Many people come to practice because they feel some need for personal peace of mind, for some settling or calming.

[15:09]

And of course, universal liberation is not separate from you. So a lot of the practice has to do with seeing our own patterns of greed, of grasping, of aversion or anger, of confusion, and working with those. witnessing that, becoming familiar, being kind to ourselves. But again, it's not just about, you're not just practicing for yourself. As you do that, as you work on your own patterns of greed, hate, and delusion, of course that helps the people around you. So there are many, many, many, many different facets of how we can express this universal liberation. And wisdom or insight in this tradition is about seeing through our self-grasping, about seeing into this deeper self, this interconnected self, this wider

[16:27]

view of self, of seeing on many, many levels how others are not separate from us. So, for the people who are close to you, family, loved ones, maybe it's very obvious that you're not separate from them. Of course, at times they may be, in fact, in our deepest relationships, we remain open to being surprised by who the so-called other person is. This is very important, but it's not that we know everything about anyone. And yet, we see that we're interrelated, we're not separate. And this practice is about seeing how that is true, not just with loved ones and family and people we work closely with, but actually beyond. And so Sangha, spiritual community, is about doing this together, interrelating together, but also how this relates to how we see our society and the world, and that we're not separate from people on the other side of the world.

[17:38]

And that's more and more obvious as we have more and more wonderful communications tools. This sense of interconnectedness, this wider view of self, is very important. But the other side of this insight, and really what brought you all here today, and when you first came here and when you first started considering spiritual practice, is not just to find some personal inner calm, peace of mind, although that's fine, but actually what we call in Buddhism compassion. So the Bodhisattva is, concerned about, this word compassion is maybe too fancy or big a word, too many syllables, I don't know, about caring, about kindness, about seeing, of course, the suffering that goes on in this world when we are caught up in separation for ourselves and for the people around us and for everyone in the world.

[18:49]

when we see the other as some demon or enemy, whatever kind of other that might be. How do we express compassion? So this is the heart of this practice. So again, there's these two sides and there are various particular Bodhisattva figures in this Bodhisattva tradition who represent aspects of this. sitting in front of the Buddha on our altars, Manjushri, the bodhisattva of insider wisdom. He's riding on a lion and carries a teaching scepter, and sometimes he carries a sword to cut through delusion. So he's the spirit of insight and awareness and penetrating vision. But we also have the bodhisattva of compassion on both sidewalls. There are images of her who we sometimes chant to, the Bodhisattva who sees the suffering of the world.

[19:57]

So we need both sides. We need to stop and sit and be present and see how it is that this body and mind is. Not our idea of it, but what's actually going on. sensations of hot or cold, the pain in our leg or our back or whatever, the thoughts and feelings and perplexity about the problems in your life this week or this lifetime that arise as you sit in meditation. But also this spirit of caring, of kindness, of generosity that is represented by the Bodhisattva of Compassion. So naturally, when we start to see how we are interconnected with others, with particular others in our life, the people we live with or work with or family members and so forth, but even people we don't necessarily know who are in line with us at the grocery store or waiting for a bus or we pass on the street, we're connected with them.

[21:09]

How do we respond with kindness? And this doesn't mean just, you know, give it. So this word compassion is, again, sort of too sticky almost. We might think of it as, you know, oh, I have to sacrifice myself for others. So I think maybe the English word charity gets more towards that. But the spirit of giving is also not separate. So when we see how connected we are with others, trying to be helpful to others and kind to others, it's not about being unkind to yourself. We see that this wider self, this deeper self, includes me and includes each of you and everyone else. We are connected. And maybe when you first hear this, it's just some philosophy.

[22:13]

But during the sitting practice, we start to feel this, actually, in our bones. We see that we're not separate, isolated beings. Part of seeing that is recognizing that sometimes we feel that way. Of course, sometimes we feel separate and alienated. The fact that we can feel this way is the root of suffering in this world. We think we're separate and we think, you know, sometimes people can think that they have to do unto others before they do unto them. We do start to think that way. It's available. But as we open ourselves to this wider, deeper self that each of us is, we see that helping others is not separate from helping ourselves.

[23:13]

And helping ourselves is not separate from helping others. So when we have some problem in our own particular life, we need to take care of that too. The whole point is that we care about the quality of our life and the quality of our world and the difficulties of our friends and family members. And then it's very easy to have some judgmental mind and be critical. But actually, when we settle more and more deeply into how deeply we are interconnected, it's not then a matter of, oh, look at all these persons, this person's faults, or whatever, or I've got to oppose that person, or whatever. We see, oh, we're all kind of stuck in this together. And so this practice actually with all the funny teaching stories or koans that I like to talk about and I work with sometimes with students. And all the aspects of sitting meditation and settling and all the different various possible meditation objects and modes of meditation that support us to just sit.

[24:28]

All of this is about how do we unfold our caring in the world. in this life. So this means being more and more intimate and friendly, each in our own way, with people and beings around us, but also with the people and beings sitting on your own cushion or chair right now. How do we... It's not about fixing things. I mean, sometimes we can fix something, great, do it, that's fine. But how do we actually be willing to settle into facing ourselves? Not running away from ourselves. Not running away from the problems we have with

[25:29]

something in the world or something that a friend or family member is doing that feels harmful to us, may be harmful to themselves. So the practice, again, goes far beyond some flashy, dramatic opening experience or even some deep understanding of the dynamics of awakened mind, all of which may be helpful, but how do we more and more fully and skillfully just express that we care about this life, this world, the beings we care about. To open ourselves to our caring is compassion. And again, we emphasize this upright sitting because it gives us a kind of, you say, we emphasize posture, but really this gives us a posture and an attitude and approach to how we interact with ourselves and beings in the world when we see these difficulties, when we see the effects of the sense of separation in ourselves or others.

[26:50]

So sitting, we kind of become more and more intimate with ourselves and with our own processes. So in some ways this is a practice about becoming more friendly with yourself, forgiving yourself for being a human being. We all have, in addition to this wonderful awakened Buddha nature that's available to all of us now, we all have our own patterns of grasping and anger and confusion. And the sitting practice is about just facing that. So we sit facing the wall, but really we're facing ourselves. Thoughts and feelings arise. We don't try and get rid of them. We don't try and do anything with them, just let them go. And be kind. So these particular bodhisattva practices like generosity, or the dynamic practice of patience or tolerance, or enthusiasm, or developing skillful means, which is a very kind of intuitive, immediate practice, or our practice of vow or commitment, all of these particular practices help us to be able to express our kindness and caring.

[28:17]

for ourselves and for the world and to see that they're not separate. And when we feel separation, which we do, how do we be kind to that? It's so easy to think of somebody over there as being a problem or causing harm. Well, maybe some people are causing harm, but then how do we see that we're part of that? How do we respond to them in a way that helps them to see their own activity. So what I'm talking about today may be fairly obvious to many of you who've been practicing for a while, but I think sometimes it's not so obvious how this sitting practice is connected to compassion and bodhisattva practices. So maybe that's enough for me to say now.

[29:29]

Part of what we do here is talk together. So if anyone has comments, questions, responses, about anything, related to this in any way, which is everything, please feel free. Jeremy? I feel like even if you have heard this teaching a million times, it's always good to hear it again. It's such an important teaching. Yeah, part of Zen teaching is repetition. Philip Whale, a great teacher in our lineage and also a well-known beat poet, used to say, it's not boring, it's not Buddhism. Well, another way to talk about that, though, is that doing the same thing and hearing the same teachings over and over and over again, we're never exactly in the same place.

[30:37]

So we can feel like it's boring, but also we can see things afresh. And a very important part of the meditation is to see exactly the freshness and uniqueness and rawness and tenderness of this next breath of this moment. When we see that, we are open to caring. Hey, Shin. Thank you very much. And I have been thinking about what you're talking about lately within the context of that line from, now I can't remember where it's from, but let go. hundreds of years and relax completely. A song on the grass hut, yes. A song on the grass hut, thank you. And I've been thinking about how, and sort of told someone this, so I want to see if this is really true, that part of what we do in Zazen is relax with our experience and learning to relax with our experience and our difficult feelings and our feeling that we've got to do something about this right now.

[31:43]

And it's the relaxing that maybe allows for other possibilities to emerge. Yeah. So we relax into our experience. And when we do that, we may have, yes, we may find new ways of actually taking care of or responding to circumstances and situations that we are involved with. But yeah, this practice, you know, that may sound funny, because if you walk into this room and see all these people sitting upright, it looks like they're very, you know, we're all very stoic and stern. But really, it's a practice of just relaxing completely. And part of that comes from being willing to just sit upright and not move. If you have to, that's okay, but just sit upright and just remain seated and keep breathing and be willing to pay attention. And yeah, so please relax completely. Yes, Jo?

[32:46]

I've just been reading some things about ecology this past week, And as you were speaking, I realized how incredibly farsighted the early Buddhists were in realizing how interconnected everything is, all the organisms, the earth. It was just amazing. Yeah, I think Buddhist teaching and the deeper view of Buddhist compassion is very relevant to how we see our environment and the ecology. and how we find ways to respond to all of the damage that's happening now. Thank you. Joanne. What I find confusing about the Bodhisattva concept is it seems like some of these beings were of this world and some were not.

[33:57]

And so, can you maybe talk about that a little bit? What do you mean by this world? Oh. Well, the one we live in. Where do you live? Now I'm not sure. Good. Sometimes what's very helpful to compassion is not knowing. When we have a strong sense of certainty about what the world is, and who we are, and who some other person is, that's when we get stuck in separation. To be open to... So, you asked about the Bodhisattva figures. The Bodhisattva exists in various different ways. So we can talk about bodhisattva activity in terms of the activity of anybody in this room in a past week towards caring and kindness, towards generosity.

[35:03]

But there are particular bodhisattva beings. Now, if you meant they're historical beings, if that's what you meant by this world, well, Manjushri and and the Bodhisattva of Compassion are sort of sometimes described as cosmic Bodhisattvas. So they exist, and I talk about them in my book Faces of Compassion, as archetypal figures. They represent some aspect of spiritual reality that different beings in different cultures at different times have connected with. So they ask, they represent different approaches towards how to express this bodhisattva caring and compassion and insight. And do they exist in this world? Well, yeah, they exist in this world, but they're not, and they may exist in aspects of people walking down Irving Park Road or in this room now. And sometimes they exist as particular great beings who are very helpful to many beings.

[36:11]

But, you know, in Asia, more of the Bodhisattva ideas is not some glorified, you know, being like Mother Teresa or Martin Luther King, but just ordinary, everyday folks expressing kindness. Us, doing Bodhisattva. So each of you here, now, just by virtue of being here, even if this was your first time here, is doing Bodhisattva, is involved in Bodhisattva practice. Just hitting Sazen is to be part of Zen Buddhism or Mahayana Buddhism, is to be involved in Bodhisattva practice. We have, each of us, some relationship to generosity and ethical conduct and dynamic patience and energy or enthusiasm and so forth. But these archetypal Bodhisattva figures, we can see them working in the world, we can see them working in ourselves, Some of them have, some historical beings in Asia have been seen as incarnations.

[37:17]

The Dalai Lama who's coming to Chicago in a couple months or so is considered formally in his tradition as being an incarnation of the Bodhisattva of Compassion. So there are people like that. But how they are in this world is a question. to look at how they are in our life and in the people around us. How this caring and compassionate insight and meditative settling and skillfulness, how those bodhisattva qualities are in the world around us is important to look at. So there are many things that are dreadful about the current world situation and our country's situation and the damage to the environment and so forth. And yet, at the same time, there are many beings who are expressing caring and kindness and working in all kinds of different ways.

[38:25]

So each of us has our own way of expressing this. And a huge part of Zen practice is So I actually don't care if any of you are Buddhists or not. It doesn't really matter to me. My job is just to encourage each of you to, in your own way, find your way, a dynamic way, of expressing yourself in this context of bodhisattva awareness and kindness. So thank you for your question. Other questions or comments? You folks, too, feel free. Douglas? This has always seemed to me one of the key things that keeps Buddhism from just being sort of a therapeutic exercise, where we try to sit on the mat and feel better. As we relax and practice waking up, being awake in this moment, or being awake in our activity,

[39:30]

sort of the enclosed self-absorption drops away. And as we're here in this moment, the sense of separation dissolves in a way. And we find ourselves with others as an us and not without any thems. And that sense of closeness and intimacy with other people, I think, is important because I think everyone's had the experience of being face-to-face with people suffering. There's a response that's called from you. You can't help but respond to that. And it's not just, gee, I feel your pain. It's, what can I do to help you? And I think that's part of what happens here. When we wake up and other people become us, It's almost like family.

[40:32]

If there's nobody there, we can never say, well, you're dead to me. You can have violent arguments with other people, but you can never just write them off. And I think that's the difference between this being your call to a way of living in the world rather than just sitting on a cushion and feeling better. That's certainly something that is Thank you, Douglas. Well said. And yeah, an important part of the Bodhisattva idea is never abandoning beings. Any beings. So even people who are doing things that I think are incredibly damaging to the world or to some other person, there's some possibility of them realizing this and seeing a different perspective. I believe that. I may oppose somebody's, try and stop somebody from causing harm, but it's not that they are evil in the Bodhisattva way.

[41:42]

It's everyone has this capacity to awaken and express kindness. It's a very radical idea, actually. But it comes out of the reality of our experience of interconnectedness. Dawn? Well, then, with what you're saying, Is your bodhisattva or our bodhisattva practice free to help them, or how do you help? Exactly. Exactly. How do we help? That's the question. And sometimes there's nothing to do, which is why I say patience is maybe the most important practice. Sometimes we see somebody causing harm. We see somebody acting like a jerk or causing harm to themselves or others, and there's nothing to do. Or we can't see what to do. And so the practice then is paying attention. So part of this sitting practice is learning to sit with confusion, with physical pain sometimes, with anger, fear, frustration.

[42:50]

desire, grasping, craving, to just keep sitting and be still and upright and relaxed in the middle of all of that. When we have that, as we allow this practice to unfold in our lives, we then have the capacity to pay attention to somebody who's causing harm. So patience is not passive, and this practice is not passive. actually using our awareness to see when is it that I can actually hold out a hand and do something that might help them to see. It might help them to modify what they're doing. It might help us to see what they're doing in a different way, which might help us to see whatever fear is motivating them, to help us to see our connectedness with someone we think is causing harm. And sometimes there's nothing we can do, but we can always pay attention. and then be ready and willing to respond when there is something that might be helpful.

[43:52]

This is a very challenging practice, and yet this is about facing reality and facing our deepest self and the reality of this world. And so it's necessary to be kind to yourself and be patient and when sometimes in this practice people see their own limitations and feel bad about it, but actually to be kind to our own limitations as well as those of others is very important as part of this. So this breathing and this practice of tolerance or patience is very important. Roy? Yeah, this discussion of what you just said, and you said before about Sometimes it's okay to know something, it might be helpful. I seem better at not knowing than knowing. Talking about how we're creating kind of an us or a we rather than a lot of thems out there, does all of this in some regard come back to what Ishin was talking about

[45:02]

we're able to relax that identity of ourselves, of our schtick that we carry forward, we relax that need to know so that we're able to see reality a bit better, see maybe how we're part of the block between ourselves and others and how much of it is related to that sort of relaxing into place. Yes, all of that. I would say also relaxing our sense of trying to be in control because You know, part of how each of us got through adolescence is learning to take care of our life and stuff around us and have some control over some things. But our impetus to fixing things, controlling things, sometimes we can, and that's fine. And there's some people who are extremely skillful, and probably most of you are very skillful in certain areas, and that's great. to develop skills is good, but if we get caught in our sense of trying to control things, that causes a lot of suffering.

[46:13]

So how can we meet the situation beyond our idea or expectation of what's going on? I'm enjoying the discussion, but I just, you know, it made me think about the interactive process and the relaxing into becoming more aware. A literal example, I think of, you know, I'm downtown during the week and on the sidewalk where I work, there's a lot of offices and a lot of elderly people. or people who are not moving very fast because they've had injuries. And sometimes I find myself walking very fast and zooming by them. And I know that when I'm walking slow, I feel crowded when people are walking fast and crowd me. And sometimes I've found myself witnessing somebody else walk very fast close by, somebody who's struggling a little bit and I'm frowning.

[47:21]

And then it makes me more aware, and then at other times I find myself sometimes being frowned at, or being aware that I just crowded somebody in my mindless kind of, in my own world, going where I'm going, oblivious to people around me. So there's something about that, that is picking up cues from other people, as well as our awareness of other people, which I think also helps us be more aware of ourselves. Yes. So part of the forms that we have for moving around in the meditation hall are about that too. How do we harmonize together? So part of this practice of caring that we've been talking about is exactly, and being in a situation where it's very crowded and we feel that, and there's different people moving at different paces, is a wonderful opportunity to develop this joyful harmony.

[48:22]

It's actually good for our practice. And Kathy brings this up because her name is Joyful Harmony. And so, yeah, that's the practice of this. How do we find our way of, in a relaxed way, being in context and interacting in whatever situation?

[48:45]

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