General description of the sixteen Bodhisattva precepts and a Bodhisattva. Description of the three levels of precepts: the literal, the compassionate, and the koan level.

Zen PreceptsTalk One

(Transcribed and Abridged by RyusenBarbara Byrum)

I am feeling a little overwhelmed because sometime ago I casually said that I would speak about the sixteen Boddhisattva precepts at the sesshin, and it was so long ago, but now here it is, and I am thinking what an enormous task this is! During zazen this morning a thought crossed my mind: how deep and wide the precepts are and how much has been thought and spoken and taught about them over the generations. So how am I going to say anything useful in three short talks? It is an awesome and daunting assignment. But as is the case with life, one goes cheerfully on and does the best one can do in the circumstances.

 

Last night in our period of zazen, I asked all of you to do your best, to sit diligently and with a strong seriousness of purpose and with heart. Our practice isn’t really about doing it right or even about some technique about being alert or aware. Rather, it is about embracing and being embraced by our life, completely entering our life, completely immersing ourselves, occupying fully our lives. When you fully embrace your life, fully occupy the life that you have been given, it is very clear that your life isn’t just your life. The small life that we all think that we have – I was born here, I did such and such a thing, I married or did not marry – all of that does not cover the life that you are really living when you are living your life. If you will sit with full intensity, intimately being body and mind, you will come to recognize what your life actually is. It is just this and being just is. Really it is ungraspable and is all mixed up with the timelessness of time and the spacelessness of space and with the everywhere effective love which is the force that allows life to be life.

 

This is why it is natural to talk about precepts during sesshin, because it is only through immersion in our zazen practice that we can really appreciate the essence and meaning of the sixteen great Boddhisattva precepts. For Zen practitioners of our way, all of us are bodhisattvas in training. Bodhisattvas mean “enlightening beings”, those beings who work enthusiastically, naively, innocently for the enlightenment of all sentient beings, no matter how long it takes or the difficulty, cheerfully going forward with this impossible project, like the man of La Mancha in the impossible dream.

 

Bodhisattvas, as you also no doubt know, are inspired by the sudden flash of inspiration that bursts into their lives, which in Buddhism is called bodhicitta, the sudden flash of awakening, the opening of the door of enthusiasm and effort. With bodhicitta lighting up our lives, we make effort everyday to be in solidarity with and in communion with all sentient beings. All of our everyday activity is in solidarity and communion with all sentient beings, even brushing our teeth and going to the toilet. When we are brushing our teeth, we are cleaning all the teeth that ever were. That is our vision and understanding of a bodhisattva’s activity.

 

 

Traditionally it is said that there are three kinds of bodhisattvas: the kings, the boatmen, and the shepherds. Kings are the bodhisattvas who work for enlightenment so that after their own enlightenment they can help all sentient beings. The boatman bodhisattvas get all sentient beings into a boat, and together with them, ferry across the ocean of suffering and pain to the other side. The shepherd bodhisattvas first make sure that all the flock is safe, and then they go last. So that is our practice, the shepherd bodhisattva practice. It is the spirit of the shepherd, guiding others across, and then going last, that is the main spirit of the sixteen bodhisattva precepts, the spirit of humility and loving-kindness for others.

 

Our tradition of Soto Zen is actually very esoteric. At the same time, it is also very ordinary. On the one hand, the sixteen bodhisattva precepts are simply the way to live – an ordinary, common sense code of conduct, just the way we take care of each other and ourselves on a daily basis. Any person would understand that it is common sense not to lie, to steal, or to speak unkindly of others. The sixteen bodhisattva precepts are human common sense to be kind to others and to live a life that is sane and peaceful. But also in Soto Zen, the sixteen bodhisattva precepts are simultaneously understood as the deepest mystery of the Buddha’s heart. The sixteen bodhisattva precepts are understood as the ultimate, ineffable truth. In our tradition, the most profound of all esoteric rituals is the dharma transmission ceremony, which occurs after many, many years of study and training, in secret and private, in the abbot’s room, literally in the middle of the night. What is transmitted in that ceremony is the secret, ineffable essence of the sixteen bodhisattva precepts. At that time the disciple learns the secret truths which I will now tell you (since it is not really that secret): the life blood that runs through the veins of the Buddhas and ancestors is the lifeblood of sixteen bodhisattva precepts. This is the essence that flows through the bodies of these Buddhas, and is passed down, one to another, to the present. So the precepts are the actual blood lineage of the Buddhas.

 

Precepts transcend space and time and are beyond our capacity to understand them. We spend a lifetime, maybe even many lifetimes, and still we are unable to exhaust their wonderful meaning. And yet the mystery is that at the same time they are also a manifestation of ordinary acts of human kindness that light up our lives. That is the wonderful mystery of our tradition.

The sixteen bodhisattva precepts are more than rules to live by. They really are the essence of the practice. Our practice is not about meditation or insight. It is about conduct, how we live. How do we conduct ourselves on a moment-by-moment basis? How do we conduct ourselves in relation to our own precious life and to the lives of those around us?

 

There is a Zen saying, “Pick up a speck of dust and the whole world comes with it.” And that is how we approach our conduct. Each of our acts, even an act such as brushing our teeth or going to the toilet, has immense dimensions and immense repercussions. So we approach all the moments of our lives with respect and reverence, doing our best.

We ask, “How can we know what to do in the great scope of things? How could we ever know the effects of our actions?” But eventually we do know through our sitting practice, day by day, retreat by retreat. For those of you new to our practice, I am sorry to say it is not a short term arrangement. I wish I could say, “Weekend retreat, no problem. After that, everything will be okay.” It isn’t like that. Life isn’t like that. If there were something like that other than our practice, I would be there before you! I am always ready to find such a thing, but so far I haven’t seen anything. I haven’t seen any way other than effort over time.

 

 

When you do make effort over time, you find, little by little, there is a rock solid sense of confidence in our life as Buddha’s life, in Buddha’s life welling up through our life. We do know that good actions lead to good results and bad actions will bring bad results. We have an unshakeable confidence in this, and a commitment to doing good and letting go of bad actions of body, speech, and mind; because we know that they will bring suffering. We know that in this process the precepts are a good guide and inspiration.

 

 

The older you get, it is clearer to see how hard it is to know what is good and what is bad. When you are young, you know exactly what is good and bad! But we have a commitment to understand in the present moment what is good and to trust that things will work out at they need to. Sometimes, something that seemed to be good in the short run turns out to be an utter disaster. Sometimes, something that seemed utterly disastrous turns out to be good. (This is especially good to remember when you are thinking about politics.)

 

We know that certainly we will break the precepts. Despite our intentions, we won’t be able to do good all the time. We may break them in small or big ways, but our commitment is to recognize this, and to let go of our sense of righteousness of our conduct, and to try to do better. There is never any need in working with the precepts to feel guilty, worried, uptight, or upset. Each moment we ask what is the best way to conduct ourselves. Because we know how difficult it is to live the life of the bodhisattva precepts, we are tolerant of ourselves and especially tolerant of others. The sixteen bodhisattva precepts are not external rules. They are not something objective or outside of us. They are human words and concepts to describe the shape of Buddha’s mind, which is formless.

 

 

So we don’t ever look at someone else and see if they are breaking any precepts. From the standpoint of the sixteen bodhisattva precepts, this is the most outlandish idea. It is unthinkably ridiculous! Sometimes within ourselves we may feel that we are breaking precepts. But there is no condemning others. And there is no condemning oneself. Sometimes it may be necessary to be strict with yourself or maybe even with others, but the strictness is motivated by loving kindness. There isn’t any sense of righteousness. It is like the mother of a little child. The child may run into a busy street thinking how fun it is, but the mother becomes very fierce and strict. She doesn’t say, “Do you mind not going in the street?” She is grabbing the child, pulling the child back almost violently, not because she is angry and condemning the child, but because she understands from her wider view that this is a matter of real danger. We are always like little children doing things in acts of body, speech, and mind that are dangerous and harmful. So we have to be a child and also our own mother to help ourselves and others.

 

There are three levels of understanding or approaching the sixteen precepts. The first is the literal or everyday understanding of the precept. So, for instance, the first precept, “Don’t kill”, literally means don’t kill anything, not even a bug. This also means in the psychological sense, don’t diminish anyone, don’t take away anyone’s confidence. Be harmless. Have a spirit of nurturing life.

 

 

The second of the three levels is compassion. We recognize that the network of causality in this world is wide and subtle. Nothing is linear or one dimensional. So sometimes not to kill one thing is to kill something else. Not to break a precept this way is to break a precept that way. So we are stuck because of this network of causality. There is no way that we can be pure. For instance, we all have to eat in order to live, and we have to kill something in order to eat. If we decided to kill nothing, we would be killing ourselves. You may think if you don’t eat living creatures, such as fowl or flesh, that you aren’t killing anything, and that’s its okay to kill a vegetable because they don’t mind, but there is no production of vegetables without killing. A senior student who worked on the organic farm at our temple in Green Gulch once gave a talk about the precept of not killing. He described the things that he had inadvertently killed that morning, like crushing birds’ nests, while doing his work. So if you eat, you cannot escape breaking a precept.

 

So the motivation when we have to break precepts is always compassion. Some of you may think that we have too many rules: stand this way, move that way. But the purpose of the rules is to harmonize our activity together, so after we practice together, our lives flow together as if we were one person: sitting, standing, walking, eating. Kindness and compassion in the unity of our being together is the purpose of these rules. Since the purpose of the rules, as with the sixteen precepts, is to manifest kindness, it would be more important to be kind to one another than to enforce a precept. To practice perfect conduct without kindness is to break the precept of compassion. So it doesn’t matter how you do the practices, as long as your spirit is good. We allow people to break any of the rules out of kindness.

 

So compassion is the second level of the precepts: breaking the precepts in kindness for the purpose of kindness.

When you really get down to it, as close and intimate as a human beings can, you see that life and death are truly indivisible. Life and death is one word, one thing. There isn’t any life without death. Time passes. Every moment we die to that moment. There is no death at the end of a lifetime when we enter what is conventionally called death. We are entering timeless time, beyond time. We are entering the everlasting life which is never distant from us. This is the ultimate understanding of our life. This is the ultimate flavor of every moment of our conduct.

 

The third level of precepts is the mysterious, ineffable level: the koan level. In his commentary to the first great precept, Banjan says,

“Living and dying are not before or after. Just not taking life is manifesting the whole works. When we understand that life is the manifestation of the whole works, the words ‘to kill’ and ‘not to kill’ are used as they are understood in the world. When the three worlds are only mind, all things have true marks, and to kill and not to kill are beyond their literal meaning. This is what is meant by just one vehicle, or one indestructible, brilliant, precious precept. In all versions of the Mahayana precepts, not killing is found. Each instance of not to kill is not with reference to beginning and end, but is just not to kill. Not to kill is mind only. Not to kill is the three worlds. Not to kill is sentient beings. Not to kill is not to kill. Not to kill is one precept. Not to kill is ten precepts. This understanding in the meaning of maintaining Buddha’s precepts. Besides this, do not expect any other result.”

 

That is the kind of understanding that is expressed on the ultimate level. What this means is to see that life and death are truly indivisible. Life and death is one thing. There isn’t any life without death. This means that time passes. Every moment we die to that moment. At the end of life, we do not enter what is conventionally called death; we enter time beyond time, the everlasting life. And ultimately this everlasting life is never distant from us. This is the ultimate understanding of our life. This is the ultimate flavor of every moment of our conduct.

 

 

At this ultimate level the sixteen Bodhisattva precepts disappear. Buddha’s life shining everywhere is all there is. On the ultimate level we are following the precepts without any sense of constraint. There is no sense of following precepts. We are easily and joyfully living our life as Buddha’s life, unimpeded, with kindness welling up.

Talking about levels is unfortunate because it sounds like these three levels are different things. When you say levels, it sounds like the low, medium, and high level, and the ultimate level is bigger and better than the other levels. We are all striving to get to the ultimate level, and it sounds like we are all just fooling around at the literal level to get there. But looking at it like that is not only incorrect, it is also terribly dangerous. There are not three levels. The literal level is the ultimate level. We just have different ways of talking about it. The only way that the ultimate level could manifest in the world in which we live is in the literal, everyday level. The ultimate level is here, not far away. If you think the ultimate level is something over and beyond the literal level, this does not mean you are seeing the ultimate level. It means you are stuck in your head. You are stuck in concepts. So, please don’t mistake this. It is a very important point.

So we never go beyond the literal, everyday level. There are no advanced students here. No one goes beyond the simple daily acts. No one goes beyond the literal level of non killing, non stealing, and non intoxication. We are always paying loving attention to all the moments of our lives. So it is not that the ultimate level is beyond the literal level, it simply helps us to see the depth involved in the literal everyday moments of our lives. Each moment of our conduct cuts through this world into the endless realms beyond.

Discussion of the first three precepts: I take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha

Zen Precepts Talk Two

The sixteen Boddhisattva precepts are really at the center of our practice. The word “Zen” actually means meditation, and especially in a sesshin there is an emphasis on meditation practice, on zazen, so much so that one might think that zazen is the center of our practice. This is true, but what is zazen? Zazen is really the sixteen Boddhisattva precepts and the sixteen Boddhisattva precepts are really zazen. Zazen has a big, wide meaning and is not understood just as meditation practice. Zen practice started with the redefinition and expansion of what meditation practice really is. We do have to pay attention to our meditation practice, to our breath, but in the end, we understand that the container of zazen is much bigger than that. Zazen is conduct on the most profound level. Zazen is the sixteen Boddhisattva precepts. It is the understanding of embracing and being embraced by our life. Zazen is really the complete saturation in our life. So, it is no good to worry how your zazen is going – “Am I doing it right? Am I doing it wrong?” Definitely make effort and evaluate how you are doing, but the big picture is, as Dogen says, just to take this seat as Buddha’s activity. Just to sit down is already Buddha’s activity.

It is very interesting that Dogen, who so powerfully stressed the literal, actual, physical posture of zazen, did not practice at the end of his life what we would call zazen. When he was dying, he was exactly my age, which is not young, but which is not old for dying. When he recognized that he was dying, he did not do zazen day and night. He took three pieces of paper, and wrote a character on each piece of paper, and posted them on the pillars of his room. He continuously circumambulated his room and chanted the three characters: “Buddha, Dharma, Sangham”.

This all sounds so religious, and no one is more aware of the many pitfalls of religion than I. Religious enthusiasm is great, feels good, is inspiring, but one should be careful. It is good not to be coerced by my or anyone else’s enthusiasm in taking refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangham. It is good to just listen, and let it come and go. Take your time with it, evaluate it, be careful. Let it ripen and mature in you, and if it does, slowly, and in a grounded way. Nowadays I practice with different people in all kinds of ways. A lot of the people with whom I work most closely in the dharma are not even Buddhists at all. It makes absolutely no difference. So, religious feeling has to be grounded in human feeling, and it should never be in violation of kindness and common sense. The test is that religious feeling should unite you with others, not just with your co religionists in the dharma, but with everyone that you meet, and you should feel a sense of union. The sense of union is the real religious feeling.

Many people come to practice, to meditation thinking it will help their lives. And actually that is a true motivation. I think that you should feel that it benefits you and helps your life, and if it doesn’t benefit you, give it up and find something else. However, the real benefit is not that you feel better, because that’s not enough. In the end, the real help is that you can go beyond your personal needs and appreciate that your life is bigger than the personal. Human beings want and need to feel that we belong to the world, that we belong to each other, that we belong to ourselves, that we possess our own lives. This is the deepest human desire, I think. This is the horizon of what is possible for us as human beings. So, we start out thinking that a little meditation would be nice; it will make us feel good. But I warn you newcomers, it is kind of sneaky, it kind of sneaks up on you. After a while of meditation, you end up joining, loving, and being responsible for everything, which is a tall order. It is a wonderful and ultimately satisfying way of life, but not necessarily easy.

It is often said that the sixteen Boddhisattva precepts really boil down to one precept: I take refuge in Buddha. If you really appreciate the meaning of “I take refuge in the Buddha”, then all the other precepts naturally flow from it.

So now I want to talk about the first three precepts: I take refuge in the three jewels: Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, but especially “I take refuge in the Buddha”. In the Pali language, the word sarana means refuge, protection, or shelter. “Refuge” is especially a good translation because in Latin re fugere means “to fly back.” Taking refuge means to fly back home, flying back to our ancient, true home, the place we really belong. As we say in Zen, returning to our true nature is to take refuge in Buddha. That is who we most truly and deeply are. To take refuge in Buddha is to recognize this true home, and to return to it over and over again as the primary commitment of our lives. This idea of return is really important. In the Surangama sutra, the word “return” is used as a technical term to mean the mind seeing through its own projections, and resting in emptiness: the endless, timeless, potential of all things. There is a wonderful Wang Wei poem that says something like, “I follow the stream back to its source and watch the clouds pile up.” So when you can turn the mind around, returning it to the source, so that it is no longer grasping anything on the inside or outside, this is the effort we make in our zazen practice.

In Judaism, there is the same idea of returning, and of course in Judaism it is returning to God. During the high holidays in the fall, everyone talks about turning the mind, turning the heart around, letting go of our entanglements, and allowing the mind to rest in its true shelter and protection, the only thing that is reliable: our true heart and our true nature.

So, that is what we mean by taking refuge in Buddha. If you are a Zen student, you might want to take refuge in Buddha, the myth and the symbol that we call Shakyamuni Buddha. Personally I like Shakyamuni Buddha a lot. I think he was a good teacher and an inspiring image of religious practice – steady, serene, modest, wise. But the real taking refuge in Buddha goes beyond Buddha. Buddha himself took refuge in Buddha. To truly take refuge in Buddha is a continual commitment and never ending process. To take refuge in Buddha is to find a true, lasting protection and security, as everything in the world is unreliable. Only taking refuge in Buddha, God, or whatever you want to call it, is reliable. The reason that Buddha or God is reliable is because it isn’t anything. The Buddha is nothing that you can point to and say, “That’s it.” Nothing that you could know or possess or indicate would be it, because it includes and is beyond everything. To take refuge in the Buddha is to take refuge in the essential nature of existence as it really is, beyond projection and desire, the coming and going, the arising and passing away, the forming and unforming of life, death – like clouds in the sky. This is the only thing that you can count on. If you have confidence in this, you can have confidence in everything. You can have confidence in yourself, although your body and mind are unreliable. You can have confidence in others, no matter who they are or what they do. You do not expect anything, so you can really trust everything. Your life is a trusting life when you take refuge in Buddha, and trust is the magic of our lives.

In the Buddhist sense, dharma means the Buddhist teachings, sutras, and sangha means the community of practitioners. In Zen we understand sangha to include not only all practitioners, but also the net of causality that embraces everything that is…all beings, tiles, pebbles, rock, grasses. To embrace all life as our own life, and not to see our life as separate, our thoughts being inside and most things being outside, to embrace all that as our own life is to take refuge in sangha.

The dharma is also the same, because the teachings are the pattern of what is. The mountain, the cloud, the grass, the trees…all of it is speaking the dharma. We see a bird fly by, and we can’t even express the awesome beauty, because it is not just the bird flying by, it is the feeling of the rightness of just that moment, the pattern of all that is. We shouldn’t be disappointed in ourselves if we forget all this, because that is how life is: we forget. Life is so perfect and so utterly right all the time, and at the same time, so tragically messed up. Other people can be so bothersome and so disappointing. People can be counted on, like we ourselves, to be fear driven, to act not from their best selves. We shouldn’t be upset by this. This is normal because we regularly forget who we are. One has only to read the daily newspaper to see the consequences of our forgetting who we are.

So we need to return, to turn around, to remind ourselves and each other of what is really important. And we need Buddha and good teachers who can connect us to our awakened nature, which we are now and always have been and always will be, even after our lives are done. We need teachings, dharma, reminders of ways to return, encouragement to return, and we need sangha, the community of friends with whom we can share our life and our practice. They are buddies who say, “You wake me up and I will wake you up.”

I think Suzuki Roshi once said, “Practice is rowing a leaky boat out into the middle of the ocean and sinking.” I might have made that up, but I think he said that! So to take refuge in Buddha, dharma, and sangha is just like that: rowing a leaky boat out into the middle of the ocean and sinking. When you are out in the ocean in a little boat, the ocean is so vast. You can see only a small part of the ocean, but you have a feeling that what you see is really, really big. You can see the waves, sometimes big, sometimes small, but you cannot see how deep it is, but you know that it is deep. Sitting in your little boat can seem scary and lonely. So the only thing you can do is to fall in love with the ocean. And then you know that you come from the ocean and go back to the ocean. You don’t mind. Plus, you have a few friends in the boat with you. Together you can row the boat and enjoy the wind and the sky and the ocean. That is my idea of taking refuge in the Triple Treasure.

You don’t have to be a Buddhist to take refuge in the Triple Treasure. You don’t have to take any special ceremonies or vows, but we all have to come to this in our hearts. I really feel, after a long time contemplating this, that everything that is really worthwhile in our lives: birth, death, love, commitment, work, community, enjoyment, suffering, understanding, wonder, all of these things flow from this source of refuge and the true heart. So, I think it is really important that we need to think about this, but more than thinking about this, we need some means of practice, a way to evoke this in our lives, something that becomes real and not just a feeling that it is a good idea that we heard one day. To shape it into something that really grounds our life as a reality takes steady committed practice.

 

Norman discusses his relationship with his teacher, Sojun Weitsman. The remaining thirteen precepts are discussed: the three bodhisattva precepts, which are called the three pure precepts, and the ten grave precepts.

Zen Precepts Talk Three

(Transcribed and Abridged by Barbara Byrum)

Before leaving for this retreat, I knew that I would be gone for a week, so I decided to look through my mail. There was a newsletter from the Berkeley Zen Center that had in it a talk by my teacher Sojun Weitzman, and even though I just glanced at it, it seemed so wonderful that I threw it in my briefcase and brought it with me. Since his talk is brief and since it is á propos of what I was speaking about yesterday, taking refuge in the Triple Treasure, I thought I would read it to you today.

Those of you who know me well know that I rarely speak about my teacher, and I don’t know why that is because I think of him often. I remember when I first met him, I looked up the Berkeley Zen Center in the phone book, and I went there and saw him raking leaves in front of the building. I thought he was the gardener, and I said to him, “Who is the roshi here?” He said, “There is no roshi, just a priest.” Only later I realized that he was the priest. When thinking about this, I realized that is why I really don’t like the term “roshi”, and I don’t use the term when talking about myself, because I don’t consider myself a roshi. I am just a priest. There have been meetings of Western dharma teachers to consider terms like roshi, and it turns out that I’m qualified: I just want you to know! Here are the qualifications according to American Soto Zen: you have to be over fifty years old, which I am; you have to have received dharma transmission and been a fully ordained priest for ten years, which I have done; you have to have trained students and trained a student as head monk, which I have also done. So I could be a roshi, but I am not; I am just a priest. The funny thing is that now my teacher uses the term roshi. But I figure that there are already too many roshis out there. I just call my teacher “Mel”, which is the name his parents gave him.

When I was looking for him, I wasn’t looking for a teacher; I was looking to practice on my own. I could never see the point of having a teacher. As my father told me when I was about twelve until the day he died, “You’re too stubborn to learn anything from anyone,” which I think is actually true. My teacher didn’t really teach me anything. We just practiced side by side for a number of years, and for awhile we lived together in the Berkeley Zen Center. I was young in those days and had a lot of suffering in my life, and I remember that one time I was really in deep waters of suffering. I didn’t have a job and didn’t have anywhere to live, and he took me in and let me live in his house. He didn’t bother me or talk to me or console me. We sat Zazen together every day. He didn’t even in those days conduct dokusan. We hardly ever spoke except that once in awhile we would have lunch together under an old plum tree. He had a big garden in the back. I can remember the plum blossoms falling down like snow. We would eat in silence, so it is true that he never taught me anything, which was, I think, exactly what I needed. So, I always say that he never taught me anything.

A few years ago he gave me a rakasu. On the back of it he wrote, “I have nothing to give you but my Zen spirit.” And I did receive from him my Zen spirit. His spirit is that of everyday Zen, just regular, American, everyday life Zen. I think he is most admirable for his strong common sense, faith, stability, and steadfastness, just to do the practice no matter what.

So this is all an introduction to this wonderful talk of his. You will hear in this talk all the wonderful qualities I have been speaking about: solid, ordinary, common sense, everyday Zen. This lecture was given January 30, 1995:

Practice of teacher and student must be built on trust, but the main thing is that the student should be able to trust himself or herself. The purpose of having a teacher is to help the student become self reliant. I remember Suzuki Roshi saying, “When the student comes, the teacher should turn the student out. You don’t bring the student in and make some kind of home for her. The student must find her own way. But a good teacher also matures the student. It depends on the circumstances. It is like dealing with a child. You nurture the child but you also let the child be a little stretched. The child is out there on the edge, reaching how to stand up, learning how to walk, how to climb, how to take care of himself. The teacher’s aim is to help the student stand up on their own. Sometimes the student has to lean on the teacher, which is okay, but only for awhile. Like with children, a mother goes to the playground with her child, and the child goes off to play with the other kids. At some point the child remembers, ‘Hey, where’s my Mom?’ The child goes back to check in with Mom, who says, ‘Everything’s fine,’ and so the child goes out to play again. The child is always checking in, ‘Where’s my Mom?’ It is sometimes like that with student and teacher.”

My relationship with Suzuki Roshi was like that. I would check in with him. I would bring him a problem. We would sit down and look at the problem. Then he would turn it into a koan for me, not by saying that this is your koan, but making me think about it in a different way, and then he would say to me, “I’m sorry. You came to me with a problem, and I’ve given you another problem.” And we would laugh. I would go away and practice with my koan and then I’d come back. Back and forth. I had to work hard on my own. This coming and going was the way of developing my practice and my relationship with him. Sometimes I did practice very close with him. Sometimes we worked together for a period of time. The whole point was to enable me to know how to have my own practice and gain my own self reliance. Even if something happened to my teacher, I would be able to stand on my own.

Some students rely heavily on the teacher. They don’t rely so much on the dharma, and they don’t rely so much on the sangham. Some people rely a lot on the dharma, but they don’t rely so much on the teacher and they don’t rely so much on the sangham. Some people are very social, and they rely a lot on the sangham, but they don’t care so much for the dharma, and as for the teacher, it is okay that he’s there. So you have these three types. A well rounded student includes all three. So a teacher is one leg. Suddenly if your teacher turns out to be a false teacher, you may be crushed, but you still have your own practice, which is practice of the dharma and practice with the sangham. You can always find another teacher. Or, you can practice on your own until you find another teacher, so you aren’t completely thrown. But if you rely only on a teacher, when the teacher is no longer there, you have nothing. You can always take refuge in the sangham when there is no teacher. You can always study and take refuge in the dharma when there is no teacher. According to legend, when Shakyamuni Buddha was dying, Ananda asked him, “Who is going to take your place?” And Shakyamuni Buddha said, “The dharma and the sangha will take my place. Just follow the path with diligence.”

Teachers appear, and they are important. They are a focal point and more, but no matter who the teacher is, he is still a student. There is a place called “a place beyond learning”, but nobody has arrived there yet. So don’t worry about it. If your teacher says, “I have come to the place beyond learning,” you should probably find another teacher. It’s important to be able to see the teacher’s faults as well as the teacher’s ability. And if you feel that the teacher has ability, then you can weigh whether or not you can practice with that teacher, and not ignore his faults, but your eyes should always be open, and you should always know the difference between the teacher’s abilities and the teacher’s faults or problems. Because the teacher, whoever that person is, has both. Like in choosing a mate we say, “love is blind”. You see these wonderful qualities that you like about this person. At the same time, you know there are other qualities that you are not sure about. But because the qualities you like bring you together, you tend to ignore the others. Later on these other problems that make you uncomfortable begin to emerge. So you have to have your eyes open to both sides. And when you get together with someone, it is important to reflect, “Well, what are the faults of this person that I am going to have to deal with?”

When we accept something good, the other side is already there. Happiness and suffering go together. So what kind of discomfort am I willing to accept? With your teacher it’s the same, so you should know these are the teacher’s faults, they are not his attributes. We tend to trust someone when they easily acknowledge their faults. If you know your teacher thoroughly, you should know what to accept and how to help him or her. It’s not just one way, that the teacher is helping the student. The student is also helping the teacher. When the relationship is there, it goes both ways. Sometimes the student is the teacher, and the teacher is the student. If the teacher never allows the student to be the teacher, that’s a kind of a dominating role. Some people like to take a dominating role, and some people like to be dominated. And some people like to be treated like children. But if the teacher keeps the student always in an adolescent role, then she is not really doing the student a favor. If you feel that your teacher is keeping you in an adolescent role, you should question that, because the teacher should keep moving toward maturing the student, helping the student to become an adult.

Uchiyama Roshi says, “The meaning of bodhisattva is adult.” The teacher would like the students to be bodhisattivas, adults acting in responsible ways, truly grown up. Sometimes the teacher is not completely grown up himself, and the students have to help the teacher to grow. It goes both ways; however, even when the roles are reversed, the teacher is the teacher and the student is the student, and the teacher and student are not peers. If you are the abbot, you have to be able to listen to the newest student. Sometimes when you have a monastic situation and a staff of experienced people, the staff tends to be a closed circle. They just listen to each other, while there is this whole group of people who are not being heard or acknowledged. So it is important to hear everyone. Sometimes the newest student can see something which everyone else misses.

When Joshu at eighty years old went out on pilgrimage, he said, “Even if I meet a little girl of seven years old who knows the dharma better than I do, I’ll listen to her.”

And that’s the end of the talk. Isn’t it wonderful? It is just what I would say! I thought that there wasn’t any time to read this, but I thought if I saved it for later, surely I would forget. However, now we have to get back to the main job. We have thirteen precepts!

So here we go: thirteen bodhisattva precepts. We did the first three, “I take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, Sangha,” and now we have the next three bodhisattva precepts, which are called the three pure precepts. There are many ways of stating these precepts, but I like to use the ancient formula from earliest Buddhism: to avoid evil, to do good, and to benefit beings. The three pure precepts.

To do evil, or the English word “unwholesomeness”, is closest to the Pali or Sanskrit word. This precept means that we will practice a wise restraint. It’s the commitment to practice restraint in our lives. It means to be calm and to recognize that our life is being where we are where we are. That’s our life. We can’t be somewhere else when we are here, and it can’t be later when it is now. So we just practice a wise restraint, being satisfied with what is in front of us. We don’t try to grab something extra for ourselves all the time. We have wise restraint. We have precepts, common sense rules to follow, and their purpose is to give us a life of enjoyment and contentment so that we are not always reaching past what we are, where we are. It’s like when you practice walking meditation outdoors; you look at what is in front of you. If you see something beautiful in front of you like a leaf, or sunlight on the grass, you really appreciate that. You don’t look around. Whatever is ahead, you appreciate it. Another time you can look all around, but in the practice of the walking meditation, you just look straight ahead. It is like a wise restraint: be with what is in front of us, not reaching for something extra.

The second precept is to do good. This is the opposite of the first one. This means that without stint, without holding back, we will practice all the positive virtues to benefit others. All the positive practices of the dharma: meditation practice, giving practice, loving kindness practice, energy, patience, wisdom, devotion, helping, studying, and so on. Everything that is wholesome and positive we will do, just as we will restrain ourselves from doing that which is unwholesome.

The third pure precept is to benefit all beings. The original statement of this precept from the oldest schools of Buddhism was not to benefit all beings, but rather to purify the mind; avoid evil, do good, and purify the mind. But this was changed in Mahayana Buddhism to benefit all beings. It is an interesting teaching in itself because the understanding in Mahayana Buddhism is that to purify the mind and to benefit all beings are exactly the same thing. All beings are the mind. And the mind is all beings. That is the fundamental Mahayana understanding. That is the mystery that we endeavor to appreciate through our sitting practice. So when we say benefit others, we do not mean others as “others”, it means just to be aware, to be kind to ourselves and others equally, to practice loving kindness with ourselves and others equally. Self and other is not really different. When we really understand finally who we are, and really understand finally who others are, then we know this.

So this is the spirit, the attitude with which we practice the first two precepts: wise restraint and to benefit others. Not uptight restraint, not uptight doing good, but free, easy, relaxed doing good. That following these precepts are one and not following these precepts are one.

I said yesterday that the sixteen bodhisattva precepts really come down to one precept: take refuge in Buddha. And the one precept opens up into three precepts: take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. And when we ask what does that mean, it means practice the three pure precepts: to avoid evil, to do good, and to benefit all beings. That’s what taking refuge in the Triple Treasure means. And then how do we do good, avoid evil, and benefit all beings, what does that mean, what does that look like? The ten grave precepts are a way of living and understanding the three pure precepts.

First, we don’t kill anything. We recognize the pure and holy ultimate nature of all of life, and we respect it in ourselves and all around us. Second, we don’t steal anything. When we practice, gratitude arises in us, and we make gratitude into a practice, recognizing that everything we have, down to the miracle of being a body and mind, is a gift. And we never take anything unless we know that it is a gift.

We don’t misuse sexuality or sensuality. We enjoy the pleasure of being embodied respectfully, without hurting anyone, and without greed. When pleasure comes into our lives, someone gives us lunch and it is good, we enjoy that and we are grateful for it. When there is no sexual pleasure or other sensual pleasure, then we enjoy its absence.

We don’t lie. We speak truth as far as we can, not indiscriminately, but always with kindness, thoughtfully, not frivolously, and we recognize the awesome power of our words.

We don’t intoxicate ourselves or others. This means that we practice acceptance of our condition. We don’t try to change it. If we are sick, we take medicine, but even then our spirit is to accept our condition. If you are sick and want to get well, still while you are sick, then you accept your being sick. That is the way to get well. If you are not sick, you still have to accept your condition. Practice is transformation, radical inner transformation. Radical transformation starts with radical acceptance. That is what is meant not to intoxicate yourself. Not to intoxicate others is a special precept of priests, and we are all priests of something; we are priests of what we believe in, of what we think is wonderful and important. This means don’t try to indoctrinate someone with your beautiful and wonderful doctrine. Your doctrine may be great, but don’t try to entice someone by getting them drunk with your doctrine. Don’t try to help them find the true way which you understand and they don’t. Just love them and respond to them, but don’t try to fix them and help them out with your profound understanding of how things are.

We don’t slander others and dwell on others’ faults, either in our minds or in our speech. Everyone, including teachers, has their faults, but everyone also has their good points. We don’t dwell on their faults, but we don’t ignore them either.

We don’t praise ourselves at the expense of others. In other words, we don’t raise ourselves up over others in our mind or in our speech. Also, we don’t make ourselves lower than others in our mind or speech. To lower ourselves is just another way of raising ourselves. It seems strange, but it is true. “You think you are terrible and lazy and stupid? That’s nothing! Look how terrible and stupid and lazy I am! Much worse than you!” One upmanship.

We are not possessive of anything, not even the dharma. We understand that it is not possible to possess anything, even our own body, even our own mind, certainly our own body or mind or our brilliant thoughts. Whatever we think we have, we don’t really have it. So naturally we practice generosity.

We don’t harbor ill will. When anger comes, we recognize anger and respect the power of anger, we study the conditions that give rise to it, we try to transform and be patient with anger. But we don’t indulge in anger. We don’t blame ourselves, we don’t blame others, we just pay close attention to anger when it arises, and we let it go.

And finally, we don’t abuse the Three Treasures, which takes us back full circle to the beginning. We respect the Buddha, we unfold the dharma through the story of our lives, and we nourish the sangha by taking responsibility for it in whatever way that we can.

Done! I am so proud of myself! More could be said. I just listed the precepts. Many other depths will be found in your study of the precepts. It is a lifetime’s study. It is inexhaustible. So, the sixteen Bodhisattva precepts are zazen. Zazen is every moment of our lives, one step up, one step following another.