This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Morning. This feels very precarious, but I believe you if you tell me this is the way it's supposed to be. Okay. Just by twisting it. Oh, that did something, didn't it? How's that? Strange technology. Good morning, everyone.

[01:01]

In a talk that Suzuki Roshi gave, it's a talk that was later entitled Stand Up by the Ground. And it's part of the talks that are in the compilation of Suzuki Roshi talks in Not Always So, the book Not Always So. In this talk, he refers to Dogen. Dogen being the first half of the 13th century Japanese Zen master who Suzuki Roshi referred to a lot.

[02:02]

Dogen is one of the main founders of Zen in Japan, and also it's his teaching, it's Dogen's teaching lineage that Suzuki Roshi was the inheritor of, as it were. And also, similarly, all of the teachers at Green Gulch here at Green Gulch and at San Francisco Zen Center are part of that same teaching lineage. So... I'll get to if this microphone starts to go not good. Just let me know, okay? Because I can't tell. Okay, good.

[03:07]

We tried that. Yeah. I'll just leave it as is and look funny. Anyway, so in this talk, Suzuki Roshi says... Dogen Zenji speaks about Zenji means great Zen teacher, something like great Zen teacher, great master. Great master Dogen speaks about practice not as something special, but something continuous, something mixed up with everything, Suzuki Roshi said. So mixed up with everything really caught my eye, and I so much appreciate Suzuki Roshi's down-to-earth kind of ordinary idiomatic way of speaking.

[04:12]

We shouldn't be mixed up in the sense of confused, but our practice should be, is, mixed up with everything in the sense of connected to everything, meeting everything. Oh, I thought like salad dressing, you know, like salad, you put the salad dressing on it and then it's mixed up with the salad completely. So we don't have to go very far for the material of our practice. We don't have to go very far for the substance, the basis for our work of realization, for the activity of realization. And I say activity advisedly because one of the misconceptions we have about practice is that so-called realization is

[05:26]

so-called awakening, enlightenment is a thing, like a thing, and that it behaves like a thing, like you can have it or you can not have it, like you can have a thing, like you can have a jacket, you can have enlightenment, and then it's yours, like your jacket is yours. But that's not actually the way. Realization is. It's actually more like an event. An occurrence. It occurs. And then we get to participate in its occurrence sometimes. So our practice and this work of realization is mixed up with everything.

[06:38]

There's another place in Dogen's writings where he addresses something very similar to this. This is in a work of his called Yui Butsu Yobutsu, which means only a Buddha and a Buddha. And in Yui Butsu Yobutsu, Dogen refers to an old Buddha. He tells a short story about an old Buddha, an old master. So in my talk today, I'm referring to Suzuki Roshi's talk. And Suzuki Roshi is referring to Dogen. And Dogen is referring in Yui Butsu Yobutsu. Part of what he does is refer to this old master. A monk, which I think for our purposes means the modern-day equivalent, as it were, is a practitioner, you and me, and any of us who are seeking, a practitioner, a follower of the way.

[07:52]

A monk asked an old master, when hundreds, thousands, myriad of things come all at once, what should be done? You know, I don't know. And Dogen himself lived 800 years ago and 8,000 miles away. And he's talking about somebody, you know, further back than him. So we can't say for sure. But I think what he means, what that monk means is something psychological. When he says a hundred, a thousand, myriad things come all at once. I don't think he's talking about, you know, pencils and water pitchers and microphones. I don't think he's talking about that sort of thing. I think he's talking about how it feels to us.

[08:57]

When all of these things are coming at us, what do we do? What should I do? And the old master says, according to Dogen, the old master says, don't try to control them. That's pretty interesting, right on the face of it. And, you know, I could talk about that, but I'm going to go on a little bit because Dogen kindly explains what the old master means. Dogen explains, Dogen says, what he meant was, it's very nice of her to tell us what he meant.

[09:57]

What he meant was, whatever comes is not things at all, is Buddha Dharma. So, maybe I have to say what Buddha Dharma means, because you may not know what Buddha Dharma means. I don't know what it means exactly, but I'll say something about it. So, It means something like seeing the truth of ultimate existence, or it is the ultimate truth of life, the ultimate truth of existence. What's coming is not things at all, but the ultimate truth of life. So... My way of saying it is we need to put on our Buddha Dharma glasses.

[11:04]

Because then whatever we see through our Buddha Dharma glasses will be Buddha Dharma and not things. Just like if you have rose tinted glasses, there's a tint in the glass and then everything you see is rosy. Everything looks rosy. So similarly, if you put on Buddhadharma glasses, everything you see is Buddhadharma, just like the old master is suggesting. Or no, just like Dogen is saying the old master is suggesting. We see it as Buddhadharma. So rather than seeing, you know, my friend Bob coming to talk to me or my enemy Joanne coming to see me, or this microphone coming to bother me, or a Zafu coming to sit on.

[12:07]

Rather than seeing those things, we see the ultimate truth of existence currently manifested as my friend Bob coming to see me. The ultimate truth of existence manifested as my so-called enemy, Joanne, coming to see me. The ultimate truth of existence manifested as this microphone coming to hang on my ear in its awkward position. When we have our Buddha Dharma glasses on. So the flavor of our practice, the flavor of Zen practice. Maybe it's more accurate to say the flavor of Soto Zen practice. The flavor of Dogen's Soto Zen practice.

[13:13]

The flavor of Suzuki Roshi's Dogen's Soto Zen practice is like this. Namely, whatever comes is Buddha Dharma. Namely, practice that. permeates our life. I know some of you are farm apprentices and other apprentices and guest students and folks out in the Zoom world are lots and lots of jobs and doing different things. So the message is excuse me, the message is Practice is everywhere, not just, it's not, as Suzuki said, Dogen speaks about practice, not as something special. It's funny because actually, you know, Zazed is pretty special, right?

[14:18]

We do it at a special time. It's at a special place. We do special things. We sit in a special way, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I'm not going to address that. Particular contradiction, zazen, not as, I mean, practice not as something special, but something mixed up with everything. Mixed up with, you know, the truck and the machinery and the Hobart and the Jackson. The name of the dishwasher in the dishwasher area here is Jackson. And Hobart is what Mick uses to mix bread, the machine. He uses a Hobart machine to mix the bread. That's Buddha Dharma coming. That's we're meeting Buddha Dharma.

[15:19]

That's our practice. That's the flavor of our practice. And that's why Suzuki Roshi often would say Zazen and everyday life. Zazen. everyday life, the practice we have in everyday life. So, you know, full spectrum, a full spectrum light bulb, you go out to buy a light bulb and you try to get a full spectrum one that has all of the, it has all of the light seeable. By us human beings, of course, the actual light spectrum is much bigger than that. But we see some portion of it. And if you buy a full spectrum light, it has the entire spectrum. So the flavor of this practice is full spectrum practice.

[16:22]

Not leaving anything out. Always available. Because always there's something coming. Always we're meeting something in our life. Whether it's a person or a thing, as I said earlier, or also those other things, like our state of mind, like our emotional life. We're always meeting something. So this is the flavor of practice. This is also the flavor of bodhisattva life. A bodhisattva. So one meaning of bodhisattva is right there in the word.

[17:28]

Bodhisattva. Bodhi means awakening. It comes from the same root, B-U-D-D, as Buddha. Buddha is the awakened one, and Bodhi is awakening. And Sattva is a being. So Bodhisattva is an awakening being. Or sometimes we say, a being on the way to awakening. Or practicing awakening. Or, I think, a practitioner. Someone who practices the way. Oh, and also, not just the way, not just something that Zen people do. The way is gigantic. The way goes way beyond Zen or Buddhism. course there are other there's the way of islam there's the way of christianity there's the way of this that and the other and then not even religions but not even named as religions you know a way that i'm somewhat familiar with is the 12-step way that's a way also so a bodhisattva is someone who is uh on the way and in the way

[18:57]

A way being. A being of the way. That's one meaning of the word bodhisattva. But also a bodhisattva is one who takes bodhisattva vows. At the end of the talk today and at the end of every talk every Sunday. And lots of other times we recite the four bodhisattva vows. They are, I'm sure you know, beings are numberless. I vow to save them. Or another translation, I vow to awaken with them. Beings are numberless. I vow to awaken with them.

[20:01]

I vow to save them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. And Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to become it. So that first vow... Is it the main vow? I don't know. They're all the main vow. So that first vow, beings are numberless, I vow to save them. The root vow, the root place that that comes from is that a bodhisattva says, the vow of the bodhisattva is, you know, there's this shore in a very dualistic way of the path of practice.

[21:02]

There's this shore, which is samsara, which is where we're cycling around and haven't quite figured things out. And then there's the other shore, nirvana. So one idea of practice is to go from samsara to nirvana. So the bodhisattva vow is, I am going to help, I, as a bodhisattva, I don't just mean I, me, I mean any I. I am going to help all beings go from samsara to nirvana. And after they've all gone, they're all over there in nirvana, then I'll go too.

[22:03]

That's the bodhisattva vow, which is ridiculous, don't you think? It's ridiculous. So I looked it up. I thought there were just 4 billion people on the planet. It turns out... There are 7.8 billion people. The last time I looked, it was four. Now there are 7.8 billion people on the planet. I'm going to help approximately 7.8 billion people go from samsara to nirvana. Then I'll get on the boat after that and go to nirvana. And that's just human beings. The bodhisattva vow is all beings, you know? including, you know, blue jays, raccoons, insects. So, what the bodhisattva vow means, in effect, practically speaking, what the bodhisattva vow means is, I'm staying here.

[23:12]

I ain't going nowhere. I'm staying here in samsara. More or less, forever. So this Bodhisattva vow, our practice is mixed up with everything. This Bodhisattva vow is very life-affirming. By life, I mean our life, your life, my life, our ordinary life, the life we have. Not some fancy life. Just regular old life. It's very life-affirming, life-engaging. The bodhisattva is nothing about denying our life, trying to get past our life, trying to get rid of this pesky thing called our life in order to get to some so-called nirvana.

[24:15]

It's really committed to life, our everyday life. Our usual life. There's transcendental meditation. This is non-transcendental meditation. You ain't transcending anything. You stay here. We find. We find our way here with whatever life brings to us. So about 1,400 years ago, two people had a conversation.

[25:48]

We don't really know if this was their actual conversation because it was 1,400 years ago. And besides that, it was in China. So they were speaking Chinese. They were speaking the Chinese of 1,400 years ago. So it may be a story. It may not be actually true, but it's good. Nevertheless, so 1,400 years ago, there were these two Chinese men, practitioners, practicers, teachers, famous teachers. One was named Nanchuan, and the other was named Zhaozhou. And I don't know why, but Suzuki Rishi always referred to them by their Japanese names, which are different than their Chinese names. I don't know exactly why. So Zhaojo is Joshu. And in this story, Joshu, Zhaojo, was the student.

[26:56]

He was early in his practice. Later, he became a really great teacher. And Nanshuan is nonsense. Zhou Shu and Nansen, Zhao Zhou and Nanchuan. So they had this conversation and Zhao Zhou asked a question of Nanchuan. He said, what is the way? Capital W. What is the way? And the way, capital W way, is roughly the equivalent of Bodhi. of awakening. When Buddhism moved from India to China and became very well integrated with Chinese culture, and at that time, Taoism and Confucianism, the people started talking about, instead of talking about awakening or bodhi or realization, they would talk about

[28:10]

The way. So Jojo, excuse me, Jojo asked, what is the way? And Nanchuan said, everyday mind is the way. And, you know, they went on further. But I'm just going to stay with that. Everyday mind is the way. This is very much like what Dogen said the old master was saying, when everything comes all at once, it means it's not things at all. It means it's Buddha Dharma coming at you. And this is very much like Suzuki Roshi, paraphrasing Dogen, Dogen speaks about practice, not as something special, but something mixed up with everything.

[29:14]

What is the way? Everyday mind. I think, again, I think there's good reason to think that this is a contemporary statement. Everyday mind doesn't mean something esoteric. It means your mind. Everyday. puzzled over this for quite some time, a number of decades, I guess I'd have to say. So I don't think he means exactly, I don't think Nanquan means exactly that there's an identity, you know, everyday mind and the way is exactly the same thing. Thank goodness. Thank goodness that's the case. But I think what he meant

[30:16]

Or to say it, he said it very elegantly. So to say it in a less elegant way would be to say, in everyday mind, we find the way. Or, everyday mind is the way, small w, to the way, big w. Or, The location for the arising of our practice, bodhicitta, I won't try to translate that. The location for the arising of our practice and for the arising of our awakening is our life as we find it. Suzuki Roshi, in another place, he said, We establish our practice in delusion, in frustration.

[31:21]

We don't usually think about it that way. We think I'm supposed to get rid of delusion, get rid of frustration. Once those things are passed and no longer coming at me, then I'm in good shape. No, he said we establish our practice in delusion, in frustration. And I would add, You know, in anxiety and in upset and in depression and in sadness and in fill in the blank. That's where we establish our practice. That's where the material of our practice is, not someplace else. So in that sense, everyday mind is the way.

[32:24]

That is where the way is. So I want to see how I'm doing here time-wise. There's more in what Suzuki Roshi says that I want to address in this same talk. Following immediately from, Dogen speaks about practice not as something special, but something continuous, something mixed up with everything.

[33:37]

Suzuki Roshi then says, Dogen says, when you fall on the ground, stand up by the ground. And then Suzuki Roshi reiterates that and explains a little bit. When you fall on the ground, you stand up by the ground in that place. Meaning, In this place, meaning in the place that you're falling. And that's what I've been talking about so far. Standing up by the ground in this place. The metaphor is fallen on the ground. It's a beautiful metaphor. It really works so well because I mentioned it to somebody and they said, oh yeah, well that's physics. You fall on the ground, you stand up by the ground. You can't You can't stand up by something else, except you can.

[34:44]

In a second, I'll tell you. You fall on the ground. So, you know, even I, who am older, and actually, I have a little trouble standing up by the ground. When I'm on the ground, I don't stand up as easily as I used to, but even I stand up by the ground. When you fall on the ground, stand up by the ground is, again, the same as mixed up with everything. The same as. It's another way of saying. It's not things at all, but Buddha Dharma. When you fall on the ground, stand up by the ground. And then Suzuki Roshi says... Suzuki Roshi says, Dogen also says, when you fall on the ground, stand up by emptiness, by nothing.

[35:54]

So this is much less clear what Suzuki Roshi meant and what Dogen meant. When you fall on the ground, stand up by emptiness. Oh, and it gets further confusing because the Chinese word for emptiness is sometimes translated as sky. So then you get, and I've seen this translation, when you fall on the ground, stand up by the sky. What does that mean? What does that mean? And in that same, in the same essay of Dogen's where he says, when you fall on the ground, stand up by the ground. and stand up by emptiness, and the name of the essay is Imo, thusness. In that same essay, later he says, if you fall on the sky, stand up by the ground. If you fall on the ground, stand up by the sky.

[36:57]

If you fall on the sky, stand up by the ground. Dogen really loved to do that kind of switcheroo, you know, A, B. A causes B. Well, how about B causing A? Try that, you know? He liked that a lot for the sake of thoroughness. You fall on the ground, stand up by the sky. Or we could say emptiness. Stand up by emptiness. If you fall on emptiness, stand up by the ground. So I think that's less clear what he means to stand up by emptiness. And further, I think there's a lot of... There's often, I don't know, often, but anyway, there's some confusion about what this emptiness means. What does emptiness mean? And unfortunately, sometimes it even goes so far as people think it means something negative, you know, like everything is empty, you know, something that's not very pleasant.

[38:04]

But I think that's mostly a misunderstanding. To see emptiness is to see that life is change, which is a cliche. But like a lot of cliches, The reason it's a cliche is because it's true. Jane Hirschfield is a poet and a Zen practitioner and practiced at Zen Center for years and lives nearby. She lives, I think, in New York Beach, and she rides with her horse. In the hills, sometimes we see her and say hello. And being a poet, very, you know, good with words.

[39:19]

Some time ago, she was asked about Buddhism and practice and so on. And she said, well, Buddhism basically boils down to three things. Everything changes. Everything is connected. Pay attention. So life is change. Or as Jane says, life is everything changes. Everything is connected. And Suzuki Roshi, when asked also, at one point he was asked, what is the, could you summarize Buddhism like in 10 words or less? Somebody asked him something like that. And he said, everything changes. So to see emptiness, to put on the Buddha Dharma glasses.

[40:26]

Bye-bye, kitchen people. Thank you. is to see that everything changes and everything is connected. Or, here's my much clunkier version of that, which is, to see emptiness is to appreciate in our life, to bring into our life, to appreciate the perspective of the continuous, infinite arrangement and rearrangement of everything altogether. That's another way of describing emptiness. A, um, a, uh, classical, uh,

[41:37]

Example of this is a cloud. So we look up in the sky and we see a cloud. We see a thing and we see something we think is a thing and we call the thing a cloud. But as we all know, as Okamura Roshi pointed out, there's no such thing as a cloud. There's just the, how did I just say it? continuous, constant, infinite arrangement and rearrangement of everything all together. In other words, you put some water in the air and under certain conditions, an infinite number of conditioning factors and of relationships. If you do something like that, you get something that then you can say, oh, that's a cloud. But it's not a cloud. It's just all of those relationships. things combining you know we could say well it's it's water in air but of course water isn't the thing either water is h2o right two of this one of this two hydrogen and one oxygen but hydrogen isn't a thing either right it's made up of you know stuff whatever what do you call them uh hydrogen is made up of atoms and then atoms are made up of

[43:07]

And quarks are made up of strings, and they haven't gotten past strings yet. So this perspective is, in a practical way, you might say, it's very wide. It's very big. It's very... different than our usual habitual reactive way that we see things our usual habitual reactive way that we see things is narrow very narrow and mostly dominated by our concerns about this one over here i don't mean you're concerned about this one over here you have to take your own fingers and do that So that's one of the main differences between our usual way of seeing things.

[44:14]

That is the main difference between our usual way of seeing things and this very wide, encompassing perspective. Because the wide, encompassing perspective is not dominated by concerns about myself. But our narrow perspective is. However. This is this is not a mistake. This is not wrong. This is not. True. This is true. This is how things are. And it's not a mistake. You know, we're. uh, evolutionarily programmed to be concerned about this one to make sure, Oh, what's for lunch? And where am I going to sleep tonight?

[45:14]

And am I going to be attacked by a saber tooth tiger? I better sleep somewhere else where the tiger won't be able to get me. That's, We're in the gene pool of the people who were concerned about those things. The people who weren't concerned, they didn't last very long. They did not stick around very long. Oh, saber-tooth tag, I'll worry about that some other time. We're not in the gene pool of those people. We're in the gene pool of the people who worried about that stuff. So it's built in. And therefore, it's not like we shouldn't be that way. Let me see if I have time to tell a story about Vimalakirti. Okay. Very briefly, there's a sutra named after a famous layperson, Vimalakirti, who was a brilliant Buddhist practitioner and debated many...

[46:26]

how should I say, many big-time bodhisattvas, like Manjushri and various other ones. So they were having a debate. Manjushri and Vimalakirti were having a debate. And, of course, everyone wanted to hear what they had to say. So 84,000 bodhisattvas came and participated in early, what's it called, magical realism. In the early magical realism school of the Vimalakirti Sutra, 84,000 bodhisattvas, each one sitting on a throne, fit into Vimalakirti's bedroom. He was sick, so he was in bed, which was only 10 feet by 10 feet. Anyway, one of these people who was participating, who was listening in, was Shariputra, who was a monk, a Theravadan monk. And as you may know, Theravadan monks... have the midday meal.

[47:28]

And then after that, they don't eat until the next day. So, Shariputra, this is in the Sutra, believe it or not. Shariputra was thinking to himself, well, this is a very interesting discussion that Manjushri and Vimalakirti are having about the Dharma gate of non-duality. That was their topic. The Dharma gate of non-duality is very interesting. But if they keep we will miss lunch. It moved me deeply to read that in the Vimalakirti Sutra. So Vimalakirti is able to read people's minds. So he reads Shariputra's mind and he says, Shariputra, are you interested in lunch or are you interested in the Dharma? I don't know what Chariputra said, but my answer would be both.

[48:31]

I am interested in the Dharma. I am interested in lunch. I'm a human being, you know? So I think it's very important because we shouldn't feel bad about being interested in lunch and about, you know, enjoying our life and eating delicious things and having a good life. This is not like... violating some precept, some Buddhist precept. So I wanted to emphasize that. However, now there's a big however coming here. However, however, however this narrow focus, if it becomes excessive, if it becomes dominant, if it becomes That that's what you think reality is. That's all that you think reality is, is about lunch and not about the infinite, continuous, constant arrangement and rearrangement of things.

[49:38]

Then all kinds of trouble, as they say, all kinds of hell break loose. All kinds of trouble happens. As any of us know who read books. the newspaper, or who know what's going on in the world. Just the other day, I saw, not a surprise at all, as you all know, the oil companies, you know, 40 years ago, they saw exactly what was going to happen. But somebody, somebody had two narrow of focus. They could only see the bottom line and the dividends that were going to be paid to the investors and the bonuses that the CEOs were going to get. So this way that we have from evolution of thinking about ourselves is not bad.

[50:50]

However, it is liable To slide down the slippery slope, and then you wind up in the world of greed, hate, and delusion. And that causes harm. Great, great, great, great harm, or smaller versions of harm, but harm nevertheless. To stand up by emptiness. We stand up, when you fall down, you stand up by the ground, you stand up by emptiness. To stand up by emptiness refers to our work, our effort to free ourself, to not be constrained by that narrow perspective. It's not a bad perspective.

[51:53]

It's just incomplete. It leaves out the infinite arrangement and rearrangement of everything else. Continuous. Constant. So. to stand up by emptiness is that practice. And lest that seem too abstract, there are descriptions of that practice. For example, Another work of Dogen's called the four methods of guidance of a bodhisattva are generosity, kind speech, beneficent action, and the fourth one is hard to translate.

[53:12]

I saw one translation I enjoyed. We're all in the same boat, action. That's what Dogen is saying. That's what the perspective of emptiness, that's what standing up by emptiness looks like in the world. It looks like generosity. And if you think about it, it's really clear. Well, generous means you're looking at something more than this is the most important thing in the world. You're looking at something wider than that. Like, oh, maybe that person needs a sandwich. I'll get him a sandwich. So, that was everything I wanted to say.

[54:17]

Other than... The last thing I wanted to say was that this is of benefit. This stand up by the ground and stand up by emptiness is a description of our practice and is a description of the benefit our practice brings. So I'll stop there. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast. offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[55:16]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_97.32