This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. I have to say there really is no feeling quite like the feeling of coming back into the beloved community after a long time. So thank you so much for the invitation. Thank you for those of you who greeted me this morning. It's a beautiful feeling. So there's a story that Suzuki Roshi loved to tell, and this is in his own words. I bet most of you know this story. In China, there was a man named Seiko.

[01:02]

He loved dragons. All his scrolls were of dragons. He designed his house like a dragon house, and he had many figures of dragons. So a real dragon thought, if I appear in his house, he will be very pleased. So one day the dragon appeared in his room, and he was very scared of him and almost drew his sword to cut him. The real dragon said, oh my, and he hurriedly escaped from the room. Don't be like Seiko, Dogen Zenji says. So I want to start by wishing everyone a happy Losar. It's Tibetan New Year today, so Tashi Dele. Today is the day that both Chinese and Tibetan people celebrate the new year, which this year means that today is the first day of the year of the male wood dragon. In celebration of this auspicious day, because I like Seiko, I'm a great lover of dragons, I thought I would spend a bit of time with the story of what happens when we meet the true dragon, or rather, of what happens when we don't.

[02:12]

The story has been on my mind a lot lately. for reasons I'll try to explain. So sometimes the story of Seiko is thought to be a cautionary tale directed at those who mostly get their dharma from reading books or listening to talks like this one, rather than from sitting zazen. To live in a house modeled on a dragon house is to... kind of accessorize your life with the Dharma, to read the right Zen books, to have the right Zen statues and scrolls in your house, but not to actually be penetrated by or given over to the true Dharma. It's a superficial relationship that does not get to the heart of the matter. In other versions of the story, including those told elsewhere by Suzuki Roshi... There's a more creative expression to Seiko's dragon-loving. He doesn't just possess dragon scrolls and accessories that he picked up at the Dragon Mart. He himself paints dragons, draws dragons, carves dragons. He is engaged in the practice of constantly visualizing and creating images of dragons, and yet he is still, for Suzuki Roshi as well as for Dogen, engaging with the dragon in a way that is secondary or imitative, a kind of copying.

[03:30]

rather than touching the real dragon. Suzuki Roshi says, some people may explain what zazen is in a philosophical way, or some people try to express our zazen in literature or painting or in a scientific way without knowing that that is their own dragon, not a real one. So the story of Seiko can be understood as a warning about reading too many books or carving too many statues, but also about practicing zazen itself. in a way that undermines or undoes the true practice. It's a story about having ideas about zazen that get in the way of touching the heart of zazen itself. He says each one of us practices zazen in his own way, or in their own way, with their own understanding. And they continue that kind of practice, thinking this is right practice. So even though they are sitting here in the zendo, They are involved in their own practice.

[04:31]

In other words, this is his pronoun, in other words, he is carving, carefully carving his own dragon, which is not real. That is what most of the people are doing. So by conceptualizing practice, as we inevitably do as our own practice or right practice, we turn practice into an object, an object of property. an accomplishment of the self, and something that can be crafted, perfected, done in a way that is objectively correct or beautiful or right. When we practice in this way, we are monitoring. We are constantly monitoring whether this is the right kind of zazen we're doing or the wrong one, as if we could possibly know. We're thinking, I'm pretty sure my zazen is the right kind of zazen. It's how I was told to do zazen and zazen instruction. It's a perfect replica of the idea I have about zazen in my head. And throughout, we are, in effect, carving an image of zazen with our bodies, an image that corresponds to an idea about zazen that we have already carved in our mind.

[05:43]

And that is clearly not going anywhere good. That's not how we're going to meet the dragon, let alone become her. So what we often do next... Suzuki Roshi tells us, is to make a resolution to let go of our self-created ideas about zazen and try instead to figure out what Dogenzenji meant by zazen or by practice. And here too, I'm afraid, we're just carving more, perhaps more ornate dragons. He says, it is not so easy to talk about what real practice is. If we want to figure out what Dogenzenji meant without having this kind of experience, so the experience of real practice, practice, if we want to figure out what Dogen Zenji meant without having this kind of experience, to talk about this point may be completely wrong. So unless we've had some experience of real practice, we can only go astray by trying to figure out what Dogen Zenji meant.

[06:45]

Trying to figure out anything about our practice, in fact, is a surefire way to send the dragon away from the door. The more you try to figure it out, Suzuki Roshi famously said, the more you feel distance from your practice and from his practice, from Dogen's practice. The more you try to figure it out, the more you feel distance from his practice and from your practice. So maybe the first thing we need to do if we want to meet a dragon is to stop trying to figure things out, our practice in particular. And here I want to bow forehead to the floor to my teacher Leslie. who is the person who first pointed out to me my slight tendency to try to figure things out, particularly when something was bothering me. So I still hear her voice in my head. I still say to myself, stop trying to figure it out, Jodi, when I'm stuck. So what's needed is to stop conceptualizing, stop perfecting, crafting our practice, thinking about our practice, comparing our practice to an idea we have about Zazen, or perhaps even worse, comparing our practice to an idea we have about what Dogen's idea of practice might have been.

[07:59]

And for a lot of us, for a long time, this is how we spend the bulk of our time on the cushion. And I count myself among this, this. We spend that time thinking about what it is we're doing on the cushion, assessing it, judging it, fussing about it. We have a lot of terrible or beautiful or beautifully terrible ideas about Zazen, about the dragon that goes by the name of Zazen, and we sit on our cushion and struggle with those ideas and with how we do or don't live up to them. And if this doesn't refer to you, bless you. You could say that when we agonize about the correctness of our zazen, in this way we pick a fight with the dragon we purport to love without ever being able to make genuine contact with the dragon herself. So we struggle with our zazen, fuss and fight with it, until one day, if we're lucky, we find a way to stop struggling. It reminds me so much of Uchiyama Roshi sitting in the zendo night after night, engaged in the very struggle...

[09:07]

that we're talking about here, the struggle to do the practice of zazen, the struggle to let go of body and mind, until one night he just spontaneously yelled out in the middle of the night into the silence of the zendo, ceasefire. So in my own practice, I feel like I came to better understand or at least become aware of this constant struggle many of us experience on the cushion, And also found some relief from it after reading a beautiful short essay, very short essay, like three pages, by Kategori Roshi, Dainan Kategori Roshi, called Throw Yourself Away, which appears in his volume You Have to Say Something. And for those of you not familiar with Kategori Roshi, his two best-known books, the first one is called Returning to Silence, and the second one is called You Have to Say Something, which pretty much sums up the whole Zen way for me. Yes. So Kategori Roshi starts from a very similar place to Suzuki Roshi in his account of the ego engaged in its dragon carving when we sit on our cushions trying to perfect our zazen.

[10:17]

He says, in learning who and what you are, you realize how your ego consciousness corroborates what you're doing. Ego consciousness appears on the surface of your daily life. It's really important. It's like this layer on your daily life as, yes, I am doing zazen, or I want to do zazen, and so forth. So in learning who and what you are, which is the business that we're engaged in here, by the way, you realize how your ego consciousness corroborates everything you're doing. Ego consciousness appears on the surface of your daily life as, yes, I am doing zazen, or I want to do zazen, and so forth. So, so far, this is very much along the lines of what both Dogenzenji and Suzuki Roshi have told us about how we distance ourselves from our practice, even as we're trying sincerely to learn who and what we are, and so we distance ourselves from ourselves. even as we're trying to learn who and what we are.

[11:20]

How we send the dragon away at the very moment we sincerely believe we're calling her in. We humans are the only creatures who can literally say, I want to do zazen, while we're sitting on our cushion engaged in the practice of zazen. We are that capable, through what he calls this function of ego consciousness, of separating ourselves from our present reality through our thinking, figuring, and judging mind. As long as you try to figure out what to do, Kategori Roshi says, the situation will get worse. In fact, this is me, it will get worse precisely because practicing zazen in this judgy way will produce anger, aggression, and even violence. We go from the relatively benign activity of carving dragons to using our knife as a sword. He says, of course... Many things and ideas come up in zazen, but those things and ideas are just bubbles.

[12:27]

The moment you meddle with those bubbles, you immediately provoke a sense of irritation, hatred, depression, and so forth. Oneness with zazen implies no meddling. The moment you meddle with them, you immediately provoke a sense of irritation, hatred, depression, and so forth. So I'm very struck by this account of how we sit down with the best of intentions to come to know ourselves through the practice of zazen and very quickly find ourselves moving from irritation to outright hatred. Just being there with our own ego consciousness basically catapults us into a state of full-on hostility. The moment these mind bubbles arise, we want to get rid of them, to kill them, in effect, so that we don't feel like we're doing a bad job at our zazen.

[13:31]

I mean, if I had a dollar for every person who's ever said to me, I don't meditate because I can't stop my thoughts. And I always say the same thing. I say, there's only one way to stop your thoughts, and we're going to hope that doesn't happen today. So the moment these mind bubbles arise, we try to kill them so that we don't feel like we're bad at zazen. We become separated from zazen when things and ideas come up, and we can't stop ourselves from trying to make them go away. They are just bubbles, but still we meddle. And when we meddle, we quickly start a fight. So how do we get to the place of no meddling? the place that Katagiri Roshi describes as non-separation or oneness with Zazen. That's the question, right? How do we stop meddling? How do we stop the activities of ego consciousness that drive us from thinking to judging to irritation to hatred and even killing itself? Well, don't despair.

[14:34]

Katagiri Roshi has some outstanding news for us. He says ego consciousness may seem to be strong, but it is actually very weak. It is always going to the right, going to the left, just like a pendulum. Finally, however, your ego consciousness realizes that there is nothing to say. At that time, in the realm of nothing to say, you will reach an impasse, a terminating abode. Now, I would say, based on my own experience, that some ego consciousness is stronger than others. But I do take a lot of solace from his notion, and it has been my experience, that eventually it wears itself out. So here we are on the cushion going back and forth with our irritating little thought bubbles that we can't stop playing or fighting with. This is good zazen. This is bad zazen. I'm doing right Zazen. Now I'm doing wrong Zazen.

[15:35]

But wait, Dogen Zenji and Suzuki Roshi say, I don't do Zazen. So I think it's supposed to be Zazen doing Zazen. I read that somewhere, whatever that means. And on and on. The saving grace, the light and the darkness is that this little game will eventually exhaust itself and will reach an impasse, what he calls a terminating abode. I love it. It's the end of the line, but it's also an abode or refuge. in which we realize that we're not going to be able to figure out what zazen is, and that by constantly trying to figure it out, we're not getting anywhere, certainly not anywhere near the Dharma gate of repose and bliss. Many of us, I expect, have had this experience from time to time, perhaps most often in a long seshin, or perhaps in a Tassahara practice period. We sit and squirm and feel pulled this way and that by the pendulum of our thoughts until eventually, like a child having a tantrum, we just finally run out of energy and stop.

[16:40]

When this happens, Kategori Roshi says, just sit down. To come to an impasse is to do zazen. To do zazen is to have nothing to say about this impasse. To have nothing to say about this impasse means your body and mind have become this impasse. Just sit down and take a long, deep breath. That's all we have to do. So my entire body-mind experiences a kind of deep release when I read this passage, as it has done on those relatively rare occasions when I've actually experienced this kind of coming to an impasse in my own practice. To come to this impasse is to stop struggling, to stop the endless battle the ego engages in, to master our experience through concepts, through rightness, through the accomplishments or failures of this I. If you're tired of the battle and want it to stop, or rather, when the battle tires you out and you find yourself coming to a stop, Kategori Roshi says, just sit down and take a deep breath.

[17:51]

He says, just be one with the impasse. Just be one with the impasse. Throw away even the idea of an impasse. Zazen is not a means to an end or an escape or the promise of a reward. Neither is it a matter of figuring out the meaning of the impasse. Zazen is to return to the original nature of the self based on emptiness. At that time, you have a great chance. to turn yourself around. At that time, you have a great chance to turn around completely. So this impasse is a kind of a portal to another way, a way beyond the machinations of ego consciousness and the promise of a reward. The reward, as Trungpa Rinpoche says, of confirming that we are a good girl or a good boy or a good something else entirely. Letting go of the struggle is nothing short of a great chance to turn around completely.

[19:01]

I say letting go of the struggle, but I appreciate so much the way Katagiri Roshi doesn't even require or allow the ego to take that action called letting go. Reaching an impasse is actually quite passive. We don't find our way out of the struggle, but the way out finds us. As he puts it in another short talk, when we are driven into a corner and we can't move an inch, this is precisely where the Buddha way helps us. When we are driven into a corner and we can't move an inch, this is precisely where the Buddha way helps us. When we can't move an inch, can't draw our sword, can't call on all of our artistry, can't will and escape, that's when the true dragon appears. and somehow helps us get out of our corner. So I said at the beginning that I'd been thinking a lot about the story of Seiko and the Dragon over the past weeks.

[20:05]

Mostly, to be honest, I've been thinking about the ways it shows us how violence and intolerance arise in us even as we're trying our best to practice, to practice wisdom and compassion, to practice sazen, to practice being bodhisattvas. I've become kind of fascinated with the little tiny drama Suzuki Roshi and Dogen Zenji and Katagiri Roshi all describe, the drama that unfolds when we sit down on the cushion to practice zazen and find ourselves separated from our own experience, irritated, angry, judging, even full of hatred. buffeted to and fro by toxic mind bubbles of eco-consciousness that we take seriously enough to go to war over them. I've become fascinated by the way, even when a small separation appears, eco-consciousness declares war on ourselves and those around us. The violence is spontaneous and potentially catastrophic.

[21:11]

So here's the thing. For category... For Kategori Roshi and all of our teachers, really, this experience we have on the cushion is a little microcosm of all the ways that violence arises in the world. Just as ego separates us from our experience in such a way that we pass judgment on and go to war with our sitting practice, we separate ourselves and pass judgment on and go to war with the world. Kategori Roshi counsels, there is you and then there is the world. If there is even a small gap between them, we fill it with thought. As long as we create this gap, we will never understand. If there is even a small gap between them, we fill it with thought, and you all already know what happens next. So, a confession. Confession. One of the main reasons this story has been on my mind so much lately and why I've been returning to Suzuki Roshi's and Kategori Roshi's teachings about this story has to do with the horror that has been unfolding in Israel and Palestine.

[22:26]

I said it. It's very difficult to talk about these things, right? For the last four months, I have been trying to to come to terms with what seems like the unimaginable violence unleashed on October 7th by Hamas, and then the equally unimaginable violence that has been unleashed by the Israeli armed forces in Gaza ever since. I didn't want to talk about this today. And taking the advice of my teachers to always talk about what's sitting on your heart, how could I talk about anything else? So I have been, I guess you would say, trying to figure this out. And every time I try to figure it out, try to figure out anything about it, I create a small or a not-so-small gap, and I fill that gap with thought, and then I get really, really upset and really, really angry. What is wrong with these people?

[23:33]

I ask myself. Can they not see that they're creating the suffering they're living through? Can they not see that the horror they are creating will project into the future and give us generations more horror? Can they not see that the solution, the only solution, is to stop this horror and this fighting and ceasefire? I sit in meditation or Zoom meetings or middle-of-the-night musings, and over and over again I try to figure out what to do about the violence in Israel-Palestine. But also, in doing so, I notice again and again how I myself become a participant in this violence. I create a gap between myself and the world, and I know that in creating that gap, in letting my ego consciousness be the primary way I relate to what's happening in Israel-Palestine, I myself sink into irritation, hatred, and depression, just as Kategori Roshi said I would.

[24:37]

So I live and work in an environment, a university, in which the overwhelming majority of my community, at least the ones you hear from most often, consider themselves pro-Palestinian. And this ought to be, and often has been, a largely comfortable place for me because I have been periodically involved in the struggle for the liberation of Palestine since I myself was a college student, which was a long time ago. Of course, there's a smaller... but equally or even more vocal pro-Israel community on my campus. And in my job for the university, I come into contact frequently with their concerns, their complaints, their sadness, and their astonishment about how these other members of our community are conducting themselves, how they are teaching their classes, how they are making statements, how they are protesting. And one of the things that is most heartbreaking to me is how challenging these two groups of people between whom I have to mediate, find it to even minimally acknowledge each other's grief, each other's fear, or each other's pain.

[25:48]

It's almost as though they feel that if they make such an acknowledgement, if they reach across the gap, even with their minds, they will have capitulated. They will have lost the war. Of course, I don't have to look to my workplace to see this kind of polarization. I can read about it in the newspaper, hear it on the radio, see it all around me on billboards coming in today. And I will admit that over the past few months, I have frequently felt driven into a corner by the entire situation. When I allow myself to really sit with the grief, horror, and trauma of what happened on October 7th, to listen to the stories of the survivors and the families of those who did not survive... to not turn my radio off, to feel the pain of all that occurred that day, I am taken to a place beyond words, beyond understanding, beyond any capacity I have to figure out how such an attack by one group of people on another could happen.

[26:54]

And yet I also know enough history to be aware of the roots of the despair and hatred that might or could provoke this kind of a rampage. That is not to apologize for it, nor to try to make excuses. It's just to say that in my heart of hearts, I think I understand how all of this might have come to pass. And then, of course, when I look at the scale of the devastation and misery in Gaza, when I hear stories of the suffering of the Palestinian people, the death toll, the destruction, the hospitals, the hounding of civilians again today, up and down and up and down, this narrow strip of land, the starvation, no water, no food, no medicine, no shelter. I am also taken to a place beyond words, beyond understanding. I cannot figure out how a nation, no matter how grief-stricken, how wounded, could visit this kind of destruction on their neighbors, could blow up hospitals and schools and shelters and roads where they themselves have told people to flee for safety.

[27:58]

And yet, of course, if I really try, I can understand that, too. I can understand the rage and the trauma that would drive you to want to exterminate the threat next door, the threat that spilled over your flimsy border and raped and murdered and burned members of your community alive. Here, too, I also know enough history to be aware of the roots of the despair and trauma that might or could drive that kind of revenge. So a lot of the time for the past four months, if I'm telling the truth to you and to myself, I have felt as though I have been walking around in a state of shock, unable to process what happened on October 7th, unable to process anything that has happened since then in Gaza, and yet doing very little in my life other than trying to process these things. Like so many people, I have felt alternately overwhelmed and paralyzed. I've tried to take seriously Kategori Roshi's assertion that when we are driven into a corner and we can't move an inch, this is precisely where the Buddha way helps us.

[29:05]

But how does it help us exactly? What does the Buddha way offer me by way of solace or solution? I'm happy that I belong to a religion where I'm encouraged to ask these questions. What does the Buddha way offer me in a time of such endless, relentless, unfolding crisis and despair? how does the Buddha way help me close the gap that opens in my mind between myself and my experience of this war, which is really just my ideas about this war, a gap that so quickly becomes an abyss? How does the Buddha way help me exactly, not so much out of this impasse, but through it? In truth, Kategori Roshi writes, there is no gap between you and the world. To become one with your object is true openness of heart. This is why we do zazen. There is no gap between you and the world in truth.

[30:09]

So here I am, back on the cushion, vulnerable and afraid, with mind bubbles full of terrible images of suffering, of what feels like endless war, endless and unremitting violence and hatred that will follow us into the future until there is no one left. What the Buddha way offers us, according to Kategori Roshi, eventually, maybe, is some experience of no gap, of becoming one with your object, and thus of true openness of heart. This is hard to describe, but what I think Kategori Roshi is trying to explain to us, or to me, because it feels like he's speaking to me personally, is that ego consciousness is ego consciousness, whether it's trying to figure out whether I'm doing zazen correctly or it's trying to figure out what to do about the war in Israel-Palestine. Either way, it's the process of taking the things of the world and making them objects in our mind and then getting lost in our thoughts about them, our judgments of them, our need to figure them out.

[31:19]

This is how we create a gap This is how we close our hearts. This is how we start a war. And as wild as it sounds to say it, our teachers tell us that practice on the cushion is the best place to study or maybe just to experience what a world without a gap, without a war, would feel like. What a ceasefire would really be. This is my favorite passage. There are always those who fight with others, Kategori Roshi tells us. There are always those who fight with others. As we look around the human world, it seems we have no idea how to live in peace and harmony. We see so much fighting that we say we are unable to live together. As soon as we say this, however, it becomes our idea, and no idea can touch reality.

[32:20]

Instead, what we have to do is find a way to live in peace and harmony in a world that seems to offer us no idea of how to live in peace and harmony. This is our way. What we have to do is find a way to live in peace and harmony in a world that seems to offer us no idea of how to live in peace and harmony. This is our way. So this passage, I read it over and over again to remind myself, yes, there is a war. There is always a war. This despairing sense you have that with these damn humans there is always a war is not wrong. There are always those who fight with others, period. Full stop. And in the face of all this war, we look in vain for for examples of how to live in peace and harmony. Maybe we find them for a moment in this place, in this community, but then we watch the peace crumble and new wars break out.

[33:29]

Even those who have been the most damaged by violence, the most damaged by war and hatred, we watch them choose to make more war and perhaps even more painfully, we watch them justify their choice. And here's what happens next. He says, we see so much fighting that we say we are unable to live together. We look around and we come to the completely understandable conclusion that war must be inevitable. And this, for Kategori Roshi, this is the exact place where the gap opens. This is where we ourselves become participants in the violence all around us. This is where we lose our way. As soon as we say that we are unable to live together, he tells us, it becomes our idea, and yet no idea can touch reality. That is to say, even though there are always those who fight with others, that doesn't mean that fighting with each other is the only way.

[34:32]

Or rather, it only becomes the only way if we believe in the idea that it's the only way. what we have to do is find a way to live in peace and harmony in a world that seems to offer us no idea of how to live in peace and harmony. The fact that the world offers us no idea of how to live in peace and harmony, I think for Category Roshi that this is actually a good thing. Twice in the passage he says that we have no idea how to live in peace and harmony, but he also says no idea can touch reality. So if we had an idea, about peace and harmony, we still wouldn't be living in peace and harmony. Our job on the cushion and in our life is not to come up with a better idea of how to live in peace and harmony, but just to be peace and harmony, to become one with our object, to experience the openness of heart that comes from having no ideas about the world.

[35:34]

That is the only true source of peace and harmony. This, as he says, is why we do zazen. This is our way. But of course, the experience of peace and harmony that we may sometimes encounter in zazen, it can't just be limited to our sitting practice, even though that is where in our tradition we practice it. It can't be limited in that way, or we just have a nice love and light sitting practice and then go out and do all kinds of violence and make war in the world. And Suzuki Roshi is very sharp on this point. He says, usually, you know, we understand zazen practice as formal practice. Our shikantaza is formal practice and koan practice is more mental practice. But this kind of understanding is not complete. This kind of understanding is the understanding of blind men like Seiko. True practice is not formal practice or so-called shikantaza or koan practice.

[36:38]

None of those. Suzuki Roshi. These practices are just the practice to whip the horse. This is like Seiko loves the dragon, carved dragon, not real one. He goes on, we should know that there is a true dragon, which has no form or color, which is called nothingness or emptiness, and which includes koan practice and shikantaza. And I would say, which includes all practices. the practice of reading the newspaper and walking the dog and protesting and also staying home and not protesting. All of these practices can be practices of peace and harmony, can connect us to the true dragon of emptiness, can manifest the true dragon of emptiness, as long as we commit ourselves to the work of not creating gaps, of not falling victim to our ideas about things, of not letting our ego consciousness separate us from the world, and from our own hearts.

[37:40]

While we practice becoming intimate with the true dragon and the silence of our shikantaza, as bodhisattvas, we have also committed ourselves to manifesting the true dragon, the dragon of peace and harmony, in every corner of our lives. For a long time, Suzuki Roshi says, we have been like Seiko. That should not be our attitude. We should not just be dragon's friend. We should be the dragon himself. Then you will not be afraid of any dragon. We should not just be dragon's friend. We should be the dragon himself. Then you will not be afraid of any dragon. You will not be afraid of the dragon of war. You will not be afraid of a world where everyone seems to be, indeed is, fighting with everyone else. And I say this as someone who is frequently deeply and has a very hard time figuring out how to live in it. Our teachers tell us that by practicing in this way, we will not be afraid of how hard it is to come up with an idea of how to live in peace and harmony, because the Buddha way is not about coming up with better ideas.

[38:53]

It's not about figuring anything out. The Buddha way is about one thing and one thing only, which is opening our hearts. It's about finding a way to live in peace and harmony. by becoming intimate with the true dragon of our own tender, broken hearts. Before leaving off, I feel it's important to make one small adjustment to the story with which we began, one minor reframing courtesy of our friend Dogen Zenji, a true dragon if ever there was one. In Shobo Genzo Zazen Shin, The Point of Zazen, Dogen writes, love a true dragon instead of loving a carved one. However, know that both carved and true dragons have the ability to produce clouds and rain. Do not treasure or belittle what is far away, but be intimate with it.

[39:57]

Do not treasure or belittle what is near, but be intimate with it. With customary rigor, with his uncompromising commitment to reminding us of all the ways we fall into the very dualistic thinking that keeps us from peace and harmony, Dogen insists that a carved dragon is ultimately just as good as a real one. Both, as he says, have the ability to produce clouds and rain to manifest the dharma. If we set up a world in which carved dragons are bad and wrong, and only true dragons our good and right, we will have ended up exactly where we began, in a place of separation, a place of war driven by ideas of right and wrong, a place of no intimacy with the world. Remember that we only come to the impasse, the terminating abode sketched for us by Katagiri Roshi, which is the gateway to peace and harmony.

[40:59]

We only get there by carving a lot of dragons on the cushion. We become intimate with the true dragon by becoming intimate with the carved one until there is no distinction between them. So it's very important that we not get hung up on the idea of trying to not be like Seiko. Go ahead, Dogen says, be like Seiko. Be Seiko. Carve some dragons. Paint some scrolls. Go wild with your dragon-loving self. But remember, if you hear a knock at the door, put your sword down and prepare some tea because it might just be the dragon you've been waiting for. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma.

[41:59]

For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dormer.

[42:08]

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