So, Dogen. And Dogen has been such a huge influence on all of us who come in close to the Zen center. It's really hard to avoid Dogen and his writing and the creativity. He was an amazing poet and thinker, philosopher, and hardly anyone can kind of explain Dogen, you know, there's not a lot of straight line to Dogen. At the same time, he follows some very strict principles that go back to the founding ancestor of Buddhism, to Shakyamuni Buddha, as do all of the ancestors. So sometimes it's a little hard to see that thread, but I think that's one of the things we want to keep looking for, is where are these principles, these primary principles? So I thought I would, once again, name the primary principles, do a brief review I find it helpful, so I'm going to assume you find it helpful to hear some of these things, you know, repeated.

[05:39]

For example, I've often talked about the Buddha's first sermon. And that's mostly because that's when I really went, aha, oh, oh my, back when I was a new student. And I had gone off to the library because I couldn't really understand what all these lectures were about. I was going to these talks, you know, week after week. did practice period. And I just said, I don't know what they're talking about. I really don't know what the structure is. You know, it was all very nice. I was inspired by the lectures, but they all seem to be a little bit random. You know, what is it? What are the tracks that these talks are running along? I could intuit there was something there. There was some common ground, but it was a little challenging as a new student to, and no one was telling me. So that was pretty common too in those days. There's a saying at Zen Center at the time when I arrived that those who know don't say, and those who say don't know. I thought, oh, well, I think I better be quiet.

[06:42]

So it was kind of the tone that really only the Roshi was saying anything, and the rest of us were kind of listening. So I did go to the library, and I found looking for the Buddhist First Sermon. And I found it, and I was very excited. It's called Turning the Wheel of the Law. And in the Buddha's first sermon, he gives these principles. And the two principles, as we have talked about many times, are Ri and Ji, the ultimate truth and the relative truth. So the two truths are the two tracks on which Zen and all the Buddha Dharma run along. They run along the two truths, whether they're made explicit or whether that's the topic or whether it's just in the in the form of the poetry or the koan or whatever you'll see the two truths dancing with each other over and over and over again so as you all know the two truths the relative truth and the ultimate truth are embedded in what the buddha said the very first time he spoke so the first truth non-duality was based on his experience on seeing the star so he saw the star in the morning

[07:54]

He had this intuitive knowing of non-separation, of no separate self, of a great expansive freedom. His mind became unbounded, that's one of the terms that's used, unbounded, no longer confined to some notion of a self or of objects outside of that self, you know, all the structures that we have built into our language and into our assumptions about reality. That fell apart for him, like the veils fell off his eyes and he could see clearly, and it made him extremely happy. So this is his awakening experience. He was woke, the first woke person. And so from that teaching, he gave us this idea of the middle way, to avoid in our thinking dualistic notions, that any dualistic propositions really are... Complements with an E. Light is a complement of dark. I'm a complement of you.

[08:56]

Me and you are complements. We're not separate. We complement each other. We define each other. There's only the whole. There's only wholeness. And wholeness can be looked at from various sides. But still, it's just the wholeness. You don't separate light and dark. You don't put the light over here and the dark over there. You know, one of them is the extension of the other. They just kind of slide into each other just as... You and I slide into each other and merge and so on and so forth. So that's the non-dual nature of reality. That's the first truth, ultimate truth. And that's the first sentence of the first sermon. The non-dual nature. Avoid the extremes of is or isn't. And find the middle way where the extremes are connected, where they coexist. They are of one nature. They are not separate. You can't separate up and down. Up makes no sense without down, and light makes no sense without dark, and so on.

[09:57]

All of our dualistic propositions depend on their partner. So the other, so that's number one, the middle way, called the middle way, avoid the extremes. And because of this, as it says in the Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, very handy dictionary, have on my desktop all proponents of buddhism are in a sense proponents of the middle way so that's that's a kind of ground zero for us the middle way is buddhism in many ways it was called the middle way for many for many many years that's how it was referred to this is the teaching of the middle way so all right so this teaching of the middle way of non-duality of interdependence of all phenomena phenomena, as I've said, based on the Buddhist experience, is what we call ri or ultimate truth. Okay, that's one of the truths. So the second framework that goes also found in the first sermon is the relative truth, gi.

[11:05]

So we've got ri and we have gi. They too are dualistic propositions. You can't understand the ultimate truth without referring to the relative truth. You can't talk about the ultimate truth, which has no language, which is inconceivable. It's beyond our conceptual grasp without referencing it by the relative truth. The finger of relative truth is pointing at the moon of the ultimate truth. That's what that metaphor is about. Big principle or framework that the Buddha presented in his first sermon is the Four Noble Truths, which are the relative truth. They're about relationships. Suffering has a relationship with its cause. Suffering is caused. It's a result. So that's a relationship. Cause and effect. So suffering is caused by ignorance of non-duality. Isn't that ironic? So if you ignore non-duality, you suffer. You know, its cause is suffering. Ignoring the completeness or the wholeness of the universe is the cause of our suffering.

[12:10]

And the other cause of our suffering, there's two of them that are the primary causes. The other one is desire. Desire to have things be different than they are. So suffering is caused. The cause is ignorance based in desire. Or excuse me, desire based in ignorance. So then you have another set of causal relationships. The third and fourth noble truth, the cessation of suffering, which is a result, the one we all would like. We'd like suffering to end. Cessation of suffering is caused. The fourth noble truth, the cause of the cessation of suffering is the path. The path... is enlightenment, enlightenment is the path, as the Buddha said. So every step of the path that we take, every intention we make to be on the path, to practice the way, to be kind, any of these virtues that we talk about in our Dharma discourses will result in lessening of your suffering.

[13:14]

Okay, I think this is... Fairly well known, and people lecture about it all the time. I've talked about it a lot. So these are the two truths, and both of them present in the Buddhist First Sermon. So then there's this elaboration. So you have four things, four noble truths. The first and second noble truth, there is suffering and the cause of suffering, is elaborated as the 12-fold chain of dependent core rising. So I looked at that with you last week. I showed you a picture of the 12-fold chain. And inside the 12-fold chain are the six realms, which is what Dogen's worldview, the reason I'm bringing this up again, is this is Dogen's worldview. 13th century Japan had a profound belief in the truth of the 12-fold chain that leads to suffering and that the consequences of your actions are what... resulted in you being in one of these six realms. So there's three high realms, the gods, the jealous gods who are trying to get into heaven, and then the humans.

[14:23]

Those are higher incarnations or states of mind. The lower realms, you've got the animals just fighting and fornicating and not looking at consequences. You've got hungry ghosts who are hungry all the time, never satisfied, and you have hell. which we all can kind of figure that one out. Okay, so those six realms, the Rokudo, are what Dogen's worldview, this was Dogen's worldview, and the worldview of his entire culture for centuries, since the arrival of Buddhism in Japan. Okay, so that's the 12-fold chain. So we have four noble truths, first and second noble truth, suffering in the cause, is basically the 12-fold chain, explains... that relationship between suffering and its cause. And there's all those 12 links. Starting with ignorance, you go around, you get to feelings, you get to desire, the second major cause of suffering. And then you get to old age sickness and death. So the whole circle is basically complete, tragically.

[15:23]

And then you go, that didn't go very well, so you try it again. So this is a circle. It's a cyclical, habitual pattern of mind. That we think like that. And we keep recreating the same patterns over and over and over in our lives. And this is, we all know this. We all do it. We all have those habits. And this is why we suffer. So this is the Buddha's main teaching was about these causes and results. Causes and results. Okay. All right. So that's... So... The six realms, as I said, are Dogen's world and is the context for his search for liberation as it was for the Buddha. Now, they all wanted to escape from the chain of causation. And that's what drove all of the teachers. I think it's what drove many of us is to get off that chain, to break the chain of suffering in some way of suffering in its cause. OK, so. This is the content, this wheel of causation was the content of the Buddha's mind during his time under the tree, under the Bodhi tree.

[16:32]

He was just sitting there. If you looked at him, you would just see a young man sitting up straight under a tree. That's all you would see. For him, he was watching how his mind was working, how it was turning, how this wheel was being formed. You know, it must take a little bit of doing to see how these links happen, because most of our minds, and I'm sure the Buddhist wasn't so different, are pretty random. You know, it's kind of hard to tell which one of those things is creating the next thing to come. But he was very patient, and he quieted his mind in such a way that he could really see these links. Oh, that led to that. My feelings, having feelings, is what led to my desire. I had a big feeling about something. I saw a mango over there, and I really wanted the mango. And then I really wanted it. I started craving it. First, I wanted it. Then I really wanted it. And then I got it, and it turned out it was rotten. And then I spit it out, and that was awful.

[17:34]

And then I thought, oh, that just didn't go well. And so then I saw another mango. So we start over again. We just keep trying. We keep trying to satisfy. our desires. Round and round and round we go. So basically the wheel is a map of our human mind and how it goes about bringing itself into discomfort. You know, the suffering, the word for suffering in Sanskrit is dukkha, which means out of round. And it refers to a wheel on a cart that's not round. When a wheel on a cart isn't round, the cart is kind of limps along like that. So it's kind of a pretty good analogy for suffering. It's not necessarily the worst pain you've ever had. It's just irritating. You know, things are often irritating. I think all of us suffer in one way or another just pretty much throughout the day. There's something that is irritating to us, this out of round. So in samsara, which is the realm of suffering, means endless circling.

[18:40]

That's what it literally means. So cutting through this habitual cyclical pattern is the purpose of this word no that appears in the Prajnaparamita literature. So for all of you familiar with the Heart Sutra, no, no eyes, no ears, no nose, no suffering, no cause of suffering, no path, no attainment, with nothing to attain. It's like, what? So here we have this teaching in the first sermon, and along comes the Heart Sutra and says... No, to each one of those elements. No path. There's no path. Where's the path? Show me the path. Show me your suffering. Can you find it? Show me your separation from others. Show me your eyes. Are these your eyes? Are they all by themselves? Seeing? Are they connected to something else? Do they have a dependent relationship with... Everything else, the rest of your body, and does the rest of your body have a dependent relationship with air and water and earth and sky and the universe?

[19:44]

Well, yes. If you look, the answer is yes. There's no independent I. There's no independent nose. There's no suffering that doesn't have a context and so on. And there's no end of suffering that also doesn't have a context. And wisdom is the end of suffering. Seeing through the pattern that creates this suffering, how the mind operates, seeing through that is what liberated the Buddha. He went, aha, I see. I see what's happening here. I'm imagining things. I'm creating the world. You know, I'm sitting over here feeling miserable. You know, I've left my wife and my child and my palace and my parents. And I've wandered around the woods and I starved myself. And I've been so upset and so depressed. You know, which is why his young wife told him to leave. He was so unhappy. She said, you know, she liked him. They were cousins. And she said, you got to go. You got to go figure out what's wrong with you. And he was very unhappy. And then he realized his unhappiness was self-made. He was creating his unhappiness by how he was thinking about the conditions of his life.

[20:49]

And the conditions don't go away. Because you realize that you still, you know, suffer broken legs or colds or COVID or whatever it is that come to our way. But our attitude about things that happen to us can change radically. And it changed radically for the Buddha. Okay, so that's a quick review. So basically our practice in Zen is no. It's like you sit there in the Zendo and it's very, you know, and no also includes don't. You know, just don't. Don't move. Just sit there and watch. Watch this spectacular show that's going on in your imagination. Suzuki Roshi talked about the white screen. You know, it's like there's a white screen. You know, we sit facing a white wall and all of this stuff is going on. And it takes a while to realize that there's nothing on the wall. The wall is just a white wall. Where is all that stuff coming from? Well, it's coming from your imagination.

[21:50]

It's coming from inside to the outside, not the other way around. So it's kind of a trick. You know, Mara is called the master of illusions. So we are under a spell of how our minds and how our bodies are designed to see the world as outside, which in some ways makes us successful. We're able to get something to eat, and we're able to mate, and we're able to do all kinds of things that depend on externalizing the other. But we go too far. We've gone too far. We start to become greedy and we start to become abusive and all kinds of stuff in order to get what we want. Our selfishness is obviously way out of control. And the Buddha realized that this was the cause of pain, that we thought this self was better than anything else. It was the most important thing, was how we manage and care for and appropriate objects to the self, hoarding. hoarding and so on.

[22:51]

We see it all the time. This is nothing new. It's certainly still the most common human behavior in so-called modern times. And each of us has our own version of that, our own kind of hoarding that we do. I'm about to move in another year, and I am terrified of what I'm going to do with all my books. I have been hoarding. I've been hoarding books. They're piled up everywhere. And so are my other friends who will be moving up to Enso Village. We've all got a lot of books. So there you are, you know. no matter what virtues you think you may be, you know, upholding in your life, there are some place where you're doing something that has to do with accumulating more than you need, more than you can use. So Azazan practice is fundamentally a practice of patience with the mind. with the arising of various images in the mind, with the disturbing images and with the lustful images, you know, greedy, things that make us greedy or hateful or confused.

[23:56]

So those are the three big tendencies we have, the three toxins, the three poisons, greed, hate, delusion. So sitting in zazen is a practice of patience with the arisings in our mind, a practice of no, no, I am not going to indulge. in what just arose in my mind. I'm not going to get on that boat and ride it. You know, I'm not going to. I'm just going to sit here and let it float on by, you know, like clouds in an empty sky. That's one of the images for Zazen practice. So we practice to be patient and to accept this continuous arising of non-existent phenomena. They're just clouds. You know, they have no substance. They're just thoughts. They're just ideas. They seem so important. They have so much power over us, you know. Mara, the evil one, he's the master of our illusions. And he tortured the Buddha for quite a while until the Buddha caught on to what was happening. I know who you are. You are myself. And once you see that the illusions are self-made, you have a great deal of freedom, you know, from this thing buzzing around up here on our shoulders.

[25:08]

So another important, and that's one very important aspect of Dogen's teaching, are these lines that he's been following, all Zen ancestors follow, all Buddhist ancestors follow, of the two truths. The relative truth of causality and the ultimate truth of non-duality. So those are the two biggies. I'll just keep bringing those up again and again. Ri and Ji. Ri and Ji. So another important aspect for how Dogen understood a life of practice in the Zen tradition, this is particular to Zen. Not all Buddhist traditions, certainly not the earliest traditions, didn't have this idea of succession or lineage. And we basically, in Zen, have a ritual process called Dharma transmission. And through Dharma transmission, we pass on this idea of our successors. You know, there's a lot of effort and a lot of sincerity that goes into performing this ritual.

[26:11]

In fact, I am about to, in July, offer Dharma Transmission, the second time I've done this, with a student of mine who I ordained a number of years ago. His name is Hakusho Ostlund. He's from Sweden. And he now lives back east. And he has started a Brattleboro Zen Center. which I'm so excited to hear about. I think it's doing quite well. And so I will be giving him Dharma transmission in July. And this is a really complex. I have lots of work to do between now and then. Lots of articles, lots of ritual implements have got to be made. There's staffs. small sticks that you carry when you're the doshi and there's a there's a whisk i need to get him a whisk and i need to get him a stamp to stamp his lineage papers and i need to get him the lineage papers and all kinds of things just you know it takes many many months to prepare and and we don't we know we don't take this lightly this is a very big commitment on my part to him and he also is making a big commitment to carry on the the responsibilities of this tradition

[27:21]

for himself with his students. So I wanted to show you this lineage document. Some of you probably maybe have one already. Those of you studying precepts will be receiving this lineage document as part of the precept ceremony. And this is not a great picture. I just took a little while ago with my photo booth shot. But anyway, I think you can see it fairly well. I'm going to pull it up on my screen share. Okay. All right. So here it is. So this is called the Ketchimiyaku. Ketchimiyaku. And it means the blood vein of the Buddha ancestors. And there's a lot going on in this document. And there are many names that some of you know and some of you maybe not yet. But it begins, if you can see, I don't know if it's possible to see, maybe I could hone in a little bit.

[28:28]

There's a line that starts up here with a circle. And there's a round circle that's empty. And so the very beginning of our story, the Zen story, is this empty circle. And the empty circle doesn't represent nothing. I mean, that's always the tendency with emptiness is to think it means nothing. but it doesn't mean nothing it means that there's nothing outside of that circle it's all inclusive you know emptiness means that dependent core rising of the universe this is the universe and all of its parts that are represented by this circle so this is the enlightened vision of that all the buddhas and ancestors share so the beginning of the lineage the transmission of understanding from one to the next from one as we say in zen one warm hand to the next warm hand from human to human begins up here with this realization of the non-dual nature of the universe and that's the buddha's enlightened vision so that's the beginning and then from there there's a line that comes down and under that line is a name and that name is shakimuni buddha

[29:39]

So now we're going from, one way of thinking about this is the big circle is ri. So that's the ultimate truth. There are no words there. There's no explanation. I mean, I gave you some explanation, but really the circle doesn't tell you anything about itself. It's just a big space, spaciousness. Shakyamuni Buddha, we're starting to get specific. Now we're in the realm of ji. We're starting to name names and to learn about differences. Shakyamuni Buddha is different than his disciple Mahakashapa, who's different than Ananda, and so on. So each of these names going down these lines is an individual. And each of those individuals, according to the Zen mythology, have connected to one another as teachers and disciples. So this lineage chart is basically telling us... who are, it's like a family lineage. And it's very much in the vein of the familial relationships. So we had, in fact, we used to call these, when I first came to Zen Center, these were the patriarchs.

[30:44]

That was the name we've kind of done away with, patriarch. But it's now the ancestors. So these are the ancestors of Zen. And, you know, we chant them every day in service. We chant the names of the ancestors. We also chant the names of the women. They're not ancestors because they're not in a line. They don't have the same... relationship one to the other but they're major teachers in the tradition so we we name the women the women teachers also every other day we do either the name of these people which no longer is exclusively male but was for a long time and and then we do the names of the women who've been very important in the transmission of the teaching so then uh when you get down through all these names the first rows of names are indian names So these are the Indian ancestors. So names like Mahagashapa and Ananda and Vasubandhu and Bhutanwanda and Nagarjuna, these are all Indian ancestors. And then we get to Bodhidharma.

[31:48]

So we talked about Bodhidharma some time ago. Bodhidharma is an Indian ancestor who traveled to China. So when Bodhidharma shows up, he's over here. This is Bodhidharma's name. You can't see that, but I have the actual document here next to me. So from Bodhidharma, we have five descendants from Bodhidharma. There's Hueca, Sangon, Daigan, and Hongren. And these are the five Chinese ancestors. So Bodhidharma transmitted to a Chinese student and that Chinese student to another Chinese student. So now Zen is maturing in China. And it's beginning to absorb a lot of Chinese philosophy and nature, sense of nature and poetry and all kinds of things that were already quite developed in China are beginning to infuse the Indian Zen understanding. So then we get to, after Hongren, which is the fifth Chinese Zen ancestor, we have Hui Nong.

[32:56]

the sixth Chinese ancestor, who we talked about at some length. So he's the author of the Platform Sutra, and Huynong is like the major, he's kind of like a seed, like a pod of seeds that just blew up, and all kinds of ancestors grew out of Huynong's. teaching so by then by the time huinong comes along zen has become the dominant tradition in china it's all over the place and there's lots of teachers and they all have their own little monasteries and they students travel around from temple to temple learning from each of these different ancestors and so on so the and yet even so And there are different lineages going on at that time. So if one teacher has a certain number of students, that's their lineage. Another teacher has students, that's their lineage. So the line that comes to us at Zen Center has a very specific set of names that are said to be connected to one another.

[33:58]

So from Huanong, we have two major lines that go off on either side. So here's Huanong, and there's a line that goes this way. with names. Again, some of these are all Chinese names, and it goes this way. And this line over here leads to Linji or Rinzai. Do you all remember Rinzai? That's the other Zen school, the other school of Zen. And on this line, we have... Where is he? We have Ru Jing, who's the Soto Zen. So this is the Soto Zen. We have Dong Shan, and then we have Ru Jing. So this is our line that becomes Soto Zen, and this is the line that becomes Rinzai Zen. So what is really, really important for us not to forget is that these two lines that go down with all these names, at the bottom is Mio Zen, down here.

[35:03]

He's a Rinzai teacher, a Japanese Rinzai teacher. And on this side, we have Ru Jing, who's a Chinese Soto Zen teacher. Okay, so we've got Soto Zen here, Rinzai Zen here. And then the line, if you follow it, goes up and connects on both sides to Dogen. So this name right here is Dogen Zenji. So he has a very important role to play in basically synthesizing these two styles of teaching. He basically brings both houses together. You know, he never said he was one or the other. He basically honors Zen as a tradition. And he studied koans. He studied all of this material. He'd read the Pali canon. Dogen was extremely well-educated, as were most of these, because that's what they did with their time. They were monks. They were monastics. They spent a lot of time in classes. They spent a lot of time in the library.

[36:04]

They were very literate. They could read Chinese. They could read Sanskrit. So they had a huge body of knowledge to draw from for their own teaching. So Dogen was a very, very well-educated person. And he had, again, he had this inspiration from both houses, from Rinzai and from Soto. Although when the finals... This identity that he assumed had to do with his enlightenment experience, which we talked about last time, that took place with Ru Jing. So Ru Jing was the Soto Zen master. That's where Dogen got enlightened. It was in Ru Jing's temple. So for him, of course, that's going to be the most important experience of his life, was his awakening. So he honors Ru Jing. He went to Ru Jing to say, you know, what do you think? Ru Jing said, drop body and mind. Dogen said, body and mind dropped. And they went back and forth. And finally, he was given Dharma transmission from Ru-jin, which he returned to Japan.

[37:05]

And when he was asked what he brought back with him, he said, I brought nothing. And then as someone mentioned this morning in lecture, eyes horizontal, nose vertical. That's what he said he brought back from his travels. Just this person. So from Dogen, then we have his students, you know, Koan Ejo, Keizan Jokin, who's the author of transmission of light so he's he's our guy who we've been studying his writings through the transmission of light and then all of the different names that come off of them so their student and the student of their students so on so again it's generational going down these these two lines of um of japanese now we're in japan so we've gone from india india up here to china to china china and then japan And now we're in Japan, and we go down for a ways until we get to some names that we know, because they're very close in time.

[38:08]

So we've got Gyakushitsu Sojun Dayosho, Butsuman Sogaku Dayosho, Gyokujin Soan Dayosho, Shogaku Shunryu Dayosho. That's Suzuki Roshi. So not too long down the line, Suzuki Roshi is right. Right here. So he is a Dharma heir down this lineage that comes from Dogen, through all of these Japanese ancestors. And then in my lineage document, which is the one I'm showing you here, it goes from Shogaku Shunryu to Zen Tatsu Miyoyu, which is Richard Baker. Zen Tatsu Richard Baker was the Dharma heir of Suzuki Roshi, one of them. So it was... Hoetsu Suzuki, Suzuki Roshi's son, who was just here doing, helping us with our transition from our abatial transition for my stepping down and Jiryu stepping up as the abbot of Greenwald's farm, city center, Ed Sato-san, David Zimmerman have changed their roles, Ed stepped down, David stepped sideways, and a woman named Mako, Mako Volko.

[39:26]

has become the abbess of the city center, a very fine human being. So we have Zentasu Myoyu, and he gave Dharma Transmission to Tenshin Zenki, Reb Anderson. And Tenshin Zenki gave Dharma Transmission to Fuyu Doshin. That's me, Fu. And then after my name, there's a blank. So my... authorization includes that I can write names in there. I can hand write in somebody's name. I'm going to do that for Hakusho when I give him Dharma transmission. I also do that when I give people precepts. I write in their name, their new name. When you receive the Buddhist precepts in our tradition, you receive a Dharma name, a Buddhist name, at the same time at the ceremony. It's one of the exciting moments is when you're told your new name. So you also receive this document with your new name written on it. And then from there, from your name, the red line, this is a red line, by the way, it's called the blood vein, this line that I've been following that goes down through all these names.

[40:35]

It's the blood vein of the precepts. So what's moving through this blood vein, the blood is the bodhisattva precepts. That's what's being transmitted from ancestor to ancestor. So when I transmit the precepts, when I transmit the precepts to Hakusho, he will be able, he will be authorized to transmit the precepts to others. So that's the warm hand to warm hand. I'm not going to give him the authority. He doesn't need me anymore. He can do that on his own. So then he will be able to sign his documents and give those precepts to his students. This is the kind of generational transmission that is very exciting and very tender. In fact, we've each been told when we receive Dharma transmission that that's the only job we have is to pass on the Dharma to someone else. And you're kind of like, well, I got to find somebody. I'm sort of looking around like, would you like to be my Dharma heir? It's not quite so simple. You actually have to go through quite a lot of time and spend a lot of time and really find the affinity.

[41:43]

Who is it you have this affinity with? that this would be something you'd be willing to you know in some sense stake your livelihood on or stake your life on that you want to do this as your vocation you know as those of us who are still here have have done it's our vocation so from the new name that's written down here new name but this red line then goes this way and goes back up to the empty circle at the top So this is representing the complete body. This is the Buddha body. The vein is running through the body of awakening. So this represents the entirety of this tradition. And it's alive. The life of it is this transmission. So the blood vein that passes through all of these ancestors is what's alive. It's the warm blood that is being passed on. I'm... passing on the warm blood to Hakusho, and I passed on some warm blood to another student of mine, Ray Ren, some time ago.

[42:48]

So I have these two, you know, blood vessels have hooked on to my transmission process, as many other teachers have done with other people, too. So it was done with me, as I did with Rev. So I hooked on to his transmission, and he'd hooked on to Richard Baker's, and hooked Richard Baker to Suzuki Roshi, and so on. So it's the Zen story. This is how the Zen tells its story about who it is that we listen to, who are the teachers, what did they teach, and who were their students. So each one of these Transmission of Light chapters that we've looked at has been about that moment of transmission or awakening when the student receives that. that authorization from their teacher like yes you've got it yes you've got it and they know it like they don't get it from the teacher but they bring it to the teacher and the teacher says yes that'll do that'll do always reminds me of that wonderful movie about the pig that that is acts like a dog and herds the sheep and at the end the shepherd

[44:00]

you know pigs a babe babe comes back and he's so he's kind of sitting there waiting you know and then the the old rumpy old farmer just says that'll do pig that'll do so that's kind of dharma transmission you get that feeling too that'll do good enough no no fireworks go off you just get this kind of calm moment of okay you all right you're okay now you go do your work you get back to work you've got work to do So this is we're not just fooling around, you know. OK, so that's the Ketchum Yaku. That's the Zen story. I'm going to get rid of that now. So. OK, anything I didn't tell you. All right. It's all right. So then here's again, just to point out one more time with what is the Ketchum Yaku made of? You know, what is it made of? Well, it's made of two things. As is everything, it's made of the two truths.

[45:01]

So in the relative truth, the kechimiyaku is a piece of paper that I had printed. Someone had printed. I will have some more printed. So there's ink, there's paper, there's human activity, there's lots of words. So it's a dependently co-arisen. It's been made of all these different parts. So it depends, the Ketchumiyaku depends on its parts, on all the things I just said. It depends on causes and condition, like the entire history of Zen, that is reflected in these words, written in ink. And it depends on words, on language. So those are the three things, if you remember, that basically make things or help us understand what it means when we say something is empty. It's empty of being independent, of having independent existence. The kechimiyaku is not independent. It's dependent on parts, on causes and conditions, and on language, on words.

[46:02]

Okay, so this is true for all things that are G. All G has those three things. So it also represents the ultimate truth. It is ultimate truth. You know, paper and ink and names are ultimate truth. They have no inherent existence. They are free of any kind of entrapment. They're not things. They're dependent co-arising. So, you know, this whole process is also a kind of celebration of ultimate reality. You know, there is nothing that's not part of ultimate reality. And this is kind of a very particular way of expressing or teaching ultimate truth. you know, using relative terms, using the relative truth in order to help us understand the ultimate truth. So, let's see, I'm going to go down a little bit. I said all of that to you. I told you all that. Okay. So, this is, you know, so when we talk about Dharma transmission, what we're talking about is this one body, this one Buddha body.

[47:09]

You know, there's just one Buddha body. There's just one universe. And that's, pretty much the message that is being given over and over again, you know, to us and by us, the one Buddha body. And just in the same way that trees live over time, you know, each of these living layers depends on the layers that went before. That's what keeps them alive. You know, I was thinking that the real life of Zen is the Sangha. You know, the Sangha has lived for 2,500 years by virtue of this holding the teaching and carrying the teaching and caring for it and passing it on so it really is this sangha that is the eternal buddha body it's this lineage of students and teachers caring about the the the wisdom teachings and the compassion teachings of the buddha so i think in in trying to study the zen tradition and in particular the lineage chart i think it's important

[48:11]

to look at this chart from a couple of different perspectives. And there's three of them that I read about in a book on Zen that I thought were helpful for me. So I'm going to share them with you. So the first perspective is called mythos, myth, or heart. You know, myths are like talking to our hearts. All the fairy tales that we have been told since we were young. We like those, you know, romantic. They're very romantic. So what we... What we might call in the Zen tradition is its own self-understanding is mythic. This is mythic. You know, this warm hand to warm hand from Shakyamuni Buddha through the lineage awakened ancestors to us is a family story. It's a warm-hearted family story. It's generational. It's about inheritance. And as I said, it's patriarchal by design. My father and my son and so on and so forth. We talk about our Dharma brothers and our Dharma sisters and our ancestors are like our fathers.

[49:14]

So there's a very heartfelt connection to this story, to this mythical story. The second perspective... which is also really important not to lose sight of, is logos, or mind and intellect. Well, what about that story? What would happen if we start to look at it from a historical perspective, based on written documents and on artifacts? In other words, like science. We'd look at it from the science point of view, which requires some proof based on such things as archaeology and scholarship and You know, carbon dating and all kinds of things that scientists do to prove that something is or isn't. Let's not say true, just say theoretically it's true. You know, we have a theory about it that might hold. We'll keep looking. So from the scientific perspective, this lineage chart is almost entirely apocryphal. In fact, it was written most likely in the 8th century by Zen practitioners in China.

[50:16]

They wrote their own story and they sort of carbon dated it back to the beginning of the tradition to Shakyamuni Buddha. It's called retroactive attribution. So much of Zen has been retroactive attribution. You know, nobody knows if there was a Bodhidharma, you know, and yet we have... documents that he wrote and we have pictures of him and we have stories about where he lived and so on. And the same thing with all of the early ancestors. Nobody really knows. There's no proof about it. There are writings. There are teachings. And then there's this wonderful chart that was written up, 8th century China, which has been held as proof of Then when I came to Zen Center, I thought this was proof. I didn't know it was apocryphal until I read these scholars who were going like, you know what, guys, this is not really possible that this person met that person. They didn't even live in the same century. So, you know, they kind of shredded some of our mythos.

[51:20]

And I've got to say it was a little painful, but not... To the point where I thought, well, I'm out of here. If this is what they've done, I don't want to have anything to do with it. So there are some wonderful books. And if you're ready to kind of have some of your mythos undermined, there's a book called Seeing Through Zen by John McRae, which I think is really well written. And it's where I kind of got all of this from. It was from John McRae. And then there's also a book called How Zen Became Zen by Morton Schluter. And then there's another one called Mahayana Buddhism, The Doctrinal Foundations by Paul Williams. And so they've done their scholarship. They've actually looked at all the documents and at the historical record and so on and so forth. And... So even though they say that this chart is apocryphal, and many of these stories are apocryphal, they're brilliantly written. They're poetically brilliant.

[52:22]

And they were written by very sincere and intelligent scholars and writers and poets of the Song Dynasty. The Song Dynasty, which was before the Song, was called the Golden Age of Zen. Well, the Golden Age of Zen was written in the Song Dynasty. It was written later. And then they attributed all of these stories about these ancestors back to the Tang Dynasty, which then gave them legitimacy. So if I wrote a story about my great-great-grandfather, who was a great general during the Civil War, I'm making that up, by the way, and then that makes me the inheritor of that famous grandfather, right? So people do that. Politicians do that. We have one that's doing that right now. It's quite interesting. So we have this... So this advantage of giving your ancestors this kind of glorious history helps you, kind of brings you up, and your esteem becomes raised up by that.

[53:27]

So, you know, Zen was basically that. That's what it was about. I would say that one of the things John McRae says, who's a great fan, he's not an anti-Buddhist or an anti-Zen at all. He said, it's not that there was anything wrong with storytelling. He said, these are great stories. They're beautiful stories. You know, fairy tales are amazing. And novels that have moved us to tears, they're amazing. They really, the mythos side is what we care about. We really care about the love and the kindness and the... and the generative qualities of the Dharma being passed, you know, through the generations. That's what's inspiring to us, you know, is this body of legendary lore. So John McRae is saying, I'm not saying that this is a bad thing. I'm just saying that these myth makers, these poets and myth makers were very talented. And what they did is, is the body of Dharma that we treasure. And there's nothing wrong with that. You know, it doesn't matter.

[54:27]

Well, it might matter to somebody, but John McRae said, it's fine. It doesn't take anything away from the beauty of these writings or how inspiring or how philosophically acute the insights are that these teachers have passed down. So even though the entire tradition is founded on the talents of poets, meaning these makers, they're lived stories, that the practice itself... has lived itself through the lives of those who were inspired by these stories. So this is the third perspective. So we have mythos, and then we have logos, and then we have this lived stories. So if we accept the stories, as I did for very many, a couple of, I don't know, at least 10 years or 15 years before I began to question, or found myself reading books that helped me to question some of what I had believed to be true, So that allowed me to actually combine these two perspectives, the heart perspective and the historical record, which I think is really interesting.

[55:34]

And I really enjoyed reading John McRae, and I recommend it. You know, he's a lovely writer, and it's very interesting what he's offered to us. So... The mythic story, I mean, the heart story, the lived story, has to do with how each of us carries the teaching in the way we live. You know, if something's inspired me, I've heard something. I don't know who wrote it, and I don't know where it came from. But there's some song or some poetry or being directed to listen to the sound of the rain, as Dogen does. You know, being given the gift of that, of that poetry, is for me, is my inspiration. entry into the buddhist buddhist teaching and into the inspired understanding that that guides this this whole tradition so there's the three learnings i've mentioned these before to you all there's the learning that comes from listening you know from seeing from smelling from your senses how you feel when you go in the zendo i feel really good when i'm in the zendo and i feel really good when i look at the altar and i smell the incense there's something very encouraging to my life

[56:45]

in that encounter with the sensory aspects or elements of our ritual Zen. And then there's the study. So I've enjoyed studying. You begin to study what you've seen and what you've heard and what you've been inspired by. And you learn something. learned from John McRae. That was really important, and I'm really glad. So that's the next level of learning. And then the third one is you become the teachings. You're able to hold that and synthesize it to bring them together for yourself and hopefully to be able to do that for others as well. So in relation to Dogen's quest for understanding, this lineage chart proves highly significant in accomplishing that mission. He didn't know that any of this was apocryphal. 13th century Japan, this is the literal truth. And the Rokuji is the literal truth. And the 12-fold chain is the literal truth. So they're not quibbling about who wrote this or whatever. They actually believe that what came down to them is the word of the Buddha, is the teaching of Bodhidharma, is the teaching of Dongshan.

[57:52]

and so on. And so there's no scholarship going on at this time. There's no tools for scholarship at this time. So we're looking back in time through this lens of understanding to see how Dogen was looking at the world. I think that's what's really interesting to me is, well, how did Dogen, what kind of a vision did he have of reality? What was he seeing that gave him this ability to break through that shield too. He had an amazing way of saying, you know, even so, this is what's true. He had Shakyamuni Buddha's eyes. He could see the world with the same wisdom and with the same compassion that all of these ancestors saw. And that's why they could speak the way they spoke, you know. So, What's really important about the diagram is not the single names in this lineage, but it's, as I said, the blood vein. It's the passing of the precepts, the passing of the lived experience.

[58:56]

Do you want to live... you know, this life of kindness and generosity and forgiveness and so on? Is that the kind of life you want for yourself? Will you ingest? Will you let your blood flow through this chart the way these teachers or whether they're real names behind them or not? We know that somebody cared enough to carry this for thousands of years into us, to bring this to us. So this is the Buddha's heart mind, the Bodhisattva precepts. um so i think i'm going to stop there because it's six o'clock and i have quite a bit more i'd like to say about succession and also about dogan but i will save that for next week um and i'd love to open to you all and what you might like to to ask i'm just make a little note here where i stopped Okay.

[60:08]

First of all, I just, hi there. I just had one more thing. I remember what's really great about getting older is you hear something for the 49th time and you get it. Or maybe I got it before, but I'm just getting it again. But it's really cool that, you know, some things take a while to sneak in. And then because I'm older, it needs to sink in a few times. So this was really, really wonderful. I grabbed, I got up my catcher and I looked at it. I started looking at it because I've looked at it before, but this was really different. So thank you very much for that. You're welcome. You're welcome. I'm going to be sharing this, this link with a number of new students at Berkeley. I think this would be really, really good. Earlier when you were talking about the Rhi and the G, and I was in a conversation this morning, and someone was talking about irritation.

[61:20]

What is irritation? And she said, for example, you go to the store, and you're standing in line, and it's a long line, and you're irritated. And I thought about it, and what I realized for me, irritation is... Having what I don't want. If I... Having what I don't want, I'm irritated. It's just across the board. It can be the grocery store. It can be someone not understanding me. It can be that I put some papers over there and someone bumped them and they're gone around. I don't want them to look like that. And then we went on to talk about how you... deal with irritation what you do with it and i sort of came to this thought of that one of the things i do is i return to the source of my suffering because i'm really suffering when i am irritated because there are people in line that that's that's that's definitely my suffering so i thought i returned to the source of the pain and what

[62:33]

I talked about said was I come back to my mind because that's the source of my pain. But listening to you talking, I'm thinking that maybe I don't go. I didn't go quite far enough because my mind is not the source of my pain. My mind is. Something along the lines of. the absolute or the ultimate truth and the relative truth, not sharing my mind. I'm not sure, but that's just listening to this. That's what I'm thinking because I've always thought my mind is the source of my suffering. But what I'm realizing it's, it's yeah. I mean, is that, that makes, that's kind of what it feels like. It's, I think you're on the right track, Dean. I think the mind, a nice way to think of the mind is the mind is Buddha.

[63:36]

It means awake. Your mind is awake. That's your awakening. And it's aware of your suffering. It's aware of you're irritated, you know, of irritation. Let's not say you. Let's get the you out of there. The mind is aware of irritation arising. There's not a problem with irritation arising. It's just a phenomenon. It's like the wind blowing or the, you know, the garbage truck rattling or something. There's nothing wrong with what's happening. It's this thing that we do, you know, that we get in the middle somehow. Our human conditioning, our conditioning that gets in there and has been taught what we're not to like and what we can like. And we're all different. Like, depending on what conditioning you had, You know, you don't like certain things that other people are like, oh, I'm in the store. There's food. Oh, my God. And there's people. I haven't seen people in such a long time. I mean, some people would be in that situation and would be just elated.

[64:40]

Right. So it's not the situation that you're in. It's your conditioning that gets in between your awareness and then this arising of. So the irritation is a really good signal. It's like the flashing light on the dashboard. Right. something is happening here and how interesting if like you said if i pay attention to how interesting this is this irritation it begins to open you know it's like a it's dharma door it's a dharma door to understanding your mind your conditioning and also the ability you have through your training to exercise some patience you know you're not You don't get credit for being patient when you're feeling patient. You get credit for being patient when it's a practice that you apply to the situation that you're in. When you do what you know how to do from all your years of finding your seat, you start to breathe.

[65:42]

You get on your feet. You open your eyes. You start looking at the colors around you. There's some green. There's some red. You begin to shift what you're You've done this, right? There's people in front of me. And then you start to go like, oh, wow, look at those signs over there on the wall. Whole Foods, whatever it is. You begin to open the aperture and to look more vastly, widely, and with more interest. I'm curious about what's going on. So curiosity is like a gateway, like at the edge of the wedge into studying what the self. That's what Dogen is telling you to do. Study that irritability. Don't let it run you around like a puppy on a chain. It's there to help you learn what is this person and how does she react?

[66:43]

I love this thing. I don't know if you remember, I talked about John Cage a few times because I really appreciated what he said about sound. You know, he said, or something, he said, if I see something I think is not beautiful, I look at it for a long time until I realize there is no reason at all. So he basically just went in and said, I don't think that's beautiful. Why do I think it's not beautiful? There is no reason. And then the not beautiful evaporates. So we have that power. We have the antidote within us to break open those entrapments. And that's what our practice is all about, right? And you're right on it. I mean, that's exactly where you're looking. But allow yourself to consider that your awareness is Buddha, is your awakened nature. Yeah, my blaming my mind just didn't quite set right, but I couldn't quite figure it out.

[67:47]

But then I'll make this with one more thing. The other thing I noticed after I said this thing about my mind is a problem, you know, that's my suffering. That's the source of my suffering. I started thinking about the heart sutra. And now every time I chant the heart sutra, no eyes, no ears, no nose. And what I realized when we were talking about this is that when I'm in the store and I'm irritated and I'm thinking, oh, your mind's taken near. This is your mind, blah, blah, blah. then what started popping up is no eyes, no ears. And the way I interpret that is that if I don't grab my eyes and make them focus or my ears and make them focus, then there is no separation. There is no irritation. There is nothing there because I don't have the eyes and the ears are not doing anything to make these things something for me to be irritated yeah good good now i just have to figure out where re and g fit in so that'll be my next well it's all it's all both so that thing you said about there are no eyes no ears that's your re that there is total freedom at all times you know you you're just the g is the little clouds of irritation that's g got those ideas and then the practices you do with those ideas that's g

[69:15]

But, you know, as soon as you see through it, as soon as you see through, that's the moon. Right. It's shining. It's going like, whoa, funny humans. What a funny human I am, you know, with a lot of love for that funny human. Yeah. Well, great. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Hey, Lisa. Am I on mute? You are unmuted. Hey, it worked for once. Hello, Fu and Sangha. Hello, Lisa. So I have two questions. And I think one of them is I'm just getting picky about language. You know, we know I'm still. Was that still? I did say still. Totally predictable. So you use the term getting credit.

[70:19]

When you were talking, Dean, you said you don't get credit for patience when you're patient. I'm asking about the use of the term get credit. Okay. Well, how does it strike you? You know, I'm always, I am profoundly, entirely too sensitive about those things which sound judgmental. And separating, one might say, religious and Christian, if one were getting sticky. But it just sounds like, or grading, that for me. The professor, that's probably where. Right. Okay. So we're giving the student credit. Right. What is the process there? You know, it isn't something being given from outside. the work and the changes and the growth happen when you're doing it, when it's hard, you know, it's not something being given from outside or is it?

[71:29]

No. Well, yes or no. We don't know. We don't know where it's coming from or, you know, inside, outside or not, or just relative terms. We don't really know. It just arises. Okay. In awareness. Yeah. Whose awareness? Don't really know. Is it mine? I can't really prove it. So arising in awareness is impatience or irritability. That's called irritability. That's what Dean was talking about. And so those are the conditions that you find yourself in right now. I'm irritated or irritation is happening. So then you can just hang in there. A lot of people do. They just glare at people in front of them in line or go, well, it's about time you got done. Or, you know, they do nasty things. So that's one approach. People live their lives with that approach. It doesn't make them very happy. Or if you're professing to be a practitioner of the Buddha Dharma, then you might say, well, these are the conditions.

[72:29]

What's the practice with these conditions? You're not inventing the practice. You've been shrita my prajna. You've been listening. So you heard that there are six practices for the Bodhisattva and they are generosity, ethics, patience. So it's like maybe number three might be a good one for me to pick up when the conditions are creating irritability. So and then how do I practice patience? Well, you've been given some instruction. Try focusing on your breathing and straighten your spine. And look around and conjure up some compassion for people and look at their faces and see that they're suffering because they can't find their credit card. And that's why it's taking so long and how embarrassed they are. And little by little, you begin to open another doorway that's there anyway. You've got that doorway. But it begins to open for you.

[73:30]

And you turn into like grandmother mind instead of grumpy old. grouchy mind you know so it's when i say no credit i mean if you're already feeling patient it's like i feel very patient with i'm standing in line well you know that doesn't mean nice thing to say to dean so you don't get credit for being patient because that's not bothering you how about when you're not feeling patient what do you do then or you always feel patient you know you one of those you know i i don't know anybody like that So basically, we all run to that moment where there's something that has got us. What's the practice when you're God? Probably one of the six. So it is arising from inside. It's just the work that happens. It's the work that happens. The work that happens that we want to do. We volunteered.

[74:32]

for this work. It's not imposed on us. It's the work that we really want to do. And we know, actually, we've proven it makes us feel better. And certain kinds of suffering really seem to go away that used to be just intolerable. So there's a motive there. Oops, gaining mind. So my other question is... So we have the lineage and it goes, you know, Dogen pulls together the Rinzai and the soda. What do the Rinzai folks say? I don't know. No, I'm kidding. I don't know. I think they are very, I do. I met a few. You know, I really don't know too many Rinzai practitioners. I know, well, our friend, Daikon, Atasahara is a Rinzai, right? He was a Rinzai for a long time.

[75:33]

So he's a lot of fun. And I think he's decided to give Soto Zen a try. And I really enjoy, you know, he has that line. He's practiced that line for a long time. And so he's able to help us to understand a little bit about that approach, which I really enjoy in being with him. So I think there's only more to learn. from each other. I think anytime we say, well, they're wrong and we're right, we're just wrong. Yeah. I was wondering if they acknowledge the Soto lineage as well. Well, they certainly do. They have some of the same ancestor roots we do. You know, they go through a little different line coming, but sixth ancestor of Zen is shared. And And also they do the, one of their koans at the end of their training is this 16 Bodhisattva precepts, I think very much at the end. They also do the five ranks.

[76:36]

It's a big part of their koan training. So that's Dongshan, founder of our tradition. So I'd say there's a lot of, you know, complementarity going on. I think someplace along the line, people got a little too sectarian. And I'm not sure when that happened. That'd be interesting to look into. When did it really start to be, well, you can't come to our temple. You know, when I was in Japan, I studied in one particular school of tea, tea ceremony. I'm an Omotesenke student. And my best friend here, Maya Wender, is a Urasenke teacher, which is a different school. And we don't know much about that because we're not Japanese, but we had teachers from those two schools. When we went to Japan together, she was so excited that I could get an invitation to go to the Motosanke headquarters, and she really wanted to go there. And so my teacher wrote a letter to Japan, and it was all very formal, and we got permission to go, but they said she can't go in because she's Urusanke.

[77:40]

Can't go in. She couldn't go into the tea room. They wouldn't let her in. And I was like, oh, my God. I think it was a guest? Whoa. No, she couldn't go in. She didn't have the right papers. So I got to go in. I didn't want to go in there. I was glad I did. It was really interesting. But it wasn't my big thing to do when I got to Japan. So I got to go in by myself and get a tour. And poor Maya had to wait outside and do something with her time. So, I mean, there's some stuff going on there that's really, you know, not – things we understand, nor do I particularly want to perpetuate. I was reading Dovan Mystical Realist, and he was talking about Dovan really fighting against the secretarianism because it had occurred before he came along. Yeah. No, he was really, it's really clear that it happened later, and it's maybe not that far back in history.

[78:44]

And why? I mean, that would be something I'll ask about because I think it's painful and I don't think it's very helpful for us to inherit that kind of prejudice. It seems prejudicial. There may be fundamental differences, gradual versus sudden enlightenment that you really can't get around, but the rest. Not so much. Yeah. I asked my Presbyterian friends what the difference is between the Lutherans and Methodists, the Presbyterians and the whatever else. And she said, we don't really know. I said, yeah, that's what I thought. Yeah. So nice to see you. Take care. Hi, Tom. Got Tom there? Yes. Hi, Fu. Can you hear me? I can. Hi. Hi, everyone. Hope everyone's doing well. Appreciate it.

[79:45]

So I guess I'm just thinking about irritation. And you talked about the grocery checkout. And then I'm also thinking about... And I know you've mentioned having a therapist. Therapy can be wonderful. I don't know if you if you engage in that regularly now, but I'll just say that I'll probably leave most of this for a therapy session. But just to put it on the table that, you know, I think about irritation at work and I'll give you an example. Just feeling I'm relatively new to this profession I'm in and it's actually a helping profession. And despite the fact that it's, quote unquote, a helping profession where I'm a counselor, I am surrounded by folks that are perpetually irritated and unkind to one another. And it's kind of fascinating. It's really a toxic environment might be the expression.

[80:48]

And I just think, just as an example, there's someone that... I was working to practice kindness because I think that's important. So there's someone that has actually not been kind to me. I find that she's pretty unkind. But I figured because she had won a statewide award that it would be nice of our office to provide some kind of celebration, acknowledgement of her. And so I worked behind the scenes to orchestrate a... giving her some, in the end, it wound up that we're giving her a congratulatory card for winning this award. And it's going around the office. But suffice it, long story short, despite the fact that this is going around, there are still folks, including supervision. And again, this is a counseling profession who refused to sign. It's kind of fascinating. So I'm just, I, you know, honestly being surrounded by all of this is, is, Depressing.

[81:50]

There's no other way to put it. It's very depressing. I dread Monday mornings. And like I said, I'll save the majority for a counseling session. But I must tell you, it really is. So I guess I wonder if you have any words of wisdom or thoughts on all that. And that's just, you know, a little bit of just the surface treatment of it all. But I figured I'd throw that out there for you or anyone else to consider. So appreciate it. I don't think that's so uncommon, Tom. I think that's really something we all go through. I mean, there's some cranky folks. We have some pretty cranky staff meetings here. I got to tell you, when I was the director, I used to think, I don't even think these people are Buddhists. I don't know what they're doing here. I would be so frustrated, and I felt like it was so hard for them to say, oh, that's a good idea, Fu. And then they'd say the idea that I just had, and I'd be like, my God, what's wrong with you people? I think there's so much going on in everybody, so much karma and so much old history and so much to be unknotted, unworked that, you know, as my teacher often says, when people go, geez, some of your students aren't very nice.

[83:00]

He says, well, you should have seen them when they got here. So it is we are all the work in progress. Right. So some people didn't get the memo when they were little about how to be polite or how to be kind. And, you know, and they really want to help. And they really want to be in the helping professions. And you're kind of wondering, did you take the wrong turn? Is there you want to be helping people? But I remember my partner, Grace Damon, who was in a very bad car accident years ago. And she was a physician. And then she ended up in the hospital bed getting the other point of view. What does it look like to be severely injured and have people come in? And she said, I would pretend to be asleep if they were in a bad mood. I didn't want to see a nurse. or a doctor that was not in a good mood. I only allowed people who I felt were in good space to come to me because I didn't need that. You know, I needed this other. And so, you know, there's no, I don't think you'll find any place on the planet where those different kinds of characteristics are not happening.

[84:08]

I think your question about how to work with it is the one that we can be talking about here, and we can talk about it some more. I think it's a really good question, and I'm sure other people would like to offer some ideas too, and we don't have so much time right now, but I'd love to bring it back up again. Maybe we can do that next week or something, whenever you're back online with us. Thank you. Yeah. Sounds wonderful. Appreciate it. Thank you all. Thank you, Phil. Okay, we'll just do two more quickies, and then I think we all have. Hey, hi, you. Hi, how are you? I'm really good. Good to see you all. My question is about the women ancestors. So the ancestors, the patriarchs were, what is the word you use? Retroactive retribution? Attribution. Attribution. So what about the women ancestors? Yeah, well, we've retroactively attributed a series.

[85:13]

I mean, we made this list up. Linda Ruth Cutts did a lot of research to find the names of women over centuries who showed up as, you know, they were nuns. almost all of them, like Mahapajapati is the first one. She raised the Buddha when his mother died. She adopted the little boy and raised him as his mother and became the first nun or the first ordained female. So the women's lineage starts with her. So she's the first name. And then there are all these other names of women teachers who wrote poetry or who show up in the literature and so on. So we chant them. And for the women, women ancestors are... Again, we start with a lot of Indian names, and then we go to Chinese names, and then we have Japanese names. And so far, we haven't added any Americans or whatever we are. Really? Not yet. Not yet. I mean, that would be kind of arrogant for us to stick our names in there. But someday, somebody will probably add a few names from the Zen tradition that are people that we know and love.

[86:21]

So it was made up. It's apocryphal in terms of there being any kind of lineage, but they are names that really matter. And so we honored them and we chant them, and I really enjoy chanting them and thinking about, I don't know, did you get a hold of that book, The First Free Women? I think I haven't. I think I haven't, but I haven't read it yet, I have to admit. Well, just kind of thumb through it. There's some really, they make us... You know, read them every once in a while and they kind of make you cry because it's about these women who are suffering so much from being raped or losing their children. It's very women's stories. And then they find their freedom. And, you know, the wind blows her robe away and all her pain is gone. And it's just like, oh, yes, you know. So they're real celebrations of their awakening. And I think that's the kind of inspiration that we all deserve. Yeah, like the hidden lamp. I love reading that. And then lastly, you know, I've always, well, I kind of question the succession, warm hand to warm hand philosophically, because it seems like it's a lot about control.

[87:36]

Since we're talking about the women's ancestors, like who gets to teach? Who gets to teach, you know? And yeah, I just, I think about that a lot. Who gets to teach? It's a big control number. You need authority. You need the authorization. You know, in Zen Center, we really hold that line. Like, you know, you need to admit Shusou before you're asked to teach a class. And to be Shusou usually takes quite a few years. And people know you really well. So there's some confidence that you are trustworthy and that your understanding is good enough. you know, that you can study and learn and offer teaching. And then it's another long period of time before your teacher may decide that you now are ready to receive independent status as a teacher. It's a little bit like graduate school. I don't think it's that different from what the Jungians go through or what I hear of the other kind of training.

[88:39]

In fact, ours is maybe a little less rigorous than your law degree or, you know, a doctorate or something um i think we're trying to make it a little more rigorous like there's a little more a sense of requirements of did you read this book do you have any sense here the lotus sutra you know we want to kind of make sure that people have done their homework and it's not that they have confidence in themselves and their wisdom so uh because those people are around here too, you know, and they just kind of can't wait. Yeah. Well, I've always wondered, like, how is it people are priests, but they don't have Dharma transmission? And I also wonder about, like, when people transgress and there's bad behavior, what happens? Do they get pulled out? Like, are they no longer able to give transmission anymore? Sometimes we do have, there are consequences and some people are asked to leave the community, you know, that they're not, they're not teaching here anymore.

[89:42]

We've had, you know, some big names that that's happened to. And we have some other folks who, you know, most of us around, you know, what's really the biggest problem people have? Sex. Yeah. I mean, really? I mean, now at my age, I'm like, really? But when you're young, it's sort of like, yeah, I mean, that's the big problem. That's the big issue. That's the big issue. And so, you know, people not being faithful or sneaking around or lying around having sex with their students and so on and so forth has been the biggest pain for almost all of the Zen communities in this country around the world, everywhere, you know. And if you don't have a good shield of lies to protect you and people who lie for you, and like here, it gets known pretty fast. And then there are consequences. It's like, you know, it's not permanent. There shouldn't be a scarlet letter. I mean, I don't believe in people being permanently excluded from their practice or their ability to teach.

[90:44]

But I think there should be some period of time and some sense of remorse. I mean, you know, not just justification. I mean, that's like, I don't think so, you know. So self-awareness, that you're aware that that was not okay and that you're able to say that and to kind of rekindle people's confidence in you, there is a process that we go through with that. And I think it's pretty healthy. I wouldn't want to say totally healthy, but I think it's pretty healthy. Yeah. Can we nominate you for the Women Ancestors List? Can I write it in? Yeah. to nominate you. Thank you. See you soon. Helene, you're last up to that. Okay. I wanted to say that for a year, I studied with Robert Aitken in Honolulu.

[91:53]

is in the Rinzai lineage. And he gave me my Rakasu and my Dharma name. So I'm kind of in that lineage, although I didn't intend to be. I studied with him because he was a lay master and I was married. So I was not interested in monasterial. I wanted to teach... to study with a lay master. In all the time that I was at Kokoan, which was the Zendo for the Diamond Sangha, no one ever spoke about the difference between Rinzai and Soto Zen. So I'm always kind of surprised that there's this kind of comparison going on here that I was completely unaware of when I was actually doing Dokusan and all that stuff, which I found to be sort of awesome.

[93:13]

Yeah. Well, you know, those guys are actually a hybrid. They're Rinzai Soto. You know, Mazumi's line is not – they have a different thing, which came through both of those being combined. So they do work on koans, but they also have the same kind of sense about Dogen. So Robert Aiken was a hybrid, and I feel like that gives them kind of a different feeling than the Rinzai guys, who I think do not have that same infusion of Soto Zen. There's a little bit of a – I don't know so much. I will study this a little bit. I will ask some questions of my resources here about, okay, tell me what's going on there with this kind of tension. Well, it's a little bit about method. You know, like the people say, they say we're just sleeping. And instead of just sitting, they say we're just sleeping.

[94:15]

And, you know, we say that they're just trying to get something out of it. You know, they have gaining ideas. That's not a very Soto Zen thing. So, you know, they both, it's kind of like high schools. You know, we don't have a kind of sense of the other, not quite doing it right. All I experienced was a bunch of hardworking, sincere Zen students. And we were doing our thing. Yeah. Well, I'm with you. That's us. We're still doing that. Yeah. I'll let you know if I find out anything interesting. Okay. Okay. Bye-bye, everybody. You want to go into the gallery view and turn? Yeah, there's a gallery. There they are. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Okay. And you're welcome to say bye. Thank you, Phu. Have a good night. Thank you, Phu. Thank you. Great to see all your faces. Good night.

[95:16]

Bye, everyone. Bye. Thank you so much. You're welcome. You're amazing. Thank you. Bring us on the way. I heard. What have I heard? It's in the mail. Yeah, I know. Thanks, Tom. Thanks for your question. Thank you. Appreciate it. Take care, everybody. Bye-bye. Well, atmospheric river of the season. We're in. Oh, my. Is it snowing right now? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I wanted to say one thing about this sangha. I find it really fascinating. that people are engaging with the Dharma, whereas some other of these group Zooms I see, it gets into personal issues and how the Dharma can resolve.

[96:16]

It's more group therapy counseling. This is great. that this group is really, you know, connected. You're doing great to inspire people to not get into, oh, I have this personal problem at my office today. What do I do with that? Yeah, what's the practice? That's what makes this so valuable. Like there is some medicine for what's hurting us, you know, and it's really good medicine. And we just have to keep learning it and reminding ourselves and try it again and try it. You know, see what happens if you try it. You stay with the teaching and you keep repeating it so that maybe eventually it kind of sinks in a little bit. We hear it. She had never heard that before. Oh, yes, you have. I say that every couple of weeks. But for me, it's the same thing. I read it again and I go like... Oh, I forgot all about that.

[97:18]

That's so helpful, you know. So I keep bringing it back for myself because I find it really helps to keep getting those foundational pieces back under there. Thank you. Thank you so much. Guys, take care. You're welcome. You're in your living room. That's a good sign. Yes. Yes, but it's all gray and white outside. And snowing. It's warm in here. Good. Good. That's what we need. Warm. All right. You take care. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Many blessings.

[98:03]

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