This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations by people like you. If I were to just give a lecture that consisted of bowing about 128 times, and then we just all got up and left, would that be okay? But... Sadly, it's too late for that now. So in the Gyoji classical we've all been reading, there's this one I mean, there's a lot of interesting sentences in the Gyoji Classical, but there's this one really interesting sentence.

[01:04]

And Dogen says this, he says, Even if you might ignore it in order to hide a crooked intention and escape from it, this ignoring would also be continuous practice. Even if you might ignore it in order to hide a crooked intention, and escape from it. This ignoring would also be continuous practice. Yeah, I can do that. Test, test. One, two. Is that better? Okay, good. So when you, at least when I read this, my first thought was, what is he talking about? It's like he's saying, ignore it and hide a crooked intention it sounds like he's um he's he's saying it's kind of okay to be to be you know to be kind of sneaky or something like that which is it seems very unduggan like so i thought well okay um i thought that might be something that was worth unpacking in this talk and

[02:21]

Someone asked me, well, why pick that when there's so much other great stuff in the fascicle? And I think I picked it because it stood out for me and also because the more I think about it, the more I think it points to something that's really kind of important about what it is to be a human being engaged in Zen practice. So I thought I'd try and scale that one. The most related thing I could find in the literature is there's a famous koan, it's the second koan in the Muman koan, and I'm reading a translation and commentary by Koan Yamada who had kind of an interesting life from the point of view of continuous practice.

[03:22]

I think for his entire teaching career, I don't really know a great deal about the details of his life, but as I understand it, for his entire teaching career, he was simultaneously being a Zen teacher and working as a hospital administrator in this vast hospital in Tokyo and managing both of them with the mind of continuous practice. So there's a sort of inspiring story. If you wanted to put a modern story in Gyorgy, you might put the story of Kohanimata. So his translation, I'm not going to read much of his commentaries, but his translation of the case goes like this. Whenever Master Hakujo delivered a sermon, an old man was always... there listening with the monks.

[04:24]

When they left, he left too. One day, however, he remained behind. The master asked him, what man are you standing in front of me? And the old man replied, indeed, I'm not a man. In the past, in the time of Kashyapa Buddha, I lived on this mountain. And the implication is that, in fact, he was the abbot. So he was Hyakkojo. Master Hyakkojo was the master of Mount Hyakkojo. On one occasion, the monk asked me, does a perfectly enlightened person fall under the law of cause and effect or not? And I answered, he does not. Because of this answer, I fell into the state of a fox for 500 lives. Now I beg you, master, please say a turning word on my behalf and release me from the body of a fox. And then he asked, does a perfectly enlightened person fall under the law of cause and effect or not? And the master answered, The law of cause and effect cannot be obscured.

[05:25]

Upon hearing this, the old man immediately became deeply enlightened. Making his bow, he said, I've now been released from the body of a fox and will be behind the mountain. I dare to make a request. Please perform a funeral as you would for a deceased priest. So that's the first convict on. We can stop there for now. So, yeah. Oh, the law of cause and effect cannot be obscured. I've also heard it translated cannot be ignored. But he says cannot be obscured. And my personal translation for purposes of this talk is you can't hide from the law of cause and effect, basically. I think that's what I'd like to go with for this.

[06:27]

So let's talk about the law of cause and effect. Usually we talk about it in this really kind of straightforward and cavalier way. It's like I cut my finger and it bleeds. I touch the stove and it burns and so on. But if you really dig into it, the law of cause and effect is... is kind of a remarkable thing. If you think down to the level of particles, there's the law of cause and effect. If you think up to the, if you think about galaxies and the entire life of the universe, there too is the law of cause and effect. There's a guy, I read a book, I don't know, maybe five years ago by this theoretical physicist who's kind of a, he's kind of a hermit, renegade, and he, He's been working for his entire career as a theoretical physicist on a way of rewriting the equations of general relativity so that they don't contain time at all.

[07:32]

They just contain essentially a representation for the law of cause and effect that says every place in the universe and in every moment the causes and conditions in that place and in that moment are leading, just lead naturally to the next moment in the most natural fashion based on these kind of straightforward and simple rules for how that works. And he's not having a lot of success because it's very hard to represent that mathematically, but it's a wonderful idea. It's like there's nothing... There really isn't any time. In some ways, there really isn't even any space. There's just this law of cause and effect. And at that level, every one of us is the unique flowering of a kind of this interlocking chain of causation that goes all the way back to the beginning of the universe and includes, branches out to include everything in the universe.

[08:48]

every single thing. What conceivable or inconceivable thing does not fall under the law of cause and effect? Here's the other question that goes along with that. Why would any of us want not to fall under the law of cause and effect? bodies and minds that turn broccoli into poetry. It's kind of a wonderful thing to be subject to the law of cause and effect. So there it is. But. There's always a but. There's this funny thing about the way we relate to the law of cause and effect. When you got up in the morning, you had to envision the entire history of the universe and the entire branching chain of causation.

[10:05]

in order to decide what to do next, including, like, putting on your shoes or something like that. And if you had to, in order to evaluate the rightness of a particular action, you had to, using some unbelievable super knowledge and super calculating ability that nobody has, sort out all the... sort out all the possible consequences that this action could have through the entire future life of the universe, however long that is, you probably wouldn't get out of bed in the morning. You'd never put on your shoes, and nothing of interest would happen in your life. So that's not a good approach to the law of cause and effect. And in fact, we've developed this other approach, which in some ways is very effective. We think about the law of cause and effect in terms of both histories and plans that are narratives, right?

[11:13]

So we say, he made me so mad. Or we say, that'll never happen again. Or I was born to lose. We make these stories about our life and about our life in the past and our life in the future. And that's generally speaking the best we can do with respect to

[11:39]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_95.08