This podcast is offered by San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. Welcome to day two of our session. I apologize for my unconventional entrance in case I rush by some of you in the back there. We've had a very busy morning. It turns out that the tanto took ill at the end of second period and has been in his apartment. And one doesn't realize how much the tanto, this is David for those of you that don't know what tanto means, how much the tanto does until he's not around. So anyway, I was a little distracted, but I'm here now, and we'll continue with the lecture.

[01:00]

And we hope that David recovers soon, and in the meantime, we'll take care of things as best we can. If you have questions that would go to the Tanto, for the time being, go to Allison Davis-Jiku, and soon we'll have figured out how to I think I'm going to meet afterwards with people. Yeah, there's a variety of solutions. In my office, anyway. So, I want to mention a few things about the activities in the zendo that might be coming up. It's quite common during a sashin for... three people to make posture suggestions, the three people being me, Curtis the Shusso, and David the Tonto, and that would be during a period of Zazen, one of us would get up and walk around the Zendo and slightly touch you to adjust your posture.

[02:08]

If you don't want to have your posture adjusted or suggestions made in that way, please let the Eno know She'll take your name down, and we won't make any suggestions. So it's totally voluntary, up to you if you want to have that done. And all three of us have had experience doing that, and I think most people appreciate it. So just to mention that. And the second thing is somewhere, either probably the third or fourth night of Sashin, during the last period, the Shuso will make some verbal encouraging words. So don't be too surprised if during the middle of zazen, someone starts talking, okay? So I'm sure you're all familiar with these various aspects, but I thought I would just mention it to you. So since I taught a class on the Genjo Koan, this practice period,

[03:17]

There was some suggestion that I would talk about the Genjo Koan during the Sashin, so I feel some obligation to mention a little bit in that area. But as is my way, I've wandered far off topic today, just as a warning. Maybe not so far off topic, actually, but anyway. So anyway, I just wanted to, for those of you who aren't so familiar with the Genjo Koan, just mention again what the term Genjo Koan means. Genjo, as a verb, means to manifest or to actualize. And as a noun, it is reality as it's actually happening in the present moment. Reality as it's actually happening in the present moment. So Genjo is the first part of Genjo Koan. And Koan, we all know what a Koan is, right? This is America, right? Everybody's... Koan is, you know... traditionally referred to as one of those paradoxical riddles that come from the Zen Chinese Japanese land.

[04:20]

And so if we were taking the reality of the present moment, genjo, and combining it with koan, one translation of the genjo koan would be the koan of the present moment, meaning your koan of the present moment. What is your question? to answer from the present moment. But in the class, we also, because Shohaka Okamura, whose wonderful book we used in the class, takes these things and breaks them down into characters, takes the character ko and analyzes it, and he said, that's the equality of all things, the oneness of everything, and an is the uniqueness or particularity of each and every being. This is true of us. We are both connected to all things and completely unique. This is a fundamental point. We are separate and feel completely alone, and we can also feel completely connected with everything.

[05:22]

So in that sense, Genjo Koan would be manifesting this unique riddle of what does it mean for us to be connected to everything, and completely uniquely individual. Manifesting that combination of ideas that were connected to everything and completely unique, how do we manifest that in every moment? How do we act in every moment recognizing that fundamental aspect of who we are? And then, of course, there's many other translations of Genjo Kohan actualizing the fundamental point. So if the fundamental point is that we're connected to everything and totally unique, how do we actualize that? Another translation is the actualization of enlightenment. And Shohaka Okamura's translation was, to answer the question from true reality through the practice of our everyday activity.

[06:31]

or you could shorten that, the question of everyday life. So the Genjo Kohan is, what does everyday life present us as a question that has to be answered each moment by us? So we, of course, read through the entire Genjo Kohan, which we've been chanting. We chanted the first half of it yesterday, and we're going to chant the second half of it for lunch, noon service today. And so there's a lot there. The last class, we got to this very famous paragraph. Well, they're all famous paragraphs from the Genjo Koan. They're very quotable, and I'll read it to you. Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water. The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken. Although its light is wide and great, the moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide. The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in dew drops on the grass or even one drop of water.

[07:33]

I'm sure we've all heard that famous saying. The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in dew drops on the grass or even one drop of water. And it goes on. Enlightenment does not divide you just as the moon does not break the water. You cannot hinder enlightenment just as a drop of water does not crush the moon in the sky. The depth of the drop is the height of the moon. Each reflection, however long or short its duration, manifests the vastness of the dew drop and realizes the limitlessness of the moonlight in the sky. Beautiful poetry. And of course, as we know, the image of moon reflected in water has been used as a symbol of emptiness in many Buddhist scriptures since Buddhism began in India. So the moonlight in water, in this case, either reflects enlightenment or emptiness. I mean, the first sentence gives it away.

[08:37]

Enlightenment is like the moon reflected in the water. It's a simile, right? Enlightenment is like the moon reflected in the water. So even though you're just a tiny drop of beingness, enlightenment fills your whole self. All of enlightenment fills you. The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in dew drops on the grass or even in one drop of water. And in this case, we're the one drop of water that enlightenment is filling us with. So then we had this long discussion that was provoked by somebody who's probably not here, so the answer to that discussion will have to be repeated again for her. about what does any of this have to do with love? The whole Genjo Koan seemed very wisdom-oriented. Enlightenment shining through moonlight and study the self and forget the self, and it all sounded so theoretical.

[09:44]

So on the one hand, I answered simply saying, well... In Genjo Cohen, we're emphasizing two elements, our individuality and our connection to all things. And if we're connected to all things, if we're connected to another person, truly connected, and we talked a lot about what real connection would be, then, of course, that connection produces love. It produces a sense of companionship, compassion, true love. But that didn't satisfy people. I thought it was basically pretty good. Clearly. Not enough. And then it turned out that in this same section of the moonlight reflected in the sky, Shohako Kimura, in his book, to sort of emphasize this quality, quoted a paragraph from the Vimalakirti Sutra. This is the Vimalakirti Sutra, and I'm going to read you that quote.

[10:45]

So this is actually... Slightly different quote, but it's exactly pretty much the same. So this comes from the Vimalakirti Sutra. So Vimalakirti is describing the insubstantiality of beings. All things are insubstantial. Emptiness, basically. So he goes, Manjushri, he's telling us to Manjushri, who's the Bodhisattva of Wisdom. A Bodhisattva should regard all living beings as a wise man regards the reflection... of the moon in water. Or as a magician's regard men created by magic, he should regard them as being like a face in a mirror, like the water of a mirage, like the sound of an echo, like the mass of clouds in the sky, like the previous moment of a ball of foam. Like the previous, not even a ball of foam, but the previous moment of a ball of foam. This is fairly transient. like the appearance and disappearance of a bubble of water, like the track of a bird in the sky, like the dream vision seen after waking, like the perception of color in one blind from birth.

[11:55]

You know, anyway, precisely thus, Manjushri, does a bodhisattva who realizes ultimate selflessness consider all being. You got the picture? Very. The previous moment of a ball of foam. the reflection of water, how a magician regards men created by magic. So this further raised the question, well, if that's how we think of beings, and we've been taught beings are empty, they're transitory, everything changes, there's nothing substantial, why should we love them? It does raise an interesting question, doesn't it? If this is the nature of true reality, I mean, I know you've been talking about connection, Ed, but what there's, you know, so fortunately for us, and particularly fortunately for me, the Vimalakirti Sutra has a very beautiful chapter addressing this very question, which I'm going to share with you so that we'll have the answer to this this morning.

[13:07]

So as that previous paragraph, Vimalakirti was speaking of the moon and the water as a simile representing the emptiness of all things. All things lack independent existence, are ungraspable, transitory, and neither arise nor perish. So I thought I would say just a few words about this. How many people are familiar with the Vimalakirti Sutra? Or let me say how many aren't. Okay, really wonderful, great. Maybe I'll give a second lecture on it. It's a wonderful sutra. It's a very important sutra. It's in the Mahayana Buddhist text tradition. It promotes the spiritual possibility of householder life. Its hero, Vimalakirti, was a wealthy householder living at the time of Buddha with a wife, children, a large house, and all the stuff of worldly accomplishments. He was very rich. Nevertheless, the sutra describes him as wiser than all the Buddha's great monk disciples.

[14:23]

A rich, wise, wiser than all the great monk's disciples. In a series of dialogues with the great luminaries of ancient Buddhism, Shariputra and Manjushri, among many others, Vimalakirti repeatedly manifests his consummate grasp of the non-dual nature of all reality. So it's kind of nice that a lay person could be that wise. It's encouraging for all of us lay people. I still refer to myself as a lay person because I spent the first 35 years of my Buddhist career as a lay person and was very committed to that and only in the end turned to the dark side, as people said. But anyway. And... The group I lead in Mill Valley, still lead in Mill Valley, is called Vimala Sangha, and it's named after Vimala Kirti of the Vimala Sutra because I really like lay practice and think that Buddhism should extend out into the world to everybody, not just for monks that live at Tashara, although that's a wonderful place to go sometime and I would recommend it.

[15:37]

And hence, that's why I called this practice period Zen is Everyday Life. So it's not surprising that eventually I would have gotten to the Vimalakirti Sutra sometime during this practice period. And I just might mention that commenting on his manifesting his grasp of non-dual nature of all reality, there's a very famous chapter, chapter 9 here, the Dharma door of non-duality. And it starts with, Vimalakirti asked all these bodhisattvas, many bodhisattvas had gathered at his house because he was sick. And so Buddha had sent many bodhisattvas to attend. That's one of the things we do as Buddhists is we attend to people that are sick. But it took Buddha a lot of convincing to send people to see Vimalakirti because every time anybody showed up, he always embarrassed them with how poor their knowledge of...

[16:38]

Buddhism was and how good his was. So nobody wanted to come, but eventually the Bodhisattvas decided to come and 10,000 of them came and visited in this 10 by 10 room. It's a very magical, you know, I mean, if you compare this sutra, this, you know, the Heart Sutra or the Prajnaparamita stuff, which is very sort of buttoned down, this is filled with magicalness of all sorts. And that little... all the descriptions of the foam and the water and stuff, that's like one-tenth of the amount of similes that are brought up here about how transitory things are. It just goes on and on. Anyway, so I'm wandering along here, but here's chapter 9, and Vimalakirti asks all the bodhisattvas, Good sirs, please explain how the bodhisattvas enter the Dharma door of non-duality. Please explain how, if you're a bodhisattva, you... enter the Dharma door of non-duality. How do you experience non-duality? Oneness.

[17:39]

How do you experience that? And then proceeds a whole series of magnificent bodhisattvas of every type and affair commenting on how they would enter the Dharma door of non-duality. Goes on for pages, marvelous explanations, many good ways to enter the Dharma door of non-duality. And then, of course, it ends with... Manjushri, who's the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, and he would give the best answer. And Manjushri said to Bhima Kirti, we have all given our own teaching. Oh, Manjushri replied, good sirs, you've all spoken. Where is this? So then Manjushri stepped forward and he says, good sirs, you've all spoken well. Nevertheless, all your explanations are themselves dualistic. All the previous ones were dualistic. To know no one teaching, to express nothing, to say nothing, to explain nothing, to announce nothing, to indicate nothing, and to designate nothing, that is the entrance into non-duality.

[18:44]

That was Manjushri's description of the gate of non-duality. And then he said to Vimalakirti, We have all given our own teachings, noble sir. Now may you... elucidate the teaching of the entrance into the principle of non-duality. And thereupon Vimalakirti was silent and said nothing. And of course this was the great roar of silence. This wasn't the silence of not knowing what to say. This was the silence of... you really can't say anything about it, so you don't say anything about it. Anyway, I might actually give a whole lecture on this. There's a marvelous koan in the Blue Cliff Record. I think it's... Case 84 in the Blue Cliff Record, and it's Case 48 in the Book of Serenity, which is just this dialogue between Manjushri and Vimalakirti, because, you know, in Zen, we don't take a whole book to do things we...

[20:01]

consolidate everything into one koan that you get to think about all the time. It's basically just that dialogue. Manjushi says what he says, Bhimala Kirti doesn't say anything, and then there's some commentary on him. So Bhimala Kirti was an exceptional practitioner of the Buddha way, and now we're going to continue on with Chapter 7, where he goes into... Love. Look at this. We're about to begin my lecture and we're three quarters of the way through the time that I've been here this morning. That's the way it goes some days. Hmm. So to restate the question, if other people are like bubbles of water or balls of foam, why should we care about them all? Are Buddhist people who wander through life seeing other people as nothing more than dreams or mirages?

[21:06]

What does this mean for us in terms of our daily life and ordinary human relationships? So Manjuru Sri helps us frame our question by querying Vimalakirti. This is after Vimalakirti had described everything as foam, saying, Noble sir, if a bodhisattva considers all living beings in such a way, how does he generate the great love toward them? Right? This is the question. If everybody is just this transitory, non-existent event, how do we generate the great love towards them? And Vimalakirti begins his reply as follows. Manjushri, when a bodhisattva considers all living beings in this way, he thinks, just as I have realized the Dharma, so should I teach it to all living beings. Thereby he generates the love that is truly a refuge for all living beings. Just as I have realized the Dharma, so should I teach it to living beings.

[22:10]

Therefore, thereby he generates the love that is truly a refuge for all living beings. Kind of tricky to see how he moved from the land of bubbles to all of a sudden he wants to teach the Dharma to them and so that generates love for them. So all of a sudden he's changed these living beings from just transitory events to actual living beings. So what's this shift about? Kumarajiva, an early translator of the sutra, points out, living beings feel real to themselves. So even though you are just a bit of foam, evaporating in the sunlight, you actually feel to yourself like a living being. And he goes on to say, they have the living being feeling.

[23:15]

So as bodhisattvas, we want to help them. We're going to go into the realm of feeling like a living being too. And that's how we generate the love that is truly a refuge for all living beings. tricky transition, but it's basically... So at the same moment, we're very transitory, but also in this very moment, we're actually here. So there's that side of it, too. We're changing, and we're very transitory, but for this moment, we're very much here. And in that sense, we have that living, being, feeling. So Vimalakirti continues. Thereby he generates the love that is truly a refuge for all living beings, the love that is peaceful because free of grasping, the love that is not feverish because free of passions, the love that is non-dual because it is involved neither with the external nor with the eternal, the love that is imperturbable because totally ultimate.

[24:24]

So here we're going to go into the details of what this kind of love is, that is the love of someone who is aware of the emptiness of the world. And you can see that it's... You know, so he's moved from likening living beings to balls of foam to a very sort of emotional feeling about them. The love that is peaceful because it's free of grasping. Love that's free of grasping. I mean, we all in our own life sort of have some sense about how love can have a grasping quality to it. So the love that we're talking about here is one that's free of grasping. The love that is not feverish because it's free of passions. The love that is non-dual because it's involved neither with the external nor with the internal. So we're moving into sort of the feeling part, the sort of sense of how we're going to actually operate in this field of emotional life with what we're going to talk about love.

[25:38]

So Vimalakirti continues, thereby the bodhisattva generates the love that is firm, its high resolve unbreakable like a diamond, love that is pure, purified in its intrinsic nature, the love that is even, This is wonderful love, isn't it? Purified in its intrinsic nature, even, its aspirations being equal to the Tathagata's love that understands reality, the Buddha's love that causes living beings to awaken from their sleep, the love that is spontaneous because it is fully enlightened spontaneously, the love that is enlightenment because it is the unity of experience, a love that has no presumption because it has eliminated attachment and aversion, a love that is great compassion because it infuses the Mahayana with radiance, a love that is never exhausted because it acknowledges voidness and selflessness, a love that is giving because it bestows the gift of Dharma free of the tight fist of a bad teacher.

[26:48]

Oh. Oh. The love that is effort because it takes responsibility for all living beings. The love that is wisdom because it causes attainment of the proper time. The love that is without formality because it is pure in motivation. Did you catch all of that? We got a lot of love here. All of a sudden we went from viewing the world as a bunch of transitory... independent beings to this marvelous ways of love. But that was a lot of love there. And so what I'm going to do is I'm just going to pick a few of these phrases and just break it down and kind of expand on it a little bit so we kind of get a little bit of the hang of it. And you on your own can go pick up the holy teachings of Vimalakirti and

[27:51]

expand on the other lines. And in all these things that I'm bringing up, I think we should look at our own life and think, well, gee, is there some way in which our version of love, because we all have a version, we all are loving, has some of these qualities that aren't quite as magnificent as Vimalakirti's idea about love. And we should sort of not just take this as a sutra, but as some way to examine our own ways of loving people. So here's one. The love that is enlightenment because it is the unity of experience. The love that has no presumption because it has eliminated attachment and aversion. So we're sort of taking the notion of insubstantiability of living beings and turning it on its head. The sutra is basically saying that awakening to the insubstantiability of beings and things, a unity of experience, actually opens us up emotionally.

[29:01]

That's what I said earlier. I said, if we're connected to other people, feeling a unity of being, a unity of experience, that opens us up emotionally. So I think that seems pretty clear. I mean, at first, if you thought about the insubstantiability of things, you would think it would cause us to be detached. That's how we usually think of emptiness, that we're detached. But turning it around, sometimes the opposite of emptiness is boundlessness, or it's the interconnectedness, the oneness of everything. The oneness of everything makes us think that it's a unity of experience, and that unity of experience is what brings our sense of love. And of course, we're very familiar with this. We feel a love that has no presumptions, no preconceived ideas.

[30:03]

So I'm looking at Alan, who I know pretty well. And then all of a sudden, if I have all kinds of ideas about Alan, it's hard for me to actually truly be one with him. So this is an easy case for us. to notice how many times we have a preconceived idea about another person. That preconceived idea interferes with our being able to unite with them, because typically if you have a preconceived idea, there's some aversion, you don't like them, or some attachment, you like them a lot and you want more of them and they're not available, one of those two pulls. happens with people? Anybody here notice any of that going on in their relationships with people? I mean, I've been married for 25 years. I love my wife dearly. She's a magnificent woman. And the other day I was going down to coffee in the morning on the weekends when I'm home with her, which is not as much as it used to be somehow.

[31:09]

But anyway, and she was ignoring me. And I was irritated. I wanted... to interact with her. And she was ignoring me because she was reading the New York Times, which apparently was more interesting than I was that morning. I mean, this happened actually a few years ago, and we had to have a discussion about it. And her comment was, I love you, Ed, but I cannot talk to you before I've had a cup of coffee and have read the New York Times. It's not personal, it's just the way it is with me. So once I understood that was the nature of what's going on in our household, I could sit down and have a cup of coffee and read the New York Times, too, and then we could have a conversation afterwards. So it's very easy for us. See, I had some preconceived notion that she was supposed to relate to me because I was there, I'd appeared in the kitchen, but no. It wasn't the case. So this is... constantly going on in our relationships this you know i want something or you want something and i don't want to deal with you you know this you've just done something very irritating you know this push-pull of aversion so the love that has no presumptions because it has eliminated attachment and aversion i mean if we just thought about that one thing if we just think about all the ways in which when we relate to people

[32:34]

attachment and aversion gets engaged in the situation and interferes with us having a loving experience of them in that moment. Okay. I'm going to move along a little bit. The next one that I just picked out of the many loves The love that is without formality because it is pure in motivation. The love that is without formality because it is pure in motivation. What is that about? Without formality. I don't know, I kind of picked that out because around Zen Center we got a lot of formality. You know, somebody comes new here and they have to go through... two 40-minute sessions with us just to figure out how to walk around the building on Saturday morning. First, we're going to spend 40 minutes telling you how to sit.

[33:40]

And then we're going to have, after the lecture, a 40-minute session teaching you how to walk down to the Zen to where you'll do your sitting and enter it. And afterwards, I would like to, on the corner sometime, interview these people and say, what was your experience coming here this morning? What did you think about all that? All those people in black robes wandering around, like very formal, you know, dressed up kind of formal. So I think it's something we always have to kind of be aware of. And I was reminded of a story from the old days about Tsukiroshi. And I'm going to share it with you because it's a... typical example. Suzuki Rishi was both very formal and quite informal. So Ed Brown, I don't know, many of you may know Ed Brown through his cooking books, Tassara Cooking and Cooking. Ed Brown was one of the real notables in Zen Center in the early days and a good friend of mine.

[34:46]

So there was a beautiful rock at Tassara in front of the office. Everybody loved it. They all would sit around on it. It was kind of a large, just talking about this. And one day Siguroshi asked everybody to move that rock, which was kind of one of the community favorite rocks. Are we, is my sleeve drinking water right now? Maybe it was thirsty. Anyway, Siguroshi had the rock moved over in front of, Ed was, I think it was in cabin four. It's either that or cabin. I can't remember. Anyway, there was no rock. You know, there's rocks that are stepping stones up into the cabins. There was no rock in front of his cabin. And Suzuki Roshi had noticed how hard it was for Ed to get up into the cabin. So he had this rock moved over and placed as a stepping stone for Ed Brown's cabin. And Ed came up to Suzuki Roshi and said, well, why did you do that? And Suzuki Roshi said, well, you needed a stone. Ed said, but Suzuki Roshi...

[35:50]

That's the office stone. Everybody loves that stone. I think this was probably in the Radishes book. I can't remember where I first picked it up. Ed Brown did a wonderful book called Something in Radishes? Pizza? Tomato Blessings in Radishes. Yeah. It's supposed to be a cookbook, but it was mostly a Zen storybook. I think that's why it didn't sell well. It wasn't either a cookbook or a Zen storybook. It was kind of mixed. They didn't know what part of the store to put it in. It's my favorite book of his. I mean, the recipes are good and the stories are great. So Suzuki Roshi apparently just said, oh, well, we can get another stone for the office. I wanted you to have this stone. So it just... Informal, not a formal thing, not a doksan telling him how much he loved him. He just moved a stone over to make it easy for him to get into his cabin.

[36:55]

Very kind of informal way of taking care of somebody. I think I have one more. Time for one more. Aren't these interesting little love ways here? The love that is wisdom because it causes attainment at the proper time. The love that is wisdom because it causes attainment at the proper time. Any of you who are teachers, and probably all of you are teachers in certain ways, know that you see that somebody needs to understand something. I was a mathematician when I was young.

[38:02]

It always amazed me when students would come to my office and why they couldn't figure this thing out. I would watch them and I would try to figure out what it was, what I could say at the right time that they would hear it. and basically someone can't learn something until it's the right time for them to learn it. People that are therapists know this very well. You can have somebody come and talk to you for years, and you know exactly what's going on with them, and then at some moment you can say the right thing that will wake them up. And it's the same with many things. When is the right time? So, This is a story about a teacher and a student, and when the right time came for that student to say something, that teacher to do something. So here it is. So Matsu and Bao Zhang were standing together and some geese flew over.

[39:07]

Most of you are familiar with this story. So Matsu asked, what are they but the geese? Bao Zhang said, they're wild geese. And Matsu continued, where have they gone? And Bai Jing says, they have flown away. Ordinary discourse, they've flown away. Matsu reached out and grabbed Bai Jing's nose and twisted it. He said, they have been here from the very first. And Bai Jing had a spiritual realization at that moment. This is the twisted nose, spiritual realization. You know, there's this twisted nose, there's the hit him in the face, there's the, you know, there's many of these. Twisted nose, spiritual. Very wonderful, very spontaneous. But actually, these two had been traveling together for, practicing together many years.

[40:08]

I mean, these are two very famous teachers in our tradition. Maybe 20 years. They knew each other well. And then a moment came when he could kind of tweak him a little bit. This was an opportune moment. And, of course, the story is, the geese are always flying overhead. Why this moment? Why not some other moment? You know what I think? I think since it is 11, I'm going to just say, leave that with you, why this moment. And I'm going to continue with some more of these little fragments and stories and finish this one the next time I lecture, which will either be tomorrow or the next day or something like that. So the love that is wisdom because it causes attainment at the proper time.

[41:09]

When is the proper time? For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[41:41]

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