So in thinking about this course, I started to think about what is it to take a class in Zen? I think those of us who read a little about Zen, whether we understood it or not, know that that's kind of a problematic notion. But it occurs to me that it has its usefulness. The way it was occurring to me was that in a way there's a progression. We read something and we get a meaning from it. And then we get an understanding of it. And then hopefully that understanding stimulates something and we get some kind of insight into the nature of what it And that insight ripens into realization, which, and I would venture to say that that in a way encapsulates the activity of Genjiokan in a way that captures the activity that Dogen Zenyu is trying to express and bring forth in presenting

[01:36]

of this material. So with that comment, we'll look at the, as I did in the talk the other day, we'll look briefly at Genjo Khan. And many of these commentaries deal with it in a very well-informed manner. Mostly agreeing, not all. Kind of interesting to read several commentaries and you can kind of see where there's agreement and see where there isn't. It gives you a sense of the scope a pilot might be thought about. It gives you a sense of the range of understanding that can arise from the same material. And so right there, we can start to get a hint of Zen mind.

[02:42]

You know that understanding is to initiate an engagement, a contact. It's not to grasp the understanding and stop there. So we use our mind as a starting point, as an initiation, as a provocation. to experience directly. And since this is a class, you can interrupt me anytime you like. Not that it will do you any good, but you can certainly do it right. So as I mentioned the other night, again, looking at the kanji and looking at the different definitions each kanji character has, you know, Gen is a character, Gen-Jo, Jo is a character, Ko is a character, and An is a character.

[03:54]

So Gen, manifest, present, actual, revealed, self-existent, self-evident. Become, accomplish, attain, complete, perfect. You're welcome to move forward. Can you hear okay there? Because if you can't, you're welcome to come up here, sit on the floor, sit on the chair. You want to do that? Manifest, present, actual, revealed, self-existent, self-evident, become, accomplish, attain, complete, perfect.

[04:58]

To become what's manifest, to become what's present, become what's actual, to accomplish what's revealed, to attain what's revealed, to complete what's, to be completely manifest, There's something about what is completely itself. It's fully present. How could it not be completely itself? How could any moment not fully express itself or any person? It seems, though, in the job part, that there's an implication of becoming, of the practice I think that's what's so useful about the word realize.

[06:17]

You know, there's an activity. But it's not saying that what is realized wasn't there before. But something has changed. Or maybe we could, in simple terms, we could say how it's being related to is what's changed. And we'll get into that when we look at the first three sentences. There's some kind of shift. There's some sentence by sentence. What is it saying that things are different or how they're being related to? And then the second two characters, koan. Ko is common, public, general, saneness. ultimate equality. And then on is proposition, suggestion, idea, plan, individuality.

[07:26]

And then I've often heard it described as case. The public proposition, common suggestion, general idea. So how it occurs to my mind is that this is talking about self-evident reality or publicly obvious experience. What's going on? Take a look. It's here. It's obvious. And yet when we practice with it, it seems ungraspable.

[08:29]

It seems, when we look at it very carefully, inconceivable. When we start to relate to it with our human cognitive faculties and sensibilities, It makes a request of practice of it. It changes from a static statement into a request for engagement. That's how this occurs to me. Any comments on that? Good. If you don't want to say something like that. Okay. I thought I was taking a risk with that one, but apparently not.

[09:33]

Okay. So in some ways, this is the whole Genji Okon is summed up in this title. What is it that's going on that in one sense is so utterly obvious, and so irrefutably just itself, and at the same time, and conjures up this profound request that touches our hearts. What is it to be fully alive? What is it that's going on? How do we make sense of this existence, singularly and collectively? What is it to wake up? What is it to realize the nature of what is? And it's being displayed around us all the time. And this is very much the spirit of Zen practice.

[10:50]

Maybe we could say in particular the Soto school, but I would say... ...both schools of Zen. And then the first... ...the first sentence, since you're all happy with that... ...statement, the first sentence... When all dharmas are Buddha dharma, there are enlightenment and delusion, practice, life and death, Buddha, and this one says creatures, which I think is just an odd word. I don't mean to be critical, but I think sentient beings are some similar kind of youth with the, I think creatures is not a word we would commonly say in English to refer to sentient beings. Chohakamara says, when all dharmas are the Buddha Dharma, there is delusion and realization, practice, life and death, Buddhas and living beings.

[12:07]

When all dharmas, a second sentence, when all dharmas are not self, he adds a prefix self. When the ten thousand dharmas are without self, there is no delusion, no enlightenment, no Buddhas, no creatures, no life, no death. When all dharmas are without self, there is no delusion, no realization, no Buddhas, no living beings, no birth, no perishing. The Buddha way transcends being and non-being. Therefore, there are life and death, delusion and enlightenment, creatures and Buddhas. Since the Buddha way by nature goes beyond, and he added in, the dichotomy of abundance and deficiency, there is a rising and perishing delusion and realization, living beings and Buddhas.

[13:20]

For those of you who don't know, these three sentences are the... I looked at about six translations and this use of the word as is singular to this one. as all things are Buddha Dharma and all the others used way. And as you can see, there's a kind of a different connotation in either word. And one thing, since this is the state of what is, than this.

[14:31]

And then the other one is the conditional. When this is the state of what is, than this. When I first read them a while ago, when I was preparing for this class, it reminded me of the Buddhist teaching of two truths. Buddhist teaching is that Existence is impermanent, interactive, and how it's related to either gives rise to samsara or nirvana. That's Buddhist teaching, the three marks of existence. You could say, this is the as. As this is the way things are, then settle them. Or you could say, Then the other one is a more conditional truth, a relative truth.

[15:33]

And so on one hand, you have this abiding truth or absolute truth. And then you have this relative truth or conditional truth. So each one of us has an experience of reality that's conditioned. It's dependent upon our personal sense faculties. It's dependent upon the language that we think in, the way we perceive reality, which will be dependent upon many things, right? Our state of mind, our emotional state, all sorts of things. The prejudice and biases that we see. I read a wonderful article on autism that said The difference between an autistic person and a regular person is that a regular person, when they enter a familiar environment, like when you enter a room like this, if you've entered it many times, not the first time, but if you've entered it many times, you perceptually pick out, you know, a random number of maybe half a dozen to ten perceptual experiences, white, green, window, floor, dining room, and then you label it dining room.

[17:00]

You know, we're hard-wired to reinvent our permanent reality. Oh, this is the dining room. I know it. I'd be here. It's the same as it always is. An autistic person, their brain simply doesn't work that way. So when they enter the dining room, they have to look all around it to figure out what the heck's going on here. And so it takes them much longer to connect to the experience. And then interestingly, the article was saying that animals are the same. And that this autistic person who wrote the article had become an expert in how to relate to animals. Quite bizarrely, the person specialized in designing slaughterhouses. Oh, God. Signing what? Slaughterhouses? Ooh. How to... How to set up an environment where cows will go to a certain place to be killed.

[18:09]

Assembly line style. Yeah. Voluntarily. Well, with the least anxiety. Oh, no. That's nice. That was your what? Yeah. Yeah, it was a kind of maneuvering shoot that ended up with a single cow, which, I think, maybe when we do a class on spotter houses, we'll learn to do that in more depth. But, you know, what really struck me was that we are hardwired. to relate to our experience in that way. This very notion of beginner's mind is not a, what you might call in a way, a natural state.

[19:14]

That we have a learned experience and then we have a shorthand way of returning to it. And then in a way, our practices thing Maybe you shouldn't take so much for granted. Maybe when you enter the room, you should check it out and have the experience of being here, of meeting it for what it is, rather than... Because what we do, we have the experience, and then we file it internally. And then we have this shorthand, we have a few reference points, and then we just go to our internalized dining room. And then the wonderful thing is you might come into the dining room and there might be something completely different about it, but you just go casually and quickly to your internalized dining room and miss it.

[20:16]

And that's how sometimes we can do that, you know, with the person, the space or whatever, you know, there's something completely different about them, but you miss it because you just went to your internalized version. So this internalized version is conditional. It's conditioned and created by our previous experiences. So quite literally, it's a personal truth and it's a conditioned truth. So in these two truths, we have what's usually called the absolute and we have the relative. or the condition. So this one's conditioned by the experience we have as a person and this one goes beyond it. And this is a very significant notion in practice.

[21:24]

Can you give an example of the Absolutely. That goes beyond it. That's a great question. If you think about it, isn't that a great question? That's why I asked it. Yeah. Hmm. Hmm. And one answer is no. Because anything we take, the only way we can access it is from our previous knowledge. If I made up a word and said that, And you'd say, well I've never heard of that or thought of that or seen that or smelled that or touched that.

[22:26]

And then I could say, exactly. It's not part of your conditioned reality construct. So then how do we find that within ourselves? Yeah, exactly. So in one sense, We can't hold on to this world according to me and try to locate the absolute truth in it. And that's its function in practice. And that cannot be thought. And this reflects itself in our practice.

[23:37]

As I was saying in the talk the other night, it's quite natural that we will construct a notion of what practice is, but we need to realize This arises out of our conditioned work, our conditioned existence. And then that's what we practice. We practice our definition of practice. But that's just what it is. It's our definition of practice. And so the challenge quite readily we can see is, well, How can that be anything other than reaffirming some notion of self, some version of the world according to me? I decide what's good and bad, and then I practice accordingly. But I'm still operating in the world according to me.

[24:39]

In fact, you could almost say I'm reinforcing it. the teaching of these two truths is initially to help us appreciate to have some understanding of that dilemma is that clear yeah and it's interesting because when you look at one way the Cohen system works you know Cohen as a way to initiate direct experience. One way the Cohen system works is that a prerequisite of that kind of study is some significant direct experience. Because when there's direct experience and by direct experience that

[25:47]

the arising event, the phenomena of the arising event is experienced in a potent, singular, non-conceptual way. And that that goes beyond the world according to meaning. Does that make sense? It's just too big a group to say nothing. I'm wondering if you're going to get to the leaping clear part. Because far it sounds very limiting. Very limiting? Yeah. You know, where we seem to be trapped in our own construct. And that's the way we have to view everything is the message I'm getting. I keep looking down there and it says, ah, the Buddha way is leaping clear. And I find out something. wanting to look ahead a little bit.

[26:49]

That's what you're going to say. Do you want to hear some good news? Well, the good news is that every momentary experience offers this possibility of direct experience. It is a deeply ingrained habit to be within the world according to me. It's not impossible to not be. And also, if you think about it, this is, in a way, this is a zazen instruction. This is a guidance for how we engage our practice. This is to help us not become rigid. This is the right way to practice, and this is the wrong way to practice. This is a guidance in not grasping onto our understanding and narrowing ourselves in that way.

[27:55]

You know what I mean? This is the gift of questioning Zen. You know, questioning Zen is to open up possibility. It's not to say, question, answer, case closed. I mean, it's Genjo Cohen. Cohen is to open up direct experience that never ends, that has no boundary, that has no fixed idea. if that's current. So in one way the current system is related to is to have sound direct exterior. And this is possible all the time. And usually within a split second we've coded it, we've drawn it back You walk into the dining room and you have a direct experience of dining room. Beyond the word dining room, just the raw phenomena of dining room.

[29:02]

And then you go, yeah, I've been here before dining room. I got it. But before we do that, There's this direct experience. There's this momentary example, this momentary expression of absolute truth. And then we turn it into relative truth. So in one way we could say, well, what is the practice of not being trapped in relative truth? Another way we could say, what is the practice of experiencing absolute truth?

[30:07]

And then another way we could say, what is the relationship between these two ways? And I would suggest to you, This is my idea. That's what these first three sentences are. Now, those three questions, you know, that Jogunzinji puts them forward as propositions. Can you say that again? No. He's a no guy. I don't know why. You stir that in me, Vince. I hope you take it as a compliment. So the first one is, I'm not to be trapped in relative truth.

[31:08]

Is it possible for a human being not to be just caught up in their own stuff? To just be... forever living in the world according to me. Me and mine and my way. Then the second one, is it possible to experience directly what is? And then the third one, what's the relationship between the two? So I hope those three questions make sense. You have a very serious look on your face, Mary. That make any sense to you? Yeah. Yeah? Good. So, why?

[32:14]

Why talk about absolute truth? Why make it reference to something? Isn't it just an idea? That's a great question to hear. Yeah. I started wondering, why? Why is there a dilemma? Why make it reference to absolute truth? Because we suffer... Because we make reference to... No, no. We make reference to what... I mean, it's like saying... Well, why practice?

[33:17]

No. It's not. You don't. Okay. Well, let me... How I lined up that idea. But what's wrong with just living in the world according to me? So I'm living in the world according to me and you're living in the world according to you. That's, there we are. But it's, in inside that world, our tendency is to mistake it for, to mistake my truth for the truth. Well, I think there is truth. or to think there is a truth. But I would still say, usually we think, my truth is the truth.

[34:28]

So the teaching of the true truth is to help us not get stuck in that. And that's why we make reference to the absolute truth. A truth. Well, in a way, language is letting us down here, but because it sort of sounds like there is a truth, that really what we're talking about is going beyond relative truth. Well, I see that as green wall. Okay, that's how I see it. Green is interpretation. The word wall is a label. The notion of green wall is a concept.

[35:32]

Yeah. So if I mistakenly think that is the truth, then something made solid something is limited and then since that's the truth then I attach to it as the truth and the assumptions and the concepts I have around it become fixed and then it changes and I'm confused because permanent is becoming impermanent and then you come along and you have a different experience, and then again I'm confused and maybe hurt because you're not agreeing with me and because you're experiencing something different. I understand that. And maybe I'm angry at you for experiencing something different from the way you talk about it. But none of that is what you do.

[36:37]

But none of that is what you do. None of that is what you do. Well, It shows our fixation to relative truth. Right. And he still doesn't find a truth. Yeah. Well, actually, as I said, language-wise is done because the teaching of two truths, absolute truth, is going beyond relative conditional truth. It isn't actually the same. But beyond our conditioned truth is, you know, in Plato's terms, you know, an idealized form. Buddhism is not teaching that. Buddhism is saying that our relative truths are relative truths. And at the kernel of experiencing the

[37:42]

There is a direct experience before the ideas, attachments, concepts, conclusions, inferences are put together. And so it's like going beyond is what's called absolute truth. Going beyond the condition truth and all the consequences that pour out of us as a human being. The inferences, the conclusions, the judgments, the attachments. So the notion is there as an enabler. It enables us to not cling

[38:46]

to our relative truth. Maybe a helpful way to refer to it instead of going beyond would be maybe dropping it? I don't know. It almost seems like maybe you're concerned with this idea of going beyond to something else. Like there's some ladder or something. Whereas it seems more like it just goes. I can drop my relative truth. then there's nothing else we're really talking about. So it's kind of like just dropping. Okay. So when you're talking about experiencing it directly, are you talking about the raw sensory data without the interpretation? That is what I was talking about. And what you're saying... Because we really can't have experience of anything aside from Ross, for us, yes.

[39:52]

Can't we have experienced something without having Ross actually, what would that be? Ross sensory input? Yeah. Are we, you know, five minutes. Yeah. I thought you were going to ask me a much tougher question. It's very interesting because if you look at the jhana, in a way jhana, the word jhana means absorbed in the experience of the moment. And then there's eight gradations to it. goes beyond the sense of time and space, of locality. You know, like it just peels away.

[40:55]

You know, that's why I quoted that poem by Rilke, you know, on Saturday. He's saying, Rose, oh, pure contradiction. I mean, it's like, that's the whole Ganjo calling right there. He's like, there's a table here. There's a room. There's a room full of people. There's lights. I've been in this dining room so many times. And yet, When I sit still and attend to it as directly and exactly and completely as possible, its permanent, familiar, knowable, fixed entity starts to peel away like layers. So, and when you look at the jhanas and consciousness becomes more absorbed in the experience, it's like, it's almost like the layers, as you go down through the jhanas to more and more concentrated, you know, the conceptual and the perceptual layers just melt away.

[42:12]

Until the eighth jhana, you know, in the same time. No concept of time or space or locality or identity. Well, what is it? How does our common language take bearings of it? And so often in the texts, it does it through negation. It says, well, it's not this. It's not your idea. It's not whether you like it or don't like it. Oh. Are you saying Dhanas? I'm saying Jhanas. Jhanas? You familiar with the word? J-A-N-A-S? I'm just having trouble hearing the word. Usually there's an H in there too. J-H-A-N-A. Jhana. Thank you. Or Dhyana as it's been in the canon since. Yeah, is that from a yoga term of eight levels of consciousness or something like that? Well, I know it as a... It may have its roots in yoga, but I know it as an old Buddhist term.

[43:19]

As levels of consciousness. As levels of consciousness. Great. Get the context of it there. So maybe Linda could say, even though I've been blithely seeing momentary direct experience, even that when we look at it, It turns into transitory interaction. You know, that there literally is no fixed abiding self. It's transitory, it's impermanent besides self. That's its nature. So that's what... the clumsy term absolute truth is trying to verify. It's trying to verify, there's nothing to verify.

[44:24]

And it offers us the admonition, so don't cling to your own concept. Okay, any other questions? Good. And what makes a difficult thing is that the minute we try to put a word on it, we limit it by a concept. Yeah. So it can't even be thought. Yeah. Class of the world. That's great. Fifteen minutes, we're done. Anyone who's not fully realized? Well, good, because there's no one to realize. But that concept is placed through Zen practice, one way or another.

[45:30]

When you look at the Rinzai system, What's the prerequisite for the exploration of apparent reality? Some experience of dropping apparent reality. When you look at Dovin's history, you know, and he says, well, one of the pivotal moments for me was when my teacher said in the Zendo, drop off everything, drop off body and mind. Drop off your physicality and drop off your mental experience. Experience direct by what is. So, drop off. Okay, so let's look at these three sentences. When all dharmas are Buddha Dharma,

[46:34]

There are enlightenment and delusion, practice, life and death, Buddhist and sentient beings. So I put this a few minutes ago. This is, can we see? The conditioned. Can we see that conditioned reality is impermanent, that it comes and goes, that it doesn't have a fixed self? As Roque says, it's a pure contradiction. As Dogen Zenji says, he says, the enlightened are enlightened about delusion.

[47:50]

The enlightened see conditioned existence. They see how conditioned existence is clung to, is misinterpreted, is identified with. So when you're seeing that, guess what? seeing delusion you see yourself clinging to something I'm angry because some cherished idea I had about reality is being taken apart and angry or I'm upset or I'm sad or I'm just a or I'm frightened or I'm anxious. Some kind of aversion. I have an aversive response to it, one way or another, across the brain, dependent upon my psychological makeup.

[48:59]

Or I'm clinging to it, trying to keep it permanent because I like it, because I want it. I don't want it to be impermanent. I want it to stay like this forever. And I think if I just grasp it and cling to it, and if it's not here, if I yearn for it, it will come to be here. And if it's gone, if I yearn for it to come back and hold on to the memory and feeling of it, That somehow that'll make it permanent. That'll make it satisfying and lasting. So when we start to see that, when we start to see, I'm having a really hard time with impermanence. I'm having a really hard time with conditioned existence.

[50:03]

But it doesn't have an abiding self. I grasp it and I push it away. I grasp it when I like it and I push it away when I don't like it. Yeah. And then when I do both of those and it doesn't work, I'm confused. What's going wrong? What's wrong with this picture? I'm just trying to be happy. And it's not working. I'm not happy. So this, you know, To be caught in that, to be blindly acting that eye and thinking, this should make me happy. This should be working. That's a delusion. This notion that it's permanent and acting as such is a delusion. And then seeing it is an awakening.

[51:09]

Seeing all that happening. And so in a way we can say, if we take that very first break, when dharmas or Buddha dharmas. So when these phenomena, if we take that definition of dharma, momentary phenomena, when these phenomena and how they're related to is seen, when that activity is seen, that's an awakening moment. Those very same phenomena, when I see myself clinging That's an awakening. I see, oh, this is me being me in the way that I being me. And not only that, this is me being the way we being me. You know, we all do it, you know? And the repertoire, in a way, you know, grasping and aversion, we're all at it.

[52:14]

We're all engaged in it. searching for pleasure and avoiding pain. We're all doing it. So not only do we see, on carefully scrutiny, we see the particulars of this one, but we have some sense of our common experience. We can't know exactly what the other person's experience, but we have some sense of it. some sense of our collective experience, our collective delusion. Like when you read history books and you see some nation or some group at some time did something, now in the wisdom of hindsight, 300 years later you go, how could they do that? What were they thinking? Guess what? They were thinking whatever the heck they were thinking.

[53:15]

And in the midst of that thinking, that seemed like a really good idea. And now with hindsight, we have a different perspective. And we think, oh, I see it really different. I can see the assumptions they were making at that time. Christian missionaries came to the New Americas, you know, and thought, wouldn't it be great if everybody was Christian? I mean, and now we laugh, but, you know, they would be saved. They would have eternal salvation. They would know the true way. Those are pretty good things to have. Those could be like us.

[54:16]

The best. Well, yeah, right. Just so happened. We are already there. So this phrase, when all dharmas are Buddha dharmas, when with the very grind, when the very activity of our karmic being of clinging in aversion is seen for what it is, those very same dharmas become Buddha Dharma. When relative truth, when conditioned truth as seen as conditioned truth, it's a liberating event. Dogen Zenji says, the enlightened are enlightened by delusions. And then he also said, the deluded are deluded about enlightenment.

[55:18]

The enlightened are enlightened about delusion. They see this is what practice is. This is good. This is bad. Who said we don't have our own orthodoxy? We wonderful, broad-minded, adroit, skillful, Zen practitioners. Who says we don't have our own sort of tricks notion that we've got it and somebody else doesn't? Or that, well, if people were really practicing, people were really doing spiritual practice the right way, they'd be more like me. About a month ago, I was asked to be on this panel, you know, it was like a teleconference. And the opening question was, well, something like this.

[56:21]

Buddhists meditate. So, da-da-da-da-da-da, and that was the question. And I thought, well, who says Buddhists meditate? Eighty to ninety percent of the Buddhists in the world, Chen. That's a problem. It's a small minority in that way. That so happens that we belong to that small minority, so we think, well, no, no, no, we're Buddhists. Those are the people, well, you know. They haven't got it right yet. So it's easy. That's why we need to study the Dharma so that we don't somehow or another sneak in through the back door, back into the world according to me. We don't sneak back into setting up standards on our own.

[57:28]

And this is why, you know, We do zazen and our other practices of entering the moment and then right in the middle of them don't know to experience what is. This is all when all dharmas are Buddha dharmas. Okay. There's enlightenment and delusion. There is the experience of, oh, I was holding on to that fixed idea. That was delusion, and now I see it. There's practice. Practice is not holding on to those fixed ideas.

[58:38]

is not getting stuck in notions of permanence, notions of abiding self. Practice is seeing that grasping and clinging cause suffering and aversion also causes suffering. There's life and death. You have an idea of a fixed reality. It's real. And then you see, oh, that's just an idea. And it stops happening. It stops being a fixed reality. And there's Buddhas. There's, you know, there's us Buddhas. And then there's those other people.

[59:38]

Creatures. Poor, misguided, awful people. Doing terrible things. So from this way we have a sense of how to practice. We have a sense of what is practice and what's not practice. and we have a sense of when we're doing it and a sense of, well, we're not doing it. This is starting to see conditioned reality. And as if that wasn't difficult enough, anybody who's tried to meditate knows that. The second sentence says, okay, now let's see if we can get a little more engaged in the practice.

[60:43]

What if you went beyond even those ideas? What if you went beyond those notions that this is and this isn't? What if you went beyond the idea that there was something that can be simply labeled as delusion? Or something as non-delusion or enlightenment. Well, she went beyond all that. So the first one is seeing conditioned existence. It's seeing the relative truth for what it is. And then the second one what I was earlier calling the absolute truth. Or letting go of any notion of what should or should not be.

[61:54]

And then the third one is bringing those two together. Because if you think about it, to operate in the world, it's very handy to have a notion of this is the dining room. I know where the doors are. I know how to open them. I know how to turn on the lights. I know where the comfortable chairs are. It's very useful. It's useful to have a schema of what the world is. It's useful to have, to be able to talk, to be able to think. These are useful things. The Buddha way, the Buddha way transcends being and non-being. Therefore, there are life and death, delusion and enlightenment, creatures and Buddha.

[63:06]

And I surely have something to say about all that. Just to the detail, do you think it's significant that he leaves out practice in the second and third line? So the first line of the list, if there's practice in the second and third, it doesn't. Let's check a few of the translations, see how they... Max that up. It's a second hand out. And it's a second hand out. I don't know what you're going to say. You can take that. In all dharmas are buddhidharma. There's delusion, realization, practice, like and death. Buddhas, and sentient beings.

[64:11]

When all dharmas are without an abiding self, with no delusion, no realization, no Buddhas, no living beings, no birth, no perishing. And why didn't they say no practice? Since the Buddha way, by nature, goes beyond the dichotomy of abundance and depreciation, Since the Buddha way transcends being and non-being, the Buddha way is basically leaping clear of the many and the one. I'm a little stumped, David.

[65:21]

I was thinking, first of all, I was thinking, well, yes, it is significant. There it is, and there it isn't. There's got to be some significance for that. So in this one, there is a sense of practice, and then The reason it's not negated in the second one is that the sense of practice, the request of practice shifts. Maybe in the first one we could say, the first one is saying, know how to practice. And then the second one is saying something like, practice not knowing. Not knowing is most intimate. The practice of the first one drops away, but still there's something there.

[66:26]

And then in the third one, then there's both. But the practice still isn't there in the third one. Right. Or in the other. But then it sort of shifts again. That it's both. And I think this catches the flavor of Zen. We do specific practices, but without a fixed idea as to what is good or bad, or to what, we don't do them with a goal. We engage wholeheartedly in the experience not because of the outcome it's going to produce, but because the very engagement is the actualization of Buddhadana. So first of all, I thought that.

[67:29]

And then I thought, hmm, I wonder. And you know, classically in Zen scholarship, rings are written on that very point. It's wonderful. Oh, yeah. Maybe the best place to get the flavor of it is in Masa Abbey's article. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, obviously all this is open to critical consideration. But let's spend our time right now with a different kind of question. If you were to say... for the next week, I'm going to let this teaching, as best I got it, I'm going to let it guide my life. When I sit down to meditate, when I whatever, stand up from meditating or whatever else.

[68:37]

If you were to say that to yourself, how would it express yourself? I don't even have to sit here until next week. Not moving. I think we want to express ourselves as a reminder not to believe everything I think. Can you say that a little more specific? I mean, could you take it into a more detailed way? I mean, how in the next week? Who that manifests.

[69:43]

If I feel like something is really true, that I would remember that that's my world. That's not necessarily what's happened. Woodland? Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Anyone else? I think I'll try and take it as a challenge. For me, I can enjoy talking about this and reading it, but then there I am in the moment of being pissed off about something and all this is just gone. I have a very hard time connecting this teaching with each difficult moment in my life. For me, the challenge is to try and at least bring that awareness to the difficult moments.

[70:45]

Like, okay, here I am. I'm stuck in this moment. I think if I can even just get there and be able to have some glimmer of this in my mind, like, okay, there's something else beyond being upset at this moment, I think that will help me. I mean, I can... I would like to take that on as like a challenge, see if I can do that for this coming week. Anyone else? My mantra is just let it go. Just let it go? Yeah, when I find I'm getting either puffed up about I'm right, somebody else is wrong, I'm getting all upset and worried about something. If I just tell myself to let it go, like I can visibly and physically feel a lot of that ego that can channel the need to prove myself letting that get out of the way it's getting so much better

[71:51]

Yes, Keith? I'm going to go out and live here. Uh-oh. You sure you want to do this? Yes. I got the saw. You got the what? I got the saw. To cut off the limb. Ah, okay. When you said that, the thing that popped into my mind was something kind of foolish that I used to do as a kid. Pull weeds while you're riding a bike. You pull the weed and sometimes the weed wouldn't come out of the ground and it would hurt your hand. Uh-huh. How many times did I do that? It was just fun. It was like, I have to be great. And I thought, well, if I approach that this week, I want to do it in such a way that I don't get stuck in the process of trying to over-examine all these three processes. That's my natural. I'd like to keep things flowing, keep them moving. And then you said over there, letting go. Letting go is an old practice, a practice that I've tried before, but this is sort of a new slant on it.

[73:08]

I don't want to let go so that I'm not benefiting from your three processes here. So that's exactly where I'm at in this very moment, is like, how can I do that, keep the bike moving without hurting myself, but still trying to pull some of those weeds and get a good look at them or something like that? Yeah. Simple. Well, let me just make the whole thing more difficult by offering a couple of reminders. One is a reminder that the heart of practice is not practice according to me. Although, how else do we enter? Where else can we enter? But maybe we can use a phrase like, letting practice do me, you know, rather than me do practice. So that idea.

[74:09]

And then the other idea is that, you know, Dogen Zenji, all the time he talks about actualizing, you know, that the challenge is always for us to take this, you know, marvelous teaching. Well, I think it's marvelous. You can think whatever you like. Take this marvelous teaching and actualize it. To actualize it? An example of letting the practice, being the practice instead of trying to practice. Just a little one. Well, you know, just a phrase. What does practice ask of me in this moment? What do I think practice is? There's somebody outside saying, Keith, do this. I'm asking this of you. I know it's only linguistic, Keith, but language is powerful.

[75:16]

It's like, well, what do you want right now, Keith? Well, that's one kind of question that you can answer. Then what does practice ask of you right now? Well, I want to do good practice. Well, okay. But what is practice asked of me right now? Well, even though it's just language, there's a kind of setting up a ship. So that would be an example. Just to pause and say, what does practice ask of me right now? And then this idea of actualizing the Buddha Dharma. You know, can we translate it from idea, understanding, intention, actualization? And I would also say, while I'm at it, don't get too fancy of why not, Andy.

[76:23]

Don't get too fancy of why not. Don't get too fancy of why not. Fancy. Don't get too fancy. Don't think, well, I'm going to realize, oh, you know, like, If you have some notion that takes you this much time to say it, you're already gone. But not we, it hurt your hand, you know. As well as you know yourself, draw it into something close to who you are that in a way has Simple expression, simple engagement. And then can you stay close? Can that keep turning Dharma into Buddha Dharma? And can it be... Now that's enough. Don't get fancy.

[77:25]

Thank you. Don't get fancy. Thank you very much. The hope was that we'll put out the span. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

[78:32]

It's just an option. No, I think I'm here. I've got a lot of weight off setting it. Right, I agree. Thank you. Okay. So you could remind me next year. Well, it happens. It happens. It happens. It happens. Excuse me a second. Let me just turn this off.

[79:14]

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