Satsang with Mooji Satsang with Mooji Satsang with Mooji An unsurpassed, penetrating and perfect dharma is rarely met with even in a hundred thousand million galpas. Having it to see and listen to, to remember and accept, I vow to taste the truth of the Chathagata's words.

[01:12]

Good morning. So as some of us know only too well, and some of you are utterly oblivious to, this is the last day of a seven-day intensive meditation. I think in some ways it typifies intense periods in our life. You're not quite sure what the heck's going on, but you know something's going on. That's what Shashin's like. So we've been talking about, not only during Sashin, the last seven days, but the last eight or so weeks, teaching by Dogen Zenji. And this being the last talk, I figured I'd talk about the last one.

[02:24]

Sweet. And it goes something like this. Because of that, So all these amazing and wonderful teachings of the efficacy and the intricacies of Dharma. And then he sums it up and says, because of that, the wind of the Buddha house brings forth the gold of the earth and makes fragrant the cream of the long river. The wind of the Buddha house. Wind is activity. The engagement, the engagement, the activity... Can't hear? Turn up a little bit, please. Is that better? Okay. Should I start over? Thanks. I didn't really say much anyway.

[03:30]

the wind of the Buddhist heights, the activity of practice, the efficacy of practice. When practice is engaged, something, the phrase here, the imagery here, the gold of the earth, what's valuable in life, what's precious, what's worthy of being cherished, the efficacy of practice makes that apparent. Was it not there before we unconsciously engaged in our lives, in practice? No, it's not saying that. It's saying it makes it evident. It brings it forth. And makes fragrant the cream of the Long River. Not quite cream. It's more... in another translation where it was explained, the word was more like yogurt.

[04:44]

So yogurt is a live thing, and you cultivate it. You get the ingredients, you put them together, you keep them at a certain temperature, and it grows, it cultivates. So something about being alive, how to live, is cultivated. There's a phrase from a poet, Nassim Hikmet, that I am deeply fond of, where he says, don't live as if you were just renting or here for the summer. but rather as if this was your family home it's a little bit like after page after page of long admonitions Dogen finally gets to the end and says and then

[06:05]

Everybody lived happily ever after. Or maybe he's saying, you know, despite it all, despite all the evidence to the contrary, it's possible to live life in a way that can be cherished, that can be nurturing. that something can be ripened and cultivated on this long river called human existence. Earlier on, he talks about finding your place where you are. And Roke takes his shot at it with this image. The image of a swan walking so ungainly out of its element and then finding its element and gliding so elegantly.

[07:12]

This laboring through what is undone, as though legs bind, we hobbled along the way, is like the awkward walking of the swan. Undying to let go, no longer feel the solid grind we stand on every day, is like his anxious letting himself fall into the water, which receives him gently and which, as though with reverence and joy, draws back past him in streams on either side, while, infinitely silent and aware, his full majesty and ever more indifferent, he glides. The process of practice, in a way, is to turn our life inside out.

[08:39]

To turn us towards that which we've been trying to avoid and have us discover that that very demon can turn into gold, can turn into something worth cherishing. that the afflictions and labors of life can be related to in a way that something ripens. So I'd like to sum up the whole Genji Kahn using a Buddhist teaching. as well as Roke's palm.

[09:43]

In Buddhism, there's a teaching of the three kayas, three realms of reality. The dharmakaya. Kaya just means a realm of existence. The Dharmakaya is undifferentiated being. It's going beyond all the fixed ideas we impose upon existence. The labels, the way we differentiate into self and other. The memories that we hold on to and make solid and the fantasies and fears and hopes we have about the future that become definitive of what that's going to be.

[10:51]

And the opinions and assumptions we have about the present that concretize it, that make it solid. Going beyond all of it. some sense in this, some capacity within this knows that the fixed ideas about reality are not the whole story. And yet, my involvement in my version of reality is so utterly passionate. First of all, it's filled with conviction. There really is me and something separate from me called other.

[11:55]

There's us and there's them. There's good and there's bad. There's success and there's failure. More particularly, that's how I see it. That's how it comes out. And each eye is each one of us, our individuated, conditioned existence. And that's, in Buddha's teachings, the phrase is the nirmanakaya, the manifest reality, what comes up, what is apparent, our subjective world. And then in between is the sambhogakaya, in between the dharmakaya, And the nirmanakaya is the sambhogakaya. And the sambhogakaya is interactive engagement.

[13:00]

We do notice that other people affect us. Situations affect us. We're moved by a beautiful sunset. We read a poem and it strikes a chord. Don't live in this world as though you were just renting. Maybe we're not quite sure what the poet meant, but something in ourselves is touched. It's like, hmm, right. And in that interaction, there is a skillfulness, a way of being.

[14:06]

So in a way, practice in the Zen style is start where you are. What's happening now? What's happening here? How is the world coming into being? How is the self coming into being? And what memories and imaginings and ideas and convictions does it evoke? Including the full range of emotions. And what is it to stay in contact with that? You know, each day in this Sashin, I've been sitting here giving a talk. And yesterday's talk, the sort of thing you can get away with during Sashin, is I talked about, don't scratch the itch. Let the itch itch.

[15:12]

And then when you're in Sashin, when you're in the throes of meditation, That means something. It's more than just a kind of trivial idea. It sinks below the Dharmakaya, the level of conventional reality, and starts to engage the Sambhogakaya, the level of interaction. without noticing we scratch the itch and we don't quite know that we itched or we don't quite know that we scratched and we don't quite know what gave birth to the itch and maybe we scratch it a little hard and there's some marks on our cheek and we're not quite we don't quite know how that came about

[16:23]

So our life is a little or a lot, painful or confusing. And as we start to bring attention to it, we can start to see that relatedness. We can start to see what is it to itch. When we start to hold still and look Before we leap, we start to see what is it to feel angry? What is it to feel sad? What is it to feel frightened? Desire? Disappointed? And how does it influence and how is it influenced by the reality we conjure up?

[17:32]

And so awareness illuminates this realm of being, starts to show us what's going on there. And interestingly, even though it's a deeply personal story, in an extraordinary way, we see that it's not personal at all. It's the human condition. We all fear. We all get sad. We're all disappointed. We all desire. We all conjure up memories of the past and images of the future. So we start to see something not only about the workings of our own personality and psychology and developmental process however you want to frame it we start to see something about the human condition and even more interestingly as we attend to it carefully we start to sense something

[19:08]

This response that's coming up in the moment is not only my response to these conditions, it's my response in this moment. In other moments, other things can come forth. For other people, other things can come forth. So, the contraction we usually feel when life tends to feel burdensome or oppressive as we start to see it and more particularly as we start to feel it.

[20:14]

You know, yesterday I was using this image of when you get an itch on your cheek and you don't scratch it. The itch becomes completely the itch. And then, amazingly, it just becomes whatever happens next. If it's just one of those peculiar little things, like something so small you can't see it landing on your cheek, 30 seconds, it's gone. And some other reality has appeared. Similarly, when we attend to our world and we're experiencing our world in this interactive way, The Sambhogakaya gives some inclination, some inference of the Dharmakaya.

[21:27]

Okay. So that's the theory. And then in practice, there's going down and coming up. meditation and the whole practice of sasheen, the whole practice of picking up a lot of time and just looking and attending very carefully, as attentively as possible to what's going on. It's like going on through the Dharmakaya, the Sambhogakaya and the Dharmonakaya. And then in this last line where Dogen's talking about, and then because of that, the wind of the Buddhist house brings forth the gold of the earth and makes fragrant the cream of the long river.

[22:38]

So sometimes in Zen, Zen being Zen, we say Zazen is good for nothing. But it's also good for everything. You just have to read popular press or buy yourself a Zen MP3 player. Truly seems that the world does feel like Zen is good for everything. Used to just be archery and flower making. Now it's, you name it. As we go down and see clearly what's going on, we see a couple of irrefutable things.

[23:48]

The most significant of which is when you cling tenaciously to the world according to me. and demand that everything else and everyone else comply you're constantly disappointed because you just can't shout that loud or complain that much that they'll do it the world's already too noisy and too distracted to listen that carefully to you in fact You're not even listening to yourself. And as we experience directly for ourselves the futility of that, it inspires us

[24:58]

After we've seen it a couple of thousand times or so, maybe longer, maybe more often than that, for most of us, some people get a little sooner. Most of us, it's a lesson that needs to be repeated frequently, easily forgotten. What was that again? I can't remember, so I'll just try to make the world the way I want it. Ah, that's what that lesson was. Why aren't people the way I'm telling them they should be? After we see it a few thousand times, it starts to occur to us that another way of relating might create less suffering. And we start to taste the flavor of suffering.

[26:14]

We start to look around the world as Hafiz says, with soft eyes and a tender heart. We see our own contribution to it. And as we see our own contribution, we see something about the human condition. And something turns. In Buddhism we say, wisdom turns into compassion. So wisdom takes us down and compassion brings us back. Not to say that's the only way, but let me go with that for a moment.

[27:24]

So we see our own version and then we see something beyond. version of suffering we see something of the human condition thankfully otherwise we just spend all our time feeling sorry for ourselves or we think that compassion was something we gave only to ourselves So this is one very significant attribute, this turning. As we see the futility of desire and aggression and the efficacy and appropriateness of kindness and compassion, something turns. We start to see amazingly that the very activities

[28:29]

that generate our separation can generate our connection. The very activities and the way of experiencing reality that make our life seem barren can also make it seem abundant. So the notion in Zen practice is that in our sitting, not only do we see this vibrant passion play called human life, human existence, this ongoing drama called me and adventures of me, but we see and experience the very momentary energy of existence.

[29:40]

That when we hold still and let the sand be completely the sand. Let this moment vibrate with the authority of its own being. The interconnectedness of existence is experienced directly. We see and experience that separateness is just a notion that we use to make our life understandable and functional. And in this grind of being, in this kaya, it's like normally we don't think, I will have compassion for my hand. My hand and I are the same thing.

[30:51]

I don't think of having compassion for my hand. But if I touch something that's hot and I don't think, well, maybe I should have compassion for my hand. Without thinking, I move it. When my hand suffers, I suffer. So this is a very fundamental ground of compassion as well as wisdom. Non-separation. And then in the realm of the sambhogakaya, as we experience the interconnectedness of our being, and we see how we touch each other and influence each other, we stir up each other's emotions.

[31:55]

But here again, we have a common welfare. That if we think we can be content and serene, in riches and abundance, well, 14,000 people lie on the streets with mountain illness, drug addiction, all sorts of other afflictions and just sheer lack of financial resources. We can try to put up that barrier, but something on the other side of it will keep knocking and disturbing our peace of mind and peace of heart. So here again, our connectedness in the realm of the sambhogakaya draws us back into compassion.

[33:12]

And the realm of the dharmakaya is where we act, is where we do. Because without actualization, It's just a dream. It's just one set of ideas or another set of ideas. But when we bring them into manifest action, in the term that Dogen Zengi uses in this long essay, is something is actualized. If you want to know If water quenches thirst, drink some. If you want to know how wise the wisdom of the Dharma is, live it.

[34:32]

If you want to allow compassion to influence your life and our collective life, be compassionate. Live it. The Dharmakaya is called the transformational body. When I first read these teachings, I thought, well, isn't the sambalakaya the transformational body? That's the weird stuff you get up to when you study Buddhism, thinking about things in such a weird way. But it's action that transforms. It's engaging.

[35:37]

So we engage the compassion and the compassion itself, the engaging of the compassion lifts aside of some separate cocoon of me separate from others. We experience non-separation through compassionate action. So our wisdom can bring us to compassion, but our compassion can bring us to wisdom. The door swings both ways. So when we sit, when we do sasheen, we do sasheen for everyone.

[36:40]

And when sasheen ends and we get up and act, we act for everyone. And even though in our sitting all sorts of amazing stuff happens. Even so, as Dogen Zenji says. And because of that, this wind, this activity of the Buddha Dharma brings forth what can be cherished and helps to ripen, to cultivate that which in life, which nourishes us. So that we can take up Hafiz's comment, or not Hafiz, Nazim Ahmed's comment, of not merely just renting, of settling.

[37:55]

As Dovin says earlier, you know, when you find your way in this moment, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point for the place, the way, is here. Here the way unfolds. Transformational body is this life we're in the midst of. And even though it's good for nothing, it's also good for everything. Thank you.

[39:09]

See you later. Yes. Yes. Yes. I am a golden adventurer in the island of the United States. I am a golden adventurer.

[40:12]

I am a golden adventurer. [...]

[40:18]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_85.93