Good evening. So I'll ring the bell. We can sit for a few minutes and then we will talk about Dogen Zenji. Hello again.

[06:45]

I hope you are all having as lovely a spring as we are right now. Green Gulch has just turned warmish and sunny, and it's really quite nice. COVID is still here. We have had just four new cases show up in the last day or so, which is, you know, it's around when one of our kitchen crew and one of our guest program, people, so we're all kind of going back into rather strict protocols again. And just as we were coming out, we're now going back, and we hope everyone will not be too ill. And for those of you who know folks at GreenGalch, I think a lot of you do, Linda Ruth's husband, Steve, he's okay. I mean, he's okay in the sense that he'll be coming home in a few days, but he had a very bad bicycle accident and was helicoptered to Walnut Creek.

[07:46]

Apparently he has some broken ribs and maybe a broken clavicle, but he's not, he will heal. And that's the very best news. He's just going to be uncomfortable for a while. So we've all been sitting with that along with the news about the COVID. So, you know, there's never a day when we're not called on in our lives to practice, you know, being, being there, being, support uh learning the most we can you know about what's happening uh so yeah so i'm offering myself and all of you uh maybe a few moments just to think about people in your life that you care about who may be going through some struggles and just sending our our warmest wishes our our deepest wish to practice for their well-being. So, Master Dogen.

[08:52]

A few weeks ago, I recommended to all of you a program that maybe some of you watched. I really enjoyed it. So if you'd like to entangle your own Buddhist practice and understanding with modern physics, this program is for you. It's called Einstein's Quantum Riddle. And then I also invited you to read the introduction to a book that was written by Thomas Cleary called Entry into the Inconceivable, which helps to explain a very ancient teaching, a Buddhist teaching called Huayen in Chinese, Huayen Buddhism. Huayen means the flower garland, flower garland. Maybe something like what an Olympic athlete might wear, you know, a flower garland. So these two things, this quantum physics riddle and the flower garden garland sutra, are very, very similar in the impact I think one has on encountering these ideas, these teachings.

[09:55]

Recently we've been reading together, my senior seminar group that I'm in with our teacher, Reb Anderson, have been entering into the inconceivable flower garland sutra by actually beginning to read it and for any of you who have attempted that it's an extraordinary exercise in all kinds of things like patience and patience lots of patience i was saying in the group that i found it very similar to meditation to zazen in the morning where You know, you sit down and you're kind of restless and all that stuff is still running around in your head from the day before or what's going on in your life. And for a while it just feels like, I don't know if I want to sit here. You know, I really think I've got things I've got to get done. You know, there's a kind of tension between the idea of just sitting there for an hour or however long it is and what's running around in your head.

[10:56]

And so little by little, by having agreed to stay there at your seat, the noisy monkey begins to kind of quiet down and take a little nap for a while. And something a lot more pleasant takes place, sometimes or often, but not always. And then there's this kind of quiet, this kind of quiet and it's okay just to be there. And that happened with the Flower Ornament Sutra too. After a while of reading it, I kind of slog through whole pages of these names of these bodhisattvas, you know, page after page of names of celestial beings, flower banner, garland, light, swinging from a cloud, you know, all these incredible names, one after the other, and kind of settle into it. And just these words became more like songs or like a tune was just kind of running along. And again, it became somewhat pleasant to be reading all those names.

[12:00]

So we are going to continue to make an effort each week to read another 20 or so pages. And if you would like to join us in reading the Flower, Garland Sutra, this is a good time to have company. So we are up to, we are still in book one. So we've read about 40 pages in book one. And now we're going to read another. 20 pages in book one. I think we'll do 20 pages at a stretch a week. So, you know, it'll take a few years to finish the text. So, but you know, not much else I can think of that I'm going to be doing in the next two years. I wouldn't be able to take time to do my 20 pages of the Flower Garden Garland Sutra. So this YN Buddhism is such an important text for Zen and for all of Buddhism. You know, it has indescribable impact, which you'll get if you read it. And Huyan Buddhism, which is based on this sutra, in Sanskrit, the name of the sutra is the Avatamsaka Sutra.

[13:09]

Again, each of these just means flower garland. So Huyan is Chinese for flower garland and Avatamsaka is Sanskrit for flower garland. And this teaching is characterized by a philosophy of the complete interpenetration of the relative and the ultimate truths throughout the entire universe. So that's really what they're presenting, these mystics or whatever, these meditators thousands of years ago who began automatic writing of this sutra and somehow we're able to just continue the flow for you know thousands of pages and basically this is what they're doing is describing what is understood to have been the buddha's first teaching so this text in mahayana is considered to be what the buddha said first after his enlightenment or what he knew of enlightened vision. This was his vision of the universe.

[14:11]

This text has had a major influence on all of Zen, as I said, and particularly Dogen Zenji, who's read everything. Dogen was quite literate in Chinese and old Japanese texts. He'd read the Chinese canon, I showed you that picture of all the wood blocks in a huge library. He'd read all of that and a great much of Chinese literature, of other kinds, secular literature as well. So he had a really deep and complete education in what was there in his time, in his day. So this powerful sutra describes a cosmos of infinite realms. And within each realm is immeasurable number of Buddhas. So basically, we're just seeing this kind of like pulsating vision of all these different universes. It's a little bit like looking through them.

[15:14]

the Webb telescope or the Hubble, you know, just looking out there at these pulsars and these quasars and all these things that are flashing and lights and explosions and black holes and all of that. It's kind of, it seems like maybe that Shakyamuni Buddha kind of got that very sense from his awakening experience of, oh, that's what we are. This is what's made us, this extraordinary. and near infinite well we don't know we don't know there's no boundaries no boundaries have been discovered just surprises more and more surprises so whether we're endeavoring to understand our universe through the scientific method or through the profound insights of our buddha ancestors the thing that's blocking us i think you've heard this many times are these ingrained patterns of dualistic thinking that prevent us from knowing our complete and original self which is what the Flower Garland Sutra is reminding us we are.

[16:15]

So as both science and Zen, however, seem to make clear that it's very difficult, if not actually impossible, for words and letters to embody the true nature of reality. You know, our cognitive capacity, as we can feel, we can tell, I mean, it's kind of small, this little kind of watermelon-sized head we have our cognitive capacity can only provide a very partial understanding like a finger pointing at the moon as they say in zen of the full range of not only our own experience but of what there is you know the unknown is so much greater than what we can ever know and um and I don't know why I'm going to tell you this, but it just is so interesting to me. I was watching, it's about the brain. I was watching this really wonderful woman scientist talking about the study she'd done about why are we so smart? Given the size of our brains, our brains are not as big as an elephant, and many other are great ape.

[17:18]

Their brains are much heavier. They, you know, and the theory being that brains, small brains are just the same, that the neurons are the same size, or the cells are the same size. Well, it turns out they're actually not, that there's quite a difference between our cells and the mouse cells. And that the thing that made a huge difference for us, you know, the authors of the Abhatama Saka Sutra, is that about, I don't know how many centuries ago or thousands of years ago, we started cooking. And by cooking, all of a sudden the capacity to think went shooting way up because we were able to more efficiently utilize food you know protein to feed this hungry, hungry beast, than other creatures, they have to eat all day long, and they don't get as much out of their eating. So they don't have the same advantage that we got by cooking our food. So how about that for some really interesting, who would have known that by cooking, we would become chefs, we would become astronomers and all kinds of funny thing.

[18:28]

I thought that was kind of amazing. Maybe you knew that already, but I was news to me. So anyway, So although Dogen was rather meticulous in using language for describing the practice guidelines for an entire monastic community, so he was very interested in his how they lived together. And a great deal of Dogen, it's good to remember, he was a monastic. So for all of us who live more or less lay lives, I certainly live more of a lay life than I do monastic. I lived monastically for various times, periods of times. know not year after year after year i do three-month practice periods and then i've been at tasahara for three years so i did monastic practice then um but it you know i would i'm i don't consider myself a monastic i'm not a monk and um however dogan was and his his um his his companions were all monks so they had all taken

[19:31]

the vows and they all lived in a communal way. So he wrote a great deal about the practice of the kitchen, about the zendo, about the administration and so on. And yet at the same time, when it came to expressing the Dharma, one scholar said this about Dogen, he said, he spun words and he turned phrases constantly, often creating new meanings on the spot. or using the same words in the phrasing to make a point in the first moment and then contradicting that very point in the next. So this is one of the things that makes Dogen so, you know, challenging for us to enter because you can feel that. You start to read Dogen, you know, wait a minute, you know, he just said that and now he's contradicting himself and so on. I think we take it on ourselves. It must be me. I can't understand it. But Dogen is, he's very intentional. what he's doing is for us, and it's making us uncomfortable, part of it, and breaking up our set, our mindset, you know, the way we expect things to go.

[20:37]

He kind of, just as you think you're getting there, he kind of flips you over and puts you over here. And yet, ironically, Dogen's skillful use of words to turn over words and to undermine conventional meanings had the effect of giving even greater value to the use of words, and especially his own, as a means to express enlightenment. So all of his effort to undermine language and to show how capricious it all is, and so on, had the effect of really making it important, like making a kind of luminosity to Dogen's very own teachings. There's a little bit of irony in that. Dogen's teaching has a kind of visceral impact. And at the same time, it's appealing to us intellectually. It's both like a body blow, and at the same time, something comes in for us to understand. So in doing that, it says he turns the body and he turns the mind, kind of like somersaults.

[21:43]

If you watch these gymnasts, you do these amazing movements. Dogen's a little bit like that, and then he sticks it at the end. It's kind of a landing. So as we will see over and over again, as we begin to read Dogen's own works, and I would like to invite you to read the translations done by Kaz Tanahashi in a book called Moon in a Dewdrop, which was published back in 1985 by North Point Press. And what's special about Moon in a Dewdrop, I mean, one of the first Dogen books that I... ever got. It was brand new in 85. I was at Tassajara in 85. I remember sitting on my bed in my little monk's room reading this book cover to cover. You know, so many hours as I had free, I was reading when a dew drop and I was like, oh my God, this is just amazing. It was wonderful, amazing and incomprehensible, you know, all at the same time. So I'm really fond of these translations.

[22:46]

And they were done. Kaz, who lived at Zen Center for many years and still is around all those various Zen camps. He's getting to be quite an elderly gentleman at this time. I think we're gonna have maybe his 90th birthday's coming up, but we're gonna celebrate him here at Greenledge. He worked with various Zen Center senior students in translating the fascicles in Munanidu Drop. So you'll read the names in the opening. pages of many you'll see rip anderson's name and a number of other people who were around at the time who sat with him for many hours translating these texts into readable english so responding to a statement made by another zen master back in the day jiang yan jiang yan said that a painting of a rice cake does not satisfy hunger a painting of a rice cake does not satisfy hunger, which usually is interpreted to mean that studying words and letters, you know, the painting of a rice cake, studying words and letters or a depiction or representation of food will not help you to realize the ultimate truth.

[23:59]

So this teacher is really pointing toward experiential learning and not intellectual learning. Now Dogen, on the other hand, declares that words and letters cannot be separated from the ultimate truth where are you going to put words and letters are they somewhere else outside of the ultimate truth or outside of reality or isn't this an all-inclusive reality that we're talking about so Dogen brings words and letters back in he says ah wait a minute wait a minute hang on we have to deal with them we have to work with them with our understanding the way we understand is by pointing, our fingers pointing at the moon. And so in Dogen's teaching, a painting of a rice cake becomes an expression of enlightenment itself. You know, the pointing finger is the moon. It's not pointing at the moon. It is the moon. The words themselves are illumination. Everything is illuminated in Dogen's world. So Dogen's teachings were offered to people in all levels of society.

[25:03]

And yet he expected that those teachings would be received in a context of a devotion to sitting meditation, to Zazen. So his audience, the assumption was that his audience were meditators. And of course his work has spread far and wide and scholars study Dogen and lay people study Dogen who don't sit and sitters don't study doga and so we've got all of that going on and so for those of us who sit and study doga and it's kind of a nice nice combination that's pretty much what he was hoping that his words would resonate would have this impact that would would resonate during during your sitting practice and throughout the day which indeed they they can and they do like the avatamsaka sutra which is uh has a rather astonishing wake, you know, after you've been reading that, and I hope you'll try it, actually, I want to encourage you to do that.

[26:07]

After you've been reading, you know, 20 pages of the Avatam Psyche Sutra, then, you know, just go outside and look around and see if you don't kind of begin to see what that sutra is telling you is there, you know. the diamonds and the rainbows and the colored banners and the palaces and the jewels and so on. So Dogen says this in the Bendowa, which is one of his major teachings. It's in the moon in a dewdrop, one of the fascicles that we'll look at together. He says, sit zazen wholeheartedly, conform to the Buddha form and let go of all things. Drop body and mind. Sit zazen wholeheartedly, conform to the Buddha form, and let go of all things. Then, leaping beyond the boundary of delusion and enlightenment, free from the paths of ordinary and sacred, unconstrained by ordinary thinking, immediately wander at ease, enriched with great enlightenment.

[27:14]

When you practice in this way, how can those who are concerned with traps and snares of words and letters be compared to you? so you know he goes both ways he's like don't get trapped either by words and letters don't make your understanding of things become a containment vessel that you don't there's no light getting in there oh i get it you know better not to get it not knowing is nearest so better to have an open openness in your sitting and in your walking in your daily life so dogan's intention in using words is to encourage his students to study them very deeply as in very intimately. Intimacy is his primary instruction for all things. So this word intimacy, I think, because I've seen a calligraphy with this term and the Chinese character for intimacy. I think Maya may have it in the tea house. Intimacy, you know, with everything. With what you're reading, what you're thinking, what you're feeling, what you're seeing, what you're breathing.

[28:19]

Every moment is intimate. You know, life is intimacy with all things. And so for us to stay connected to the intimacy that's there is the primary instruction. So once this lock of discriminative thinking has dropped away, you know, you've opened up this little cage of things you know, thinking becomes beyond thinking. Beyond thinking becomes the practice of zazen itself. So Dogen is not teaching that meditation leads to enlightenment, but rather that the meditation posture itself, zazen itself, is enlightenment. That's it. You just sit there and that's it. Pretty straightforward. Dogen's understanding is that all moments, in all moments, we are whole. We're lacking nothing.

[29:20]

despite how we may feel at any given time. Even though you feel like I'm lacking everything, I've got nothing, I'm nobody, I'm no good, whatever that is, it doesn't matter. All moments are whole, lacking nothing, regardless of how you feel. So for Doga, intimacy is the primary antidote to the feelings we have of not being whole or complete in every moment. Zazen completes us. Your body and your mind are just there. Just this is it. Just this is it. No matter what you're thinking. You're there. You're there. And you're not alone. I think that's why we're drawn to the Zendo. I think there's some way in which that enactment of not being alone by not being alone is really encouraging. I hope you all have a small or large sitting group where you are that you can sit with together. So Dogen says, intimacy means close and inseparable.

[30:22]

There is no gap. Intimacy embraces Buddha ancestors. Intimacy embraces you. It embraces self. It embraces action. It embraces generations. It embraces merit. It embraces intimacy. Intimacy means close and inseparable. There is no gap. The moment and what we are doing in that moment are one complete and intimate expression of life. Each moment is complete expression of life, of your life, of my life, of our life. So Dogen also says, between aspiration, practice, enlightenment and nirvana, there is not a moment's gap. Between aspiration, practice, enlightenment and nirvana, There is not a moment's gap. And so we do not sit in order to become enlightened. We sit as an expression of enlightenment.

[31:25]

That is what Buddhas do. However, because we do not yet know who or what we are, a gap appears. A hair's breadth deviation, as Dogen says. And our thoughts run around like a wild horse our feelings jump around like a monkey in the forest so as a result of our mind made suffering a longing appears in us you know an aspiration to close the gap you know to get the monkey back in the cage get the horse back in the corral you know we really want to trap our energies our feelings we want to get them back under control you know i think that's what dogman is suggesting to us quite the opposite So that aspiration, this aspiration, is what led many of us to undertake the practice of Zen in the first place. Wisdom is seeking wisdom.

[32:27]

Wholeness is seeking wholeness. Life is seeking life. Self is seeking self. There's a koan, I like that, called the fire boy comes seeking fire. There's a monk who's, I can't remember it exactly, I meant to look it up. There's a monk who's... not visiting the teacher, and the teacher says to him finally, well, how come you never talk to me? And the monk says, well, you know, fire boy come seeking fire. You know, I know that I am Buddha, and I'm just looking for Buddha, so why do I have to, I think I have to be concerned about, I'm already there. You know, and the teacher goes, hmm, just what I thought. Not a clue. So the kid's insulted. This young monk was insulted like he didn't get affirmed as he was expecting. So he leaves the monastery and then he gets down the road a little ways and he thinks, you know, this is a pretty well-respected teacher. Maybe I should go back and check it out again and ask him what he meant by all that and so on.

[33:32]

So he turns around, he goes back and he goes to see the teacher. And he said, teacher, please, you help me. You tell me, you know. You tell me the teaching. And the teacher says, fire boy come seeking fire. Good, huh? So, you know, it's not about us knowing. It's not about me knowing or thinking I've got it or something like that. It's about my dynamic relationship with my teacher, with each person, with the day and the evening and what I eat and how I behave. All of that is confirming or questioning. You know, how I'm doing? How you doing? What's happening here? So we're always being questioned by one another. And, you know, being sure, being confident is not so highly recommended. It's sort of about what? I mean, what is it? You know, narcissism is kind of a mysterious illness, I think, because it's sort of like, really? You know, you're really caught inside your own marvelousness?

[34:36]

You know, it seems like a very limited containment vessel. very small and it cracked that one open so fire boy comes seeking fire so i think one of the basic questions for us within the zen tradition if we've accepted that sitting zazen is yes is the thing itself is how to employ the mind during zazen it's kind of a secret question okay i get it this is enlightenment itself but you know Is there something I should be doing? I mean, this is what the students are always asking. What do I do while I'm sitting there? And I had a group of students from Spirit Rock. Did I tell you this last week? Did I tell you already about them? No. Okay. Well, there were about 15 folks who had hiked from Spirit Rock. to Green Gulch, in three days, they were hiking here with their teacher, Gil Fransdal, who some of you may know, he's a wonderful, wonderful teacher.

[35:41]

He's also ordained Zen teacher, priest, and has Dharma transmission. And he's a vipassana teacher. So he, for his own reasons, thinks the vipassana teaching is more accessible for folks, and he really emphasizes that in his own teaching. Anyway, he brought them to the Zen, to the Zen house, and we went in the Zendo. And so I know they have a particular style of training and teaching and so on. So they asked me, you know, what's the instruction? And I said, just sit. You know, and then I rang the bell. So, you know, we basically are upholders of the just sit, just sit. You know, just sit. But still we wonder, am I doing it right? You know, is this right? So the sixth ancestor, you may think back a little ways, the sixth ancestor, he's the sixth down from Bodhidharma, who's the first Chinese ancestor.

[36:44]

Bodhidharma came from India to China. He brought Zen with him. And then six generations after Bodhidharma comes Hui Nong, the sixth Chinese ancestor, who is kind of the... If you look from Huynong on, you've got Zen is all over the place. It's sort of like exploded from that point on. And China basically, Buddhism in China for centuries was Zen, Chan in Chinese, Chan. So this pretty much started with Huynong and his text called the Platform Sutra. Interestingly to remember is there was never another that anyone wrote that was called a sutra. The only sutras were the teachings of the Buddha. So here they have this platform sutra written by Hui Nung, Hui Nung's teaching, which elevates this teaching like way up there to call it a sutra.

[37:46]

That's kind of an amazing audacity actually. But, you know, it had a profound influence on Chinese Buddhism and on Zen, this text, which again, I highly recommend you read the Platform Sutra. It's not like that, like the Aptam Sakha Sutra, it's more like that, so you can get through it in fairly short order. But it's another incredibly important teaching for our school. Much of what we hear in Dharma talks and so on, you'll find in the Platform Sutra. You'll recognize it. So in the Platform Sutra, which is foundational to what's called the Southern School of Zen, of which Dong Shan, Soto Zen founder, and Ru Jing, Dogen's teacher, and Dogen, and Suzuki Roshi, and all of us are descended, the Southern School, promotes the notion of sudden enlightenment in which the goal and the method are the same. So just sit, the goal and the method are the same.

[38:52]

Just sit. Buddha. Buddha sitting. Buddha sitting. What's Buddha doing? Buddha sitting. So from the start, the sole object of meditation is the dharmadhatu itself, or reality itself, ultimate reality itself, like this avatamsaka sutra is a meditation on the dharmadhatu, on reality itself, the universe itself. You know, that great big circle at the top of the lineage chart, big open circle that has room for everything. you know, there's a vast and all inclusive circle at the very top. So, you know, to have the dharmadhatu as the object of your meditation is, well, it's easy, actually, because you can't miss. I think I remember telling you, I don't know what I've told you, but anyway, there's a story that's really great about that. One of the teachers, Japanese monks and teachers that Suzuki Roshi brought with him from Japan to help him with Zen Center, there was Chino Roshi, and then there was Katagiri Roshi.

[40:00]

And Katagiri Roshi told a story once of going down to Esalen, where he was invited to give Kyudo. Oh no, I'm sorry, it was Chino. Chino Roshi, the other one, the first one. Chino Roshi, who was a Kyudo master. Kyudo are those long bows that the... japanese if you have a chance you can look it up there's pictures of the kyudo masters and they're standing there with these really high maybe seven eight foot tall bows and they're just standing beautifully dressed you know they have their their whole hakama and everything on and they're gorgeous japanese you know elaborate costumes they're not costumes they're clothes and so the the target is not very far away i've done i did a little bit of kyuto i was a very very tempted it's beautiful art form but you know it just another thing would take a lot of time so i didn't do it but anyway you you you stand there and you just wait you know you stand there with the with the string drawn back and you wait as it tells you in the manual for the arrow to release itself you know you don't let it go it goes and um so uh chino was chino roshi had set up a target

[41:15]

and he had it on the edge of this, I guess it's a cliff, at Esalen where from there the ocean is out there in the distance. So you saw the target and you see the ocean and there he is and his whole thing, he's got all of his clothing and everything. And he gets up there and he waits and he waits and everyone's watching. And then he raises the bow and he shoots the arrow into the ocean. And somebody asked him, you know, well, why did you do that? He said, because you can't miss. So, you know, this is the Zen approach, you know. It's all inclusive. You can't miss. You can't miss when you're sitting Zazen. You got it. You can't miss when you're sitting what you're doing right now. You know, it's already here. And it's just that we have this dualistic, confused monkey running around going, this can't be it. I can't believe this isn't it, you know. I'm not it. I mean, what isn't it?

[42:16]

So we don't have the confidence to recognize what's happening. And so we study, and we learn to drop body and mind. Just this is it. Just this is it. So here's what the six ancestors said, Huynong, in the Platform Sutra, a little taste of the Platform Sutra. The fact that the basis of the mind is without any wrong, is the ethics of one's own nature. So what he's talking to here are the primary teachings of the old wisdom school. Of the Pali Canon there are three sections of teachings that the Buddha gave. The first is ethics or morality. The second is concentration or meditation, samadhi. And the third is wisdom or prajna. So you have shila, ethics, samadhi, meditation and prajna, wisdom. Those are the big three that are understood to be what the Buddha taught.

[43:18]

And here's what Hoi Nong is saying about the big three. The fact that the basis of the mind is without any wrong is the ethics of one's own nature. The fact that the basis of the mind is without disturbance is the meditation of one's own nature. The fact that the basis of the mind is without ignorance is the wisdom of one's own nature. When we understand our own nature, we do not set up ethics, meditation, and wisdom, since our own nature is without wrong, disturbance, or ignorance. And in every moment of thought, prajna illuminates, always free from the attributes of things. What is there to set up? I'm going to read that again. The fact that the basis of the mind is without any wrong, so the basis of the mind, the all-inclusive basis of the mind, the universe itself, re, the basis of the mind is re, is ultimate truth, is without any wrong.

[44:25]

This is the ethics of one's own nature. The fact that the basis of the mind is without any disturbance is the meditation of one's own nature. The fact that the basis of the mind is without ignorance is the wisdom of one's own nature. When we understand our own nature, we do not set up ethics, meditation, and wisdom, since our own nature is without wrong, disturbance, or ignorance. And in every moment of thought, prajna illuminates, always free from the attributes of things. What is there to set up? So in the perfect sudden practice, so this is sudden enlightenment. We're talking about the sudden school. We're in the southern school of sudden enlightenment. And so in the perfect sudden practice, every sight and smell and taste is the ultimate middle way in which ignorance is identical with enlightenment. And samsara is identical with nirvana. There is no path leading from one to the other.

[45:27]

There's no gap. Samatha, tranquility practice, is nothing other than the quiescence of ultimate reality itself. And Vipassana, insight practice, is its constant luminosity. So this is closure. They're taking these two sides, these dualistic propositions, samsara and nirvana, the path from here to there, you know, ignorance and enlightenment, and they're going, nope, nope, there's no gap. You'll never find a gap in the present moment. And the only place you ever are is the present moment. So, you know, this is like a giant healing or a suture, suturing, you know, platform suture. This is a suturing and it's challenging, right? I mean, I find this very challenging. I've always found it challenging and I still enjoy it greatly and I enjoy seeing what I can do with all this when I'm down there in the Zendo.

[46:29]

You know, like, really? See if I can remember any of it while I'm sitting there. So what do we actually do when we're sitting? So this radical non-dualism that I just read to you undermines the rationale for cultivation and for some kind of concrete discussion of a technique. Which is a problem that was reflected in Dogen's own big question that drove his practice. Why practice if you're already Buddha? That's what set Dogen sailing for China. Why practice if there's no gap? Seems like there's a gap. So what's going on here? He was taking all of this very seriously. And yet a small opening for instruction still remains in the face of this radical deconstruction of Buddhist practice in these teachings such as the Heart Sutra. There's no suffering. There's no cause of suffering, no cessation of suffering, no path to the cessation of suffering, no knowledge, no attainment with nothing to attain.

[47:34]

The Heart Sutra. We recite that as though it's not the most... stunning, surprising, and shocking thing that's ever been said. You know, we just go la [...] every morning, you know. It's like, you better read that, guys. You know what it says? There's no suffering. So this small opening goes kind of like this. If wisdom is the natural experience of the six senses in the absence of deluded thought, you know, you just smell the flower, right? Buddha held up a flower and twirled it, and Maha Kashapa, his dharma heir, smiled. It's just like, what's happening, you know? There was no delusional thinking going on. Maha Kashapa wasn't thinking about what does that mean or why is he doing that, you know? The rest of the monks are looking at the Buddha like that, like, what is he doing? What's happening? And Maha Kashapa smiled slightly, it says, slightly. Mahakashapa was the great ascetic, so he didn't grin or laugh, but he did smile slightly.

[48:39]

And so if wisdom is the natural experience of the six senses in the absence of deluded thought, then meditation is the non-production of such thoughts in regard to that experience. So meditation would be the non-production of thinking about meditation, or about the sound of the bird, or the light in the room, or your neighbor's coughing, you know. So this small opening is the cultivation of no thought. Cultivating no thought, as in Dogen's famous meditation instruction in the Fukanza Zengi, which we're going to look at for next time. I'd like to, and I'm going to put that in the chat. Don't let me forget to do that. It's on the Zen Center website if I do forget. It's the Fukanza Zengi. Dogen's instruction for meditation, in which he says, his very famous line is, think of not thinking. And someone must have asked him, well, how do you think of not thinking?

[49:44]

He says, non-thinking, non-thinking. This in itself is the essential art of zazen. How do you think of not thinking? Non-thinking, non-thinking. So what happens is this question, as I think you can hear because it's like, what? You know, this question sets up a kind of vibration, a kind of dual focus. Instead of my meditation object being like my breath or the color red or the sound of the bird, my meditation object is sound, no sound, the sound of no sound or the thought of no thought. So you have these two focal points that are vibrating in opposition to one another. So there's nothing static there. I don't know how we can call that concentration. Basically, it's sort of like unconcentrated, you know, to not let you land, no landing on either thought or no thought. So he says non-thinking.

[50:47]

So you have think, not think, think, opposite, not think. How do you think not thinking? Non-thinking. non not [...] non includes both of them so it's a double focus think and not think are connected they're twins they're conjoined twins as are all dualistic propositions so Dogen has put together our primary you know the Mara the evil one the thinker he's put Mara the evil one into relationship with not thinking With, you know, Mara the evil one is the master of illusions. He's putting Mara in connection with no illusions. With pure mind. A clear mind. And fuzzy mind. So they're now real close. There's no gap between these two. So basically the instruction boils down to change your attitude about zazen.

[51:50]

Or change your attitude about everything. you know, if you like, shifts from a focus on a singular substance, such as the object of meditation, like a sound or a sensation or a thought, which many meditation instructions are, to the functioning of the mind itself. So you turn away from some kind of singular focus, some substance, some named object of meditation, to the functioning of the mind itself, you know, this dizzy, fuzzy, woozy, giddy world of illusion. We're keeping our focus on Mara, the evil one, and his tricks, and all the tricks he's got, all the tricks of the trade of illusions. How are illusions being made? How is this happening? How does the mind work? How fascinating is that? So from the cultivation of the calm radiant Buddha nature latent in every mind, which is called the mirror wisdom, so you have the mirror, song of the jewel mirror samadhi, to the celebration, of the natural wisdom in every thought, which is on the surface of the mirror.

[52:55]

All the stuff that's showing up in the mind's eye, in the mirror, reflected on the mirror. That's the dynamic relationship that is taking place in this teaching, Dogen's teaching. So as a result of this shift from a single focus to a dual or a multiple, I think it's a foci, plural, in Zen discourse, any talk of sitting calmly in meditation came to be considered in poor taste. You know, if a Zen teacher saw, sit calmly, relax yourself, that was considered to be in poor taste. And there was a shift that occurred toward meditation in which one was instructed to be ever on your toes, vitally and spontaneously engaging in phenomena, in Ji. As Rev once said to us, it was some time ago but I really remembered it, I think it was a time he had a dog like this one, but he once described his own meditation as being like a Doberman on a sit-stay.

[53:57]

Very awake, very alert, and ready to jump. All you have to do is say, fetch, or something like that, but you don't. You just leave him sitting there, kind of twitching, like, come on, throw the ball, throw the ball. a Doberman on a sit-stay. In other words, you're fully alive, you know, and fully engaging with the appearances of conventional realities, taking them seriously as they arise and cease as they shine and glitter, Avatamsaka Sutra. You know, this extraordinary vision that's appearing before our eyes and in our ears and through our mouths, all day long, all day long. And following the teachings of the sixth ancestor from the Platform Sutra, many techniques developed among the great masters of the Tang Dynasty, who turned their remarkable energies toward drawing the students out of their trances and into the dynamic new world of Chan.

[54:59]

They shouted and they beat them and they gave the spontaneous dialogues, these koans and poetry, beautiful poetry like Hongzhi and Dogen, enigmatic sayings, iconoclastic anecdotes, all of which were intended to be expressions of the great mystery of things itself. The great mystery of things. And yet while making light of the practice of meditation, along with ritual devotion study and teaching, they made light of that, they kind of made fun of it. These very rascally Zen masters indicated that these practices were basically givens at the core of zen they weren't they were basically like they did morning service and then they did these kind of funny things you know i've i remember somebody reading somewhere in one of suzuki roshi's books they asked him he because he was really into the ritual And I've seen that in Japan. They do beautiful ritual at Eiji.

[56:02]

It's extraordinary. They practice all day long doing gorgeous rituals together. And when we do it well, we feel good. When we're able to do our rituals in a nice way and respectful way, it feels really good. So those rituals, those practices and studies are core expressions of Zen. So it was okay for them to be... kind of fooling around after hours, so to speak, or, you know, playing in Dokusan, having private discussions and having things be, you know, a little bit thrown out off kilter, you know. So, you know, it wasn't like they'd thrown the baby out with bathwater, they had both of them there. And as Izuku Roshi said when he was asked, what do Zen masters do in their free time when they get together? And he said, we laugh a lot, you know, and I thought, Yes, I think that's true. I've seen that. I've seen that with teachers. I've seen that with our teachers. You know, we're very silly. You know, we just had an Abbott's Council meeting and, you know, we had some business to take care of.

[57:06]

Of course, we had an agenda, but whenever there was a crack of any kind, these very silly things would be said and we would all have a good laugh and so on. So that closeness of good-hearted humor, good-natured humor, What does that mean? One of the things I've always liked about Zen is that the humor, the jokes are not unkind. They're just funny. So all of the great masters of Zen, regardless of their attitude or how they explain the Dharma, throughout the ages, all of them sat in meditation for long hours, they offered incense, and they studied the teachings of the Buddha ancestors. Dogen said it was not that Zen monks had no practice, it's that they refused to defile it by thinking of it as a thing, by turning it into some thing that they understood or they had or they were good at in some way, appropriating it for their egoic needs.

[58:06]

So by refusing to call it names or turning them into methods, They refused to relegate the great mystery to some kind of step or stages that they accomplished or to separate their method and goal from one another, and thereby not creating any dualistic propositions. That was his ultimate goal. So I'm going to stop there because I see we're running out of time, and I will continue a little bit. I've got a little bit more to say about all of that. And then, as I said, I want to put the... Avatamsaka Sutra into the chat. No, no, not the Avatamsaka Sutra. Sorry, didn't mean to scare you. The Fukanza Zangi. So that you can... I'm going to try that. See how that goes. Oh, no, why? Why? Why does this happen? I got a lesson too. And I thought I got it.

[59:09]

I thought I had it. All right. Here we go. I'm going to try this. Okay. There it is. Yay! All right, that's the Fukanza Zengi from the Zen Center website, which I would invite you to take a look at for next week. I'll be starting to look at that text with you then. Hi, Melissa. Hello, Sangha. Hello, Fusensei. Thank you so much for this evening's talk. I felt such an interesting alignment of circumstances, and I wanted to share them. We're talking about Dogen tonight, and I think I'm realizing for the first time how deeply he's interwoven into my practice, even though I haven't spent a lot of time studying his works yet, because of the idea of Zazen is enlightenment.

[60:20]

It is an enactment of enlightenment. And I was talking with someone today who follows a different spiritual tradition And he was asking me about meditation, and I described it for him in that moment as like anything worth – it's like training. It's like training for anything worth training for, you know, a lifetime in the law, a lifetime in medicine, archery, a marathon, whatever it is, and hopefully, you know, something – that really expands your horizons as you participate in it, but it's just putting in the work and that's what the meditation is. And I described some of the things that I do, but really is, I was saying, you know, there are these moments and I think I was trying to describe what little I know of Samadhi as just complete alignment with,

[61:24]

it all without having to put labels and words on it. And I've experienced it outside, off the cushion, and maybe once or twice on the cushion. And it's so, I mean, it's worth devoting a life to, right? And so I described it to him that way. It's like, I'm in a craving kind of way, but I'm watching out for that. I'm sitting there in practice in hopes of aligning with that again. And it was just such an interesting, To hear Dogen say, oh, that's why I think of it that way. Because in a way, that's how he thought of it. And that's what I'm taking from his teachings. So, yes, I feel good to share that. Thank you. Wonderful. Yeah. You and Dogen, no gap. Thanks, Melissa. Nice to see you.

[62:28]

Lovely to see you. So I'm having it took me a long time to come to see thinking as being the sixth sense. And now you're what really struck me and probably set me off kilter was when he was talking about wisdom as seeing the six senses, you know, and there was sort of, it sounded like there was going to be some thinking about thinking. And that starts to confuse me. Good. We've been trying to confuse you for a long time. Isn't it nice to be successful? Finally. Yeah.

[63:31]

You know, there's thinking, there's discursive thinking, there's basic awareness, and my sense is there are layers here. Is this a way to think of it? Sure. When you think of it that way, that's what you're thinking. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's the gap. Is there something wrong with what you're thinking? Is thinking wrong? Are we supposed to not be thinking? That was the instruction for a long time, for many centuries. Get rid of your thinking. Stop thinking. Don't think. Thinking is your problem. That's where your problems are. He's saying, oh, no, bring it on. it on it's just as good as as smelling baking bread or hot apple pie or you know it's it's not there's nothing wrong with it we just don't know how to work skillfully you have to be skillful to make a hot apple pie you know and to ride your bike and and to like poor steve you know i mean we we have to really be we have to be skillful and attentive to what we do with our bodies and how we think

[64:49]

and how we negotiate all these challenging terrains of our life and our relationships and all of that. So I think we're about learning skills. Dogan was very skillful with his thinking. You know, he's not just fooling around. So you know, he's basically doing his deep meditation with a with a brush. He's going down into his deep experiential world. And, you know, doing some commentary, like drawing galaxies and swirl, things are swirling, they're moving, they're not static, they're not in place. They're actually, just like you said, I'm feeling a little disoriented. Did you say, I don't know what you said, disoriented, but a little thrown off or something? It's like, that's right, that's the movement of coming to understand. It's not the thing I've said to you all before, it's like, they call it right view, right intention. long time ago i thought this doesn't sound right how do you have a right intention i i like writing more like a sailboat like yeah you're going this you're trying to figure out well what is right intention what would that be like is there just a standard and i better hit it and stay there that doesn't feel alive so you know writing your views writing your intention writing your understanding of

[66:10]

of dogan right now trying to come to some understand what is he talking about you know he goes over here then he goes over here you know but there's some thread there's some through line that's really strong that's very uh his his heart you know his passion for uh wanting us to understand to draw he's drawing us toward some some profound insight as such as he's had so You know, I feel that it's a voyage here. And to let the words disturb you. Yeah, they definitely are disturbing. You look comfortable. That's a good chair to be disturbed in. LAUGHTER Well, I'm still hoping to come be disturbed out there. Oh, good. Yeah, well, our chairs are not quite as comfy as you know, but we'll have a chair for you.

[67:12]

Yeah, okay. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. Hey, Fu. Thank you so much to you and to all of us for coming together. I wanted to share something. I think I've mentioned it before. In my own experience, at least I remember in some of Hangzhou's writing, speaking of turning away from deliberations. Hmm. which I think was very interesting, the difference, I don't know if difference is the best word, difference, the harmony of difference and equality, right, which I'll touch on, but of deliberations and of the sense thus themselves, right, of the Skandas themselves in a way where in my own experience, I remember reading about this in an article on Lions Roar by

[68:29]

Okamura Roshi, where in my own experience, there's a difference when I start grasping, right? And deliberating on what is passing, right? And I remember what Okamura Roshi had put is that thoughts are just the scenery of the mind, right? The same as smells and as the difference is when we start trying to hold them and make them into things. In my own experience, from my understanding of the deliberations, right? Where in sitting, you know, in the non-duality and then suddenly something I want to attach to, right? Something is so pretty that this one's worth holding on to or making something bigger of and then deliberating on it and having that practice almost of, oh, that's great. That's part of it, right? And then, well, what's now? It's, yeah, but that's something that I wanted to bring forward at least that was,

[69:29]

The thinking of non-thinking, right? What is thinking and what are thoughts? Who are we to know? It's our own experience. Just sit, right? You can't get away from it in order to look at it. Exactly, exactly. Am I thinking about thinking of thinking? And then that's it. So come back. Come back to drop it. Turn away. Remember it's... You know, you said deliberate, and I had this thought, well, liberate... Deliberate is to unliberate. I never. You're deliberating your thoughts. They're just fine and then you just like put them in a cage, you know? Yeah. Yeah. So that's, it's so tempting because some thoughts are so good. Yeah. Or some are so, yeah, I mean, both sides, right? A visualization that really helped me is... I think this was from Headspace, where they were talking about, you know, the analogy of sitting and watching the cars go by.

[70:32]

But sometimes, for some reason, we're tempted to run after the cars. Don't run after the cars. You'll never catch up to them. Don't do that. It's very dangerous. But, yeah, what a wonderful, wonderful talk. Thank you so much. I'm extremely excited going more and more into Dogen. I'm going to start with The deep water here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's no. I forgot. I forgot what you what you had said once beforehand in the deep water. Oh, I remember that I was saying that I felt like I was flailing around, splashing around. And you told me it's like your feet can touch the ground. No matter how deep the water is. Right. Either way. That's right. That's right. Just stand up. Exactly. Stop splashing. Yeah. But one question I had as well, which was what you had said of the platform sutra, reminded me of the harmony of difference of equality of hearing the words don't make up standards of your own.

[71:36]

Is that a relation I'm making myself or do you feel like there is? Because I'm not sure if one is don't make up standards of your own. What standards are there to make up? Right. Is the platform sutra. I'm wondering you're right. Right. Well, it's always like, okay, then you fall too much into, well, I won't have any standards then. Uh-oh. So we better bring some standards back. Like the guy who says, if you got something, get rid of it. But I don't have anything. Okay, then get something. So it's like, whichever side you're falling into, then you can tell that you've left out the other side. It's not whole. You've got a half. You got half of it. A lot of the Zen teachers will say that. Well, you got a half. You know, so there's somehow you've taken one side of something, but you forgot about the other side. And the constant pivot that you just in me saying this to you, I just thought about hearing the words, understand the meaning.

[72:41]

There's the standard you're setting up. You're understanding the meaning, but don't set up standards of your own. There you go. Yeah. Yeah, let somebody else in on that. Exactly. Tell Vanessa before you make a move. Yeah, I need all the help I can give. Yeah, we all do. Thank you. You and I have a funny connection, don't we? Tell me. Yes. Suiko. Yes. I was talking to her this morning and she said, we have a funny connection. And she said, Alicia, I said, no, how can that be possible? Yeah. Yeah. I did a workshop with you guys and I just kept doing her workshops and I keep coming here just on Sundays. And so, yeah. Wow. That's so great. Well, we're both very happy to have you in each of our camps.

[73:45]

I'm happy to be in your camps. Yeah. So I'm curious, did Wei Nong or Dogen start thinking, not thinking? I mean... It's very similar. I'll find that out. But it's in the Fukan Zazengi. Think not thinking. How do you think not thinking? Non-thinking. This is the essential art of Zazen. I'm looking at that right now. That's in Dogen. That fascicle I just put in the chat. Right. But you'll see it when you read through that. So it sounds like Dogen is... He's dropping the concentration meditation. Zazen is not concentration meditation. And when was he still early Chan Buddhism, were they still doing concentration meditation at that point?

[74:54]

Yeah, they were Yeah, they were doing all kinds of stuff. There was pretty, it was pretty normal to do shamatha vipassana. And I think it's still pretty normal. And it's not we don't hide it from students. And nor do we say, Oh, don't practice that we actually encourage them to calm down. You know, quite often, you need to calm down, you know, so that's, that's still primary that if you're too excited, it's really hard to understand what's going on. So that's just true in general for humans. You have to calm down. You come to your senses. Come back to the present. You're in hysterical. You're spinning, you're spinning, you're spinning. So that's just good psychology too. There's nothing off about that. But as the primary teaching, this is taking a whole new tack. This is going like, whoo, with a big wind out to the big water of the ocean of reality itself is where these teachings are sailing. You know, they're not about method, they're not about technique, not getting the ship ready.

[75:56]

As my therapist said, ships are safe in the harbor, but that's not what they're built for. So you're not really getting yourself ready to meditate. You're meditating. You're out there. You're in the swirling, dizzy world of reality itself. Just like you are. But there's not some effort to sort of like parse it all out into sections of I like this part and I don't like this part and I'm going to get it all organized so that my life is the way I really want it to be. And like, meanwhile, you know, you just like fooling around because you really don't really know yet that you're already it's already fine. You know, if the more you relax, the more fine it gets. And the more you're able to respond in an appropriate way to what's happening. without knowing what the response is ahead of time. You don't have to calculate how I'm going to make this work. It's just like it unfolds. Things begin to unfold in a way because they do anyway.

[76:59]

You're not in control of your thinking. You're not the thinker. There's no thinker. There are thoughts. And then there's response. And there's weavings and tapestries and all kinds of things that come, art. They come from that. to make it your art or your work or your thoughts or your whatever, you're making a gap between subject and object. Hearing you say that makes me think about how much courage it takes to be that vulnerable. Yes, ma'am. And you are anyway. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Being afraid doesn't make you less vulnerable. Yeah. It just makes you feel like, you know, you can't really meet it. But you're meeting it anyway. Yeah. So better to drop all that. Drop all that.

[78:01]

I mean, my heart's pounding. I'm sweating. And I'm just going to be right here with this situation. You know, because that's where I am. Wow. That's the intimacy. Yes. Yes, ma'am. Exactly. And it takes so much courage to be intimate. It's one of the great fears, intimacy. And it reminds me of what you said, sort of like about Gil saying that Vipassana is more accessible because you don't have... I mean, it does require up front that level of intimacy. It's not asking you for that. Yeah, actually not. Actually, I think you're not so much engaging with one another. There's not a... of sangha formation at least not the way we do it here is you know you go to class you go to yoga class and you go home you're really not making a community there and and which is also much easier i mean gill knows that he said i don't want i don't want a zen center i don't want all that stuff because it's really a lot of work for everybody you know but it is it is the

[79:11]

Rubbing, rubbing. Like Suzuki Rishi said, you put all these pebbles in the tumbler, and then little by little they smooth each other down. But it's irritating. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But it's also, it's the transformation. It's where the liberation and transformation happen. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Thank you. Okay, we have Helene, and then I think we'll say good night. Hi, Helene. We just had a whole fleet of motorcycles go by. I hope that won't happen again. Hey, Will. They're just circling the block, Helene. Don't you worry. Well, a couple of things have come to me.

[80:12]

And in speaking of the great intimacy of Zen, I feel that there's great intimacy in facing a wall. There's just something about that that strikes me that way. And I sat with Sasaki Roshi's people for a week, a long time ago, and they were Rinzai. And they sat facing in. Right. Instead of at the wall. That was really disconcerting for me. I just didn't like that at all. So I do feel like that it's kind of like facing a mirror. Yes. You know, it's like you're looking. Yeah. And somebody said, pretty much guarantee that what you're seeing is not on the wall.

[81:14]

Right, well, it's on that wall. It's on that wall. It's on that wall, yeah. Also, I wanted to say that I have just thought maybe it's frivolous. But just like... We talk a lot about letting our thoughts go and dropping body and mind. Well, where do they go and where does it drop to? Same place they came from. Yeah, I consider you. I considered that response, actually. Is there any more to it? Well, there have been scientific experiments trying to find where thoughts go, you know, and so far nobody has had any luck discovering that place. It's like never, never land. Okay, just out of curiosity. Yeah, okay. Check that question.

[82:20]

Yeah, Buddha said those questions won't help you become liberated. Right, right, right. So... Okay, everybody, if you'd like to say farewell, please, you're welcome to unmute and do that. Thank you, Fu. Thank you, Fu. Thank you, everyone. Thanks. Thank you so much, Fu. Great to see you all. Great to see you all. Great to see everybody. Lovely, lovely. Welcome. Some of you haven't seen for a little while and some are new and it's wonderful to see all of you. So wonderful. Great. Thank you. Have a good night. Yeah. Good night. Good morning. Don't forget our morning crowd. I'm so glad it's not 6 a.m. Yet. Yet.

[83:22]

It's coming back. You're all becoming philosophers. It's wonderful. No, not all of us. Okay. Bye. Bye, everyone. Bye. Good night. Good night. Good night. Great to see you. You too.

[83:46]

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