This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Can you guys all hear if I talk like this? Okay, good. All right, first, I want to thank David. David, thank you very much. It's just not working for me. Over it? Okay. You know, we good Zen students do our best to comply to all requests. Okay. I would like to thank David. David, where'd you go? Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. I also want to thank everybody who's here and not here who's been part of the Stogan group that we've been meeting, gosh, I don't know, 10 years?

[01:05]

12 years. We've been meeting for 12 years. In the acknowledgments, don't forget to read everybody's names because they're all in here. So, yeah, it's been a lot of fun and we're continuing to do it. Uji, this book would not have come about without their encouragement. So they are a big part of making this book happen. So I'll just say really briefly, if you don't know who Dogen Zenji is, he was the founder of Soto Zen in Japan in the 13th century, and he lived from 1200 to 1253. So... Dogen is really tough to understand. Those of you who've worked with Dogen probably know that it's hard because he was a poet. He was very precise in his use of language. He tried to use language in a way that the reading of it and the exploration of it in and of itself would help to awaken us.

[02:12]

So as you can imagine, that can be kind of difficult. So... But the most important thing to know about Dogen is he wrote these texts for us. He wrote for us. He wrote for practitioners. He wrote for practitioners in his time, but what he had to say was something that all of us are trying to learn about the nature of reality. Dogen says something in Boucho that goes something like this. He said that the sixth patriarch was in the room with Shakyamuni Buddha. So Six Patriarch lived hundreds of years after Shakyamuni Buddha, but what was it that was happening in that room? What was it that the Six Patriarch and Shakyamuni Buddha understood together? And what they understood was they understood the nature of reality and its relationship to our practice, its relationship to how is it that we, in our daily lives,

[03:14]

in our spiritual lives, in our secular lives, how is it that we support each other? How is it that we enact the dharma? What is realization? Dogen says, to carry, he says this in Genji Kon, to carry the self forward is delusion, to allow myriad things to come forth and meet you is realization. To carry the self forward is delusion, to allow myriad things to come forward and meet you is realization. So this delusion is this way in which we're like, I got to have it my way. You know, like the McDonald's commercial. I can only have it my way. And we get so caught in that. Allowing myriad things to come forth is just that experience of allowing life to come forward and meet you, to be open to that life, to be willing to... see other points of view, to be willing to be present for our life in a way that's inclusive, not narrow.

[04:16]

This is something actually that we all do every day. So I think that's basically what Dogen is trying to say to us about the nature of what realization is and the nature of reality itself and our lives. So one way he does that is he talks about it in Uji and other places in as a Dharma, it's called a Dharma position. In Japanese, it's called Juhoi. So a Dharma position is a way that... Wait a minute, I want to back up a little bit. I'm sorry. I want to say that I wrote this book for you. I think that's important. I wrote the book, first of all, that I wanted to read. So that means that... What I tried to do in this commentary on uji, which means being time, what I tried to do is first explain what it might be that Dogen was trying to say. Just the language, just to understand the teaching.

[05:20]

And I did this by mostly reading scholarly texts. And then the next part of it would be like, how do we use this in our daily life? How do we practice with this? So again, this goes back to... My firm belief that Dogen is speaking to all of us throughout time and space. Okay, so now back to the Dharma position. What is a Dharma position? A Dharma position is a way of talking about some particular thing. So a Dharma position would be, this book is a Dharma position. You're a Dharma position. This moment is a Dharma position. This time and being in this room together is a Dharma position. So basically, anything that you can name would be a Dharma position. Dharma positions are about where our life happens.

[06:21]

Our life happens in the particularity of our experience. Our life happens in the particularity of the situations that we're in. And of course, that's where our practice happens as well. Our practice doesn't happen in some abstract idea that we have in our mind. Our practice happens right here, right now. What you're doing right now, if you're driving your car, you're at the supermarket, that's where your practice is being enacted, as well as coming here, listening to your lecture, as well as going down to the Zendo and sitting Zazen. So it is the totality of your life. So the way that we can talk about how we address this and explore this is to look at the nature of a Dharma position, to look at the nature of the particularity of the experience that you're having. Dogen says in Uji, he says, the time being means time just as it is being and being is all time.

[07:25]

Got that? This is his summation of Uji, so I'll read it to you again. He says, the time being means time, just as it is, is being, and being is all time. So this time being, this Dharma position, which includes both time and being simultaneously, they're not separate from each other, because we like to do that, like we separate time from our experience of being, but actually... Dogen's saying, no, you can't separate the two. Time is particular. Being is particular. Time and being have that joint event happening simultaneously together, making up this dharma position. So he says the time being means time. It means this time, right now, just as it is. And that is also being. And then at the end he says, and being is all time. Oh, okay.

[08:27]

Now we have this kind of bigger vision being included in this. So that's a real question. How is it that this being time, this dharma position, includes everything? When I was upstairs in room 10, looking at the altar, there are pictures of Suzuki Roshi up there. And I was thinking about coming down here to the Buddha Hall, thinking about all the years that I've sat where you're sitting in the Buddha Hall, Wednesday nights and Saturday morning. I thought about Suzuki Roshi spoke in this Buddha Hall. Suzuki Roshi is still in this Buddha Hall. Jewish women came to this Buddha Hall, young women who came here when this place was first built as a place for young women who, Jewish women who were single and were working in the city, they too were in this room. Their lives are in this room.

[09:29]

All that dharma is in this room. The Gandhara Buddha that's on the altar, that's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years old, thousands of years old, and there it is on the altar. Think what that has seen. Think the dharma that that Buddha holds. And all of that is still simultaneously part of this moment. All of that is still resonating and presencing in this Buddha hall. So when Dogen says at the end, he says, all being, time, being, times, he says, excuse me, when he says, and being is all time, he's talking about that, this being is all time, presencing right now in this room, affecting us in some way. We might not know exactly how, but that that is present for us in our life. So all of these... kinds of investigations begin with a question. So Dogen starts out, Uji, with kind of a challenge to us.

[10:31]

He says, as evidence of your 24 hours coming and going is obvious, okay, as evidence of your 24 hours, that's your day, is obvious, you do not come to doubt them. But even though you do not have doubts about them, that is not to say you know them. So, in other words, we take a lot of our life for granted. We don't think about it very much. We think we understand what's going on. This is Dogen. Since the sentient beings' doubtings of the many and various things unknown to him are naturally vague and indefinite, Since the sentient beings' doubtings of the many and various things unknown to him are naturally vague and indefinite, you don't know something, so it's kind of hard to frame the question, the course of his doubtings will probably not bring them to coincide with this present doubt.

[11:39]

The course of his doubtings, the way that we doubt things, the way that we talk about and think about things in the Dharma, in our lives, Dogen's saying, we'll probably not bring them to coincide with this present doubt, which means that your doubts, if you're not asking the right questions, you're not going to be brought to the present doubt. And the present doubt is this kind of doubt that brings about awakening. It's that kind of doubt that's not corrosive, but actually opens us up to something bigger. It opens us up. to something about the nature of reality, that question, what? What? What is it? What is it? We come to the Dharma for that, right? We come to the Dharma, we say, oh, what is it? What is my life? Buddhism can tell me something about my life. We come to the Dharma often because we're suffering. Well, at least I did.

[12:42]

I don't know about you guys. But where something doesn't seem right to us, we can't figure something out. Practice is hard. Doing Buddhist practice is hard because it requires that we give up some notions that we have about the nature of our experience that we don't want to give up. So we come to this practice with a question. We come to this practice with doubts. And Dogen's saying, you need to have the right questions. You need to have the right doubt. And so we come to practice because we want to find out what those questions are. We want a path, a map, to show us how it is that we should approach and look at our life. So now I'm going to read to you what I wrote in the book here about the meaning of this. People learn in different ways.

[13:50]

But however we may pass through this process, it begins with a question. The question is critical. Our tendency is to define our experience, not to open it further to ambiguity. Our tendency is to want to define our experience and not to open it up to ambiguity. In this case, Dogen wants us to expand our view by doubting what we think we know about being in time. Until we understand our true nature in relationship to time, we will not deeply penetrate the importance of thoroughly engaging the present moment. We will not deeply penetrate the importance of thoroughly engaging the present moment because, of course, that's where our practice happens, is in the present moment. From Dogen's point of view, if we deeply investigate the nature of being time within a specific context,

[14:50]

we will completely penetrate the true nature of each and all being time. We will completely penetrate the true nature of each and all being time. In Zen, this deeper investigation or doubting is referred to as great doubt. Great doubt is doubt that brings us face to face with life, just as it is, without our conceptual overlay. Zen Master Hakuin wrote, to all intents and purposes, the study of Zen makes us, the study of Zen as its essential is the resolution of the ball of great doubt. Okay, so Hakuin's saying the study of Zen makes as its essential the resolution of the ball of great doubt. That is why it is said at the bottom of great doubt lies great awakening. If you doubt fully, you will awaken fully. So Dogen starts out with this observation that we don't ask the right questions.

[15:59]

We don't have the right doubt. What he does in Uji is he proceeds to tell us what the right questions are, how we should investigate those questions, and about the nature of reality. The other thing is that, you know, often when people look at being time as a text, they kind of get off on it as a sort of, you know, philosophical thing about being time. Like Stephen Hine, who's a really well-known Buddhist scholar, wrote his dissertation probably when he was in his early 20s on Heidegger and Dogen's being time, which was a... real important source for me. So what I did is I went through and I crossed out all the parts about Heidegger and just read the parts about Uji. Because as a practitioner, to be honest with you, I could care less about the relationship between Heidegger and Dogen.

[17:03]

As a practitioner, I want to know what Dogen has to say about being time because he's talking about practice. So if we look at this issue of what being time is. We usually think about time as kind of like a river, right? And we think of time as separate from ourselves, and we think of our being as somehow kind of like in a boat, we're going down the river. There's a famous science fiction series about this group of people who start at the beginning of time on a river, And they flow down the river and every once in a while they stop the boat and they get off the boat and they interact with people who are in that time zone or whatever, you know, at that harbor on the river. So this is the kind of way we think about it. We say to ourselves, oh, I have to catch up to time or I don't have enough time or something like that, you know. The famous part in Alice in Wonderland, right, where he's running along with a clock going, you know...

[18:09]

I don't have enough time, I don't have enough time, I have to hurry. But Dogen's saying, no, that's not actually how time and being work together. He's not denying sequential time. Sequential time is the time that gets us to work on time. Sequential time is, I had to get up here this morning at a certain time, I had to get in my car to drive here, I live in Santa Cruz, so it took me an hour and a half to get here, so I had to think about that, sequential time. But Dogen's not talking about sequential time here. He's talking about time as a holistic, universal, multidimensional event. Okay? It's holistic. One moment of time includes all moment of time. Simultaneously, it's just this moment of time. It's multidimensional, it's interpenetrating, it's impermanent.

[19:13]

It's all those things that we talk about in Zen. And it's all, like, right here. So if we think about it, if you think about time in your life, If you're thinking about the past, the only time you can think about the past is in the present, true? And if you think about the future, the only time you can think about the future is in the present as well. So there's a way in which time does not exist in the way that we think it does. And yet, excuse me. I did take my allergy medications this morning, but somehow it doesn't seem to be helping. In Genjo Koan, let me read this section here.

[20:14]

In Genjo Koan, Dogen says, you should realize, this is all very famous, you'd probably recognize this. You should realize that although firewood is at the Dharma stage of firewood, this is possessed of before and after. The firewood is at the same time independent, completely cut off from before and after, completely cut off from after. Okay, so if we're talking about the nature of our understanding about how we think about time and our experience, we often think that we're kind of caught in some ideas that we have about the past or we get caught in our desire for the future. So in this kind of unconscious way, We bring into our present experience something that happened in the past. So you go to work, you're going to go to a meeting, you're going to talk to somebody that's in the meeting who's a co-worker, and you don't like them. You feel like, okay, I've heard everything you have to say.

[21:17]

I don't want to have anything to do with you. I don't even want to listen to your ideas. Have you ever had anybody like that at work? You know, you go to a meeting, and as soon as they open their mouth, you're kind of like, oh, no. You know, here's an experience. This oh no is being caught by your past. This is a way in which you're not being open to. You're not allowing myriad things to come forth to meet you. You're only allowing a few things to come forth, the co-workers you like. You're not allowing the co-worker that you don't like to come forth and meet you. So you completely close down. So in this way, this is this way where we're caught in the past, if we're going to use this phrase, metaphor that Dogen uses, we're caught in the past of firewood. We're saying, oh, I'm caught in the Dharma position of tree, right? Because firewood comes from trees. So I must be caught in the Dharma position of tree. But actually, I'm in the Dharma position of firewood.

[22:17]

I'm not in the Dharma position of ash, which is its future after it's been burned. That's when we get caught in our desires. Have you ever had that happen? You want something so badly, you've already got this notion of how it's going to be, you've decided what it is, and you're completely caught in that, and you can't live in the present moment. I don't know about you, but I'm often thinking about what's going to happen in the future, like what I have to do, like three minutes from what I'm doing right now. So that's the great thing about Zen forms, is they pull us back to reality. They pull us back to this moment. We say, oh, I should walk through the door with my left foot, not my right foot, right? Oh, I need to remember, I'm going to come in here and leave my zagu on the bowing mat, because I don't do that at Ocean Gate anymore. So it's like, I'm going, okay, but don't forget, leave your zagu there. So this way in which we are being asked to, this dharma position right now, as Shohaku Okamura says, 100% this dharma position. 100% this moment.

[23:20]

100% leave your zagu on the bowing mat. 100% step through the door with your left foot. That's all there is in that moment. Nothing else. Zazen, 100% this moment. Zazen is so wonderfully subtle. There you are sitting and you're being asked, this is, shikantaza is basically inhabit this dharma position. Be in this dharma position. So subtle, the things we bring to Zazen. Even when we think we have our minds clear, and that ache comes up and we go, oh no, oh, my knees hurt again. Oh, that's extra in a way. That's bringing the tree into the moment of Zazen. So this way that we're completely presencing for our life, just as it is, is this 100%. And yet, simultaneously, we have a past. We have a future. We have to think about it. And we also inhabit this past that is all of past, present, and future existing right in this moment.

[24:29]

Earlier I talked about the Buddha Hall. So this Gandhara Buddha throughout time and space exists with us right now. I'll read you a part here from the book. This is about that. Okay, this is the part of Uji, this is a commentary of, is as long as the time is not a modality of going and coming, the time... on the mountain is the immediate present right now of the time being being time. Got that? Okay, so that's what this is a commentary of. As long as the time is not a modality of going and coming, as long as the time is not thought about as sequential time, past, present, and future,

[25:41]

The time on the mountain, this is the time that you spent practicing. Dogen's talking about practice. The time that you might have spent in the past practicing is at the same time simultaneously present as right now. You haven't jettisoned it. And yet it is just right now. And that right now is the right now of time being being time. Okay, so this is the commentary. If we look at the night sky, we are awestruck by by the vastness of a starry night, and we forget the self. Forgetting the self has the quality of stopping time. Time does not pass away, nor is it coming and going. We are experiencing the eternal now. We see the incredible vista of the night sky, and at that moment, we are completely one with everything in front of us. We have dropped our eye are the sense that we are separate.

[26:43]

We directly experience the awe of being completely present with everything. We have been told by astrophysicists that when we look into the night sky and see a star, we are seeing the star's light from a distant time, simultaneously with the time of our present now. The distant light travels... from a star in one year, the distance a light travels from a star in one year is called a light year. Depending upon the distance the star is from the earth, we will be seeing light that has traveled for a thousand years. We see an uncountable number of stars all projecting their own time continuum, which we experience as now. Although this is true, the time of the stars and the time of our being are part of the whole of that moment. We make the moment as the moment is making us. So this is a really important part. We're making our moments as the moments are making us. We, with all of reality, share the function of making the whole, and in that way, each part is the same as the whole.

[27:51]

Yet, each aspect, a person, a star, a Dharma position, has its own past and future particularity. At the same time, there is just this one moment being enacted right now, an interconnected, totally functioning, universal whole. So in this moment right now, this is where we are enacting this practice, and yet simultaneously, there's all this other presencing going on. And it doesn't get in the way of anything else. Think about it. Right now, while I'm talking and you're listening and we're here together, right now there are people walking around in Hong Kong, right? Doing whatever they're doing. I don't know the times. Maybe they're asleep. Maybe they're having a drink. Maybe they're walking down the sidewalk. And we're all doing this and nothing gets in the way of it.

[28:54]

It all happens simultaneously. And it's all informing and being part of our world. part of our now right now but of course we can only pay attention to right now our right now and that's where our practice is is right now so I think I've been talking for a while I want to read one more thing from the book because this is dear to me what it expresses which is I feel like We spend so much time in practice, or when we first come to practice, we have this idea that enlightenment or actualized action somehow is separate from, different from our everyday life. That the only way that we can practice is to come and do this. I remember one time I was here and someone said, I'm leaving San Francisco Zen Center, but I won't be able to practice anymore because I won't be able to come to the Zendo here in Siddhartha Zen.

[29:59]

or I won't be able to come to the Buddha Hall. These activities that we do here, these Zen activities that we do, are the foundation and the map and the training that we engage in. But our bodhisattva life must be in our everyday life. Our bodhisattva life, our life of enlightenment, Dogen says, practice realization, which means we do not practice Zen in order to become realized. Our practice is an expression of our realization. And that expression can be anywhere, everywhere in your life. So here's an example. If we can go so far as to call our driving enlightened, then that driving must include the arising of compassion and selflessness as the situation requires. Ultimately, our driving includes everything throughout time and space. Yet we can't drive thinking about the non-dual aspects of each thing we meet.

[31:05]

Nor can we let our gripes about other drivers dominate our perspective. Rather, we just meet each thing and respond within the context of a shared situation. This is myriad things coming forth to meet you. This meeting, this skillful means, wisdom and compassion may manifest as letting someone into a line of traffic. forgiving another driver's mistakes, or avoiding an accident. It means we can share the road when a stoplight is broken or a car is stalled. I cannot cite all the possibilities for enlightened driving, but we know when we are in its presence, especially if we are the recipient of such enlightened passage. This is our everyday experience of practicing entering the mud, entering the water. Bodhisattva practice is not predicated upon a special religious environment. It is this moment as it is.

[32:09]

This is the being time of practice realization. Entering the mud and entering the water are the activity of a bodhisattva entering his or her daily life. It is getting down in the trenches and helping ourselves and others realize the way. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[32:56]

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