Good evening, everybody. And thank you for coming to the Dharma Talk. First of all, I wanted to thank the Zen students of Tassahara and the venerable leadership of Tassahara for creating and recreating again and again this wonderful place of refuge, of healing, of coming home, and of insight. So thank you all very much. I also wanted to thank Greg Feintanto of Tassahara, that he invited me to talk here tonight.

[01:11]

Tassahara is one of the most precious pieces of my home. I was here in 95 and 96 and 97, and I returned to Tassahara many times for winter practice periods. but the last talk I gave was actually in 2007 when I was the head student here with Paul Haller, quite a while ago. So today I would also like to talk about Dogen's Versical, Only a Buddha and a Buddha. maybe from a slightly different perspective than Leslie reflected on it. This classical by Dogen Zenji, who is the Japanese founder of the Soto Zen lineage that this temple belongs to, Dogen lived 121253.

[02:24]

And this classical Only a Buddha and a Buddha refers to a part of the second chapter of the Lotus Sutra. So I would like to give you a little bit of a taste of the text that Dogen is referring to. The Lotus Sutra in the translation of Burton Watson says, the true entity of all phenomena can only be understood and shared between Buddhas. And further on it says, the Dharma is not something that can be understood through pondering or analysis. Only those who are Buddhas can understand it. Why is this? Because the Buddhas, the world-honored ones, appear in the world for one great reason alone.

[03:27]

What does it mean to say that the Buddhas, the world-honored ones, appear in the world for one great reason alone? The Buddhas, the world-honored ones, wish to open the door of Buddha wisdom to all living beings, to allow them to attain purity. That is why they appear in the world. They wish to show the Buddha wisdom to living beings and therefore they appear in the world. They wish to cause living beings to awaken to the Buddha wisdom and therefore they appear in the world. There are of course different readings and understandings of this text. My understanding of the Lotus Sutra as far as I understand it at this time, is that it models in many, many variations how to realize and how to transmit teaching of the Buddha.

[04:36]

It has an abundance of parables and description of rituals, rituals of inquiry, rituals of transformation that show how this teaching can be realized and understood. So I would like to focus on two aspects in this particular passage that I read to you. The first one is, the Dharma is only realized between Buddhas, who are Buddhas. And the other aspect is, Buddhas appear in the world and manifest a body to awaken living beings. And being in a workshop about embodiment of wisdom and peace, a yoga workshop, it is close that I try to talk about what is the body in this context.

[05:44]

The founder of our lineage A, Dogen, comments on the Lotus Sutra statement that the Buddha's teaching is understood and realized only between Buddhas, as follows. When you have unsurpassed wisdom, you are called Buddha. When a Buddha has unsurpassed wisdom, it is called unsurpassed wisdom. Being undivided is like meeting a person and not considering. what the person looks like. When you clarify that, there's nothing to be disliked and longed for. Then the original face is revealed by a practice of the way. This point I remembered the story of Rionan Genso. She was the attendant to the Japanese empress in the 17th century.

[06:50]

And when the empress died, Rionin, experiencing sorrow and the impermanence of life, she decided to become a nun. And she went to the town of Edo to find a temple a master to teach her. She was known for her intelligence and beauty, and several Zen masters rejected her, dismissed her, because she would be a disturbance to the monks. One of them was Hakuo. Rionin then went by a place where women were ironing fabric and took one of the irons and disfigured her face.

[07:52]

After this incident, she wrote the following poem. To serve my empress, I burned incense to perfume my exquisite clothes. Now, as a homeless mendicant, I burn my face to enter a Zen temple. The four seasons flow naturally like this. Who is this now in the midst of these changes? When we are one with what is, when we don't discriminate or want anything to be different, we might touch reality as it is. That is our potential of Buddha wisdom that is always with us, and that we might encounter that with another person.

[09:00]

It is actually us who discriminate between Buddhas and sentient beings and delusion and enlightenment. It is us who keep the record of who attained enlightenment and who did not. This discrimination falls away in realizing wisdom, in not wanting anything to be different. Dogen says that realization comes to be through the manifestation of the Buddha body, the Dharmakaya, the enlightenment body of the Buddha. This enlightenment body happens in the midst of awakening sentient beings. There is a simultaneity of awakening sentient beings and the manifestation of the Dharmakaya, the Buddha body. Dogen. A Buddha manifests a body and awakens sentient beings, means that awakening sentient beings is its safe self,

[10:07]

the manifestation of the Buddha body. Understand that in the midst of awakening ancient beings, the Buddha Dharma is totally experienced. Explain it and actualize it in this way. Know that it is the same with manifestation and having the Buddha body. This is so because a Buddha manifests Buddha body and awakens sentient beings. Buddhas manifest a body to meet sentient beings and the only reason they appear in the world is awakening sentient beings. There are Buddhas and sentient beings. There are awakened ones and there are those who have the potential to wake up. The meeting between them is realized in the moment of waking up.

[11:08]

Who is addressed in this passage? I think this might speak to everyone involved in awakening sentient beings and manifesting Buddha body in the moment of awakening. We are supported by all Buddhas to wake up with all beings. One of the implications of the concept of only a Buddha and a Buddha is the universality of Buddhas supporting sentient beings to wake up. And the imagery that Dogen chooses to express that is, the mountains, rivers and earth are born at the same moment with each person. All Buddhas of the past, present and future are practicing together with each person. All Buddhas are practicing together with us.

[12:13]

We are held by all Buddhas and we are held by all beings. It is on us to let this in, to let this be how we live. to let go of our plans and expectations and arrive where we are in the midst of all Buddhas, in the midst of all beings. And yet what does it mean? All Buddhas of the past, present and future are practicing with us. We should not think that Buddhas are other than us. It also does not mean that we are Buddhas because we are human beings. struggling with greed, hate and delusion. And yet, from the beginning, we are endorsed with the potential of Buddhas. Dogen emphasizes that from the moment the thought of enlightenment and practice arises, our body and mind is not excluded from that practice of practicing Buddhas.

[13:24]

Our body and mind with all their karmic proliferation are the place of transformation, are the place of practicing Buddhas. Practicing together with all Buddhas, we are in the watershed of enlightenment. And again, Dogen, when we reflect quietly, it appears that our body and mind has practiced together with all Buddhas of the past, present and future and has aroused the aspiration for enlightenment together with them. When we reflect on the past and future of our body and mind, we cannot find the boundary of self or others. With what delusion do we believe our body and mind is apart from all Buddhas of the past, present and future? The delusion by which we establish our body and mind as being separate is the delusion of separation that we make to form language.

[14:42]

We start to see self and other to become able to say I and you. This separation seems to be necessary to be a human being functioning in this environment with other human beings. We just seem to exaggerate and grasp this separation, form attachments, and forget that we are only through each other and connected. I assume that the concept of only a Buddha and a Buddha points to a relationship without attachment. It points to a complete transformation of relationships as we know them. I'm interested in understanding what it means to realize being interconnected without being attached. In a different language, my question is, can being in love support us to wake up and be in harmony with all beings?

[15:49]

I'm keenly aware that there is no love without suffering under human conditions, because love depends on attachment. Chunryo Suzuki Roshi said, Without attachment you cannot love anyone, but still you have to love someone. Then what will be your love? The Buddhist teaching of the Four Noble Truths gives us an orientation to understand how love and suffering is related. It also leads us to understand how we can find liberation in the midst of this entanglement. of love and suffering. The four noble truths are the truth of suffering, the truth of the origin of suffering, the truth of the cessation of suffering, and the truth of the way leading to the cessation of suffering. The Noble Eightfold Path.

[16:53]

Suffering emerges from craving for sensual pleasure. craving for being and craving for non-being. Suffering is the result of attachment. And as human beings we are bound to form attachments from the beginning of our existence. As babies we form attachments to our mother and father and are depending on them to feed us and hold us and care for us If we can't form these attachments as babies, we might die or have difficulties throughout our life to establish fulfilling relationships. In their book, A General Theory of Love, Thomas Lewis, Fariyama Amini, and Richard Lennon describe the physiological process at the basis of arising emotions.

[17:57]

They describe the three kinds of brains that we have, that we inherited, that we are endowed with. The reptilian brain, the oldest part of the brain, which regulates basic processes like breathing or heartbeat. It is steeped in the physiology of survival. The second one is the limbic brain, which developed with the evolution of mammals and transformed the orientation around reproduction towards offspring, taking care of the young. And this is the brain that allows us to develop emotions and relationships. The newest brain, the neocortical brain, is the one that gives us the ability to speak, to write, to plan, to reflect. So it means to develop awareness. So the second one, the limbic brain, is imprinted by the way our parents relate it to us.

[19:08]

Their way of loving us is the roadmap that orients our way of forming relationships. As infants, we are depending on our parents and resonate with their emotional expressions. to form our own emotionality. They regulate and ripen the way we feel. They give us the capacity to love and to transform emotions. And this is a quote from a general theory of love. The mammalian nervous system depends for its neurophysiologic Stability on a system of interactive coordination, wherein steadiness comes from synchronization with nearby attachment figures. Protest is the alarm that follows a breach in these life-sustaining adjustments. If the interruption continues, physiologic rhythms decline into painful unruliness of despair.

[20:17]

Evolution has given Lermals a shimmering conduit and they use it to tinker with one another's physiology to adjust and fortify one another's fragile neural rhythms in the collaborative dance of love. We call this mutually synchronizing exchange limbic regulation. Our physiological setup is an open loop design. Even as our nervous system matures, we remain social animals that require a source of stabilization outside of ourselves. Stability means finding people who regulate us well and staying close to them. So when we go back to the Four Noble Truths, we can see that our neurological setup

[21:20]

is part of the human condition of suffering as much as it is the place of liberation. The Buddha teaches us that we fully understand the second noble truth of the origin of suffering, which is forming attachments by abandoning the origin of suffering. He says that the third noble truth of the cessation of suffering will be realized through the complete cessation of craving, the complete abandonment of attachment, the complete renouncing and rejecting of all craving. To go through the complete cessation of craving, according to this teaching, we have to realize the Eightfold Noble Path, right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood. Right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. If we rely on being stabilized and regulated through interbeing with others, we need to form relationships of love without attachment to realize freedom.

[22:35]

We need to relate to each other with right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right life yield, right effort, right mindfulness. in right concentration. This is a tall order and the most beautiful challenge. When we live in relationships, we form attachments. Being thrown into confusions and delusions, we make an effort to practice with attachment. It is part of our being alive of experiencing so many states of being that need to happen to be in this world completely, to practice with this body, mind and heart completely, to be completely human. There is the following sentence in the Vimalakiti Sutra. Without going into the ocean of passions, it is impossible to obtain the mind of omniscience.

[23:42]

Omniscience? to the limits here. So some tiny gesture occurs and turns our chemistry into the chemistry of someone in love. Mixed with little boosts of anodynes, warm human contact generates opiate release, according to Lois, Armini, and Lennon. We can be in the throes of forming attachments in no time and without neocortical control. It is the power of the limbic response system that sets in and makes us wonder how to practice with this change of heart. In limbic regulation, we as nearly all mammals correspond and interact with each other's heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature,

[24:48]

hormones and start to harmonize or find balance. These intricate communications emerge before language even enters the process on a bodily synchronization level with strong emotional results that leave us puzzled and confused. In the neocortical process that is initiated So this experience, we start to tell the story of our love, and we start to distinguish between desire, falling in love, and loving. Desire and falling in love keep us in turmoil of wanting what we don't have and not wanting what we have, as it is the nature of desire to only be satisfied for a moment and then start lingering in you a clear recipe for suffering. It seems, though, that the deep attachment that ensues in this physicality is also a gate of liberation.

[25:54]

It is the same limbic system that forms attachments and that is the base of transforming attachments into spiritual friendship, into the ability to love in the most universal way. The transformation of our limbic system changing the routing of our emotional abilities, needs to happen between two limbic systems. It is a training process. It is not a spectator sport, as Lewis, Armini and Lennon put it. It demands the messy experience of yanking and tinkering that comes from the limbic bond. If someone's relationships today bear a troubled imprint, they do so because an influential relationship left its mark on a child's mind. When a limbic connection has established a neural pattern, it takes a limbic connection to revise it.

[27:04]

This is one of the reasons why we practice with a teacher. This is one reason why we practice in community. with spiritual friends. Understanding Buddhist teaching on a neocortical level intellectually does not render realization as it bounces off the deeply ingrained limbic constitution. Realization is related to the transformation of our body, of our neurology, of our emotionality. This transformation only happens with other bodies in the room. In the words of the writers of the General Theory of Love, the physiology of love is no barter. Love is simultaneous, mutual regulation. The benefits of deep attachment are powerful. Regulated people feel whole, centered, alive.

[28:11]

These contemporary descriptions of our body-mind constitution in a general theory of love seems to go together with the explanation of the Lotus Sutra of why Buddhas appear in the world, why they take human appearance to transform our body-mind and entice us to enter a path of liberation. The path of liberation is the path of oneness of all beings. It is the path that allows us to realize that we are not separate. So how do we get to the place of reflection or insight of where the boundary of self and other cannot be found? We call this process renunciation. We put ourselves into the bamboo tube. We sit upright and still. We don't move and feel our boundaries.

[29:15]

And in becoming aware, they change or fall away. We practice awareness of our breath, of our body, of our thoughts, of each detail in our action. Diligently, we are practicing with our boundaries. We cannot just strip them off as they are unnoticeable to us to a large extent. Harmony with all beings and places grows inside and outside at the same time and is never inside and outside. Harmony with all beings and places is that nothing is by itself but rather coming forth from the entire universe. So it is never apart from one right where one is. It is only that we think we want to look for it or make it happen that hinders it.

[30:16]

It is only us that cannot accept the world as it is, although we are never able to make it what we think it should be. Thank you very much. Thank you.

[30:39]

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