Good evening. Welcome, welcome. So I'll be gone for the next couple of weeks, as you saw on the banner. We are going to Mexico, as I mentioned. I'm pretty excited. I haven't been most anywhere for a very long time. So this is kind of a big adventure for me. And my partner and I have been studying our Duolingo arduously for the last couple of weeks trying to get enough phrases in hands so that we can at least enjoy trying to talk a little bit while we're there. So I also wanted to remind myself and you that I'd like to leave time at the end, maybe a little before six, to offer a few more opportunities for people who would like to do a brief Wayseeking Mind. tell us where you are and how you came to practice. So I'll be offering that maybe around quarter to six, something like that.

[01:14]

So I've been looking at and really enjoying studying this fascicle called the Ben De Wa. So this is Dogen's fascicle, one of the first ones that he wrote when he came back from China, somewhat of an effort on his part to leave something. He didn't know what the future would be in terms of his practice or establishing a temple of his own. It was all kind of mysterious when he returned. There wasn't a welcome party that was waiting for him. So he lived alone in a temple for quite a while and did some writing, began doing some of this writing. Fukanza Zen Gi and Ben Do Wa. So Ben is wholehearted, effort or endeavoring, and Do is the way. the way way of practice and why is the talk so a talk on endeavoring to practice the way so last week i reviewed some of the significant elements of this fascicle in which dogon offers his teachings of a path using an image of a circle rather than a line so you know that i don't know most of you are probably familiar with the enso our retirement center is called enso village which is a circle that's not finished

[02:32]

It's like an incomplete, which is the nature of our reality, that we're all in here. And we're never going to get done. It's not going to get finished. But we make this big stroke from the beginning till the place where we start to fade out. So a lot of Zen teachers make an inso as part of their final gesture of their practice. So the circle of the way, which includes no matter how long or or short the duration of a moment, in each moment there's the arousing of the thought of enlightenment, there's complete awareness, and then there's liberation. So that's a circle of the way. It can be short, it can be long, but that's the pattern of our practice, the circle of the way. So the thought of enlightenment, present awareness, and liberation. So in the circle of the way, each moment of practice is all-inclusive and perfect.

[03:32]

And at the same time, our practice has a direction, which is somewhat ironic. What's the direction in the ocean or what's the direction in the sky? Well, there is a sense of direction for the creatures who live in those places. And for us here in the path of practice, the direction is toward awakening or Buddhahood. And it's based on the bodhisattva vow. I vow to awaken for the benefit of all beings. So there's an intention, there's a direction, and there's a kind of a mission. We're on a mission. We want to go find beings that we can help, that we can serve. So then I had a really wonderful experience this week of visiting a Japanese teacher who gave a good example of this circle of the way. He actually was sent from Japan, from the Sotoshu headquarters. Every year they send a lecturer to the different temples, and so he came to Green Gulch.

[04:36]

And he didn't speak much English, but his iPhone had a translator. And his script was written out in English. And as he said to us later, he practiced it very much because he wanted to make sure he could communicate what he wanted to say. Very sweet man. So he told us a story about an old man who had developed Alzheimer's and that he had been a monk and a teacher in his youth and as an old man he just walked around the temple grounds every day rain or shine all year round he just made this path around the temple grounds and then one day a friend of the lecturer ran into the old man on the path and he said how are you and where are you going and the old man said he was fine and that he was walking to Eheji, the head temple, Dogen's temple, where he had practiced as a young monk.

[05:37]

So I thought that was a very sweet thing, that he had direction. He had some sense of where he was going. Even though the rest of his life seemed to be totally disoriented, he had an orientation. He was going to Eheji. So then it turned out when we had tea the next morning with the lecturer, Melwinder, myself, and his assistant and him, I asked him about that story and he said that was his father who had been walking the temple grounds and who had been the abbot of that temple for many years. So for Dogen, this beginningless and endless circle of the way is, as Reb said this morning, the everything, everywhere, all at once arising of the universe and arising through a process of imperceptible mutual assistance. You help me, I help you in innumerable ways. We can't even see how many ways we all help each other. And so the awakened self awakening and then being awakened by others and awakening others.

[06:44]

I think I used the metaphor of popcorn last week. this kind of it's almost like a self-replicating virus that you awaken me I awaken you and we awaken everyone around us so that's our that's our vision that's the vision of our practice and of the circle the circle of the way and maybe the earth is the circle that we're all headed you know we're all heading toward a heiji one way or another I also mentioned last week the means or the how-to that Dogen offers for realization of this ongoing, imperceptible, mutual assistance. And that is, in Dogen's words, by expressing the Buddha's seal, Buddha's seal, that's Zazen is the expression of the Buddha's seal. Some of you, Reb's talk, very, very sweet, wonderful talk this morning, he talked a lot about that, about Zazen, about a token or a seal that we offer. to represent the all-inclusive reality, of which we are representatives.

[07:50]

So by expressing the Buddha's seal in the three actions of our body, our speech, and our mind, by sitting upright in samadhi, all-inclusive, gathering the entirety of reality is gathered right there with us. We don't even have to do it, it's already happened. By sitting upright in samadhi, at which time the whole phenomenal world becomes the Buddha's seal and the entire sky, turns into enlightenment. It's a very Dogen way of his vision. So this how-to was the same for Shakyamuni Buddha and for Bodhidharma, for Huinong and Dongshan and Dogenzenji and Suzuki Roshi as it is for us. The unsurpassable, unfabricated, wondrous method called upright sitting, you know, zazen. So So now this week, I am going to be looking at the second chapter of Hee Jin Kim's book called Dogen on Meditation and Thinking, a reflection on his view of Zen, in which Dr. Kim offers his many years of scholarly study and insight into helping us to better understand Dogen Zen, which is not so easy to understand.

[09:03]

And I am deeply grateful to Dr. Kim, and I've been reading his text over and over again. I think he's like, Wow, this is really helpful. So I really recommend it. If you haven't gotten it already, it's something you might want to try spending some time with. Dogen on Meditation and Thinking, a reflection on his view of Zen. Dr. Kim wrote another book 30 years ago called Dogen Mystical Realist, which I remember acquiring way back then and not being able to understand a word of it. So I have a little better luck this time than I did back then. So at the very beginning of Chapter 2, Dr. Kim says that it is in the fascicle, the Bendo Wa, that Dogen very succinctly enunciates his Zen. And here's what he holds up as that enunciation. The endeavor to negotiate the way, Bendo of Bendo Wa, the endeavor to negotiate the way, as I teach now, consists in discerning all things in the view of enlightenment.

[10:05]

and putting such a unitive awareness into practice in the midst of a re-evaluated world. That's a little complicated. But the way I understand this statement by Dogen is that we must first catch a glimpse of the all-inclusive reality. We're seeing it right now. I mean, we're always seeing it. It's always all-inclusive. But somehow there's a way in which we don't actually perceive correctly. You know, we have been trained to see differently. to see things as outside of ourselves, as ourselves as unitary units of singularity, me and my stuff. And so we've had this kind of bad training to look at reality as a whole. But if we catch a glimpse of this all-inclusive reality through a lens of an all-inclusive perspective, so in some way we open our awareness very wide. opening the aperture of our awareness as wide as possible to meet the width of the universe, this great presence and the great presence of mind come in contact with each other, even for just a moment, in such a moment.

[11:15]

This all-inclusive scene, the subject, is seeing the all-inclusive universe, the object, as not separate, like water pouring into water. pouring water into water. Or Buddha seeing Buddha. Just two mirrors facing each other. So examples of this way of seeing are given at the beginning of each of the chapters of Kezon's text, The Transmission of Light, which we are still in the middle of studying. I'm getting stuck on Dogen's chapter, but we're spending some time on Dogen's chapter, before we go on to the next three or four of the Zen masters who are in the transmission of light. So in the first chapter, as where we started way back when, Shakyamuni Buddha saw the morning star, and he had such a moment of experiencing the non-dual reality. that wide aperture experience in the width of the universe.

[12:17]

And then the second chapter, Maha-Kashapa smiles when the Buddha twirls a flower. So that's his opening to the great awareness, all-inclusive reality. And then each of the stories, each chapter in the Transmission of Light, if you pick up a few of those and read them over again, each one of those is that moment of all-inclusive awareness, meeting the all-inclusive universe, subject and object, no longer separated. and by anything, because the only thing that separates them is our discursive thinking, our discriminations, our judgments, and so on. It's the human mind that splits the world into parts. So once you have a glimpse of the non-dual nature of reality, then the second step in negotiating the way is to enact that all-inclusive vision right in the midst of this dualistic world in which we live, the everyday world that we know well. We've got a lot of expertise in the everyday world. And it's an enactment that has been infused with the light of awakening.

[13:20]

So it's a little bit like that Zen story about first the mountains are just mountains, an ordinary world, nothing much to say about that. And then the mountains are no longer mountains. You have this experience of all-inclusive reality. And then the mountains are mountains again, but they're changed by the fact that you saw you saw the non-dual nature of reality. So now when you come back to dualistic viewing, you're infused with the light and the knowledge of that truth. Whether you're seeing it right then or not, it still has a big impact. Sometimes they refer to it as perfumed. You're perfumed with that experience. And I'm sure all of you have had that experience. I think children have it all the time. And I think we've had it many times in our lives, this kind of unitive experience. And yet we can kind of not understand that that was a really important thing. One of the beads on your mala is those moments of unitary feeling when you really do, you are in awe of that sunset or that baby smile or whatever it was that caught you for a while and held you as not separate from that wonderful thing that you were experiencing.

[14:34]

So once we have caught this little glimpse, then we have this job to do. You know, we go to work. And how we do that, Dr. Kim tells us that with these two aspects, in the process of negotiating away, you know, the first one being seeing the true Dharma and then enacting what we've seen, this is what Dogen calls practice realization. So he basically Dogen has glued those two terms together. Practice, which we might call the everyday actions in the world that we as human beings are taking, you know, kind of our direction. We're taking that, this practice, and it has direction. It has a direction based on our vow, which is a practice to live for the benefit of others. So practice in the everyday world is realization. So Dogen has these two basically laminated. Practice Realization is one word. Every moment of practice is a moment of realization. And those two in themselves are non-dual. And yet each of them serves as a unique focal point in our endeavor to practice the way.

[15:43]

So they're not exactly merged and they're not separate. So that's one of those big Zen things too. Not one, not two. And how to hold that without getting frustrated? It's like, well, wait a minute, which is it? Well, it's not one and it's not two. So that's part of the way that we learn to retrain our minds to not have to get a hold of something as an either or. So Dr. Kim then helps us to understand how important the non-duality of practice and realization is for Dogen's teaching. He says that Dogen most often uses this Japanese word show. SHO, which translates into English as enlightenment. So that's kind of Dogen's main place that he, when he talks about enlightenment, he uses this term SHO. And yet there are these other words in Japanese that also translate into English as enlightenment. One of them is Kaku, meaning awakened, as though awakened from a dream. So Kaku would be more like you woke up, you know, from dreaming, from sleep, and that you're sort of just

[16:51]

little bit disoriented like where am I so that's part of the path as well that kind of awakening from the dreaming state that we often are locked into dreams and then another term Japanese term is go so there's kaku show and then go go is means you're emancipated from delusions you've awakened from delusional thinking so that's not so much from sleep to wake but more like from the normal discursive thinking you're doing also there's a little break the train of thought decouples for a moment and you got like, whoa, I feel like as I'm getting older that's happening more and more. And it's really kind of funny. And that's happening to my friends and we're all getting used to saying, what was I talking about? Just saying, can you help me out here? So that's a go, emancipation from delusions. So this word, anyway, back to the word show, Along with enlightenment also means to prove it or to bear witness or to verify.

[17:53]

So this is the really important part for Dogen. So Dogen really signifies the importance of a direct personal verification. of the Dharma through one's whole body and mind. So he's very much a physical, he's really into the physicality of Zen. I mean Zen's a praxis, it's a practice. It has to do with doing things with your body and approaching your task with energy and enthusiasm. It's really great for us to have a farm because you can really get out there with that hoe or with those clippers or whatever, baking bread. There's a lot of opportunity for real physical wholehearted physical engagement with Dharma practice, which I think is very essential to the way Dogen also understood how to practice. So this direct personal verification of the Dharma through the whole body and mind of one's whole being, you know, fully engaging body and mind. Dr. Kim says that an important point here for Dogen is that the one who verifies with their whole being is not separate from that which is being verified.

[19:01]

the whole universe, so kind of saying the same thing again, a little slightly different way. The one who verifies, who witnesses with their whole being, isn't separate from what is being verified from the universe itself. Again, that kind of grand vision of this grand union. So, which is the reason that Dogen couples this word shō, again meaning enlightenment or realization, with the Japanese word shū, s-h-u, which means to practice. So this conveys this kind of intimacy of seeing the Dharma and then actualizing what you see and how you speak and how you behave. You know, it's really interesting. I meet with people pretty much every day privately, and I can really tell. I mean, I can't tell like reading someone's mind, but I can really tell by how they come into the room and how they bow and how they talk, if they've been practicing for a while or not. And most often there are new students coming and I'm not expecting them to have a lot of experience of all these very strange things that we're doing, sitting face to face and talking, looking at each other.

[20:12]

Somebody said to me, is this a staring contest? And I said, no, I hope not. But there is a way in which you're doing something quite unusual. We don't too often sit face to face with someone else and talk without a script or a purpose or a plan. you know, which certainly Doksan is not like that. It's not set up to be a certain way. It's whatever the person brings into the room and whatever they'd like to talk about. So anyway, this enactment is pretty palpable. There was one, a couple years back, this young woman came in the room and she was very... practiced in her bowels and her gestures and her and her the way she approached the conversation and sure enough she'd been practicing at a temple in Japan for about ten years so I could see that I could see that that was who she'd become was a result of that practice and then actualizing the practice and how she spoke and how she behaved so

[21:16]

In talking about enlightenment, Dogen always emphasizes this process of verification in which enlightenment, say non-duality, non-separation, is never completed without putting our awakened vision into practice in the dualistic world of suffering beings. We are called on, we are doing this for a reason, we are trying to awaken for a purpose, which is to help awaken others and to bring them some relief from the suffering that comes from our delusional thinking, which we know very well, having been caught in all of that for so many years of our own lives. So as I know you've heard, the Buddhas and the Bodhisattvas are on a mission to save all beings. There was a play once, I saw a poster for a play, it said, on a mission for the Buddha. was the name of the play. And I thought, oh, I'd love to go see that. I didn't see it, but I thought, I wonder what they were doing with that. So Dogen, having been raised on the Mahayana teaching of original enlightenment, which is called Honggaku, and we spoke about that somewhere back in the beginning of discussing Dogen's own journey to awakening, he was very bothered by the idea that he had been taught since he was a young man, very young man, when he started his monastic training, that you're already enlightened.

[22:36]

And that's the Mahayana teaching. And then he had this question, that burning question, well, if I'm already enlightened, why do I need to practice? What's the point of that? And yet he did continue to practice, and wholeheartedly, and he endeavored to find the answer to his question, and eventually going to China, where he was satisfied eventually by his meetings with his teacher, Bir Jing, and by his own insight, basically characterized by dropping body and mind. Dropping body-mind. It's a little bit like the decoupling of those train of thought. So, Dogen came to frame his own teaching not in terms of whether or not to practice, but how to practice. You know, not why. Sometimes people say to me, why? Why should I practice? Or why am I practicing? And I go, I don't know. I really couldn't tell you, you know. Something called you. Something got you. I don't know if I mentioned you, but Norman Fisher said to my student, Hakusho, when he went to visit him during his Dharma transmission, Hakusho was sort of saying, like, well, how did I get into this mess?

[23:45]

And Norman said, Buddha got you by the ear. I thought that was pretty cute. And I feel that way myself. I think Buddha got us by the ear. There wasn't really a choice. So how to authentically negotiate the way in specific daily situations? In other words, what would Buddha do? If you take on that question for yourself, what would Buddha do? If I am originally enlightened, if I am already awakened, then how is it that I behave in the world? What am I called on? So Dogen Zen, as we know from much of his writing, is repeatedly grounded in everyday activities, which for monastics who were under his guidance, were undertaken from what he called their dharma positions or their dharma situations. So the cook is a dharma position, the eno is a dharma position, the abbot is a dharma position. Everyone on the crew has a dharma position. And it's by the means of those dharma positions coordinating with one another, like the director helps with that, is what makes the Sangha.

[24:47]

That's how you create the community. So Gringotts is very much of like example of that dynamic working of each person in their Dharma position. We even sometimes refer to our jobs at Zen Center by that term, you know, my Dharma position in the mandala of the entire community. So, and each of us, each of you has a Dharma position and that you move. forward and backward throughout the day, and sometimes sideways, and whatever. Sometimes you go quickly, and sometimes you go slowly. But always, as Dogen instructs, you do so with the mind of an awakening being, of a bodhisattva. That's where we're going. That's our direction. We're going to Eheji. So Dogen's primary concern is not with the depth or the shallowness of our understanding or with our intelligence or our lack of it, as he says many times, but with the mindful attention to authenticity of our practice in daily life. You know, the sincerity with which you take up the chores of your daily life, whether anyone's there with you or not, anyone sees you or not, you know, you know, this is all about your own self-awareness.

[25:59]

You know, whether you really put the cap back on the toothpaste or not. It's really you, and then you'll know later when you find that it wasn't. Oh yeah, who did that? I think that was me. Anyway, so Dr. Kim then asks and answers one of his own questions. He says, so what then constitutes the authenticity of practice? What constitutes the authenticity of practice? How do we know if what we're doing is authentic? We can fool ourselves pretty easily and quickly. And so then in the simplest terms, although not much of what Dr. Kim says is all that simple, he says it has to do with the manner and the quality of how we negotiate the way through this dynamic relationship of practice-realization, Dogen's big terms. So how we negotiate practice and realization as these two... Here's that word again, foci or foci, depending on how you like it to pronounce it, the two focal points, the two foci or foci, in the liberative context of realization itself.

[27:06]

So we have these two dynamic pieces that are dancing. Ryab was talking about that today too. It was very nice to see that reflected in what he was saying about this dynamic interaction that's going on. The conversation between these two parts is always happening. Two seemingly oppositional parts, like self and other, actually totally determining the authenticity of our practice how do you handle that how how well do you take take up the question of talking with another meeting with another or doing the dishes or whatever it is you're doing how do you take up that dynamic partnership with whoever it is you you are now currently facing you know all day long it changes our partners we change partners all day long like what we're working with, what comes into our hands, but how we care for that. Our own authentic effort is the liberative context of our life. So for Dogen, the undefiledness of our practice and enlightenment, which always appear together, consists of not only this dynamic relationship,

[28:13]

between practice and realization, but also between duality and non-duality, or thinking and non-thinking, or delusion and enlightenment. So all of these are dance partners. They have numbers on their backs, and they are basically doing their thing out there in the middle of the arena, where we are. We're always there in the middle of the arena with our partner, and doing our best not to step on each other's toes, if possible. But even more importantly, it has to do with the quality of such interactions. You know, in other words, is our effort authentic and wholehearted? Are we fully engaging body and mind? And if we aren't, are we fully engaging our awareness about that? Which, that counts, you know, that's fully engaging. So it's not like the right way or wrong way, it's more like the fully engaged. You know, the awareness of ourselves and our actions in the world is where the authenticity arises from that. The sincerity, our honest assessment of ourselves and of our actions in the world.

[29:19]

So you might remember from our discussions of the Ganjo Koan, which I first shared with you, this unique perspective that Dr. Kim has formulated and which seems to be widely respected. Whenever I mention his work to other students, senior students and some scholars, they go, oh yeah, he's good. He's really good. So I feel like I'm on the right track here by spending time with him. So this perspective of the two foci or foci, these intimate conceptual partnerings begin with the very first moment with the very first thought of enlightenment so the very first time any of you had this inspiration or connection or contact or whatever it was you know when Buddha got you by the ear that's the bodhicitta and it's our endeavor to practice the way starts there right the very beginning you're already that's already an awakened moment that's already an experience of enlightenment you know and Dogen says Inasmuch as practice is based on enlightenment, so practice is based on enlightenment, the Buddhist enlightenment is where practice came from.

[30:27]

The practice of a beginner is entirely that of original enlightenment. And therefore a teacher should advise their disciples not to seek enlightenment apart from practice. For practice itself is original enlightenment. Because it's already enlightenment of practice, there is no end to enlightenment. Because it is already practice of enlightenment, there is no beginning to practice. So, these are the kinds of teachings clearly that influenced Suzuki Roshi. Of course, he was a student of Dogen, as all of the Soto Zen teachers and people who have gone to Hei AGS, as Suzuki Roshi did. So, of course, in his famous title of his world famous book, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, Zen mind, beginner's mind, already enlightenment is there at the very beginning. As soon as you open the book, it's happened. You're already Buddha, and so then we work on acting like that.

[31:29]

How do we act like that? So as we know, Dogen's ideal for actualizing the unity of practice and realization is zazen, shikantaza, just sitting. And Dr. Kim tells us that in a nutshell there are four aspects to Shikantaza. The first one is that sitting meditation is objectless. There's no object. You're not conjuring up an object or looking at an object or seeing anything as an object because in fact there aren't any. There's just this. Just this. The total non-separation. of subject and object. So, sitting meditation is objectless, it's imageless, it's themeless, with no internal or external devices or supports, it's decentered, and it's open-ended. And yet, it is a heightened, sustained, and total awareness of the self and the world.

[32:31]

So it's just like the doors are open. The door of the mind is opened. you know, and into this space, in the spaciousness. The spaciousness of the mind fits very nicely into the spaciousness of reality itself, you know. Number two, Shikantaza seeks no attainment. There's no goal. You're not trying, you're not going anywhere. It's a circle of the way. You're not trying to go somewhere else. And therefore it's simply ordinary, as in everyday mind is the way. And the third thing, the third aspect of Shikantaza is the body-mind cast off as the start of ultimate freedom. So that's Dogen's realization. Body-mind cast off. Something about that that we need to consider and perhaps try for ourselves. What would that be like to cast off body-mind? How might that be? You can just start by giving it a thought. What would that be like? How can I do that? How do I even get a hold of my mind to cast it off, you know? So it's all full of the kind of exciting possibilities.

[33:33]

Cast off body mind, you know. Give that a shot. This is also called the self-receiving and self-fulfilling samadhi. Jijuyu zanmai, which is the name of this portion of the bendawa that's in our chant book. The self-receiving and self-employing samadhi. so you receiving and giving at the same time like one word you receive your life and you offer your life you know it's like inhaling and exhaling just no coming no going just presence and with a spirit of direction you know toward being of benefit to others and then the fourth aspect requires single-minded earnestness and resolve and urgency on the part of the meditator. Like in the Zen saying that, you know, practice as if your head's on fire. I remember hearing that pretty early on, the years back, and I was like, whoa, these guys are kind of serious. Practice as if your head is on fire. But it is kind of motivating, you know, when you think about that.

[34:35]

Some of those images really help to get you kind of like, sit up a little straighter, a little bit more effort, a little more wholeheartedness, you know. I was at an ordination yesterday in the city center with three new subdozen priests as of today. It was quite a lovely event and three of our abbots were ordaining three people and I got a front row seat of being a former abbot so Reb was on my left and Paul Haller was on my right and I was in the middle feeling very well sandwiched between my two friends, my two teachers. Yeah, it was about two hours of just sitting still and watching as this amazing theater piece of putting on robes and making statements and chanting and and how awkward they were they were just like they're like little babies you know they just they can't get their clothes on and everybody's trying to help them and the robe is falling off and it's just perfect you know just that like it's supposed to be i've never seen an ordination where that's not what happens you just cannot possibly get it all right the first time so it was really very sweet very uh very dear and uh

[35:53]

Anyway, so that's what I wanted to say today, and then I wanted to offer us some time to, hopefully, a few of you would be willing to give these little introductions of yourselves, where you're from, and then where are you from, you know, what brings you to practice, and then I, after we do that, I hope we do that, some of you offer, I wanted to remind you that I'm not going to be here the next two Sundays, I would be be back on October 15th, and I will continue with Dr. Kim's commentary, which I find so rich and encouraging, so I'd like to share that with you. I'm very encouraged by his help in reading Dogen. So, that's the plan, and as I said, I'd really appreciate having any of you who'd like to offer just a few words, if you'd like, about yourself, and to introduce yourselves to our our Sangha, and we had a very nice three, I think three people last time.

[37:00]

Please, just raise your hand if you're willing to say something about you. What's that? You know what they do in junior highs, then they start calling on people. So I think that would be really very immature on my part, so I'm not going to do that. Thank you, Lucia. Thank you very much. It's not easy. No, no. I'm here with you. Oh, good. Good, good, good. Just you and me. Yeah, and you and Sangha. Yes. Which we've been together a while, but... It's always interesting to, what do you cherry pick to tell how you came to practice? Where are you first? Oh, sorry, sorry. I'm just outside D.C.

[38:03]

I was in D.C. in the beginning of COVID. We moved outside of the city into the burbs. So I'm in Maryland, Silver Spring, Maryland. I think it's the land of the Piscataway. Although there are a number of tribes, I think, in this area. the Anacostia and things like that. So let's see, where to begin? Because to be honest, I feel like my whole life has led me to practice from the very beginning. So I think, where to start? I think the beginning, I remember the bodhicitta that you spoke of. I remember feeling not separate and a part of everything. And my mom died when I was five. And my grandmother died, who lived with us. Sorry, my great-grandmother died when I was seven. And I think that pretty much sets up my perspective on life.

[39:06]

I think that was the beginning because I realized that I would lose everyone that I love. Very early I learned that. So I think that made me a secret. I wanted to understand what is this? And like I said, I do remember, I remember being a part of everything. And I remember being here and like looking in the mirror and saying, oh, I'm a girl this time. I remember that. And I was like, oh, and I'm a black girl this time. So I remember just being surprised by everything. And these people, these people are my family. And I remember when it was all new. It didn't take long going to, like, kindergarten. Pretty much the conditioning begins, right? And all my attention goes to the external. And I start forgetting about that mystery that lived, that seemed right here, not separate.

[40:07]

And I, yeah, so I, you know, just focused on the conditioning and living in duality, as you said, Boo. And... So as an adult, like I said, I was a seeker. And I'm also kind of a bookophile, so I read a lot. Just wanting to understand, what is this? That is my question, like my leitmotif. What is this? So anyway, I think it was when I was in law school, I was looking... I was looking for peace, right? And I read the book, Every Step is Peace by Thut Nhat Hanh. And so I really credit that book and Thut Nhat Hanh as my way into the practice because I went to see him speak and in his presence, I didn't know the word at the time, but I now know that I was in the presence of a Bodhisattva.

[41:09]

And I felt, like you said, You can feel it when you're with people, when they actualize practice. I felt peace in his presence. And he was a model for me that it was possible because I very much wanted to be able to accept my life and to be able to embody peace. So, yeah. So after that, I just kept reading books because in this area, I wasn't aware of a Sangha. And I finally found one. And it was the Thich Nhat Hanh group. And so I sat with them for years. And then I also sat with Vipassana group for years. And then I found my way to then. And so I've been doing this for a long time now. It feels like, not to date myself, but it's been over like 23 years. Yeah. So... So what was I going to say? So, yeah, so in each tradition, I just pursued it.

[42:12]

I went on a lot of retreats. I went to Blue Cliff Monastery. That's on the East Coast here at Tetnan Hans Monastery. And I did a residency. It wasn't for very long, for just a month at Zen Mountain Monastery in Mount Tremper in that lineage. And I've been to Tassajara. And actually... I think I met you there. I didn't know you then. That was like in, I've been to Tassajara and I've been to Green Gulch in 2018 and 2019. And I think I met you at Green Gulch, actually, not Tassajara. And we were in the field early in the morning and I didn't know who you were at the time. You know, so. Let's see. I've left out a lot of things because there's a lot to the practice, but that's a little bit about me and how I got here and why I stay. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Wonderful. Thank you. Eight's going to go.

[43:29]

oops looks like he's gonna go well there's gi and carol caroline go go ahead gi thank you thank you uh thank you sangha for everyone being together again on this sunday um I recently attempted a Wayseeking Mind talk in our Wednesday sangha, and it got me thinking more about when did I really encounter practice. And I think it was really through music. When I was very, very young and before, I started this new career I'm at.

[44:32]

I worked many years with music and it was something that really had drawn me to it. And the more and more that I sit and I practice, it's the same sense of oneness that I feel that music had brought to me, that communication through sounds, even without language, right? I've always really enjoyed music. the instrumental side of music and what simple notes and and airwaves can can cause us to feel and cause us to feel so connected and so united on such a broad scale um so i now that i've taken some more time to revisit i think that's really where i i felt that first sense of something beyond something more um greater than what i had always seen right was always seeing but I would say on a more, on the relative side, what happened, I would say when I was younger, I had a lot of anxiety and depression.

[45:39]

It was difficult for me to go to school and middle school. And I had always been advised to do breathing techniques. And for many years, I resisted because there was nothing more difficult than having to deal with with my mind. So why, why would I, why would I stay there? Right. Fu recently said, um, when we sit, it's like, we let, we let it catch you, whatever we feel is chasing over us. And it seems so scary when we first sit, but you know, once we're all gobbled up and like Pinocchio in the whale's stomach, it's like, okay, let's, let's deal with this now what's happening now. Right. But, um, but I would say that was my entrance was, um, In 2015, I downloaded the Headspace app. I would say my first teacher was Andy Puddycomb. I don't know how you say it, but he was that first voice on that app. And I just started meditating on and off eight years ago or so. And then a year after that, more regularly.

[46:44]

And then when COVID hit, I found myself with a lot of time on my hands. So I decided to look into meditation. And through there, I found Zen, which I had always been very drawn to as this impossibility, seeing monks and the way that they behaved. It seems so unapproachable to me because of the way that my mind was and my life was. And I still feel still feels that way. I'm just barely a beginner at this but um but i think that was uh that was where where i started my practice was through through the headspace app and then when i researched i found zen mind beginner's mind and um when i read that book that was that was it for me you know i had jumped leapt off the cliff holding on to nothing because the way that suzuki roshi spoke

[47:48]

And now I understand that it was non-dualistically, his non-dualistic way of speaking and his approach to life and living right now in this moment. I felt like it was exactly what I needed to read and as if the words were coming out through me the same way that I felt about music when I would work on music and compose. So it was something beyond my thoughts and beyond what was... you know, entrapping me, at least it was the way that I felt. So I would say that's where I started practice. And since it was the COVID times, I found a lot of different engagements that the Zen Center was doing online. And through reading Suzuki Roshi, he had emphasized finding a teacher and through watching a lot of these different engagements i found fu and i think i heard her first talk and the way that she spoke about the challenges i think was really what drew that self-reflection of turning the light back into the zen center and into our own way um i think that's what really really drew me in it was like wow i've never seen uh and all of all of the speakers the way that they would accept criticism and and that they would just reflect it was

[49:14]

It was something so inspiring to me that I continued practice. And never being one to read much, I now keep reading and sitting zazen and encouraging others to do so as well. But it's hard for me to speak, you know. of myself from my practice. So I'm just starting and all I have is gratitude for Fu and for the Sangha and for all of our ancestors in this great way. So thank you. Thank you, Guy. It shows. I can only hope. Like you said, not in here. Sometimes I'm reflecting this whole talk. I'm just looking at Mike. I still need to keep revisiting, right? But that's the endless circle. Sometimes we think it's a straight line. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Well, thank you, Guy, as always.

[50:15]

Caroline, Caroline, where did Caroline go? Actually, we lost her. Hi, can you hear me? I can't see you, though. Karina, can you... You can't see her. I saw her for a minute and then she, I can hear you. It's sort of funny. I could either do it this way or wait until that works. Let's see if I can find you on the gallery view. Oh, there you are. There she is. She's, well, I don't know if she's in the same square that I see. She's third down from the left. It's got a green background. I'll get you. I'll add a spotlight here. There you are. Great. Welcome. Thank you. So my name is Carolyn Argentati, and I've been joining these sessions along with the Saturday and Sunday morning Dharma talks since I discovered them during the pandemic as well. First through the video archive of these, since it is three hours later out here in North Carolina, which gets close to my bedtime.

[51:28]

And now more recently, more in real time. So again, I'm just so grateful to you, Fu, and to Zen Center, and to all of you who have welcomed people like me at a distance to the online sangha in this way. So I work as a library administrator at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, and I grew up in Minnesota. in a Christian family and community, and was taught about that tradition and its stories, as told by the Lutheran Church. But really before, and like both of the folks who've spoken tonight and the other night, before I really had the words to express it, Starting in early childhood, I had a sense of and this desire to experience and focus on the spiritual dimensions of life, as I kind of called it then. As I got older, it took the form of reflecting on questions about meaning, or in college, again, at a Lutheran school, the dimension of depth and religion, as Paul Tillich puts it.

[52:40]

But it often felt like... Most of the people around me and the culture around me and those churches at the time didn't really share that interest, at least in the same way. So again, I went to college in northern Minnesota at a religiously affiliated school. And actually there, surprisingly, as I look back on it now, there was a course in world religions available. That was my first introduction to Buddhism and Taoism and Hinduism. And these teachings really resonated for me and helped me expand my horizons then, starting then, and really informed the path that took me to Santa Fe, New Mexico for about four years in the 80s, and then on to Boston for graduate school. And that was where I came upon the wonderful book, Moon in a Dew Drop. that Fu has mentioned many times, and also some other somewhat more accessible books like Everyday Zen by Joko Beck.

[53:44]

And although I didn't ever feel like I really understood these teachings, I was drawn to them just in a very immediate way, and they fundamentally felt right and really true at a deeper level. My husband and I started sitting in about 1990 and have continued off and on over the years. But I was also very engaged in building my career and other ways of being busy during those decades. Then around 2011, I met a woman out here in North Carolina who had lived in San Francisco and spent time at Zen Center. And she started talking with me about Zen and introduced me to books and talks by Norman Fisher and Reb and other teachers and also resources from the Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, which I thought was so funny because I'm sure I drove by that area and was right there at that time that I lived there, but I just wasn't aware of it at that time.

[54:51]

So I feel very fortunate to have found all of that kind of help and guidance and really to, as Guy mentioned, to be able to immerse myself more fully in the practice and into whatever my version of wholehearted effort is during the pandemic, which was really isolating in so many ways. And so I'm on the path to continuing to do that, though I'm certainly... a beginner in any formal sense. Thank you. Thank you so much. Wonderful. May I ask who the person was who mentioned Zen Center? Her name was Anita Leal Idrogo. And I don't know that she was actually a resident there, but she had participated and spent some time there over the years, I think in the 80s. Great. Wonderful. It's just mysterious. These mysterious ways that we are supported.

[55:53]

I don't know if you heard Rev's lecture this morning, but wasn't that great? He was talking about that. It's like, you don't even know. I don't know how I'm helping anybody, but here's somebody said I was getting a wedding ring. I got a good deal instead of being treated badly. This is wonderful. Yeah. One other, just very briefly, one other thing about his talk this morning, we talk about turning some of these teaching and some of these very commonly repeated sayings, and the one about there is no giver, no receiver, and no gift. But the way that he talked about that all-inclusive conversation helped me, like the light bulb go off on that one for me this morning. Great, great. All of those goals, it's only a glimpse at a point in time, but it's all always happening. Yeah, that's fabulous.

[56:54]

Great, wonderful. Congratulations. Those little glimmers are wonderful. Thank you, Caroline. okay well i'm packing for my trip so thank you that was three very very wonderful gifts from you all so um if if you would like to defuse no what's the other word what's the word uh unmute if you'd like to unmute yourselves uh please do and you're welcome to say what you like Enjoy your trip, Fu. Have fun. You deserve, well-deserved. Enjoy it. I know you will. Thank you all so much. We can practice. There's nothing better, I know from experience, than just getting thrown out there. And you'll be amazed at how we communicate.

[57:57]

Sometimes it's, you know, there's something, we're still all the same, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's almost a greater gift when you can speak less of the language, right? Well, that's probably true, you know. I took a lot of language labs in high school trying to learn Spanish, and so a little bit's coming back. That's good, yeah. ¿Qué tal, Pablo? ¿Cómo estás? Un poquito. There you go. That's enough. Sometimes it's just showing the effort. Then it's like, you know what? Okay, I'll put in the same. We'll mash. We'll give you a cookie instead of whatever you said. Well, one thing's for sure. People will laugh and nod. I love it when old people, when you can't understand them, they start to talk louder. Speed and volume doesn't make a difference. It might be helpful to use Google Translator too.

[58:59]

Last time when I was in Japan, when I was trying to order my dishes, I literally used the Google Translator because I couldn't, you know, I was doing Duolingo, but then also Google Translator in emergency, like ordering food. You can use the camera and it'll translate it. Yeah, it's... That's what this teacher had. We were having a real conversation with him. His English was not very developed, but we were talking because it would all translate. It was fantastic. It was like, oh, my gosh. What was even funnier was when we were in Japan, we used the same thing, and then we would show some characters, and they would have this face, and then we would translate it back to English. And it would make absolute no sense whatsoever. And I was like, no wonder if this is what we're saying. So translator, you know, it's fun. The whole thing is fun. So I hope you, Karina, have a wonderful time. Thank you so much. And thank you to the Sangha. Looking forward to seeing you all soon after our break. Definitely, definitely. Yes, take good care all. Good seeing you all.

[60:00]

Be well. Be well. Buenas noches. Gracias. Adiós. Adiós. Bye, everyone. Bye, everyone. Bye, everyone. Ciao. Ciao. Okay. Oh, she left. Bye. Bye. Everyone.

[60:30]

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