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. Welcome to San Francisco Zen Center in person and on Zoom. My name is Kyoshin Wendy Lewis. And today I will be speaking on the Genja Koan. I'm teaching a... class on it right now. And this was written by Eihei Dogen, who is considered to be the founder of Sotozen in Japan. So Dogen lived in the first half of the 13th century. So if you can imagine yourself in that time in Japan, and if you know anything about the history, include some of that. And his writings were mostly unknown until the early 19th century. and then translations and commentaries of his work in English are fairly recent.

[01:06]

Shoaku Okamura's book, Realizing Genjo Koan, was published in 2010, and I'll be quoting from his translation and commentary. I gave a talk earlier, a few months ago, about Heart Sutra as a kind of introduction to Genjo Koan. Dogen wrote Genzo Koan after he wrote a commentary on the Heart Sutra, Makahanya Haramitsu. And Okamura proposes that Genzo Koan is a further investigation of the teachings of the Heart Sutra. And the Heart Sutra, we chant it every day, and it's basically a list of basic Buddhist teachings. And core Buddhist teachings, actually. And each one is preceded by the negation, no. So this negation is referring to the teachings through the perspective of emptiness, which is the perspective of perfect wisdom or prajnaparamita.

[02:16]

So the list itself is an affirmation. All the teachings are there. And then the negation serves to undercut our attachment to the teachings and our interpretation of them and our application of them to ourselves and others. And that this attachment tends to allow us to avoid applying the teachings as a conversation between the relative and the absolute. Relative meanings of the teachings through an integration are put into the realm of the absolute. And so then they have to understand each other, come to some sort of terms with these two different perspectives. So non-attachment or engaging with the teachings through this dialectic of relative and the absolute allows applying to the teachings

[03:21]

the teachings to continually deconstruct and reconstruct one's habits of mind. So you could say, you know, humility doesn't quite do it, arrogance, vanity, wealth, abstinence, ideologies, conventional happiness, power, self-effacement, or spiritual solitude. None of those really sort of do this work. So you can neither ignore nor rely on any of the spiritual prescriptions or definitions offered by Buddhist or Zen practice or idealism. So the images that Genjo Koan evokes sort of disallow this complacency or resting in comfort or accomplishment. Clinging to comfort is kind of the mirror of clinging to suffering.

[04:25]

So it allows one to ignore and discount the suffering and the service of others on which one's own comfort depends. And I think it's also this sort of holding to comfort in the Western Buddhist tradition is part of the tendency towards using Zen speak. and Zen-splaining when teaching, and also a correlative of kind of white-speak and white-splaining in our Western Buddhist tradition. And so these things, you know, need to be in that conversation about our comfort and our sort of willingness to put things in the absolute perspective as well as our experiential relative perspective. And who wouldn't understand that, right? You know, the need to maintain our comfort and our personal viewpoint in an ever-changing, shifting world is completely understandable.

[05:34]

I think that one of the mistakes we can get is into a particular type of shame. Shame is important, but there's a particular type of shame that's kind of undermining and gets sort of projected onto others. It's more this examination, and I think that's one of the gifts of Zen teaching, is that this conversation is what's continuing. You're not trying to destroy anything. So the problem with this clinging to comfort, though, is that it undermines the effort towards liberation. And it means missing liberation from conditionality. And that's a very disorienting experience. So there's more of a tendency to go back to the comfort area. But the possibility is instead something like authenticity or what I think of as modesty.

[06:39]

And that's a combination of trustworthiness, faith, vitality, And a kind of acceptance of awkwardness. When anything is shifting, there's periods and points and experiences of awkwardness. And that should be allowed to be part of it. There's a version of this show called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It's on Netflix. And there's a few versions, a couple of versions at least. And in one of them, Sean Astin is one of the voices. So if you're interested in looking this up, that's the one. And he's the voice of Raphael. So the turtles have their ninjas, right? So they have a sensei named Splinter. And he named them after artists. So they're Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello, and Michelangelo.

[07:42]

Leo, Raph. Donnie and Mikey. And Splinter says things like, you know all that I have taught you, but I have not taught you all that I know. Sound familiar? And in one conversation about following your instincts, Leo says, so you're saying I should follow my instincts, even though my instincts may be wrong. And Splinter responds, Correct. And Mikey, who's kind of the wise fool, says, whoa, you know, it's good advice if you're even more confused afterwards. So the Dogen scholar, Heejin Kim, describes Dogen's teachings as mystical realism. This conversation, this

[08:44]

way of putting things in both contexts. And as he describes it as this dialectic or conversation. And Mu Sung, he's a Buddhist scholar, and he's written some very wonderful accessible books on the Heart Sutra, Diamond Sutra, and Faith and Mind Sutra, if you're interested. And he describes this as a conversation between... relative reality or individual consciousness, and absolute reality or the visionary cosmos. When you think of all you don't know, that's kind of what he's referring to. And in a conversation, there's as much listening as talking, even if we get lost in not listening. If it's a conversation, there's this exchange going on. So there's listening, talking, and that includes listening to oneself.

[09:45]

So Dogen expresses this teaching with the background of listening in phrases such as, or description sentences such as, conveying oneself toward all things to carry out practice enlightenment is delusion. all things coming and carrying out practice enlightenment through the self is realization. And so that's a form of listening to all that you don't know, trying to let it permeate the expectations and sort of assumptions that you have. So then Dogen's central koan is this practice realization. And by practice, Dogen is referring to three essential trainings, sila, or ethics and morality, samadhi, or meditation and reflection, and prajna, study and wisdom. And the three training aspects can't be set aside, and they're not sufficient in themselves.

[10:52]

But they function as liberation only in this dialectic relationship to realization. So Dogen begins... the Genjo Koan, with a presentation of relative and absolute reality and the context of their interactivity or emptiness, he says. When all dharmas are the Buddha Dharma, there is delusion and realization, practice, life and death, Buddhas and living beings, the relative. When the 10,000 dharmas are without fixed self, There is no delusion and no realization, no Buddhas and no living beings, no birth and no death, the absolute. Since the Buddha way by nature goes beyond the dichotomy of abundance and deficiency, there is arising and perishing delusion and realization, living beings and Buddhas.

[11:55]

And this is where he's referring to this interactivity of emptiness where there's This relative, and then the negation of the absolute, and then this connection again. And the next section sets forward the problems that this poses. Therefore, flowers fall even though we love them. Weeds grow even though we dislike them. Conveying oneself toward all things to carry out practice and enlightenment is delusion. all things coming and carrying out practice enlightenment through the self is realization. Those who greatly realize delusion are Buddhas. Those who are greatly deluded in realization are living beings. Furthermore, there are those who attain realization beyond realization and those who are deluded within delusion. So,

[12:57]

Dogen examines the interactivity of delusion and enlightenment, which are completely dependent on each other. They arise as the practitioner applies the teachings, naturally develops attachment, and then lets go of the attachment, which Okamura calls opening the hand of thought. So we're simultaneously Buddhas and sentient beings, and so our practice and realization is through applying, you know, the trainings, the teachings, and through the permeability and non-attachment is continuous. And Dogen often refers to continuous enlightenment, continuous delusion. And then in the part in Genjokan that people are usually very familiar with, to study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. and to forget the self is to be verified by all things, to study means to apply the teachings of Buddhism to one's conditioned mind, which is also our body, heart, and mind.

[14:06]

So the study of ethics, along with the reflective practices of meditation within the context of prajna, or the perspective of emptiness, this dialectical dynamics of practice and enlightenment, it's the interactivity that allows for continuous effort and continuous transformation and understanding. And in Suzuki Roshi's comment on the Genjo Koan, he says, In our everyday life, there is enlightenment and ignorance. You cannot escape from ignorance to attain enlightenment because enlightenment is not somewhere else. Dogen says, to know what ignorance is, is enlightenment. And to be ignorant about enlightenment is ignorance. So nirvana can't be experienced if we have a preconceived idea of what it is. And if we expect nirvana to remove us from our conditioned life, you know, where do we think we will go?

[15:18]

Dogen says that conveying oneself forward is delusion. It's a projection of our preferences and perceived needs onto the concept of liberation. And commenting on the Heart Sutra's All Buddhas of Past, Present, and Future, Dogen writes about firewood and ash. And this is an examination of the query into how one can become a Buddha through practicing Buddhist teachings and meditation. Does it happen in time or is it practice realization within time, not restricted by time, continuous? So transformation does occur, but not within the limitations of before and after. Each Buddha has to practice within the context and conditions of their present time.

[16:19]

Be firewood, be ash. And just as we can't project into the present or future an imagined state of nirvana, we can't project into the past an imagined process of attaining nirvana. Ash stays in the position of ash with its own before and after. So time is the horizontal dimension and eternity, or the absolute, is the vertical dimension. of practice realization. So in spiritual terms, we're always engaging in practice in the context of the keros, or signs of the times. And those of us practicing in a Western cultural context, you know, whatever our background is, are faced with various signs of the times, some of which are the impacts of white supremacy, environmental disaster, and the COVID pandemic.

[17:22]

And so caught in the horizontal dimension of becoming enlightened and perhaps escaping the signs of the times, you kind of can forget this vertical dimension of the absolute and its impact, known or ignored. Okamura discusses the term satori or realization as having implications of awakening. with its opposite being dreaming or sleeping. And this is a very familiar kind of theme in Zen. Are you awake or asleep? Are you awake or asleep? So as Dogen is discussing, as he's regarding the moon's reflection in the water, the depth is the same as the height. And that's about... the extent of our awakening being correlated to the depth of the study of the self.

[18:27]

So if we're dreaming of enlightenment, the moon may seem very close. And if we're engaged in the interactivity of the relative and the absolute, the moonlight illuminates or is reflected in all things. The next section is when the Dharma has not fully penetrated, body and mind, one thinks one is already filled with it. When the Dharma fills body and mind, one thinks or understands that something is lacking. So I think that most of the time we engage in practice from a fairly complacent viewpoint and kind of expect it to fulfill conventional expectations of accomplishment. And Suzuki Roshi, in his commentary, says, when we have no particular concrete idea of good or bad, we expose ourselves and accept criticism.

[19:33]

That is enlightenment. So I think Suzuki Roshi was pretty aware that the people listening to his talks and classes didn't know what he was talking about. He was teaching the Dharma from a background of being in Japan, living in monasteries, going to Komazawa University. He also studied Western philosophy and all these other things. But what he was doing, he was teaching the Dharma because the workings of the Dharma have an effect, such as the effects of meditation, even in one period of zazen. during a sishin. And I think that what this constant working of Dharma does is it allows something, there's something intuitive about what he was talking about that allows us to consider that there's a knowing beyond what is familiar.

[20:42]

And that that's not a fantasy, but it's an expansion. So Dogen describes being out in a boat beyond sight of land in the middle of the ocean, and the horizon looks like a circle. And I think it's pretty clear to all of us that that's our general perspective of reality. We see just a certain limited view. Yet the ocean is neither round nor square. It has inexhaustible characteristics. And we can see only to the horizon of the circle. And we only see or grasp as far as the power of our eye of study and practice can see. And when he says that, that's actually a kind of promise. Yes, we can only see as far, but oh, we can actually extend our practice and out far beyond that horizon.

[21:44]

Our study and practice. So transformation or enlightenment is a conversion, and it's not toward or away from anything, but through this interactivity of the relative and the absolute and emptiness. And it might be helpful to think of this in terms of aversion, which includes desire, indifference, and hate as a turning away, and conversion as as turning with or towards or being turned by. So how does this conversion impact our experience and our ability to address, confront, and respond to the signs of the times, the keros? And there's this possibility of what I describe as modesty in the sense that Suzuki Roshi describes as... We expose ourselves and accept criticism rather than kind of holding to a narcissistic or kind of ideal of enlightenment or to our vanity.

[22:57]

We have this idea of enlightenment, but we maintain our personal comfort and don't sort of risk the edges of that. The next section uses images of birds and fish to describe that there is no other place to go. All the conditions of our lives and their consequences are the resource for our moral, meditative, and wisdom examinations and insights. The sky is life and the water is life. And Dogen goes into the summary of what he has been saying. into a summary of what he's been saying. When we make this very place our own, our practice becomes the actualization of reality. When we make the path our own, our activity naturally becomes actualized reality.

[23:59]

And then the next part includes, the boundary of the known is not clear. This is because the known, which appears limited, is born and practiced simultaneously with the complete penetration of the Buddha Dharma. So I'm trying to take us all the way through Genja Koan. I hope you don't mind. So I think generally we move through our lives assuming that this circular boundary that we carry with us, you know, we... We assume that this circular boundary through which we judge and limit the world and our experience of it is an edge rather than a horizon of possibility. And this eye of practice that allows edges to blur, to become permeable to the absolute is something we resist and it's also very difficult to access.

[25:05]

But this isn't a separation of the relative and the absolute, but an acknowledgement of their interactivity and its potential for awakening our mind, body, heart through liberation, this sense that the horizon is permeable. So at the end of the Genjo Koan, the conversation that interrelates the relative and absolute is is demonstrated in the exchange between the student and the teacher, with wind representing the Buddha Dharma. The teacher is fanning himself and the student asks, The nature of wind is ever-present and permeates everywhere. Why are you waving a fan? The teacher responds, You know that the wind's nature is ever-present. you don't know that it permeates everywhere. The monk said, how does wind permeate everywhere?

[26:08]

The master just continued waving the fan. The monk bowed deeply. So the teacher keeps fanning himself to indicate the participation of practice, sila, samadhi, and prajna in the unfolding of realization. So because of spiritual path and efforts to understand the teachings, tend to unmoor us, there's an emotional component to spiritual practice and study. And Okamura describes this in his commentary on the section about flowers and weeds. Since weeds are stronger than we are, we can never get rid of them all. And this sometimes makes us angry or sad, just as working with our delusions can make us frustrated or hopeless. If we are not actually doing the weeding, we can be objective and say weeds are just weeds, while we claim to neither like nor dislike weeds.

[27:10]

Yet, when we have to do the work of weeding, it is difficult to say that weeds are just weeds. And so, you know, we continue to appreciate the flowers, even though they fade, and to do our best to regulate the weeds. though they tend to proliferate beyond our control. So practice realization includes the joy of beauty, as well as its loss, and the sorrow and anger of difficulties, as well as the potential for all this to be the resource for our wisdom and understanding, liberation, and compassion for ourselves and others. In the face of the keros, the signs of the times as they manifest through us and have their impact on us, Dogen's assurance of this dialectical relation of effort and realization allows freedom in the variety of expressions of the Dharma.

[28:15]

And as is the case with all kind of what you might call prophets or those who... question complacency or put things in certain contexts, Dogona is actually not popular during his lifetime. And yet, you know, his teachings and his imagery move us and they deepen a commitment to the unfolding of our practice life with its ups and downs. As Mikey says, you know it's good advice if you're even more confused afterwards. That is... if you're not expecting practice to reinforce what you already know. But listen for what takes that apart and puts it back together again in the context of a widened horizons that become flexible enough to extend to the extraordinary viewpoint of the Buddha eye. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center.

[29:22]

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.

[29:42]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_97.71