This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Thank you for the opportunity to be here. I always enjoy discussing Dogen. And as you can see, there's two handouts, no quiz at the end, but... I tried to put on paper some of the material I wanted to discuss. I'm going to ask that on your way out, if you hand them back to Marcella, we will be using this material over the next couple of days. And we'll redistribute it. And if somebody wants a permanent record, please let us know. We can provide that later. So my main theme is . You may be familiar with it from several passages in Dogan, including Uncle Zengi, where here's one, and Vang Doa, where it's mentioned several times, also Genjo Koan.

[01:12]

And I want to look at different ways that Shinjin Dasaraku has been expressed by and about Dogan, because one of the main sources for understanding Dogan are some of the traditional biographies. as they've been interpreted over the centuries and by modern interpreters among Japanese researchers and scholars and priests. And to try to really understand is what is Shinjin Dasara? And it itself can be tripled in a lot of different ways. So I can't think of casting off body mind, but you see dropping off, falling off, slumping. And You might see shedding. There might be various ways that's doing it. When you're looking at English translations, since each translator might have their own way, and sometimes they're not always insistent, that they might vary it a little bit from fascicle to fascicle. It's interesting to see the variety of options in the phrase.

[02:16]

But this phrase, Shinjin Datsuraku, does refer to probably the single most important experience. in Bogan, the life-changing experience when he gained enlightenment in the year 12.25 during the summer retreat studying in China under his master Ruzhin, which is the Chinese pronunciation, the Ojo in Japanese. Generally, I'll use the Chinese pronunciation for the Chinese names. And the other handout deals a little bit with Shobo Genzo. Dogen's main writing and some other topics in these pages that are related to understanding Dogen and getting a sense of the experience of Shinjin Datsuraku. So let me start by talking a little bit about my own background in studying Dogen. I got very intensely interested in Dogen in the mid-1970s.

[03:22]

40 years ago, maybe a little bit more. At that time, there was the first wave of English translations. There were books by Ingen Kim, Mystical Dogen, Mystical Realist, Takashi Jin Kodera, Dogen's former years in China. There was translations by Kenneth, by Yukowe, a Japanese professor. and the translations by Norman Waddell and Marcel Abe were coming out in the Eastern Buddhist Journal. So there was a big wave of interest in Dogen, and I ruled that wave because my own interests were in the development of Chan Buddhism, originally in China, influenced by Confucianism and Daoism, but I was also very fascinated by medieval Japanese culture, Japanese poetry. I did some translations of Dogen's poetry over time. And Dogen seemed to encapsulate many of my interests in terms of Chinese Zen and its impact in medieval Japanese culture.

[04:30]

So here we are 40 years later, and some of my Japanese friends have asked me why we stick with Dogen after all these years. And Dogen is a never-ending source of fascination for me. So in preparing for today, I wanted to gather in this first handout a lot of the passages, and we're not going to have time for all of it, but I wanted to gather a lot of the passages related to Shinjin Natsuraku and various writings by Dogen and about Dogen in the traditional biographies. And then meanwhile, I got intrigued the other day by the passage that appears in Pukata Dengi, where the The monk says to the master, when you're sitting in meditation, what do you think about? And the master says, who knows that? Okay, the first answer of the master is, it can be translated different ways, but there's not thinking, right?

[05:34]

And usually they distinguish the not thinking from beyond thinking concepts, beyond thinking for the second answer. So he says, what do you think about in meditation? And the first answer is not thinking. And then he says, well, how do you think about not thinking? And then the answer is beyond thinking or non-thinking. And generally, a distinction is made between not thinking as the opposite of thinking and non-thinking or beyond thinking, which is another stage of understanding. And then it's mentioned in Phukhan Zazengi briefly. It's also mentioned in the facet goal of Shobo Genzo called Zazengi, the principles of Zazen. But it's discussed much more in depth in another facicle of Shogu Genzo, Zazen Shin, or the point of Zazen, or the acupuncture point of Zazen. And in that discussion, Dogen does fare what he does in so many passages throughout his writing, where he takes what the Chinese ministers have said, and he takes the traditional dialogues and koans and sayings,

[06:40]

And he explores them word by word and tries to turn them upside down in a lot of cases or read them inside out, topsy-turvy, does a somersault with his rhetoric. However you put it, Dogen's not letting us stand still and understand it the way it seems like it's reading and tries to point out different tendencies. So mainly there, he tries to point out that non-thinking or the beyond-thinking level is not something that you get to above and beyond or past thinking, past not thinking, but it's a fundamental awareness that permeates both thinking and not thinking that is already existing in the monk's question. So when the monk is asking the question, he's already engaged in the beyond thinking level. And therefore, the dialogue is not kind of one-sided, where you have a monk expressing misdelusion, and the master seems to be illuminating him, but you're not quite sure if the monk gets the point.

[07:44]

According to Dogen's reading, the monk already has the point, and the monk is illuminating the master, but just the master is illuminating Dogen. And it's just fascinating to see the way Dogen interprets these things. And also, I was looking at a couple of the translations, and I realized that But in a couple of the key passages, the translations come off quite differently. In fact, in some cases, it was almost unrecognizable that it was the same exact passage because words were left out or added in or amplified or they gave an interpretation of the exact wording rather than the exact wording. And that's all good because Dogen himself said that entanglements lead to more entanglements. Entanglements, it's the only way you're going to understand. And Dogen also uses... the expression, mistake upon mistake. And, you know, if you get to the, maybe we could say, if you get to the right mistake, you have an understanding. In fact, there was a Chinese popular romantic movie that came out recently that used the exact phrase that Dogan uses about the mistake upon mistake.

[08:46]

And the English translation of the title was the right mistake. And I think that, you know, to me, you I don't know whether the translator meant that to apply to Dogen. Probably not. But, you know, I took that as a mistake, maybe, that, you know, was the right mistake for me because, you know, it led to another level of understanding. So let's come back to Shenzhen.siraku. And, by the way, when I was discussing with Greg, I think he mentioned in an email, we're going to discuss Shenzhen.siraku, and maybe that was... part of our entanglement. But it turned out that I have an MA student, in fact, at my university who's working on that topic right now, so I've been thinking quite a bit about it. And so I'm glad to have this chance to discuss it. But let me just ask, if we talk about Shenzhen dot Sirocco, and think about Shobo Genzo as well, for those people who've had a chance to study those things, and some people may have studied it intensely, I realize.

[09:47]

What are some Things we can say or we can't say about Shinji and Gatsuraku. Just off the top of our heads, a couple of points. What is something we want to say about it? Happens in Zazen. Okay. It happens. How did you phrase it? Happens in Zazen. Happens in Zazen. All right. So, Dogen wording is very important. So, I don't mean to pick on the wording, but would anybody... Want to rephrase that a little bit, or time by now we're not phrasing you. It is zazen. It is zazen, right? Not in zazen. And he says that it is zazen. And where does he say it? Practice realization. He talks about the unity of practice realization. So he talks about practice realization, the Japanese term shusho nito, right? He talks about... Zazen, or just sitting, Shitan Kaza.

[10:51]

Shijindatsuraku. These are all expressions. So maybe he likes S-H word. Undivided activity is another kind of synonym for that. And also, I noticed in Kaza's translation, there's another term, undefiled activity. Undivided activity... When you see that term, it could be the Japanese term Zenki, which is complete or undivided movement or activity. And then there's another phrase, undefiled mind or body-mind or undefiled activity. And sometimes he uses undivided and sometimes he translates that also as undivided. But the idea is that there is a wholeness, there is a unity, and that's the unity of practice realization. So that's what That's what Shinjin Dasarapu is getting to. Now, how did Dogen come about this saying? He had the experience in China.

[11:57]

He had the experience in China. Okay. And when? Studying with his teacher and I think it was in Zazen and his teacher asking questions. Okay, he's studying with the teacher, he's studying with Ruzhin. Now, he had been in China for a couple of years. He gets to China in 1223. He went to this temple, one of the main temples in China, which was near the port city called Ningbo, which is across the bay from Shanghai. He went to the temple, and he didn't get there in time for that summer retreat that first year. because he was tied up for various reasons. One time they say he was sick and he stayed on the boat. Another time they say he could see it not taking certain precepts in. Back in Japan, he had to go through some other procedures in order to get permission to get into the summer retreat.

[12:59]

So he missed it that first year. And Wu Jing was not the teacher when he first got there anyway. And when he finally got into the temple, And the teacher he had, he wasn't quite satisfied with. So he traveled to other temples around China for several years, and always feeling like I'm not quite getting the point here. And according to the biographies, he was about to go back to Japan after two years. But then his companion that he had gone to China with, Myozen, died. And there was going to be a ceremony back at the Tianan Temple. And he decided I'd better go back to that ceremony because I'm going to have to take Yosen's remains with me back to Japan. And when he gets back to that temple, he's told, like, hey, there's a new abbot there. You're going to like this abbot. This guy is going to be a much more meaningful teacher for you. And that is Wu Jing.

[14:02]

And so, you know, the rest is history, as they say. But... I want to kind of zero in on, and some of these passages zero in on, exactly what happened between Dogen and Rougin, and when did it happen? We do a little kind of detective work by putting together different versions of it. I think some ideas start to unfold. But, you know, at the top, let's go to the top of that handout. So, I use the word method. What I'm saying is that the way I'm looking at these topics is text historical and rhetorical, meaning that I'm trying to look at when the texts were written and what they said and the different versions over the years. But you're also trying to look at the literary quality. Dogen is a master of language. And for Dogen, language is crucial. It uses several expressions, including the idea of entanglement, to explain that language is a crucial device.

[15:07]

And that's a little bit different from some of the Zen masters he met in China. And so I'm trying to combine that. And I mentioned a Japanese term, ki-roku, here, at the end of that first line. And there's actually two different words that are pronounced the same way. And one of them means, like, the first one means... A biographical record. Well, the biographical records are not totally reliable. There weren't biographies written in Dogan's life. He kind of has some autobiographical reflection sometimes, but those were probably edited later, and we don't quite know exactly how reliable some of those records are. And then biographies were written, and if we look back at those biographies written in the... 1200s, 1300s, 1400s. Obviously, there's going to be some discrepancies. I mean, that's not true just for Dogen. That's true with that time in history where the recording wasn't as specific as we might want it to be from modern standards.

[16:17]

The other word for key role here is dialogue. That's basically a synonym for koans. So I think we have to keep aware that in a way we want to look... historically at these things, what actually was said and done. But at the same time, we have to keep in mind that they're all Zen dialogues in a way. And what's important is the Zen meaning underlying the historical record. So I want to try to combine those two levels of understanding. Now, Shinjin Datsuraku, as I mentioned, could be casting off, dropping off, falling off. And I think the big issue there is the action or the intention by the person that experiences it. To what extent is it active and to what extent is it a little more passive? So the word Datsuraku is used in Chinese and Japanese in a couple of different ways and it can mean what a caterpillar does, what a snake does, it sheds its skin, the caterpillar

[17:25]

sheds the cocoon to become a butterfly. So it implies that kind of natural state of transformation that the caterpillar and the snake don't intend to do this, but it happens as part of the cyclical course of events. But at the same time, Shinsun Datsuraku does imply that the person is making the effort and making a kind of decision and has a kind of intention to gain that understanding. And so the It's kind of a borderline there of active and passive. I think that's what's exciting about the word. One of the things is that if we look at Wu Jing and what he said, and we know that we're basing that on the records of Wu Jing's writings that are separate from what Dogen said Wu Jing said. And the records of Wu Jing's writings never use the phrase exactly to cast off body-mind. What they... Rujing himself said, anybody familiar with this?

[18:27]

Rujing himself used a different phrase, cast off the dust from the mind. And so that's one, that's another area to look at. What does it mean? Is there a difference there? And It turns out in Japanese, the two pronunciations would be the same. But in Chinese, the pronunciations are a little bit different. So when Dogen gets to China, we don't know to what extent, you know, how he was, how fluent he was in Chinese. Because it's quite a different language. The characters are pretty much the same, but the pronunciation and the grammar is quite different. So it's possible that Dogen... you know, thought he heard Rujing said in Castle, body and mind, but maybe Rujing said Castle, if it does from the mind, then maybe he had it mishearing. Or maybe that was a creative mistake.

[19:33]

Maybe that was an entanglement that had its own intentionality. Maybe Dogen was kind of correcting Rujing and saying, well, you should have said it this way. You're my teacher, so I can't say that too, obviously. But there are times where Dogen says, well... Rajin said this, but I disagree, and I'm going to say it another way. And Dogen didn't hesitate to do that in some cases. But at the same time, he praises Rajin very strongly. And then if we look at the word dust, what we could translate in English as dust, in Buddhism at that time, dust did not mean necessarily dust in the sense of dusty or defilement or dirty. Anybody know or guess what another meaning for dust could be? Can I spell the dust from the mind? Yeah, that's right. The sensory experience, right? Yeah, so dust could mean the sense object. It's not necessarily anything to file, but our senses engage with objects.

[20:36]

So we hear sounds, and we see sights, and, you know, Dongshan is supposedly the founder of the Sokto lineage. You know, one said, you've got to see with your ears and hear with your eyes. And Dogen sites that saying a couple of times. And so, in other words, instead of saying, cast the dust from the mind, what might be, quote unquote, wrong with that saying? Yeah, the Queen Yang, the Sixth Patriarch poem, right? So when you say dust, the dusty mirror, and he kind of corrects, he said there is no dust. What's wrong with saying dust? I mean, why do they correct that? So Dogen seems like he's doing what Queen Yang did, the Sixth Patriarch, in correcting that. Yeah. The mind can't be defiled. Correct. The mind can't be defiled.

[21:36]

And so there's no difference between... something dusty and something pure. That's a duality that would become an obstacle to understanding if we set that up. So maybe that's why Dogen wanted to change it. If that's what Rujing was implying, that there's not an undivided activity, that there is a division between a defiled or dusty level and a pure level, maybe Dogen wants to challenge that and change that somewhat. Or maybe Rujing didn't really say that. Maybe in his own way what he was saying was not cast off the dust from the mind, but cast off thinking there's a division between dust and mind, which would be very close to Dogen's meaning. But maybe Dogen is taking a little step further in saying cast off body-mind. Okay, so let's go back to the experience. Like you said, he interacted with Rujing. Can you tell me when? Well, the version I've heard was he was actually interacting with a student who revived and exhausted and recommended him and that.

[22:49]

Where Jing was interacting with the student. Right. Okay. How many people have heard that version? Okay. So, anybody want to say more about that version? I've heard it's critical historically, maybe not all. doesn't hold. Okay. That's what I want to look at in a moment. But let's go back to the story itself. Let's go back to that key local, that record that we have. Okay. For what? Okay. So, one of the versions, and this is number, this is under number two. Um, So, they're doing Zazen, and the monk next to Dogen is falling asleep. And those images at the bottom of the page, these are taken from some artwork that was done.

[23:51]

I know they're kind of small and hard to see, but these were done for a film of art that was done in the early 1800s, showing different scenes of Dogen's life. And the middle one is that skulling. This is about to happen. Is he looking over at the monk's three people? And there's Rujing opening the staff and in one version he makes an interesting wordplay where he says like, you know, you must cast off body-mind, which is shikan-danza, which is just sitting, or single-minded sitting in one translation. And he said, so why are you doing single-minded sleeping? And Dogen looked over and he said, okay, I got it. I've had Shinjin Datsuraku. But, you know, when I started looking into this, I realized, where did that version come from?

[24:52]

And you know Keizan? People from Keizan, they'll get the same disciple. And he wrote, anybody know his famous book? Denko Roku. which is a history of 52 patriarchs. Dogen is number 51. Rujing is number 50. Ejo, Dogen's disciple, is number 52. And in that record, he talked about quite a bit about this passage. And he does not, you know, and that was supposed to have been Kezon's lectures given in 1300. He does not mention the monk sleeping. I myself, after all these years, was really shocked to see that. According to that record, Ruching says to the assembly, casting off body-mind is Shikantaza, but he does not reprimand the monk. And so I started looking into it. Where does it actually say this? Well...

[25:55]

In Dogen's writings, in Shobo Genzo and Dogen's extensive record, and other writings that some of you have probably read, he never refers to, I don't think he ever refers to what some Japanese scholars are calling the scolding Shinjin Datsuraku, or the reprimand in Shinjin Datsuraku. It's not in Dogen's record, but... And it's not in Rushing's record. But if you look at Rushing's record, in the canon has a supplement that was supposed to have been written by Dogen. Wuxing's record came to Dogen some years later in 1242. Some disciples brought it from China to Japan. And Dogen said, well, they left stuff out here, so I'm going to write a supplement to it. And it's mentioned there briefly. But again, we don't know how reliable that record is. And then we see it coming up in some of the other traditional commentaries. So that's one issue.

[26:58]

It doesn't matter how reliable the record is. I mean, that's a question we have to answer for ourselves. But here's another question that's come up. How long did Dogen know Ruxin already? You go back to what I was saying briefly about the history. How long could he have known him by the time this happened? This was supposed to have happened in the seventh month, second day of 1225. He didn't know him at all. It could have only been a couple months. Just during that summer retreat. And we don't know when... You couldn't have met him before that, because Rujing had just come to the devil. Dogen had been traveling around China. The Menzhu fascicle. What is Menzhu? Face-to-face.

[27:59]

The face-to-face fascicle on face-to-face transmission, which Dogen says is crucial. You have to learn it directly from the teacher. And I learned it from Rujing. That face-to-face meeting, that's at number one. Let's look at number one. Where did anybody read that line? Beginning on 5-1. Good. Any degree there? On 5-1 of the first year? Yeah. All right. Good. Good. Good. Okay, so this was two months earlier.

[29:09]

And he says quite a few interesting things in that passage. What does he not say in that passage? What's that? He doesn't say that, right? But what does he say? He what? He revealed the Dharma gate. And he gained the transmission from that revelation. So he gained the transmission. So what some people have been pointing out in the Japanese... studies of this, is that Dogen must have had Shinjin Natsuraka when he first met Rujim. And he talks about this as a life-altering experience, that first meeting, which is a couple months early. It doesn't quite say, but it's quite clear that we're funding the experience for Dogen. So, if you look at above, well, let's put it this way.

[30:21]

So one theory, then, is that there's the reprimander scolding Shinjin Dasaraku. That took place when the monk was falling asleep. The other theory is that When Dogen first met Ruzhin, there was such a profound exchange that Dogen already had Shinjin Datsuraku at that time. And does it matter exactly when he got it? Would anybody see any difference that would it make in the long run? Yes. Well, the Ruzhin story is almost metaphorical. I'm very sleepy, waiting. Whereas the other is actually more in the tradition. Right. So one thing Dogen wants to say in a lot of his writings is awakening or enlightenment doesn't really have a before and after, which the reprimand experience has.

[31:25]

And what's wrong with before and after? Well, the continuity of enlightenment is such that You know, it's always there, and it's not something that comes to you all of a sudden out of the blue and ends after that momentary experience. But the metaphor, the beauty of that story, you know, is quite important. Now, let's go back to that story. After Dogen witnessed the scolding, what happened next? Okay, so let's go to number three. Would anybody read that one?

[32:31]

Dogen said, I have cast off body mind. U Jing said, casting off body mind, body mind, casting off. Dogen said, this just happened. So please do not approve this already. U Jing said, I am not. Dogen said, what do you mean? U Jing said, casting off, casting off. At that moment, the attendant monk, Guan Pei, Okay, so quite a few ideas in that one. Now that is indignable. So this is basically the Dengoloku passage.

[33:37]

But some of these points here are not mentioned in anything that Dogen wrote. When we look at what Dogen wrote, there's another very interesting passage that comes up in a writing called Hokkyoki. Anybody familiar with Hokkyoki? It's... Yeah, well, it's the Record of Ho-Kyo-Yura. So it was translated a couple times. Kaats, Kanahashi has a translation in, I think that appears in the Moon on a Druidra book, or Enlightenment on Fouls, one of those two books. It was translated in Dogen's Formative Years in China, way back in 1980. I think Waddel and Abe had a translation. It's the Record of Dogen's Conversations with Rujing. And it covers quite a few topics, including the casting off body-mind idea. But in that passage, Dogen says, at one point, he says, you know, when I got to China, I was not satisfied with any of the other teachers, and I traveled around, and I wanted to find the real teacher.

[34:48]

And then I heard about Ru Jing, and I wrote him a letter. And I said, look, even though I'm a foreign monk, and I'm still in training, I really want to have the privilege of coming to see you for private conversations. Can I come to the abyss room?" Which was quite extraordinary, because for somebody at Dogon's level, and especially for a foreigner, and we had a sense that there were a lot of Koreans and other Japanese monks training there, as well as some Daoists and other local people who were not in the Zen tradition. They were usually kept on the side, it seems like. They were usually kept in a separate area, and they would not have had such direct contact with the abbot. But according to Dogen, he originally said, fine, you can come. You don't have to ask permission. You can come at will. And then there's a record of their conversations. What's interesting about that is that One of the interesting things about that is it sounds like Dogen contacted Rujing before he had that first meeting with him in May, or the fifth month.

[35:58]

Even before then, Dogen was so impressed by what he had heard about Rujing that he asked for this permission. Now, we don't know what got lost in translation over the years, but if we talk about how this transmission happened between Rujing and Dogen, we have the letter that was written before the first meeting, We have the first meeting. We have the reprimand story. We have the later that night story that we just read. Now the later that night story has a lot of interesting features to it, but most of that later that night story was not mentioned by Dogen himself. What Dogen himself mentions is I wrote the letter to Ruzhin, and I met Ruzhin And he talks about regime teaching cast off body-mind. There's no question about that. If it was, indeed, cast off body-mind, not cast off dust from the mind, but putting that aside for the moment, you know, there's an interesting sequence of events.

[37:00]

So what does this passage add to the account? Yeah. It seems like I have cast off body-mind, and regime said at the end, casting off, casting off, so it's not that you're doing anything, just body-minds. passed off and... Right. So we get a kind of progression there. And in between, what does he say? Dogen? Dogen or Rushing. So Dogen says, look, I came here because basically earlier today I had the experience. I wanted you to approve the experience. Of course, as soon as Rushing approves it, he says, wait a second. Yeah. Yeah. But... And we get to the cast-off, casting-off, or casting-off, casting-off, but what else does he say that's an interesting wordplay? We get to that a little bit after, but in between, from the first casting-off to the casting-off, casting-off, he says... Right, and he's not approving it.

[38:12]

Body, mind, body, mind. Body, mind, casting off. So he has that Shinjin Datsuraku, Datsuraku Shinjin. Now that's a very Dogenes kind of saying. Because we see him doing that all the time. If you read like the facts called Sokushin, that Butsu, this very mind is Buddha. And he said, this very mind is Buddha. Buddha is this very mind. This very... is fluid of mind, that he's always playing around and changing the order of the characters and, you know, playing with that grammar. That's part of the continuous mistake idea, I think, that the entanglement is just, let's explore it from every possible angle. So flipping it around is very Dogen-esque. But was it Rujing-esque? Or it doesn't matter. But, you know, this comes into the story at a certain point. and maybe it's an amplification, maybe the stories got transmitted orally, and then finally they got, you know, it got brewed down by Keizan.

[39:17]

But it's interesting that Keizan leaves out the reprimand, but he includes this kind of flourish, which makes it, you know, very interesting. So if we look at Shinjin Datsuraku, and then Shinjin Datsuraku, Datsuraku Shinjin, that's number two. And number three, that's a rock, that's a rock. What can we say about those three? It all happens in this one brief conversation. So there's quite a lot of rhetorical activity, which I think is a good thing, a very interesting thing. What are the distinctions between them? Yeah. Yeah. As passing up on it in mind, the object becomes... Right, right. So in the second one, the subject-object is reversed.

[40:19]

So again, it takes away, I guess the comment was made that, you know, is it Dogen exactly doing, is that person doing this, or is the Dharma manifesting itself through Dogen's understanding at that moment? And so... So the interesting emphasis on just the pure activity, casting off, casting off, as a state that doesn't have a beginning or end. Go back to that before or after, casting off, casting off. And so as soon as you put casting off on a pedestal or stereotype it or try to pin it down, that idea itself has to be cast off because these are just... words, which in the end can be very creatively used, but are also kind of arbitrary and don't equal the experience. Okay, so, and then we get the idea about the, this is kind of unique for the foreigner, and according to the Okie Okie account, Ruoxing not only allowed

[41:30]

Dogen to come to his chambers for private conversations, but offer him to become a successor. And Dogen turned it down. He said, first of all, I have to go back to Japan. My mission is to return to Japan. And also, I'm afraid that I wouldn't be... It would be difficult for me to kind of leapfrog over all the other Chinese followers as a foreigner. Well, it turns out Rujing... died shortly after this. He died in 1227, and Dogen did return to Japan. But this mentions, this passage of the last sentence mentions one other point that's, I think, important for understanding this whole package of events, which is... Well, the roaring light thunder is, I think, is an interesting way to put it. You know, there's a blue clip record saying... you know, you can roar like thunder, but is there any rain after all?

[42:34]

That's a put-down. That could be a put-down if you, you know, you're, what do we say, you're the horker. Yeah, yeah. But I can hear it in a positive way. But what's the very last sentence? Yeah. So, how does that fit into the whole story here? Yeah. And it's another event in the transmission process. So we had the letter being written, we had the first meeting, we had the reprimand, we had the later that night of the reprimand, and then we had the precepts. So this all happened in a way, it was very fast-paced because it all took place in a couple of months, it seems like, during that retreat period, Pope 25. So if we look at the three images, the first one on the left is that's the first meeting.

[43:40]

The middle one is the rebel man. The third one is the later that night meeting. In the first meeting and the third meeting, he burns incense. Now, one of the things that comes into the story later on, and when I try to track this down historically, it doesn't seem to appear in the story until the 1700s, with a famous monk named Minzon in the 1700s, was editing a lot of Togen's writings, including Shippo Genzo, and also doing a lot of other things to organize Sopto's sect in that period in Japanese history. And Minzon also... worked more on Dogen's biography. It seems like he brought in a lot more legendary accounts. In his account that came out in the 1750s, he says that Wu Jing had a dream before he knew that Dogen was even coming, that a successor to Dongshan would appear.

[44:45]

So there was a kind of premonition on Wu Jing's part ahead of time. Okay, so let's take a look at page two. And actually, let me skip down to point A for a moment. Point A has One of the key passages about Shinjindatsura, the Dōgen actually mentions eight times. The wording is a little bit different. You can see that the eight mansions are listed here. Three are in festivals of Shobo Genso. Gyoji, Zomai Ozomai, which is the king of all samadhis, Gyoji is the same practice, and Bukyo, which is Buddhist sutras.

[45:52]

It's also listed at Ebedo, So that's four times. And then it's listed several times in A.J. Co-Local, where Doge does an extensive record. It's also listed in Hokioki. I put this list down in chronological order. Hokioki was supposed to be conversations in China, so that would be the first, number one. Number two was Pendoa, because Doge was supposed to have written that in Quote 31. That was only a few years after it came back. But then he kept going back and referring to this. It usually starts out by saying Rujing said, but on two occasions, actually in Bendoa and one other occasion, he doesn't say Rujing said, he said, this is the way it is. But, you know, maybe he took for granted that his audience would know he was referring to Rujing. So, let me ask somebody to read that one. And you don't have to read it eight times, just... Eugene said, studying Zen is casting off body-mind.

[47:02]

Without depending on burning incense, making vows, reciting the name of Buddha, performing repentance, or reading citrus, you build yourself to just sitting. You'll get asked, what is casting off body-mind? Eugene said, casting off body-mind is our Zen. Would you just sit if you are free from the five-sentence desired and five-tenglootters? Okay, let me mention about that last part. As I was looking back at Carl Bielefeld's famous book, Dogen's Manuals of Meditation. Anybody familiar with that book? Carl Bielefeld was a professor at Stanford University, and he's working on translation. He's still working on what will probably be the most scholarly translation of Shibu Gantel.

[48:07]

Some of it's on a website that is posted on the Stanford system there. But anyway, he said that when Dogen asked that question... is this freedom the same as what the sutra schools talk about? He said, that was a real... I was trying to go back and see Carl's comment there. He said, that was a really sharp question, and Rujing didn't answer it very well. Because Dogen was really saying, how do we distinguish the Zen transmission from Yinayana and Mahayana? And in a way, it's a good point that Rujing makes to say there's a continuity, and it's really basically the same thing. But... According to Carl's comment, Wu Jing didn't quite measure up to the expectation Dogen must have had in asking such a sharp question. Being a young guy there, and he's still kind of nervous in front of Wu Jing maybe, and he's able to press him on these crucial points. So that was an interesting thing. But going back to the main part of the passage in Goal, what does this add to the whole atmosphere?

[49:13]

What's that? A single practice. A single practice. And what about the other practices? Not so much. What's that? They're included. They're included? They're not included. Okay. Without depending on... So that's always a key word, I think, when we look at Buddhist writings and then writings. When you say don't depend, it doesn't mean don't have them at all, necessarily, which is the way some people interpret it, but don't rely on that. So... But, okay, so what are those five? Okay, different rituals. Let's list the five rituals. Burning incense number one, right? Making vows. Chanting the name of the Buddha. And reading sutras. Okay, so those five. Now, Which of those are or are not followed in most Zen practice?

[50:31]

What's that? Yes. All of them? Yeah. Yeah, well, I don't know, he does it. What's he doing? He's always, every classical, he says his own. Right, right. The ritual of Nambutsu, in Pure Land Buddhism, right? He says that's like a frog croaking, just a meaningless sound. And I think, I think it... One difference between Chinese and Zen and what's happening in China where they did integrate the Nebutsu recitation generally into the practice is that Dogen and I think the Rinzai schools in Japan agree with them on that point where they didn't necessarily integrate Nebutsu.

[51:36]

So I would say four or at least five are still used, right? Yeah. Is there any reference here at all to... like stream-enter dropping, you know, the reliance on rituals, freedom, you know, going back to the age of India where Buddha was rebelling kind of against that thought of you have to be so ritual in order for you to know about one source of the universe. It seems like a stream-enter, the more you move up or down, every one of you knew that, they let go of these spiders. Like these spiders, they're releasing these spiders, yet somehow a ritual is going to lead them to the mighty. Okay, good. Let me hear that again. The release from the fetters is that... Yeah, so... So are the fetters the rituals or the fetters are the desires? I think the fetter is the belief that this ritual is going to aid in your enlightenment somehow. It's going to unlock the King of the universe. Right. Right.

[52:37]

That ritualism, at the end of itself, is not going to... Right. I mentioned it will be mentioned as well. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Right. Yes. If I understand your question correctly, I think so. In other words... Yeah, you know, these rituals are supposed to free you from other hindrances, desires. But if the rituals become a desire in a certain way, a desire for enlightenment, even though that's a noble kind of desire as opposed to other desires, then it becomes another hindrance or better. So we have to relativize those rituals and not depend on them. But then the question is, are they eliminated? And, you know, he's not saying that

[53:38]

necessarily to eliminate them. In fact, he does encourage them in a lot of his writings. Now, in addition to the Buddha himself and his rules and regulations for monastic practice, as Zen developed in China, they had additional sets of rules that they added to the Buddhist rules. And they added to the Hinayana or Mahayana rules. I mean, that's partly the Dogen's probing question there, what's the relation to these other sets of rules? But in the Zen set of rules, they emphasize meditation, they emphasize the teaching of the master. The master is the living Buddha. So anything worshipful or devotional is not necessary and can be counterproductive because the teaching is transmitted by the living Buddha. And so you don't have to worship an historical order or shakimuni.

[54:41]

But it doesn't mean it's eliminated. So it's a fine line there. And the one I'm going to want to look at more carefully, probably we'll get to tomorrow, is reciting sutras, which is going to be on the fourth page of this handout. Because he's got a key fascicle about reciting sutras, the words kan kin. And... You know, that's one of the things I want to probe there is what's the relation between casting off body-mind and these five that need discounts. But I think he only really discounts one of the five. But how do you develop the right balance between discounting and not really discounting? Because it's kind of a mixed message because there's different levels of understanding that people are going, you know, depending on the level of awareness of the practitioner. And a message for one practitioner may be detrimental to another one if they're not pretty clear at that point.

[55:45]

And that's, I think, one of the things that Dogon wants to say. But since we're running out of time, let's end with... There's a lot of items here. Okay. Let's look at number 10 on page 3. And what I tried to do here was looking at Dogen's extensive record, translated by Taigen Layden and Shohaku Okamura. Strongly recommend that you get a chance to look at that. Those are Dogen's sermons delivered. a different style of sermons from Shobo Genzo. So they're both collections of sermons, but they have quite a different style. They complement each other in a lot of ways, but they have a very different flavor. Usually the Shobo Genzo lectures are more lengthy essays, and the extensive record sermons are shorter, more demonstrative.

[56:50]

Like a lot of times Dogen holds up his staff and draws a circle in the air, or kind of throws down the staff, or make the very... or uses poetry. It's not as much of a line-by-line commentary as you get in Shobo Genzo. But really, I appreciate Dogen, I think you have to look at both sides. Fortunately, we have excellent translations of all of that. But in Shobo Genzo, we have a number of translations. So that makes it sometimes confusing, because like I said at the beginning, sometimes those translations are a little bit contradictory. They're not necessarily contradictory, but there's a slightly different nuance there that is interesting to explore. In the extensive record, the A.E. Kolobov, there's really only one main translation, very reliable though, and it's got a lot of great footnotes to explain some of the details. So 6.419 means it was the sixth section. It's a ten-section work, and it's a sixth section.

[57:53]

And there were like 530 or so lectures altogether. So, you know, I cited three of those. 6419, 6424, 6358. Okay, so let's look at, let's finish off now with 6419. Okay, now, To really bring this out, let me ask somebody not only to read it, but to stand up and kind of demonstrate as you're reading it. It's a pretty simple demonstration, but who has a dramatic flair for us at 4.30? I have a whisk. Okay, you have a hat, right? I have a hat. I have a hat. Okay, all right. I want you to circle with this hat. It's whisk. Casting off body and mind is an effortless function.

[58:55]

June, another circle was to say, body and mind casting off is quiet too without extinction. Okay. I didn't put the rest of it there. I can't remember. It probably threw down the way. I walked off in the thing. Good to see you, Greg. You're used to it, right? Okay, so, for the final comment today, who would like to sum up the point that he's making here? So, in other words, he comes into the Dharma Hall. These were the formal lectures in extensive worship. He'd come into the Dharma Hall, probably five or six times a month. The months would be lined up. He'd sit on what they call the high seat, or kind of throne-like seat, that he'd be able to sit on. And he'd always have the fly whisk, or a staff, and he... He often uses that in a demonstrative way and making short statements. So how can we sum up the significance here?

[60:01]

Equating that nirvana with circle. Okay, so circle is a good symbol for the unity, for the undivided. Extinction is to... Right, so you're abandoning nirvana in a way. Yeah. So you're casting off, you know, if nirvana is casting off, then that's to say... But he says without extinction, I guess. So why does he say without extinction? What was it? Right. It still applies the before and after dualism. The right and wrong, the violent and the violent. No trace continues. The no trace continues endlessly, as you said, in the age of co-op, right?

[61:05]

Yeah. By the end of the study, the radio talks about foods and pieces, and how someone, I guess, has talked about the mind, and then see the world with one giant eyeball. One giant eyeball, right. And someone who's not passed out by the ordinary in their place sees the words in case of pieces. And so that extinction is pieces. Correct. To see the world. Right, right. And sometimes it's about holding up the one fist as opposed to the five fingers, which is that depicted pieces. So it's that undivided, that unity. Okay. And very good. So finally, what's the difference between the first statement after making the circle and then after the second circle? Because they cast him off, it's like you're the agent doing it.

[62:25]

You're releasing it. I noticed I was saying to my MA student, and I know I'm not up with the technology, but I used to think that when final albums, for those of us to go back, and then CDs came out, what would they do? What would be the verb? If a singer released, well, there it is. Release. Release. Release a single. Now what do they talk about? Two and a half. Drop. Exactly. And that, to me, was it. Is it dropping body-mind or releasing body-mind? In any case, they make a lot of money anyway, right? But, yeah. acting up, like an external agent acting up. Right. So we got that reversal that we saw in the Rujing passage. So Dogen does use that.

[63:26]

So it is possibly got that from Rujing. Let's take the thing and turn it around. So one is don't be the agent, but then don't not be the agent either. So it's always that middle way. And this is Dogen coming at it. from both sides and putting you into that middle way, which is the undivided, I think, the one big eyeball, which is the gen. When you look at shopo genzo, right, gen is the eye, the dharma eye and the big eyeball. There's a whole facet, a ganzai on that eye and the function of that eye. And one of the things he says with the reading sutras, we'll see tomorrow, is like if you want to read sutras, meaning you really want to understand the sutra that you're reading, you have to have one thing which let's leave that as a cliffhanger for tomorrow.

[64:28]

So thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma Talks are offered free of charge 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.

[64:50]

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