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. Good morning. Well, we've really got it in for you this morning. This is the new completed translation of the Shobo Genzo, which Kaz Tanahashi did with many of us at Zen Center. And it's 1,500 pages, 700 years in the making, a cast of thousands. Kaz started to do this translation work.

[01:03]

Well, first he started to translate the Shobo Genzo from, Shobo Genzo was the major work of Heihei Dogen, who's the founder of Japanese Soto Zen. And Kaz first started to translate it in the 60s. He had this Japanese teacher in Japan, and then he translated it from old Japanese to modern Japanese and he found it very difficult to do and then he came to Zen Center in the 60s and met Suzuki Roshi and Suzuki Roshi heard that he translated Dogen and he said give a talk on Dogen which he'd never done before and he he found and then he started to do some translation work into English, and he found that after translating from old Japanese to English, he found it easier to translate from old Japanese to modern Japanese.

[02:13]

He had more permission because it was such a great leap that it was easier to translate, and if we tried to stay too close to the language, it was very difficult to translate. So this is, you can do your exercises with this if you need a doorstop. I was involved in this project early on, and about five or six years ago, Taz had his 70th birthday, and he translated half of this. And I said, we didn't have another 70 years to do the next half. So we made a great effort to finish it. The completion of the translation of Dogen's great work, The Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, is a milestone in Zen's coming of age in the Western world.

[03:39]

This work in Shasta Abbey's recently completed translation of the text marked the absorption of Dogen's life work to Zen practitioners outside of Japan and establishes the mind relic of Dogen's written teaching in the English-speaking world. This translation was done within a community context with many translators, as with Shasta Abbey's recently done one. One thing about translation, you can understand something on one level, but to understand it in which you can translate it into another... mind map, another language. You have to know it very well. In fact, what made, what people think made Suzuki Roshi distinctive was he was able to translate into English language, into simple words, Buddhism, which you have to really know well in order to do it in another language.

[05:00]

Because you can't just fudge with the words. We're going to celebrate the publication of this. There were about 35 translators that helped translate it. And in the first week of November, first weekend, we're going to have a celebration in which we invited a lot of the translators who came to come. And it'll be a spectacular weekend. if you like words. We're also gonna show, there's a recent movie about Dogen's life, which is called Zen, which we're gonna show on Saturday, that Saturday night. Just to give you a flavor of what Dogen was like, and Dogen's main question is, if we're already enlightened, why don't we have to practice?

[06:05]

The moment is as it is, and nothing can be added to it. Why do we work on it? How can you work on it? This is another reframing of the sudden and gradual polemic, which was actually the first main issue that Zen addressed. And there were two schools when Zen started. One was the sudden school, and one was the gradual school. And of course, being human beings, they thought that one had to be right and one had to be wrong. But we gradually work on sudden enlightenment and we suddenly discover gradual... And this is true in many... I want to talk about a lot of different topics and it all breaks down to sudden and gradual and trying to choose when there's no need to choose. I'm going to read a little bit just to give you a little bit of flavor of a fascicle called Butsu Yo Butsu, Buddha and Buddha, which Kaz worked with, I think, Ed Brown on.

[07:23]

This is fascinating, I know, as I turn the pages. But there's a teaching in that in which just meditate. Then you can stand, even bad lectures are useful. Buddha Dharma cannot be known by a person. For this reason, since olden times, no ordinary person has realized Buddha Dharma. No practitioner of the lesser vehicle has mastered Buddha Dharma. Because it is realized by Buddhas alone, it is said in the Lotus Sutra, only a Buddha and a Buddha can thoroughly master it. When you realize Buddha Dharma, you do not think, this is realization just as I expected. Even if you think so, Realization inevitably differs from your expectation. Realization is not like your conception of it.

[08:51]

Accordingly, realization cannot take place as previously conceived. When you realize Buddha Dharma, you do not consider how realization came about. Reflect on this. What you think one way or another before realization is not a help for realization. So what are we doing here, huh? Although realization is not like any of the thoughts preceding it, this is not because such thoughts were actually bad and could not be realization. Past thoughts in themselves were already realization. But since you were seeking elsewhere, you thought and said that thoughts cannot be realization. However, it is worth noticing that what you think one way or another is not a helpful realization. For this reason, you become cautious not to be small-minded. So, if you came across one thing today, cautious, don't be small-minded.

[09:55]

It takes a big book to tell you that. That's all I'm going to say about the show of Genzo. Except it is a... It's taken, this practice of seated meditation has been in America maybe 50 years, maybe more, but 50 years because it's taken that long for the basic works of Soto Zen to be translated. And so it takes a long time.

[10:55]

Now that the basic works have been translated, we can start to figure out what's the American way. Because we've been handed the traditional way. And the traditional way is always being adapted. The traditional way as it came to Japan from China was different than the Japanese developed it into. So now I'm gonna talk about art. I have an art show and I'm gonna teach brush painting this afternoon, which you're welcome to join. Brush painting is about sudden realization. Most of the time when I paint, I just make a stroke.

[11:57]

I don't have any idea what it's gonna be. And then I create something out of it. Now, it's interesting that in America, when I teach the free stroke, people don't want to make anything of it. They just want to have the free stroke because they're freed from their thinking. And that's good to do for a while. But I think you have to bring in the mind again. We're not better if we'd have lobotomies. But we shouldn't be ruled by our mind. But our mind can participate with the rest of us. For many years, Kaz, who did this book, I did painting for my whole life, but not so much when I was seriously practicing because there was no space to paint.

[13:00]

And also I had other things. But after I became a teacher and had to make documents and fill out names on the rocks on the back of the small robe, I began to paint again. And all this time I admired Kaz's work because he was clearly about the stroke. In fact, I remember when my son was, who's 24 now, was two years old, I had him on to my back. And Kaz laid out about a three tatami, four tatami square space. And he got a mop. He put it in a bucket of ink and put the mop over the, canvas.

[14:06]

And it was clearly about the stroke, about the freedom of the stroke. When you do a free stroke, it's got lots of air in it. When you're trying to do something, it doesn't have much life in it. And then I met Max Gimlet, who came to Zen Center wanting to know about Buddhism. and wanting to paint. So he taught me painting and I taught him Buddhism. It's a fair trade. And they're both about being free. They're both about being free by the concepts of your mind and the habits. And it's not just your habits and concepts of mind, it's the cultural concepts of mind and it's the history, it's the genetics. There's so much to transform, to see through.

[15:09]

That's why it takes a while, even though it happened suddenly. This book came out suddenly. But it was gradually worked on for many years. But then all of a sudden, there was one day and it was complete. So I'm going to talk about, in the workshop I'll talk about painting and how to do it and how to free yourself in painting. Even though your free stroke isn't free, it will lead you to freedom. I have Parkinson's and I sometimes teach painting at Tassajara. And there was a doctor who was taking the painting workshop, and he said, when you paint it, I don't see your Parkinson's.

[16:16]

The concentration and effort transform it. I did a workshop at the Zen group in Oregon, in Portland. It's the second one I did. And I find myself saying that painting isn't owned by anybody. Buddhist practice isn't owned by anybody. You may think that the great artists are in charge of art, or that the institutions are in charge of art, of meditation or Zen. The institutions and teachers are very important. And they pass a tradition which has been very successful. But nobody owns it.

[17:18]

It's not a possession. You can't control it. If you try to control it, you kill it. And this has to do with sudden and gradual. People take sides. I'm sudden. I'm gradual. Nice to meet you, sudden. Nice to meet you, gradual. But in fact, we're beings that live through time. Each moment is free and complete, and it's linked to the moments before and after. medical treatments, I get sacrocranial work, and that gives me a sudden healing. I kind of drop all my symptoms and can feel what it is to be healthy, maybe.

[18:25]

And then I do other treatments, which I don't feel any better at, but gradually will help to transform my illness, I hope. So sudden and gradual. This is often, this can also be translated into being and doing. Being is sudden, doing is gradual. There's this Zen saying, don't just sit there, do something. And then there's just don't do something, sit there. Both of those are true. And I'm not just going to sit here. I'm going to move. So, one of the basic tenets of Zen training is to don't move.

[19:45]

And sometimes it's good to move. So, another thing I wanted to comment on is, have you noticed the jets going by? It's really annoying. And not only is it annoying, I don't think it helps the vibes of the city. But on the other hand, I think this is happening all over the world, and we have a very mild experience of it. And we should realize how these things affect. They're not even dropping bombs here. They're just showing off.

[20:51]

So on the one hand, I think, well, it's good that we experience this, that we can't ignore it, that we can't lead our peaceful lives and think that everyone is having them. But on the other hand, I think we can try to be more peaceful at home as well as away. And, you know, I think there's something good about showing off what you can do in the air. There's a place for that. But you should volunteer for it. I know there are people like NASCAR racing. But if we had NASCAR racing in the streets haphazardly, it wouldn't work out so well. So what am I trying to say?

[21:58]

I'm trying to say be free. Don't get caught by your dogmas or even your highest understanding. As Dogen said, what you think one way or another may not be true, may not help you to realize the experience of what's happening right now. We're all in the midst of transformation. and we're one truth right now. So the truth right now for me is I'm shaking and I'm standing and I'm not sitting. And then there are other times when I'm sitting and I'm not standing. Is one right and one wrong? I think one of the main weaknesses or characteristics of Western mind is that we all have low self-esteem, except for those of us who are more arrogant.

[23:08]

And those with low self-esteem work very well with those who are arrogant, because they can feel arrogant and the others can feel low self-esteem. It's a pact. Dalai Lama, many Western teachers told the Dalai Lama that we have low self-esteem and said, no, you don't have low self-esteem. You do? That's terrible. The problem with low self-esteem is you can't take criticism. Criticism is devastating or you can completely deny it. You can't take it for what it is, information for how you behave. So that's one other message for today. Listen to what everyone says. Don't believe it, but listen to it and see what you can learn from it. It's information, it's not judgment.

[24:15]

If you take everything that happens in the world as judgment, you'll be running from the world. If you take everything as information, ah, that's interesting. So I think 50 years after Suzuki Roshi came to America, a little over 50 years, we've got a foothold on practice in America. And we've had to stay pretty close to the tradition. Because you don't know what's the tradition and what's not. You don't know what's American disease or Japanese disease.

[25:17]

And many of us were attracted to Zen Center because it didn't have Americans as a disease so much. But then people said, we want it more American. We missed our old disease. But it's not a question of American or Japanese. modern or ancient, sudden or gradual. It's in this moment what seems right to us. And it's a slow process of suddenly realizing what's going on. See if there's anything else. Is there one burning question in here? One cold question?

[26:22]

The bookstore. There may be a copy in the bookstore, but... in the library, but I don't know if you can take it out yet. But they're last in the bookstore, and they're, we sell them by the pound. How much English pounds is that? I think it's $150 for over 1,500 pages. I'll be down and answer questions or ask questions in a few minutes you can see my paintings in the art lounge and you can sign up for my show at 2 o'clock but also protest to someone about these planes coming out about all hours I think if they posted from 2 to 5 on such and such a date that would be okay but they don't do that

[27:44]

What are they practicing? If they didn't practice, they wouldn't crash. And why practice in the middle of the city? If they wanted to practice, wouldn't they do it over the desert? Yeah. But also look at the good side that Many people suffer from this much more than we do. We have it easy. Well, have a good day. 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, please visit sfzc.org and click giving.

[28:53]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[28:56]

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