Hold on. I said don't. Do it. Hello. Good evening. Welcome. I have a few minutes for us to sit quietly together. Good evening.

[06:39]

Welcome. Welcome, all of you. So, I've been a busy person. Just this last over a week, I guess, almost a week, I was down in Los Angeles celebrating my daughter Sabrina's 30th birthday. Hard to believe, especially for me, as all of you who have raised children must understand. It's like, how did that happen? Anyway, Los Angeles is, I haven't been there terribly often, but it is an amazing place, and it's truly beyond description. I think it's an excellent example of the ungraspable nature of reality. There are many hours, many places, many times, areas of Los Angeles that are devoted to the illusion of great wealth, great beauty, and youth. as the primary purposes of our human existence. I was almost convinced, feeling a little bit like, well, too late.

[07:44]

It really does feel like this tiny Buddhist endeavor here in Northern California on the coast is swimming upstream against these very powerful currents of fashion and finance. And so here we go. All together, our little band, our little Sangha, Like migrating salmon, you know, pushing against the current, you know, stroke by stroke, hoping to reproduce ourselves. Bye-bye. Anyway, that's my L.A. story. So this evening I'm returning to Dogen's teaching, his masterpiece called the Genjo Koan. And I hope you have a copy of that so you can follow along. I'm not going to get very far this evening, so not to worry. Just basically will be touching on the first paragraph. So, as I said last week, for Dogen, the authenticity of practice has to do with the manner and quality of negotiating the way.

[08:47]

You know, through this very dynamic and dialectic relationship of practice and awakening. Practice-realization, as he calls it over and over again. You know, the two foci, which are both viewed in this context of liberation. I mean, that's the point. You know, the reason we're trying to understand and to move between these two is for the purposes of freeing ourselves of our dualistic boundaries, boundariness. So in Japanese, this relationship is called the Ganjo Koan. And that's the name of Dogen's essay that we're going to be studying. So again, as I said last week, means to fully show up or to fully appear in the present moment. like an appearance right now like this one we're all doing right now right where you are is again fully appearing in the present and jo as in genjo means to become or to complete or to accomplish so the fully accomplishing your appearance right now kind of like wholeheartedly so together genjo means to manifest or to actualize or to appear and become you know in which the self

[10:03]

And all things in the universe are nothing but the true Buddha Dharma itself. So just this is it. No other it. No other now. No other time. No other you. Just this. So as I said last week, the underlying intention in Dogen's teaching is to help us engage in some authentic how of practice. You know, how to sit. How to work together. You know, how to care for objects. And especially how to care for one another. And that's the big one. So all of that depends entirely on the strength of Zazen. As Dogen said in his first essay that we were looking at the last few classes, the Fukan Zazengi, Universal Recommendation for Seated Meditation. So Dogen says, in surveying the past, we find that transcendence of both unenlightenment and enlightenment, two foci, and dying while either sitting or standing, two more, have all depended entirely on the strength of zazen.

[11:10]

So in the Genjo Koan, which is translated as actualizing the fundamental point, actualizing the fundamental point, which is this one right now, Dogen begins his essay with this rather amazing paragraph. As all things are Buddha Dharma, there is delusion and realization, practice, birth and death, and there are Buddhas and sentient beings. As the myriad things are without an abiding self, there is no delusion, no realization, no Buddha, no sentient being, no birth and death. The Buddha way is basically leaping clear of the many and the one. Thus there are birth and death, delusion and realization. sentient beings and Buddhas. Yet in attachment blossoms fall, and in aversion weeds spread."

[12:14]

So this first paragraph, basically Dogen is giving the whole pattern of Buddha's teaching, beginning with that very first sentence in which he names the primary elements of an all-inclusive Buddhist worldview. When all things are Buddha Dharma, there is delusion and realization, there is practice, there is birth and death, and there are Buddhas and sentient beings. That's the all-inclusive Buddhist worldview. He then turns that worldview, in which all things are the Buddha Dharma, into a worldview in which myriad things are without an abiding self, no separate self. From that point of view, there is no delusion. no realization, no Buddha, no sentient being, no birth and no death. So this sounds an awful lot like the Heart Sutra, right? No eyes, no ears, no nose, no body, no mind, no suffering, no cause, no cessation of suffering, no path leading to the cessation of suffering.

[13:21]

And this, as I think we all know from our studies, is the view from the perspective of the emptiness teachings. the teachings of non-separation of parts from the whole, one whole. So Suzuki Rashi says in his talks on the Genjo Koan that when all things are without self, what we do is done in the realm of selflessness, just like milk and water. When the whole fabric is woven completely in various colors, what you see are not pieces of colored thread, what you see is one whole cloth. which reminds me, of course, of this wonderful weaving of the one-hole tarantula nebula that was done by our very own Millicent of Australia, out of single threads of many colors, coated many colors. Suzuki Roshi then says, do you understand? There's no need to say this is water when you drink water and milk.

[14:25]

There is no water and milk. So seeing the whole cloth and seeing the individual threads or drinking milk and knowing it's made up mostly of water is the Buddhist way called beyond being and non-being. It is the two foci that do not exist one without the other. But we observe all things without any contradiction between on the one hand there is one whole and on the other hand there are many parts. And just as we see with our two eyes, while not splitting what we see into halves. We see the whole thing with these two eyes. Suzuki Roshi then says, when you are not sincere enough, we say, well, when we are not sincere enough, we say, this is Buddhism and that is another religion. Or, we are monks and they are lay people.

[15:27]

and then we don't understand the whole beautiful cloth. Suzuki Roshi goes on to say that he is just a piece of thread, but he knows how to make himself useful as part of the whole cloth. And that being useful as part of the whole is the Soto Zen way of practice. Not knowing how to be useful, no matter what kind of thread we are, is not our way. So again, this is on the doing, right? On the action, like Dogen is about embodied practice, is about how. How do I be useful? How can I be useful as a single thread in service of the whole cloth? So I'm really grateful to have the teachings on the Yen Jokon in a book, there are three of them, three teachings, that was put together quite a few years ago, I think back in 2011, by Zen Center's Michael Wenger and then abbot Mel Weitzman, and they found these three commentaries on the Genjo Koan by contemporary Zen Roshis.

[16:33]

So the first one is by a teacher by the name of Nishiara Boku-san, and the second is by Shunryo Suzuki Roshi, our founder, and the third by Kosho Uchiyama Roshi, who is Okamura Roshi's teacher. So this book was published by Counterpoint Press, and it's called Dogan's Genjo Koan, Three Commentaries. And it's such a delightful book. They're giving lectures to their monks. So these are contemporary teachers who are lecturing to these young monks about this ancient teaching of their great ancestor, Dogan Senji. So before I go too deep into their comments, as we're reading through the text, I thought it might be helpful to say a little bit about these three teachers and especially their relationship to Suzuki Roshi as well as to Okamura Roshi. Both of them are contemporary teachers who have given the entirety of their lives to helping English-speaking people gain access to these amazing teachings.

[17:36]

Some of you may have had the privilege of studying with Okamura Roshi or perhaps even Suzuki Roshi, I certainly didn't. I missed him by a few years, but I've had the privilege of studying with his disciples who clearly thought he was the best thing that ever happened to their life, you know. I must say I feel the same way about all of it. So Nishiar Bokusan was born in 1821, and is considered to be one of the most authoritative scholars of Dogen's Shobo Genso. which is the entire collection of essays that were written by Dogen, the Shobo Genso. So the Genjo Koan and the Fukan Sazengi that we looked at in the last few weeks, and now the Genjo Koan, these are essays within this collection of somewhat like 90 essays in the Shobo Genso. Treasury of the true Dharma eye is what that means. That's the Buddha's eye. The one eye that sees the foci as not two.

[18:39]

So Nishiara Bukusan was active at the time when Soto Zen in Japan had begun to revisit and make available the teachings of its founder, Dogenzenji, which had not been made available for over 500 years. So much of this was held in the libraries of the temples. Only the most senior monks could look at the material. Many of them didn't. And in some sense, it was like, you know, Treasure of the Lost Ark had been filed in some government, you know, filing system and no one knew where it was anymore. It's kind of been lost in the library. So having been found and begun to study, now it's just blossomed into just a major study of this fantastic teacher who we all owe a great deal and have great respect for. So one of the disciples of Boksan was another very excellent scholar whose name was Kishizawa Ion. And Suzuki Roshi, this is where the connection to Suzuki Roshi comes, Suzuki Roshi was born six years after Bokusan's death and by the time he was a young monk he was attending lectures on the Shobo Genso given by Bokusan's disciple Kishizawa Ion whose temple as it turns out was very near

[20:01]

to Suzuki Roshi's own temple, Rinsoen. Now, when Mea and I, back in 2015, I think it was, visited Japan, me for the first time, Mea Winter, who's a tea teacher at Green Gold, has gone many times and will go again many times. She's got quite an intimate relationship with the tea world in Japan. Anyway, she took me by the hand and took me around to some amazing places, including these two temples. Rinsuen and Kishizawa Ion's temple. So I have some photographs of these that I wanted to share with you this evening, but I can't quite tell which is which. So I'm going to spend some time with Mea and have her remind me of which temple was that. I know Rinsuen, but the other ones, we have a couple of other choices that I want to make sure I'm telling you which is the correct information about these temples. They're quite beautiful. And it was a very special thing to be able to go and visit and see that this was not a very far distance for Suzuki Roshi to go in order to study with this amazing scholar and study the Shopo Genzo and particularly the Gento Kohan.

[21:14]

So maybe next week or the week after I can show you some photos of our visit to Japan. So Mel Weitzman said in this book that I've mentioned, of the writings of Nishara Boku-san that Boku-san is very playful and very down-to-earth and so are his disciples and very lucky for us because so was Suzuki Roshi. He was very playful and he was very loving and that was obvious to the people who met him. And Mel considers much of Suzuki Roshi's understanding of Dogen to be a direct result of the influence of Boku-san's teaching of these very challenging texts. So this is our lineage, going from Bokusan to Ion, to Suzuki, to us. So the third commentary, so we've got Suzuki Roshi and we've got Nishira Bokusan, of these three commentaries in this book that I'm talking about. The third commentary is by Uchiyama Roshi, who was a disciple of a teacher by the name of Kodo Sawaki Roshi, who was...

[22:20]

It must have been quite a character. I've heard about him a number of times from people in his lineage. So he didn't have his own temple. After the war, things were really grim in Japan. There wasn't a lot of food. Most people were on the verge of starvation a lot of the time. There was just not so much to eat. So some of these monks were really on the road for a long time. Koto Sawaki Roshi chose to do so. He was basically a traveler, a pilgrim, and he went from temple to temple. So he became known as Homeless Koto. That was his nickname. And then in his later years, he lived to be quite an old man, he went to live with his Dharma heirs at Antaiji Temple, which many of our students have actually gone to study at Antaiji because they welcome people from other countries to study. They don't do too much talking and they don't do much ritual. They just sit a lot of zazen. That's what they're especially known for. So Uchiyama Roshi himself, as I said, settled down there at Antaiji and he spent almost 30 years there with his Dharma sister whose name is Joshin-san.

[23:31]

Joshin-san is a name I knew from when I first arrived at Zen Center because she was this amazing sewing teacher who had come from Antaiji to California and taught sewing at the San Francisco Zen Center, in the very same style of sewing that all of you who've sewn your own Ocasas or Roxas have done. So this form of sewing these robes is what she taught, and in particular to Blanche Hartman, who was just a very devout disciple of Joshin-san. And there are actually pictures of this. Apparently she was a very small bodied woman with a big smile, Big, bright smile. And she had this hat, this kind of hat cap that she wore. And there are photographs of her in the sewing rooms of the Zen Center. So Okamura Roshi, who is Uchiyama's disciple, and now lives in Indiana. And again, I hope some of you have had an opportunity to study with him.

[24:33]

For many years, he would come to Zen Center and offer what were called Genzoe. which were teachings on the Shobu Genzo, Genzo A. In his introduction to this text and to the commentary by Uchiyama Roshi, he expresses such profound gratitude to his teacher for all of the sincere effort he made to bring Dogen's teachings to the world for the benefit of everyone. So over the next few weeks or months, I'm going to turn to these three commentaries to help us in our understanding of this very highly esteemed text. I'm going to begin with Nishiyar Boksan, and then Suzuki Roshi's commentary, and finally Uchiyama Roshi's commentary. So back to the first paragraph of the Genjo Koan. As all things are Buddha Dharma, there is delusion and realization. There's practice, birth and death, and there are Buddhas and sentient beings. As the myriad things are without an abiding self, there is no delusion, no realization, no Buddha, no sentient being, no birth and death.

[25:43]

The Buddha way is basically leaping clear of the many and the one. And thus there are birth and death, delusion and realization, sentient beings and Buddhas. Yet in attachment blossoms fall, and in aversion weeds spread. So Nishara Boksan says that the Genjo Kwan is the most difficult text of the entire Shobo Genzo, and he says to us that we should open the great vital eye and penetrate Dogen Zenji's words without sparing our body or our life, and that the fundamental teaching of Dogen's lifetime is in this fascicle. He then tells us that Zen teachers throughout the ages have usually one word or one phrase that characterizes their ultimate understanding of the Dharma. So you've heard great many of these. I read some of them to you last week, those little citations in Dogen's Fukanzazengi. For Zhuang Sa, the phrase was one bright pearl.

[26:45]

He would repeat that phrase quite often. For Matsu, this very mind is Buddha. For Zhao Zhou, the cypress tree in the garden. And for Dogen, the Genjo koan. These phrases are called words of iron, words of iron. Maybe each of you has a kind of phrase or a word of iron that you use in your own life to kind of recenter your understanding of reality or what's happening. Something comforting, I would guess, or opening or illuminating. I'm rather fond of just this is it. I didn't make that up. It's not my iron words because they're not unique to me. Iron words are words that haven't been used by others, not famous words of the ancestors. Just this is it is one of the phrases that Dongshan uses. So I'm still waiting to get my own iron words when they arrive.

[27:49]

So Boksan tells us that we should make this teaching by Dogon the root of our practice, birth after birth, world after world, reading it with respect, day and night. High praise. So in order to do that, however, first you need to get this teaching right down into your hara, into your abdomen, you know, the pit of your stomach. You know, one of the instructions for seated meditation is to Put your mudra, your cosmic mudra, right there, right there in front of your hara. Like the hearth. Haras, I think, come from the same word as hearth. Like the place where your life force is kind of cooking, you know. The heat, the heat generation. A lot of times when you're sitting and it's very cold, like oftentimes it was at Tassahara when I was there years ago. The hara was one place you could really focus your energy and begin to warm your body. It's quite a trick that you just learned.

[28:53]

You had to learn it. There's no way. It wasn't magic. It was a necessity to learn how to warm your body by putting strength into your abdomen, into your hara. So in order to get this teaching, in order to really understand the Genja Koan, you have to bring it down into your hara. You have to embody it. We've been talking about that. Dogen's great emphasis is on embodiment, on action, on doing, on movement, on your hands and your eyes and your arms, how your body expresses your understanding. And Dogen's emphasis is exactly on the practice of embodiment in which both the intellect, the physical body, and the world are not separate. You know, Genjo Koan. No single thread is being left out of the whole." So then Boksa goes on to say that the Genjo Koan is the original self-nature of the universe.

[29:53]

It's immeasurable and has no limits. It contains the past and the present, all worlds and all beings, both Buddhas and humans, delusion and enlightenment, birth and death. And in this understanding of Genjo Koan, Every element turns into being, into emptiness, into liberation, and into ultimate reality. Each thread is ultimate reality, as is the whole. And then he says, being is ganjo kohan as being. Emptiness is ganjo kohan as emptiness. And nirvana is ganjo kohan as nirvana, which makes pretty good sense. And making good sense is genjo koan as good sense. And furthermore, he goes on, delusion is the genjo koan of delusion, with no need or means to sweep delusion away. Among all beings, Boko-san says, there is not a single existence that is a mistake.

[30:58]

Among all beings, there is not a single existence that is a mistake. And therefore, We cannot have enlightenment by excluding delusion. Enlightenment is the Genjo-Kon of enlightenment. So in other words, each and every Dharma element is itself ultimate reality. Ji is Ri, Ri is Ji, and Ri is Ri, and Ji is Ji without any contradictions. Okay? So this is a little bit reminiscent, if not a lot reminiscent, of the five ranks and I think I will go over those again as we're looking at this first paragraph because one translator, Thomas Cleary, says that this first paragraph is the five ranks. So we take a look at that and how he explains that to us. So the entire world as it is, is what Dogen calls or what he means by Genjo Kwan.

[32:01]

The entire world as it is. Seeing without a discriminating mind is as the distance, I'm sorry, seeing with a discriminating mind. Seeing with a discriminating mind is as distant as heaven and earth. And we exhaust ourselves trying to bridge the illusory gap between delusion and enlightenment. between wrong and right, between self and others. We're always trying to close the gap that there is no gap. So it's futile. But that seems to be something we're compelled to do. That's the nature of illusion. It drives us. It makes us crazy. So therefore... As one bright pearl, as Xuansa said, and as Shakyamuni said, all dharmas are ultimate reality. One bright pearl. So that's the commentary that I have so far put together on the very first sentence of the first paragraph of the Genjo Koan.

[33:07]

And I'm going to go on next week to talk about the second sentence and maybe even the third sentence if I get that far. But I realized, you know, two things have helped me to realize that I'm not in a hurry because there's nowhere to go. You know, I was thinking like, well, what's the rush? You know, we can spend a lot of time with the Genjo Kwan and it's tremendous richness in this teaching. And a lot of amazing teachers have taken time to think about it and help us to understand it. So I'd like to do that. I'd like to take time to do that. So... The other thing that's helped me to realize there's nowhere to get to, in no hurry, is reading the Avatamsaka Sutra, which I mentioned also that we've been doing in Reb's senior class, his senior seminar. We started reading it a couple months ago, and if you've tried it yet, reading the Avatamsaka Sutra, Flower Garland Sutra, it really is so clear, after not too many pages, that you're not getting anywhere.

[34:12]

there is nowhere to get there's just more descriptive words and there's more realms and more descriptions of realms and more buddhas and more bodhisattvas and they're all together in one great space and it's like it's the genjo kohan and put in a kind of poetic and very vivid uh you know like imagery the imagery is so is so beautiful and spectacular and you know and uh and there's no escape you just crawl in there and you say, time just disappears and location disappears and you disappear because there's nowhere to go. There's no separation. And it's a rather amazing experience that I think, I don't know if it's possible to get stuck in there. You can actually find yourself in the matrix and you can't get out. So maybe maybe that happens but i i think mostly you just have an amazing experience like reading a good novel or entering into a a good play or a film of really having merged with that experience you know becoming the flower garland sutra for a time being for a time being so um that's what i have for this evening for you all and uh i would like to give a little more time for

[35:36]

discussion or conversation or whatever you'd like to say and talk about. So I am going to welcome you to make your own way with this material as we're all doing. And while you're thinking about that, thank you, Lisa, I'm going to drink some lemon. I came back from LA with one thing that I didn't mean to bring back, and that's the cold. So I had my first cold in years, you know, having protected against COVID for maybe many of you too, it also protected against the rhinovirus, but somehow it's found me. So anyway, hi, Lisa. Hey, Fu. We made it home.

[36:37]

Last night at two in the morning. Welcome home. Welcome home. So my question, I kept, you know, I kept chanting this, reading it, chanting it, reading it. What does it mean? What does Jobin mean by the strength of Zazen? Well, what do you think? What does it strike? You've been doing a lot of that Zazen lately. Yeah, I always wonder if I'm doing it wrong. You think you're doing weak Zazen? Yeah, right. 30 years of bad meditation. Look what's gotten me. Yeah, right. Absolutely nowhere. It won't get you anywhere. It leaves you alone. It leaves you completely alone. There's no damage. There's no accomplishment. It's like, what did you get out of it? Nothing. I'm happy with it. And I, yeah, and I'm just, it's like taking a shower.

[37:39]

What'd you get out of that, you know? Why wash your face? It's just gonna get dirty again. You know, it's like, why do that? Why bother? Why bother? I think it's a kind of bothering. Kind of bothering with, you know, who are you? With big questions. Not big answers, because you know, and I know there aren't any. But there are great questions that I feel are so, just evoke a kind of, welcome to to to maybe there's an you know please somebody somebody come here and talk to me about this and um it's delightful i i enjoy very much going in talking with my teacher other teachers and getting no answers just getting some kind of reassurance that that there aren't any and you're on the right track and if there were they probably wouldn't be the right answers you know So there's something about, you know, what is reality actually? I mean, have you got that one down yet?

[38:41]

Oh yeah, sure. You got that? You're not going to tell us, are you? Nope. It's called the secret sauce. Yeah. Now you have it, so keep it well. That's what they tell you, you know, now you have it, so keep it well. Well, you can't tell you. Well, no, no, you can't, because you can't say. You can't say. You can point to it. You can put a lot of words around it, a few poems, but you can't say. You can flap it. Yeah? You can flap it. You can blink its eyes. You can wiggle its head. But you can't say it. But the strength is awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Well, what do you think? You know, sometimes I think, is it concentration? Is it samadhi? I would say that's okay, and that I think it's showing up. Just showing up.

[39:43]

Genjo Koan. You're there, and you're there. It's always showing up. You're there, yeah, you're there. You come in, and you show up, and it matters. It matters to me. It matters to everyone in the room. And it's kind of magical, you know. Can't say what it is when people show up. and sit together. It's just beyond definition. But I basically, you know, spent my life showing up with those people. And, you know, I can't tell you why. I just, the bell rings, like I'm sure it sounds kind of corny. The bell rings and I go to the Zendo. And I hear that's what Suzy Groshi did. And I know that's what Reb did. And I know that that's what you've done. So something about that very simple thing of coming to be with others who are called by the same mysterious wish, you know, to what?

[40:52]

To save the world, maybe, maybe. To help, to be of help, you know. I think that showing up, I've seen it so much. I've seen people show up and somehow something for them changes in a way that I think is very encouraging. And I can testify. They testify. And that's the strength of it. I think that's the strength of it. It's the 2,500 years of a living, it's like a tree, you know, all those old rings are dead, that's dead. They're holding up the living layer. Yeah, that's us. We depended on those who went, who've gone, and that they left little scratches of little messages, each layer left a little message, you know.

[41:56]

We build on it, yeah. Yeah. Dogen left little messages on his way through and out, and we're doing that in our own way. The language of the statement, dying while sitting up or standing, it depends entirely on the strength of Zazen, makes it sound like a very individual result rather than collective one well there's the two foci there's the me i die i walk alone with you with all beings so my dying or sitting or upright or my my whatever if i think that's something i would like to do i'm not so i'm not so inspired by the idea that i'm going to be sitting up straight when I die.

[42:56]

I don't think I am into that. I think I'm probably going to want to lay down and have people say nice things to me, hopefully, going, goodbye. Bye, foo. Sure was nice having you here. So yeah. Yeah. Thank you. So I have my own kind of like little cartoon version of my death that would please me, and I have no choice in the matter. So, you know, the strength of zazen doesn't work very well for me driving fast on the freeway from coming back from LA. I was like, oh my God, no, don't hit us, please don't hit us. You know, I have an awful lot of, not so, my strength is like, kind of works better when I'm in the quiet zendo. Things aren't moving too fast. I feel some support. The strength comes from the support of others for me. You know, the Sangha.

[43:58]

Yeah, that's what holds me up. I wouldn't go to that. I've never been to the Zendo by myself to sit Zazen. Not in 45 years. So there's something about you being there and others being there. That, for me, is the strength of zazen. The strength of my zazen depends on others. Thank you. You're welcome. Welcome home. I'll be back. Yeah, good. Hi, Millicent. Millicent of Australia. It's your new IW. Hi, Sue. Fu, there's something, as we return over and over again to the, to use the familiar image of the single threads and the whole cloth, there's an aspect of that that's puzzled me from the very beginning, which is how do we

[45:18]

respond to the threats that are just awful. The threats that are torture of children or cruelty of the most deliberate kind. I'm not talking about everyday cruelty. But, you know, we all, I guess, are in our dominant culture come from one that really separates out good, evil. And I can get it that the deliberate torture of a child is a thread that's part of the whole, but then when we say that each thread is the whole, How can we live with the fact that someone deliberately doing something really dreadful is the Buddha Dharma?

[46:29]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's delusion. Massive form, a really tragic form of delusion. I mean, we all are delusional in our own way. And some people are so massively delusional that they would do something that horrifying to hurt animals or children or other people. I think we think of it as madness. And the Buddha did not refrain. He didn't hold us back from stopping it. That's your mission, is you have to restrain that. You have to contain that. That's the job of those who are less delusional, perhaps, or have a wish to protect others, is to not allow that behavior to go unrestrained. And even in the case of, there's an example of if someone's killing a whole bunch of people, that person, if there's no other way, they can be killed to stop that.

[47:37]

So that was part of the Buddha's early teaching. So it's very hard for us because we're in this conflict between I don't want to hurt anything or anybody and I need to stop that. I need to stop it right now. So at the risk of her own life, a mother protects her only child. So it's the spirit of protection in my mind, the spirit of the wish to enlighten beings, those who are lost in darkness. I mean, that's the horror of darkness. where can that come from, that horrific way of thinking and acting? It seems like it's just from out of the dark, out of the contractions of not being loved, or feeling love, or knowing love, or all of those things that hate, that hate that is one of the three toxins that we all carry, and to varying degrees. So I don't

[48:38]

I'm not immune to hate or lust. I have those qualities that run through me, as I think through all of us. And I also recognize, as you do, the extremes. I do feel like... I wouldn't want to call it a war, because that's just conjuring up more violence and hate. But there is a... a movement afoot, you know, that always has been, I think as long as humanity has been doing its thing, you know, to find a way to not allow that kind of harming, to restrain that, have systems in place of protection. And we've always been trying to get that together. We haven't got it. You know, each new generation comes along with these super violent, delusional mad individuals and so what do we do now what are we doing now well everyone one idea is everyone has a gun that seems kind of like that seems kind of well i don't go along with that idea i don't think that's a good idea i prefer what you all are doing down there and like nobody gets a gun it's like yeah that's better you know

[50:03]

How many people can you kill with a knitting needle? I don't know, but you probably have a better chance of restraining that. Yes. Yes. Yes. I get it that society judges that cruelty that is deliberate and not a mistake is to be managed on a social level somehow. When we're learning about the Dharma and it says that the whole is expressed in the one, so the whole is expressed in these acts of cruelty, and we learn that nothing is a mistake, I think, gee, how do we work that out? Well, we're talking about reality. You can't say, well, that's not real.

[51:05]

That's not happening. Okay. That's not included. I don't include that. I don't let that in my reality. You don't get to say that. I don't get to say that. That's all included. It is reality. And it's the reality that comes into conversation with, don't do that. You have to stop. That's not okay. That's not allowed. in our shared reality, that is not allowed. That behavior is forbidden. So, you know, it's like we wouldn't have to do all that if that weren't happening. If that weren't reality on an equal basis as people sending food to the food banks. I'm not trying to do anything about that, but that's reality too. So it's all together. We don't get to have all the bad over here and just the good over there. You know, that's why we're here.

[52:06]

That's our job, is to be on alert for harm. And if you can talk someone down, sometimes it's a matter, you know, it's not necessarily on that extreme version that you're naming, but it's on a lesser version. Some hate somebody else that they work with in the kitchen. I deal with that a lot. You know, I hate them. Well, Okay, let's talk about that. Let's talk about that while you're walking around with knives, you know. I think there's something really needs to be addressed. So, you know, in my little world, there's a lot of hatred that happens, a lot of hurt feelings. And so that's my job, is to go there with a fire hose. Try to cool it off and see if we can make some agreements. And other people do it as policemen or whatever else, lawyers. There's all kinds of ways people are trying to protect other people from what you're saying.

[53:12]

But they do get to be in reality. It's one place where we can't say, you're not in. I get it. Yes. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Amir. Good evening. Good evening. Thank you for your talk. I just wanted to comment on something that you mentioned with Lisa, which I've been experiencing. In fact, even today, just the question of like, I don't know what I'm doing here. I don't know what has attracted me to To Zen Buddhism, it's been like a magnet. I mean, I actually ran into someone this morning after the Dharma talk at Green Gulch in the bookstore.

[54:13]

She and I had sat together, Norman Fisher, at an all-day sit, I guess, a couple weekends ago. So we recognized each other, and she brought that up. She was like, I don't know what's going on here. I don't know what's... And it's been on my mind, too. I was like, I'm going to think of the exact same thing. So I don't know. I just I don't know if you could expound upon that. I mean, you already mentioned it a little bit, too. But I mean, there just seems to be this draw for some people. And as you said, I can't I can't explain it. And I scratch my head and I journal about it. And there's something there. I think you're lucky. I consider it my good fortune. that I tripped over this Dharma and you know these people and this kind of amazing historic you know collection of these incredible poems and writings and you know it's like wow wow where have you been hiding my whole life you know I'm pretty I was almost 30 before I heard any of this material and had looked at a lot of stuff and been a lot of places and you know was a

[55:26]

political science major, and I was kind of into Marx. I was going down that road. Materialism, and I thought, oh, yeah, workers of the world. So I have found another philosophical preference that has much more to do with kindness and generosity and patience, things that really are relevant to my life and where I get caught. So, yeah. I do think we're lucky. Thank you. Yeah. Hey, Melissa. Another lucky one. Hello, Fu. Hello, Sangha. Thank you, everybody. for tonight, and I wanted to kind of tag on to Millicent's question, which is something that I'm turning a lot lately, which isn't so much the extremes.

[56:33]

It's being close contact with an opposite, an other view, an other way that isn't perhaps that far off of yours, but far enough that there's tension. And, you know, the thing that is coming to me right now is, you know, when I'm in communities that don't recognize the existence of like racial microaggression. And yet it's happening and I'm feeling it. And I struggle with the... dual foci, as it were, of self-protection and compassion, curiosity, sometimes a need to engage. I don't have the choice. I have to engage in that relationship or that situation.

[57:36]

It's those closer calls, the closer ones where you're like, it hurts. You know, even when I express it to you, you don't recognize what I'm saying. And there's, you know, how, what are some words of wisdom when you're dealing with that kind of, because, you know, in Green Gulch, I go there and yeah, I rub up against the stones of other people. And that's part of the function of being in a monastery as is, you know, part of the function of being in the lay world is kind of rubbing up against those that you don't exactly agree with. But, you know, I guess where's, Where's that wisdom point, I guess, of engagement, non-engagement, truth-telling versus kind of just swallowing the situation and saying, okay, it is what it is. I'm not going to change it. Do you have words of wisdom for those closer calls? Well, I just had a whole, I was immediately flashing on the time I just spent with my darling daughter.

[58:42]

And I had lots of words of wisdom that I wanted to give her on all kinds of topics. And I kept keeping my lips together. I thought, she's 30 years old. You've had your turn. You show respect to her and let her make her choices, which she's making. Some of them visible. Some of them I would like to go, maybe if you just, you know. And every time I would kind of transgress my own rule of being being quiet, I could see it in her face, you know, the feeling of being hurt by my, you know, not just, yeah, sure, great. So I really tried to be just a loving presence. And the more I... I'm not even trying. I am a loving presence. It's easy.

[59:43]

I love her. And, of course, when we love others, including those who are not that close to us, but there's a closeness. It's very challenging. How do you give, I think you're talking about feedback, how do you give a critique of someone's engagement with you that doesn't up the ante or make it worse or turn them into you know, really violent racists. How do we keep massaging these issues together? I think no one of us is going to be able to wake up the culture. I think it is slowly happening. I think I see evidence of it everywhere I look. I see evidence of the advertising. Oh, my God. I mean, advertising has changed so much in just a very short time. You know, large bodied people dancing away and being real happy and looking like it's just fine. You know, love your body, love your life.

[60:45]

You know, you're fine the way you are. That kind of spirit, I think, is really being reflected. And I think there's a lot of us are deeply grateful for and surprised by how quickly, you know, things are opening. and the young people who come to Green Ultra are so much more tuned in. I mean, they don't even talk about gender anymore. It's just obvious it's they. I mean, what are you thinking? We're all they. It's just like, let's not get into some kind of confusion here. You know what I'm saying? Okay. All right. So they're teaching us. They're helping us to get through our conditioning. You know, you're meeting conditioning. You're meeting ancestral conditioning. It goes way back. And, you know, birds of a feather and all that. So I was really comfortable in Los Angeles, the place where we were, in Glendale, where my daughter lives. And we stayed at this hotel that was just, I mean, I was the minority by far.

[61:46]

I mean, it was just amazing to be in a whole dining room full of people of every culture I can imagine and every tone of skin color and all of that. And I was like, well, this is really nice. And I read somewhere that once you get to 40%, this is around women's presence in various organizations or in the military, I think it was a study, once there's 40% of any minority group you don't see it anymore it's not a minority group anymore it becomes invisible so the more we integrate the more we spend time together the more we're in diverse situations the more it's like you know mommy what's an ocean it's just like well this is we're swimming in the water of diversity and that was a nice thing That was the best thing about Los Angeles for me. I agree. Absolutely. I love that about Los Angeles. Yeah. It's, it's where it's, it's really happening there.

[62:49]

And, you know, not Mill Valley yet. It's really slim pickings in Mill Valley. So I think our, our, our, our time is coming, hopefully, you know, through conscious endeavor and through learning and through help. People who are willing to say, just, you know, in a fairly neutral way. Fairly economically is a really good quality to cultivate when you want to say something. It's like how to say that. There's a koan. I told you the koan last week of the hermit. The guy says, anybody there? Anybody there? And the hermit raises his fist, which means something like full understanding that has some meaning. I fully get it. And then he said, anybody there? Anybody there? And he raises his fist and he criticizes him. Oh, that's shallow water. Nothing going on there. And then he raises his, the hermit raises his fist again. He said, and then the teacher bows to him. So what's the difference?

[63:50]

Well, the difference is, is the monk moved by praise? And he's insulted with blame. He doesn't have any equanimity. He can't handle one or the other. It has to be Good job, monk, or you're a terrible monk, you know. So our work inside ourselves is to find that way of holding, whichever way the wind blows, that we're able to continue our journey. Right, right. Traversing the ocean of challenge. right yeah that the the blame and praise for sure that really touches home for me thank you i'm really um i i i do zazen to cultivate that equanimity because it is not with me as much as i would like yay me too And here we all go.

[64:52]

Thank you. Swimming upstream. Thank you, Melissa. Alicia. Hi, Fu. How are you? Very well. Thank you. I'm listening to Melissa. I was, what came up for me, what evoked for me is like sort of the emotional weight. of pointing out to people that they could interrogate their perceptions and their stories about people. And it gets to be a lot, even if you're doing it in a neutral way. It's an emotional burden to point that out. And yeah, it gets to be a lot. And it also made me think of the shooting that happened in Tennessee and there were the two senators who got thrown out. And I was watching the news about that. And I was surprised to see there were a lot of other African-Americans in that assembly.

[65:53]

But I think those two young ones were doing it in a different way. And they were provoking the Republicans to interrogate how they did business. And I think that older generation wasn't provoking them to interrogate the way they do things. And I think just having diversity alone is not enough if the system's still in place. Good point. If we don't interrogate the system itself, then it's just business as usual. It's just more colorful. Yeah. I hear that. And I appreciate that. And I'm sorry for the exhaustion that comes from holding that out to all of us. I'd love to carry some of that weight, and I can't. I can try to do my work, but I can't carry yours, and I wish I could, but I can't. Well, you're doing the work.

[66:54]

As long as you interrogate yourself, I think we're all doing the work. We can't do it for someone else. Even me pointing it out, I can't do it for you. I can't make you interrogate, but I can just point out. Yeah, there's that for you to look at. Which you just did in a very nice way. And I hope you'll continue to find ways to do that that can be heard. I certainly heard you. Thank you. Thank you. I did have a question. I can wait, though, until we go into the Genjoco line more. I did have a question about the first two stanzas, but I'll wait. Since we're going slow, I'll hold on. We're going real slow. We have to grok. This is a grokking situation here. Like, what? That's perfect. You just got me here, and now you've got me over here. We're not so comfortable without that kind of, you know, something feels stable. There's a lot.

[67:55]

This is not stable. Yeah. Yeah. Also, the last thing is the talk that Timo gave today was so wonderful. And I was thinking, oh, I hope we're going to do that fascicle time being. Oh, we can. Of course. I'd love to. We can do it after the Genjo Kwan. That would be awesome. No time at all. Yeah. Oh, I missed it. I was not there because I'm not there. So I will look it up. I like Timo's talks very much. Yeah, it was excellent. Yeah. Thank you. Great, good. Thank you. Okay, everybody. It's nice to be with you all. And I'm going to put on a gallery view here and wish you all a very good evening or morning, depending where in the world you are. Thank you for your talk, Fu.

[68:57]

You're welcome. Good to see everybody. Thank you, Sangha. Have a good week. You too. Thank you. Thanks. Bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Good night, all. Good night. Bye. Good morning, Ying. Ying and Millicent, our breakfast club. We always seem to be the last word. Well, that's good. That's good. Last is first, first is last is somewhere in some scripture. How are you both? Good. Yeah? Good? Snow? Melting. Wow. And flooding is okay? So far, so good? We're at the top of the flood pattern, so we're not affected. You have friends down below. There are people down below who are still worrying.

[70:01]

Rivers are living fast and cold. Yeah. You know, it's been so cold. We haven't yet to have warm. We came from LA was cold. And the drive up was lovely. We're in the car. So we didn't get to do that. And then we got back to San Francisco and that big, that big mountain of fog was pouring over the top of the coastal range. So it's foggy now. June fog. June gloom and May something, gray May. So what are we going to do about the weather? What are we going to do about everything? Yeah, and everything else. And everything else. Well, we'll talk about it. That's what we'll do. Yes, and notice the differences. Yeah. That's what we're good at, isn't it? We're talking about everything. That's right. Like those little birds. I can't believe it.

[71:03]

This is happening. Yeah. Yeah. That's the new normal is things we can't believe are inconceivable. We never thought would ever happen ever are happening. Yeah. Yeah. It's almost like the new normal. You said that, right? It's the new normal is really weird. Yeah. So last night we watched everything, everywhere, all at once. What did you think? I think we need you to explain it to us. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. Well, there's a little time travel going on there, or dimension travel, right? I mean, I like the hot dog fingers. I thought that was interesting.

[71:46]

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