So, for this evening I'm going to move along, at not so rapid pace, to the next paragraph of the Genjo Koan, and to the paragraph that begins with, to study the Buddha way is to study the self. Now, this has had a lot of commentary to this particular paragraph, so I've enjoyed looking at each of the ways that the teachers talk about it. So in this set of teachings, Dogen is basically bringing us closer to the daily activities of what's called practice enlightenment or practice realization, in which we intimately study this interplay between ourself, at least the one that we think we are, and whatever it is that we think we are not, such as trees and clouds and stars and flowers and other people. So given, as you have heard again and again, that there is no self apart from myriad things, that the self and myriad things are simply just one thusness, one wholeness, when one dharma or one thing is realized or actualized, then one recognizes one's whole self, you know, through one thing, one blade of grass and so on, or one leaf or one grain of rice.

[01:23]

And at that time, the 10 directions are also fully comprehended. All together now, it all comes up together. So this means that the wholeness of the universe is comprehended as one's true self. So you've heard this many times, and hearing it is one thing, and then actually knowing that all the way through is the thing we're hoping to experience for ourselves. So as there's a saying in the Buddha Dharma that I've always found really intriguing and often repeat, that the entire universe in the ten directions is the true human body. The entire universe in the ten directions is the true human body. I was just looking at some of these amazing images that are coming from the Webb Telescope of the, you know, as far back as we... as things have ever been seen, that very close to the beginnings of the universe, after what they think of it as the Big Bang and how these star systems are already forming within millions of years, which is nothing in terms of galactic time.

[02:30]

So it's just kind of amazing how far our eyes and ears have been able to reach into this universe that is our true body. we got a big body is what I'm beginning to understand. So, you know, there was a woman Oh, and speaking of grains of rice, there was this really amazing conversation I had after the Dharma talk this morning, I talked about kitchen practice for those of you who were tuned in. And after the talk, I was out at tea and a woman talked with me and said that she wondered if I did speak Korean, because I'd mentioned that the AI had listed all of my talents, including I speak Korean, and Sanskrit, and all kinds of other qualifications that I truly don't have. I said, I'm sorry, I don't. And then she said she was from Korea, she was kind of hoping I might. And then we talked a little bit about her life. And she said, she said to me that when this one grain of rice is mentioned in Buddhist teaching, it has such a

[03:33]

big feeling in her heart, because when she grew up in Korea as a child, there wasn't a lot of food. The Japanese had occupied Korea for quite a while and had basically taken most of the resources. The trees were off the hills. She said Korea wasn't beautiful when she was young. There weren't any trees on the hills. And if they had rice, one grain of rice was very precious. So if you dropped one on the floor or on the table, you put it back in the rice bowl. You didn't waste a grain of rice, literally. And she asked me if there was anything like that in my own culture or my own childhood that I could relate to. And I thought, not really. I can't think of something from my early childhood that was so iconic as a grain of rice. In Asia, rice certainly is the staple of their eating, of their survival. And then I felt kind of sad, you know, I thought, well, I don't really have a connection to my ancestry.

[04:41]

I don't know what, you know, my people ate or even where they came from. I mean, the migration that went on long before I have any record or any knowledge of it, you know, hundreds of years ago, when someone who I resulted in my birth, I had no idea where they came from or what they were doing or who they were or what they did for their livelihoods and so on. So, you know, it's been probably 150 years or more since my ancestors arrived in North America. So ordinarily, you know, when we see something like a grain of rice, an object as the subject, This is a dualistic view that we have and that applies to just about everything we experience, including what I was feeling about my heritage or my family or my country or and so on and my sense of belonging. So there's a little bit of pain at times wondering about all of that, you know, with no way to follow the living pathway by which my own ancestors made their way to this side of the earth.

[05:43]

So I think that's a reason that for many years I've resonated with this idea of home leaving. since I didn't have a feeling for a home or what the migrating salmon referred I mean they don't refer to we refer to the migrating salmon as having natal waters they return to their natal waters like Redwood Creek here is the natal waters for generations of salmon that go out to the ocean and then they come back to their natal waters to spawn so being home leavers you know for me and for many of my Zen comrades turns out to be a very good way for us to feel like we have a sense of belonging, at least belonging to a sangha of home leaders, people who have left home. And then coming home in the light of the Buddha Dharma is actually coming home to this non-dual relationship that we have to all people in all places and all things that endlessly populate our lives in the form of where we are right now and exactly what we're doing, you know, true home.

[06:45]

So there's great comfort in that. you know, that I also feel in absorbing these teachings from Dogen in this case, but certainly his inspiration is from Shakyamuni Buddha. So to study the Buddha way, Nishiyar Bhoksan says, is not to study the Buddha way as something over there, with the self over here, like I study the Buddha way, so that's dualistic mind. To study the self is to study how this very body-mind is the Buddha Dharma. So then what is the entire body fully becoming Buddhadharma? He asks and he says, it is dropping off both the Buddhadharma and the self all at once. So again, this familiar ring of Dogen having the experience which he called dropping body and mind. So that was his awakening experience, dropping body and mind, now drop that, as his teacher said, now drop that, keep dropping, because it drops anyway. Just maybe stay with the rhythm.

[07:48]

of how things arise and pass and arise and pass with literally nothing that we can hold on to, you know, and even though that makes us a little nervous, I think is what makes us more comforted is the fact that it's true, there really isn't anything to hold on to. So there's something that ultimately is relaxing about realizing what's true. So studying the Buddha way as anything other than the self is separating the subject and the object. And that is not the Buddha way. And yet, he goes on to say that if we hold on to our old views of ourself in any way, then we don't have any room for this new version of ourself to grow and to occupy the space that we call us. And particularly this version of ourselves as Buddha. Is there room in you for that? There is. But do you allow that? Do you allow there to be room in yourself for Buddha, for awakening? as who you truly are. So it's not only by forgetting the self, you know, this old one that we've been hauling around most of our lives, the forgotten self opens up a space.

[08:59]

Once we forget that self, we drop that body-mind, then this space opens in which the myriad dharmas can come forth and actualize themselves in us. So that's kind of reversing the flow from I go out there and I get things and I own things and those belong to me to I belong to it. This world is what's creating me in each and every moment. This is kind of standard Dogen speak. Bokasan says, if you surrender and throw your entire body into the Buddha's house, today's practice of walking, abiding, sitting and lying down is done from the side of Buddha. If you have a little more weight on the side of yourself than on the side of the Dharma, Dharma is not transmitted, and the way is not attained. So hanging on to ourself, to whatever reasons, mostly fear probably, or doubt, whatever it is that keeps us hanging on to a sense of ourselves as some solid separate thing, that moves us away from realization of the Buddha Dharma.

[10:07]

This is where the intimacy of our practice appears, when the self stands alone as all things. I alone am the world honored one. That's what the baby Buddha said when he was born, you know, shortly thereafter, he stood up and he pointed one finger to the sky and one to the earth and said, I alone am the world honored one. They're kind of precocious. We have little statues of the baby Buddha doing that, that we put on a little, there's a tray of water and they're little scoopers and so and then we build this beautiful flower pagoda for the tray to sit inside so usually when we have the children's program which right now sadly we don't the doing the Buddha's birthday celebration then the children and everyone else would come forward and pour a little bit of water as an offering sweet water onto this little baby Buddha so I alone in the world honored one So when we when the self stands alone as all things, you know, when you have a meal, you fully become a meal, the meal that you're having, when you walk the dog, you fully become the dog walker.

[11:13]

And when you're sitting upright in this self receiving self employing samadhi, then you are nothing other than upright sitting. So whatever you're doing is what you're doing. I mean, it's so obvious, but at the same time, it's like our mind, you know, as often says in the sutras is running around like a monkey it's just kind of going you know going to the past going to the future planning the shopping trips and doing all this stuff you know meanwhile you're sitting there and that's upright sitting is nothing other than upright sitting you know how to occupy the space and activities that you're actually doing in each and every moment not so easy so one old teacher said that you are turned by the hours of the day whereas I turn the hours of the day So meaning that the hours of the day are nothing other than me. There is no one else to blame for anything. To abide at ease at the place of no abiding is saying the same thing. Abide at ease at the place of no abiding.

[12:14]

Boksan then says that people today are suffering because of attachment to ideas of self and ideas of things. And he says this is called hell. And even though we might think that detachment is hell, is harder, having to give up things or let go of things, renunciation, people don't like that word at all. Although I loved Pema Chodron saying that renunciation means to renounce that which doesn't work. I think that's more the intention of that renunciation. So it's not detachment that's hard, it's holding on to things that makes our life so difficult. You know, my love or my house, my life, my family, my country, all of those things, all those my things are what make our lives so difficult because we don't hold them. They don't belong to us. You know, they are free, as we know. And that's part of what makes it so hard. You know, where are you going, my love? It's like, ah.

[13:17]

So anyway, this is what we're here to study. This is studying the self, studying how the self reacts to all of these things that we have been conditioned to think are so. So if I leave off the my, leaving off my gives everything in our life a lot more room to breathe. In a state like that, everything that the eye touches or the ear hears or the nose smells becomes a gift to us in the present moment. And unless we learn to receive rather than to take the gift, even if we lived for a hundred years or a thousand years, we would never know a moment of true freedom. And then Bokasan says that if you say you are finally enlightened, the front door is locked with a gold chain and going beyond enlightenment is blocked. So here he's getting into a little more advanced problems that maybe we all wish we had, you know, to imagine we're enlightened and to think like, oh, I got it, or I get it, or somehow we have an experience that leads us to feel that way.

[14:21]

And, you know, it happens. And it's... Yeah, it's not uncommon around here anyway, that people feel that way, or they fall into some kind of sense of, you know, I get it. And then they sit back and look at everything a little suspiciously. A couple of folks in my class recently were kind of sitting back like this, you know, with one eyebrow raised looking at me. Okay, well, that's okay. It's okay if you think that, but you have locked the door, the front door with a golden chain. You know, you're not really free. You've actually trapped yourself behind this idea of your own experience being some finale or some final accomplishment. So any trace of enlightenment is a disease or a shadow of true enlightenment. And so it says, a cloudless blue sky still needs to be hit with a stick. A cloudless blue sky still needs to be hit with a stick. Cloudless blue sky being a mind that seems to be free. of any kind of hindrances.

[15:22]

Still needs to be hit with a stick. And then he adds that there's this eccentric 14th century monk poet named Ikkyu you may have heard of. He's quite a rascal and he wrote some interesting things and did all kinds of carvings. He carved, I don't know, thousands of little Buddhas. I think they're all arrayed somewhere over in Japan. I don't know exactly which temple. Anyway, Ikkyu, who is said to have been the son of the emperor and a low-ranking woman of the court, so someone the emperor had mated with and had a baby, and then the baby was given to some servants to raise, but Ikkyu was kind of a rascal. He broke all of the monastic regulations, he drank excessively, and he defied the rules of celibacy in his lifelong love of a blind singer by the name of Mori. Boksan says, Ikyu was great. And then when asked about awakening, Ikyu says, I don't remember making a mistake called enlightenment.

[16:26]

So Boksan likes this kind of approach to understanding. And although Ikyu didn't look like an outstanding example of practice, he kind of wore rags and he was kind of schlumpy and so on, he didn't have the stink of enlightenment either. And then needless to say, he didn't behave violently, you know, like swinging his staff, shouting or hitting other people with a stick. He was a gentleman, a gentleman. So once we are freed from the golden chain of enlightenment, that no trace that's mentioned in this paragraph continues for a very, very long time, like a single rail of iron for 10,000 miles. This dropping away of enlightenment is the great practice that encompasses the entire future. And even if we say no more enlightenment, we mustn't stop there either. So basically this message again and again is don't stop there. Don't stop there. There's no stopping. There's only verbs.

[17:28]

There's no nouns. There's no place. There's only motion and there's only the next foot, you know, your right foot, left foot. There's just the next thing you do. It's always just on to the next, on to the next. Same thing with these ideas that we're We're courting about awakening. Don't stop there. Keep going. Keep opening. It is stupid to be puffed up over a handful of enlightenment like a long-nosed goblin who is proud of getting a hold of a demon's head. It's stupid to be puffed up over a handful of enlightenment like a long-nosed goblin who is proud of getting a hold of a demon's head. Dropping off body and mind as Dogen was uh once said to have done is the beginning of practice it's not the culmination of practice it's where your practice begins when you have that experience of letting go of just letting go i don't know if you remember i always oftentimes think of that scene in the wizard of oz where the witch is flying across the sky writing in black smoke sky writing sure surrender dorothy surrender dorothy that's good surrender foo surrender everybody just let it go you know raise the white flag

[18:42]

So adding practice realization to the body-mind dropping off is the genjo kwan. Adding practice realization, one word, practice realization, whatever you're doing, wholehearted practice is the realization of your practice, to this body-mind dropping off. So you just have room for practice realization. For exactly what you're doing, there's all there's room for that. That's all there's room for. Not anything else. Nothing else can fit in there. So this is the Genja Koan of the Buddha ancestor's own practice realization. It's full circle. You come right back to the same thing. Just this is it. Just this is it. Just this is it. And Suzuki Roshi says about this section, I will be very disappointed if you come to Zazen thinking, now I know what Buddhism is. If you then think there's no reason to practice Zazen or to study Zen, I will be even more disappointed. And even though I'm not selling you something, I want you to be my customer. I want to live and teach with your support, and I will be very glad if you have some joy in practicing here with all of us.

[19:50]

This is actually Buddhism. It is not a matter of understanding or awakening to anything. You will need to do the same thing over and over again, such as sitting zazen, until you acquire perfect acquisition, which will not vanish from you. It's like pressing your dress or your trousers. You need an iron. Just to fold your clothes won't work. This kind of effort is necessary, but it's not work that can be forced on you. No one can make you practice. No one can make you really do much of anything, you know. We all know how to resist and how to slip away from things that we don't want to do. So, and I would say to people, when I was tanto here at Green College, you know, If they weren't showing up or they were missing work and it wasn't quite clear, they didn't seem terribly happy, I asked them, well, do you want to be here? Is this really what you want to do? Because if you don't want to be here, you won't do it.

[20:52]

It will be impossible. You have to do what you want to do. So unless this is what you want to do, it would be really good for you to find out what that is and do that. Find out what that is. No fault. in discovering that Zen practice is not your cup of tea. There's no fault in that. Most people discover that. Residential life at the Zen center is not exactly what they had in mind. And that's okay. I mean, more than okay, of course. And then it's wonderful when everyone comes to visit and find out how we're doing. The ones of us who stuck around. Fewer and fewer as time goes by. So as long as you try to find your true nature by practice, you cannot find it. But if you find your true nature in your practice, or that practice itself is your true nature, that is enlightenment. I often find his way of talking really, really useful. As long as you try to find your true practice by practice, as an instrument, I'm going to practice to find my true nature, you can't find it.

[22:01]

But if you find your true nature in your practice, as your practice, or that practice itself is your true nature, that is enlightenment. And then he says, you should be absorbed in practice until you become one with practice, until you build up your character by practice, until you become Zen practice itself, like a rock. That is enlightenment. A rock doesn't know what it is. And then he begins the discussion of this next paragraph, and so we can do that too, about riding in a boat and watching the shore, and thinking that the shore is moving. But if you keep your eyes closely on the boat, you'll see that the boat is moving. So, I am going to stop there, and I would really like to talk with all of you who are here, just about anything. I have been giving a lot of talks this last few weeks, so i thought well why don't i let you talk and i'll listen and happily respond to anything that you'd like to to bring up or discuss thank you tim i forgot i what you were saying

[23:24]

I just want to say again, everything you say is so deeply it resonates so much with me. How do you do it? It really does. It's amazing. I was I listened to Bhikkhu Bodhi once or twice a week and He's going to have a retreat on Labor Day weekend online because on Zoom, he's in upstate New York. But they had a questionnaire he filled out at the Chinese monastery where he lives. And they asked, what's your goal for this retreat? And I thought this might be your influence. And I thought about it. I don't have a goal. yay what goal would i have and it's kind of funny right yeah that's really true i i credit you with that sort of self-awareness you know that concept is how do you describe that goalless practice yeah yeah it's not for something it is something yeah it is you

[24:56]

sitting there there's no banana i'm not reaching for a banana again yeah all right thank you enjoy your retreat don't get anything out of it please i promise hi marianne hi Good evening, Boo. Thank you for your teaching, Sangha. You know, what you have just said, we've gone through this a couple of times and it's just so liberating to hear, you know, the idea that, you know, your true nature is in your practice or your practice itself is your true nature. And, you know, in my own teaching, I do a lot, I teach a lot of the Greek philosophers, so Aristotle. And This is exactly what he was trying to say about habits and virtues.

[25:58]

You know, you are who you are. Happiness is not an accumulation of a certain skill set, but happiness is in a set of practices. So you practice justice. You practice courage. You practice, you know, the virtues that he was talking about, temperance. And it's in the practice. And but it's so hard for my students to get because of exactly what Tim was just saying. We're very goal oriented, constructivist in so many ways. And so please tell us the plan. And will this plan get us to that end point that we really want? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's kind of sad, you know, the way we are educating. Isn't it supposed to educate me to pull out or to lead out or something? Right. help liberate or to help free, you know, and it's like the way we've kind of lined it up, as we all were educated, it's kind of the opposite. You know, I was being I remember this, this book, maybe you know, it called mindset, you run across mindset, you did.

[27:05]

Yeah. It's amazing, because these little kids were brought into a room with a puzzle. And they were young, they're really young, and they would work on the puzzle. And then if they did it, they would come in and say, would you like another one, a little harder? And say, oh, sure, for a little while. And then at some point, when it got too hard, they said, no, I don't want another one. That's enough. And they said, except for a couple kids who would go, yeah, give me another one. That's good. That's really challenging. That was hard for me, that last one. Let me have another one. And they said, those kids had a mindset that was about learning. It was about growing. And the other ones have been trained to stop at the A. Right. Or the A+. That's enough. I did it well, and I don't want to be pulled off of my grade, my rank, you know. And they said that really it was a training, that the kids could recover from that, but they needed a different way of understanding, that their mindset could be open, but not if they kept going in that way, you know, like stopping where they were comfortable, and rather than going where they're uncomfortable, you know, that's the green light.

[28:15]

Right. And that's really, again, I know you love the meaning of words, but the word education and educade really means to draw out, draw out, draw through a set of learnings or practices or experiences. You draw out the true nature. They become that. And, of course, the great system that was developed by Maria Montessori was all based on that. the idea of the set of practices. But again, thank you. Thanks for all your inspirational teaching. Thank you for bringing up these parallels. I find them really fascinating and encouraging. Hey, Gi. Nice to see you. Hi, Fu. Nice to see you as well. Hello, Sangha. Yeah, I wanted to share a story based on what Tim was saying.

[29:17]

So at my work, one of my, well, I guess one of the lead, you know, the lead consultants was trying to make a point with a story where just to give some foundation, we... We're going to a client when we talk about setting metrics and being able to measure and seeing if we win, right? Winning every day, essentially. So he told the story about how he went to see his daughter's basketball game and that everything was set up and they were getting ready to play and that the referee went out there and then he noticed the scoreboard was off, but the referee blew the whistle and they just all started playing, right? And I was like, that is the most wonderful thing. When did we lose that? Right. But then he went on to say what he was trying to say is at the end, uh, his daughter was like, yeah, we really crushed that team.

[30:19]

We really killed them. Right. So essentially the moral of, of his story was we need to track. We need to see if we really won because in the end, people are always wanting to win. Right. Even that. And I just take that story in. And, uh, later on I said, um, To them, when we were talking in the same situation, I was like, but that's, isn't that the wonder of it, right? To play the game just for the playing of the game, right? When we sit and we're looking at wherever that is, wherever we want to get, we don't even see whatever the step is that we're in right now. I think what I was trying to use the story for me was... It's about the direction, right? We know where to face. What you always say of wayfaring, right? But isn't that step that we're taking right now so much more important than wherever it is that it's taking us? And I just, I'm always going to carry that story of he was, he couldn't believe it.

[31:21]

He's like, who's going to turn on the score, you know, the scoreboard or who's going to win? And the kids just went out and just played to play. But so that was something wonderful. And it really shows how... how we're teaching this and we're learning it, but we don't necessarily need to. And I think so many frustrations of why we don't get wherever it is that we think we need to be is because we're not looking at the step we're taking. We're only looking at where and wishing we were there already, right? Yes. Yes. That's really good, Guy. I will always share that story. When I told him that... He hated it. He's like, yeah, you're right. I'm not going to like that. I'm not going to like how I used your story. I was like, because it's about playing to play. You know, it's about I read a card that just touched my heart. It was it was Winnie the Pooh and Piglet. And it's Piglet asking Winnie, how do you spell love? And when he's saying you don't spell it, you feel it.

[32:24]

Wonderful. Winnie the Pooh, he had it all down. That's what I was going to say. I was like, oh, Pooh, why did we not listen? When did we forget all of this? But thank you so much, Pooh. Thank you for that, Guy. I've done a number of lectures on Winnie the Pooh stories. Have you? I can only imagine. I took a picture of the card to share it with you, so I have it somewhere. When I saw it, I was like, this is it right here. Yeah, just this. L-U-V. I think he spells it L-U-V, doesn't he? Yeah, I don't know. He's not a bear of very many brains. Well, the slowest force, right? Yeah. So it reaches the marrow of our bones. Yeah. Him and Mr. Rogers is my other very favorite. You know, I just, I can't believe that guy. He was so amazing how he treated the children as people, real people. And his kindness and his really advanced, you know, social sensibilities.

[33:31]

Anyway, there have been some lovely humans who have walked this earth. And we are grateful to know about them. I hear their stories. Helene. Hello. Hello. Hi. Hi, Sangha. Good to see everybody. And thank you so much for your talk and for your teaching. And what I've been thinking about this week is things have been really difficult for me. So I've been suffering even more. But what I've been looking at is more specific to my suffering. that a kind of desire or greed in the midst of all that's been going on is what's making me suffer.

[34:39]

And I feel like what I'm suffering from is wanting things to be a different way than they are. Excellent. I wish I had a bell. Well done. Yeah. So that kind of puts that gives like greed a form. A hug. Give it a hug. Give it a hug. So I'm just noticing that, you know, desire is a lot of what's going on, just wanting things to be different than they are and really making wanting this so much that I will be really miserable not getting it.

[35:48]

Yeah. very stressed out. You're sacrificing what you do have for what you wish you had. Right. And that's very common. And that's what the Buddha said is that the truth of suffering. We ignore what we have, and we want for something we don't have that's not here. And then that's, that's, that's desire, that's pain and ignorance. And that's the soup. That's the soup of pain and suffering. Yeah. Right. It's very uncomfortable. Yeah. But I've been able to kind of label it. Yeah. Just, you know, desire. Yeah. And then I can, and then I just say to myself, you want things to be different than they are. And that's not happening. That's called insight. Oh, bravo. Very bravo.

[36:49]

Oh, okay. Then you see the how the mind's working that you see what your mind's doing is insight. That's what the Buddha was watching. He was studying how his mind was doing that, causing his suffering. You know, that is the subject matter, study the self. Right? Yes. And you'll see that it's, it's doing a kind of wacky job, you know, inside of this perfectly fine body. and perfectly capable human being, there's this little monkey running around just like looking for something else or something to do or some trouble to get into or whatever. Right. And it's very agitating. Yeah. And it kind of stirs up a lot of my childhood trauma. Exactly. You know, it's kind of like I'm escalating myself. Yeah, right. You know. Yeah, that's right. So all of, you know, dropping, dropping, dropping. That's the instruction. Not to be rude to ourselves, but just drop it.

[37:51]

Heart Sutra, no. But I just want no. If I can only have, no. Just a little bit, no. And there's that idea that whoever, I don't know what her name was. She gave the Dharma talk yesterday. City Center? Victoria? Vicky? Austin? I don't know what her name was. She was talking about all the buts to practicing. And when she brought that up, I just noticed that my whole life is full of buts. Well, there you go. No more buts. We've been training ourselves to not use but, but to use and but is a separator it's a negator and i like chocolate and vanilla is okay you know rather than but i don't like chocolate or vanilla so you know we have to kind of watch our vocabulary because it sets us up for this kind of conclusion that maybe we don't even mean it's just the language gets us into trouble too so you know but is a good one to kind of

[39:12]

Extract. See if you can get rid of that one. Yeah, I just noticed that, you know, I want to wake up early and sit in. And I sleep in. Okay. No criticism there. Okay. I do that myself every now and then. Okay. All right. I get that. You get two rings now. OK, very good. Thank you. Welcome. Hi, Dean. Hi, Fu. Thank you. So in the commentary by or the translation by Kaz and Sojin, it's the guy's name starts with an N, N-I something or other.

[40:15]

Yeah, that guy. Somewhere in the beginning, at least I knew it started with an N. But, you know, I could stay in and probably be right, you know, 20% of the time. But somewhere in the first few pages, they talk about delusion and how so many of us, we see the way is to rid ourselves of delusion. And it's interesting because in reading that, it really made me start thinking about my degree of delusion right now, which is just, it's a really big skill set I have. And I am Very, very, very immersed in it. You're not bragging, are you? No, not a bit.

[41:16]

Okay. But it's interesting that in reading it, it was just a really good reminder that delusion is part of it. It's part of everything. And so I would like to hear you talk a little bit more about delusion. Not necessarily about our commitment to delusion, because I believe most of us have a fair amount of skill with that. But how to how to sort of allow delusion to be something that I mean, what I read is it's like I need to embrace it and give it give it, you know, give it give it its due. So I'd like you to talk a little bit more about that line between it being something to reject, because if we get rid of it, then we'll get the little tap.

[42:20]

We'll get the little bell. Big bell. Big bell. So I'd like you to talk a little bit more about our commitment to delusion and how to shift that commitment so that it's not... the thing we want to get rid of as opposed to the thing we need to um i i guess incorporate yeah what's a great question you know that is the key i mean it's the core of the whole exploration and the buddha was studying delusion and so i've used this gesture a few times with you guys so here's the light of awakening you know awareness and here's delusion the purpose of the light of awakening is not to get rid of delusion, it's to study it. So you bring the light on to the activities of your mind, you bring your awareness, turn the light around, look at how your mind is functioning, look at those things that you're doing that are like, well, that's wacky. You begin to see how delusion is working and how it's been taking charge.

[43:23]

It's been driving the car for a long time. We have basically not been taught how to not take orders from our delusions. our convictions, our judgments, our righteousness. We're actually trained to really bring it out. Make your statement and win the case and so on. Like Guy was talking about, the kids are supposed to go win. That's the whole point. And it's not the point. And really the point is to understand how it works. Buddhas are enlightened about delusion and sentient beings are deluded about enlightenment. And that's what it says. That's what Dogen says. And, you know, I think that is as close to what I understand is the purpose of the practice. You know, I don't think anything more elaborate than that other than, well, as soon as you see your delusion, that's an insight. You know, Helene was just seeing something that was delusional. That's an insight. You get a lot of points for that.

[44:24]

Every time you spot delusional thinking, you got like, give yourself a point. When you get a whole bunch of points, then you've got a technique. You're on the road. You're basically working with. And that's fun. I mean, there's joy in beginning to unravel some of those knots. Knocking out the pegs and untying the knots. That's what these Zen guys were doing. They were spotting their delusory thinking and unbinding themselves from it. But if you don't look at it, if you try to turn away from it, You're just lost in delusion. That's another kind of delusion. As though you could get rid of it. That's a big one. So we're not in that school. We are not in the get rid of delusion school. We are the study it and learn about it and understand it and celebrate it. Well, there was a big one. And yeah, I really think that you're on the right track.

[45:30]

And the more you have, the better you are gonna have opportunities to study. It's true. It's true. Thanks, Dean. Okay. Guy. I just wanted to bring back the conversation that you just had really reminded me of Dogen, one of the fascicles of a painting of a rice cake does not satisfy hunger. It's recognizing the painting, right? I thought it was very, very great conversation. One thing that I've noticed as well, because I think more in the transmission of light, we hear a lot of not chewing on the words. And with studying the self, I've found that many times in my study of Dogen, it's a study of the self, right?

[46:37]

It's a lot of times, why do these words, what does it stir up in me, right? Why am I having a difficult time understanding them? Why am I trying to understand them? Is there understanding and not understanding? Or why, right? Why am I fighting against it, that rub, that study? It seems so many times that... what Dogen's doing is, like you said, just breaking us free and turning, constantly asking us to turn the light around rather than really just focusing on the words, right? And he also says, you know, he started off with a why, why practice if, if we're already enlightened, and he, instead of why, the rest of his life was how, how to practice, not why, is there like, why am I born? Why was I born? Well, who cares? You're here. So basically, How am I going to live? How do I take care of things? How do I talk to my friends? How do I study the Buddha Dharma? You know, it's all about how it's like, we're basically technicians of, of how to do things.

[47:38]

And very physical, very embodied. And he's a lot about hands and feet and head and where your body's placed. That's why all this formality, I know you like the formality to I do too. And it's basically about aligning, you know, when you're when the incense is straight, I think I told that story to you all about Kategori Roshi, saying that when you put the incense in the incenser, line it up with the Buddha's nose and body, and then that's straightforward mind. That's it right there. Really? Yeah, just that. Just do that. Hold things with two hands, you know. It's a delight when you begin to realize that you can talk with your body, that the body's the text, and that how you're talking is how you're behaving. Oh, for I'll never... I think I repeat this all the time, but I'll never forget the moment that we were discussing. I think I was asking what what Zen is or what usual question. And you were just you just said, it's the way I pick up this pencil. And that was it. That was it. I was like that.

[48:40]

And when you told me, if you just stop talking just for a moment, that's Zazen. That's it. That's it. Answered it all for me. So thank you. Thank you so much. I hope I wasn't rude. Oh, no, it's where I see. That's why I'm so eager to be in person because I need the physical. You do your best. Virtually for sure. It's worked very well, I must say. I can't wait. I haven't used it on anyone for a long time. Thank you. Hey. Hi, Fu. Hi, Fonga. Can you hear me okay? Yeah. Okay, because it's on mute. Okay, there we go. Yeah, I'm wondering. I'm wondering what Dogen thinks about, like, Yogacara and the storehouse consciousness. Because recently in Doka-san, I was working with my teacher, and I directly got the experience of seeing something I never had seen before.

[49:46]

And even though I sit and intellectually I kind of understood, But it was a real direct somatic experience. And I wonder, like, it made me think there is so much in my storehouse that, you know, I don't have enough years to see what's going on in there. And I can turn the light around, but there's so much. And it's kind of my operating system. Like, I didn't see something that is my operating system. And it's... It's my world, I guess. It's the world that I create and that creates me. Well, don't take too much credit. You know, you didn't do it. You didn't make it. You didn't make it. So the world, yes, the world created you. The universe created you. Your parents and your ancestors and the cultural conditioning, all the conditioning has gone into that little baby that came out pretty clean, you know, and then all those influences on that little baby.

[50:48]

or what you are, how you have evolved to this point where you are now. All of that is in the aliyah and it's unconscious. You can't get in there. It's locked. The only access we have is this little straw that's coming up from the aliyah and popping, kind of like these tennis balls so you can practice tennis, it's just one after another. So the aliyah sends something up into your awareness, like whatever it was you saw, Like holy cow. So then that's the only place we have a chance to recondition or decondition what's been stored is when we can see it. So those are the opportunities we have, you know, and they're a lot of a lot of his habits. So it's not exactly like new stuff all the time. It's like, Oh, I've done that before that looks familiar. Oh, there's that, you know, there's that habit of mine. There it is. So then when you see it, and you recognize it, then you can make some choices. about how you want to relate to that, you know, instead of getting angry when that, you know, and then I see the color green, that green makes me angry every time, you know, instead of getting angry, then I can start to study green and start to study that, that vision or that impression or that impact, like what is going on there for me, you know, I can bring it up into consciousness.

[52:12]

So we really work with what comes up. We can't go down. We can't go down in there. It just isn't accessible. It's unconscious. But there's a lot in there. And you're right. The understanding is you have an insight about how the mind works. And then it's going to be quite a number of years, average 20, if you work on getting those habits to be more in line with your intention and your vow. I do not wish to respond in anger. Even though anger is arising in me, I do not wish to create harm by responding to anger. I wish to calm down first before I speak. So that's a practice. So here's the conditions. They're coming up. Your conditioning is producing the conditions. Here's the conditions. The question we ask ourselves again and again is, what's the practice with these conditions? And I would say 90% of the time, the practice is patience. Excuse me, I've got to plug in my computer.

[53:15]

It's telling me it's about to die. That's helpful. Yeah. That happy little bang. The universe has caught me again. Yeah, so that's the system of work that we're doing. What's the practice? And then you know the practices. There's the six paramitas. Patience is right up there. Generosity is right up there. Ethics is right up there. Energy. So all of those responses that we can generate as practice responses are how we meet what's arising. That's very helpful. So don't worry about that. All that. It's locked. Can't see it. Don't worry about it. I'm not responsible. No, I'm just kidding. You're responsible for what? I'm kidding. What you do with what shows up, not how I got there.

[54:16]

You're free of that one. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Hi, Kate and Paul. It's me again. I know. Two days in a row. Or is it three? Oh. You're home. That's good. By saying how much I admire all of you in this sangha and how you come up with comments and questions. And I always feel challenged because I'm trying to follow everything and take everything in. And there's this little spark that happened, what, half an hour ago? Yeah, that's a question. I want to ask that. But I'm trying to hold on to it at the same time that I'm trying to pay attention to everything. Tell Paul. As soon as you have a spark, just tell Paul. He'll hold it for you when you're ready. Here's my question for today, if I can conjure this up.

[55:22]

I'm hearing a lot of discussion and presentation about changing mindset. And the one that clicked for me is that I've had this internal vision that just as we are these fairly light bodies compared to an ant and they're moving around doing their thing, that I'm this tiny thing in this huge universe and I'm in the universe. And what I was hearing was to turn that around and that I am the universe. So dependent co-arising is together. So those photos from the Webb telescope, maybe because I can sense them, see them, they are part of me as well as me being part of them?

[56:26]

Yes. Is that correct? Those are your great, great grandparents. Oh. Those star systems were before the Earth. They have been before the Earth, and we're part of what made the Earth, you know. Billions of years down the line, we come from that. That's home. You know, that's our ancestral. Those are our natal waters. Clouds of, you know, whatever they are, photons or something. That's where we come from. It's just a miraculous appearance, is what we are. So are the ants. Everything. Life is a miraculous appearance. I can see that I am part of that. infinite universe but to turn it around and say that infinite universe is inside me is you is me is is more different inside outside all of you the whole of you that you are you're speaking as the universe right now the universe is speaking

[57:29]

I'm the universe speaking to the universe. You know, the image I think is helpful is of the ocean with the waves. So we're all in the ocean of reality. There's no place else. And then you and I pop up and go, oh, hi, Kate. Oh, hi, Fu. And then we go back down. So we're just waves that are emerging from reality. You know, we have this little brief little visit here as separate waves, looks separate, but really we're just part of the same. We're just part of this great ocean of reality. And it's kind of mysterious. I think Reb one time said that, well, the universe basically produced us so we could look back and admire ourself. It's like, wow, we're really cool. I thought that's pretty good. That's our job, is to be in awe of creation, of whatever this thing is that's happened here. Who else is going to appreciate it? It doesn't seem to be a lot of other aliens running around yet that we can find. kind of we're the aliens that are going to be able to sort of and then of course we'll write all this stuff down and make notes and everything and then the planet will vanish and it'll be gone and something else will happen so this is our shot at appreciating creativity creation you know just to really be in awe of it that's enough just like wow wow I mean you're awesome can you

[58:55]

Can you even believe what's going on in your body that's just happening without you even thinking about it? I mean, pancreatic juice and blood vessels. I mean, have you done anything about that lately other than, you know, eat some lunch? I mean, you don't really have to do anything for all of that to work. That's miraculous. Yeah, that is miraculous and mysterious. And mysterious and marvelous and scary. You know, all of that, because we came out a little nervous. You know, we're kind of new. We've only been here a little while compared to the universe, to our grandparents, great-great-grandparents. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, thank you. And you've mentioned the Webb telescope, oh, from time to time. And the thing that fascinates me about that is that The images are actually created by people that the telescope is measured, receives infrared, which we cannot perceive because it's much more defined than visible light.

[60:09]

So we're not actually seeing what's out there the way we would see what's out there. So it's another level of mystery that we're actually seeing a different radiation than, and making, and we're doing the same thing our minds do as we're creating it into something. Yes. That we don't perceive. Yes. Right. Right. And that is very clever. Very clever. Clever. Well, it fascinates the images that come back are fascinating to our mind. Yes. Yes. Yeah. We are wired for a fairly narrow range of what, electromagnetic or whatever it is, the stuff that's coming through. We don't see a lot of it, right? We see the color thing. We don't see below. We don't see above. But it's all coming through us and past us. And we're sort of just have this very limited bandwidth.

[61:14]

All of the wavelengths. Yeah. And the web itself only can see another... very narrow bandwidth, but it's more defining than visible light. So they've chosen that. And then they enhance the frequencies with visible colors so that it looks like there's patterns that we can see. But there's nothing there, which we all know. Don't scare people. The Buddha says, there's nothing there. There's nothing we can perceive. We're making it up out of data we get back from the web. We are very creative. And we're fascinated by it. By ourselves. By what we can do. We're getting back from that. Absolutely. We are infinitely fascinated by ourselves. Infinite stories about the origin of the universe. I mean, what? Yeah. I want to stick around until they finally get it all figured out.

[62:16]

But I don't think. Well, let me take. There's always another mystery. Aren't we supposed to come back and do that next time? Yeah, I have plans. I'm kind of, you know, going to try to radiate myself so I can come at least peek in. I don't know if I want to come back, but I'd like to be able to hover a little hovercraft. I can see enough, but maybe watching would be interesting. It would be fine. Like I'd like to watch Green Gulch, see what happens here. in the next 200 years you know that'd be sort of fun i hope so i hope it's fun yeah it could be yeah well i don't know i tend to be optimistic as a head as an observer oh well we appreciate your optimism carrying the optimism for all of us you're welcome i'll do my best Okay, maybe another landing by Helene. Yeah, I just wanted to, it kind of has been coming up, and I guess it's related to mindset.

[63:29]

And the priest who died at Zen Center recently, Keith Wiley was a member of the morning sangha, online sangha that we have every morning at 7 a.m. to sit. So it was a shock when he died. I mean, he just died suddenly. I don't know the details. But his friend who is in the group was saying that Keith had this app on his phone. called We Croak. And it's this app that reminds you five times a day that you're going to die or about death. And it's kind of like in the tradition of Theravada Buddhism or different kind of Buddhism practice, Buddhist practices that give some time to focusing on death.

[64:38]

So I got this app. Did it just go off? No, no, but I'm attenuated to it. But anyway, Keith had this app, and it just seemed very, you know, and then he died. Anyway, it's just like. You don't want that app. No, I think it's kind of interesting to be reminded. of your death. You know, I mean, it sends you little blurbs, nothing horrible. Sinister. Yeah, well, you know, Giryu, our abbot, did something called the Death Cafe for a year with students here, and they seemed to have a very interesting, I wouldn't say a good time, but they had a very interesting time, considering that at the end of that year, the idea was that at the end of that year, they're all going to be dead. So that during the course of the year, as they met, they would talk about, you know, well, it's been six months now.

[65:46]

So, you know, what are we going to do with the next six months? How are we going to think about our lives? What are we going to take up that maybe we don't have another chance to do and so on. So I think a lot of people found it incredibly enlivening to really take up the idea that there's a time limit, you know, and to work with that in a collaborative way. So, you know, I didn't go, but I heard really good things about it as a practice. Yeah, I'm just trying to, I think I left my phone over here so that I could just look at the most recent blurb that I have. So this is my father decided to change the subject. Suddenly, for the first time in weeks, he did not want to talk about his symptoms of the day or his problems.

[66:55]

He wanted to know about his grandchildren. So and it's by somebody whose name I can't pronounce. But people send in, they send in some comments to be for the day or is it coming from, is this a kind of top down or is this a bottom up? I think this is a top down. Interesting. And anyway, because Keith was doing this, I gave it a try. Well, let us know what you think. It is a mindset kind of thing because I don't normally think about that. So it's kind of introducing this into my life that, you know, we're not going to live forever. And according to Suzuki Roshi, we're lucky that we don't. He also said, life is like getting in a little boat, rowing out in the ocean and sinking.

[67:56]

So don't forget the laugh part. I think that's the part that saves us all. You know, it's like, yeah, it's been great. It's been great. I'm really sorry to go, but gotta go. It's time to go. Okay, dear one. Okay. Thank you for that. Sure. Thank you, everybody. If you would like to, you're gonna unspotlight me. Ouch. Yeah, that's, yeah. Now I'm tiny. Thank you, Fu. Thank you, Sangha. Yes. Thank you so much. Thank you, food. Thank you, Sangha. See you next week. Good night, everyone. Have a great week. Have a great week. Bye. Thank you all. Travel safely. Yeah. Take care. Stay well. Stay healthy. And we'll see you soon. And then the dates that I'm going to be away were posted on the banner. So I hope you noted that because the banner won't show up. And that's how you remember. There's no banner. It's next Sunday. Yeah. Is it next Sunday? Whatever I said.

[69:00]

No, the one after that. Do you think there's a small group tomorrow? Yes, at 8. Okay. Talk about whatever it was. Bodhidharma. Bodhidharma. Well, I think my last suggestion is ideal for the retirement community that this is Death Cafe. Yes, and we can all meet downstairs in the cafeteria. Then it's starting to get a little closer than you guys, you know, where you can say, oh, well, that's sometime in the future. Yeah. Oh, listen, I'm right with you, Paul. Yeah. Just like, we'll have a committee. Yeah. Okay. We need a resident committee. Grace and I tried to do a death and dying class at Zen Center some years ago. Grace was doing hospice during the AIDS, and she signed so many death certificates for these young men.

[70:06]

Anyway, so we were going to do a death and dying, and nobody signed up. Oh, really? Oh, I guess it's too... We signed up for one of... 20 years ago that Reb was going to do at Green Gulch, and then he... decided not to do it. We may have been the only ones who signed up or something. Maybe it's, yeah, it's, it's hard. You know, people don't want to. And a friend said to me, what's more important than your spiritual practice? And I went, Oh yes, that would be it. That would be it. Yeah. That's really true. That is true. Just you made my heart pound there, Kate. Yeah. Finally. Good night. You got some greenery out your window. It looks like this. Yes. Yes. It's morning here. A bunch of kids here. They listen to part of the talk.

[71:09]

Good. Well, they're always welcome. Always welcome. Did you guys hear about Winnie the Pooh and about Mr. Rogers? Hi. Hi, guys. Oh, they're gone. Just almost got a glimpse, a little angel. They're going to come out in December. Oh, really? Yeah, for Ying. And she's going to come to California. And she's coming back now in December. So we're very excited about that. That's awesome. One of the kind people at Zen Center offered to sew her rocks before. Oh, there. OK, let's see. Come on. Come on into the camera. We would love to see you. Come on. Don't be shy. They're probably never shy except. Hi. Hi. Nice to see you. Wonderful. You've got two more, right? Hello. The older one. Cameo. Lovely.

[72:13]

Have a nice day. Is this a weekend for you all? Sorry, I just forgot to unmute myself. This is the summer break for them. Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. So they can have fun today. Obviously. Oh, that hurts. So I'll tell them the Winnie the Pooh story because I haven't, they didn't hear that. Winnie the Pooh is great. You want a fool to tell you? Winnie the Pooh. Do you want to hear the Winnie the Pooh story? Stay here, stay here. Why is that happening? Wow, that's so far out. I have one of those. Does it mouth open? Open? Yep. Oh, that's fabulous. Really good. That's not Winnie the Pooh, though. That's very similar. Different species. All right. Good night.

[73:13]

Next time, I'll read my Winnie the Pooh book, which I have somewhere in my... Bye. Take care of your mom. Okay. You'll be really nice to your mom. That's your job. Me too. Bye. [...] Wonderful. Long goodbye. Long goodbye. The long goodbye. Bye, Tom.

[73:44]

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