Maybe this is . to the middle day of Sashin, the best day. I can't remember who it was. Maybe it was Steve who used to start every day of Sashin, or maybe it was Paul with today is the first day, the best day.

[14:10]

And he'd say, today is the second day, the best day. I appreciated that. I want to give my... wholehearted thanks to Chimya-san for leading us in this intensive, for inviting me to give this talk, and for taking up the study of being nothing. When I first heard that that was the topic of this intensive, I got really excited. I felt like, ah, That sounds like liberation. Being nothing. Or maybe how I parsed it initially when I had that moment of excitement was not having to be anything. The liberation of not having to be or not needing to be anyone or anything other than what is.

[15:17]

which is what we do when we come and sit sushin together. We plop down and we let go of all the things that we think that we want. Well, we try. We try to let go of all these things. Giving over to the body and the breath, to the sight, the sound, the smells. And amazingly, in giving over to body and breath and the moment, this is dropping off body and mind. Yesterday, Chimyo talked about wholeheartedness. And I don't know about you, but when the feeling of wholeheartedness comes, it's there is no you

[16:19]

There's just the activity at hand. The thoughts and thinking and deliberation and strategizing are allowed to drop away. And there's just this moment. As Thich Nhat Hanh said, the only moment, really. Just this. Good work when you can get it. I wanted to, today, a little bit, I wanted to go back to some of the Genjo Koan and talk a little bit more about this question that I think can plague us, the question of who am I? Maybe in the sense of who should I be? What is expected of me? What distinguishes me from others?

[17:22]

What is my identity? In some ways, all of these are a form of hindrance, a form of self-clinging, self-identification, self-cherishing, or self-love, and its close cousin, self-disparagement. So when I heard being nothing, It felt like an invitation to let go a little bit of the grasp that these self-views have on me and an invitation for all of us to take it up as a practice. So Dogen says that we study the self by forgetting the self. and forgetting the self is being actualized by the myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, the body and mind of ourselves and others drop away, and no trace remains.

[18:30]

All of us come to practice with a desire to wake up, usually spurned on by something that isn't working, doesn't work in our lives, a suffering, a despair, dis-ease. Surely there's a better way to live, maybe, we think. Maybe when we don't feel these things, we don't really feel the need to practice. So, strangely enough, we come to practice with a strong sense of selfing, and we seek this liberation, this being nothing from that strong selfing. And when we sit together, we return again and again to our cushions. Each time we leave our cushions, it's like sometimes the whole of our world system with all of its concepts and discriminations can come alive again.

[19:38]

And maybe when we sit on our cushion, we have this invitation to let it go. And as Chimyo said, maybe yesterday or maybe before, this invitation to sit zazen isn't just about sitting. It's actually the invitation to, in every moment, to drop body and mind. I like to think of this as the one breath zazen. You can just breathe in everything, all of the experiences of your lifetime. all of the experiences of the universe, breathing in, allowing. And as that breath turns from in-breath to out-breath, releasing. And we do this moment after moment.

[20:41]

What happens when we get caught? When we get caught up or we feel resistance to the moment? Anyone ever experienced resistance to the moment? Nah. In GenjoCon, I wanted to bring up the section on the boat. Dogen says... When you ride in a boat and watch the shore, you might assume that the shore is moving. But when you keep your eyes closely on the boat, you can see that the boat moves. I've chanted Genjo Koan, I don't know, countless times and gone over this passage, not really thinking much about it. But for some reason, in the last few weeks, it just... kind of struck me as the most obvious thing is like, oh yeah, the boat, the boat is kind of like ourself and the shore is everyone else.

[21:50]

It's like, of course that's the case in this analogy. It's not a full analogy, but how often we assume that the shore is moving. We're not aware of the boat moving. Because, you know, we're the boat. We're in the boat. We're not moving. We're permanent. We're fixed. This is who I am. I know who I am. All this other stuff is moving. And, you know, sometimes in really annoying ways. And so we get caught. We get irritated. We think that what the shore is doing is ruining our, like, what's going on over here? Thank you very much. So when we... Keep your eyes closely on the boat. I see that now. That's an invitation to look deeply, intimately, turning the light inward, illuminating what's happening in body and mind.

[22:57]

And I just have to say, it's so much easier to do this in Zazen than it is in our so-called daily life. Imagine how lovely it would be to be able to more consistently maybe apply this to all those moments where we're not really thinking about identity. I mean, most of the time we're not thinking like, I'm this way, I'm not that way, who am I? We're not consciously thinking about these things, right? And yet, how often does the self, and all our grasping at self and other come roaring into focus. It doesn't take much, right? It just takes one little, maybe a side-long glance. Somebody looks at you, or somebody doesn't bow when you walk by them. It could be something really, really minor. And intellectually, you may feel, oh yeah, of course, that wasn't really, the person was probably just wrapped up in their own thoughts.

[24:10]

It wasn't about me. This is the dynamic of the boat moving, the shore moving. There's another example that I think is Jeffrey Hopkins. I remember years ago reading this example of a boat where I think the thought experiment was something like, imagine that you're sitting in a boat. in a misty ocean. You can't really see very far because of the fog. And you don't have a motor. And you don't have any oars. And you're in this boat. And you notice, it's like a little dinghy. It's like a rowboat without the oars. And out of the fog comes this giant, giant, like, cruiser, like a barge. And it seems to be barreling towards you. And if it continues in its current trajectory, it's going to smash into you. And who knows what would happen then.

[25:11]

So you're in your little boat. And you go through all kinds of turmoil. You start yelling at the boat. Stop. Don't you see me? You don't have any light. So you start using your voice. You panic. You start trying to splash the boat around. Then you get angry. Why aren't they listening to me? Why can't they stop? Why don't they turn away instead of coming towards me? Eventually. The boat collides with your boat. Maybe you fall over. Maybe you don't. All your anger, you're ready to start, you know, giving what for to the person in the other boat. And then you realize that there's nobody in the other boat. It's empty. What happens to all that anger and consternation and energy? All ready to manifest and be directed. this person wronged me. I like that analogy because it's, for me, it's a visceral sense of how we can get caught up in what we think should be, what we think is.

[26:34]

how it can all go poof with one realization. There's no one steering that boat. There was no one with malicious intent. No one was out to harm you. You may have still gotten wet. Your little rowboat may still be smashed to pieces. But there's a different flavor when it's not personal. Right? If you're ever having trouble finding the small self, if that ever becomes difficult for you, just imagine being falsely accused. Imagine how quickly the I didn't do that. I never said. I didn't mean. So in that way, it's identity formation.

[27:42]

It's self-view, self-clinging. Could be self-aggrandizement or it's the flip side, some kind of self-deprecation. These pitfalls we fall into all day long, sometimes without even realizing it. And we act from those places, harming ourselves, harming others. Maybe mostly harming this one. Yesterday Chimeo spoke about, well, there's so many things, such a rich talk. I love the story of Guishang calling the director and the head monk.

[28:42]

This question of identity and who am I supposed to be? Being Abbot for a day during Zuise, I was sitting there thinking, yeah, what is it? What is it to have an identity? I think when I had my ceremony to become installed as the abbot, I think I mentioned, it's all a whirlwind, but I think I mentioned my own struggles with having an injury. I tore my ACL and have not been able to sit the way I'm used to sit, and I've been experiencing pain, so I feel like I'm not myself. I don't feel like I'm myself. this particular delusion. I think we all have this experience when, you know, as all things change, when we miss or grieve a part of ourselves that is no longer, maybe it was a part of ourselves that came alive out of a particular kind of relationship or way of relating.

[29:59]

And when the relationship is over, that part is also no more. Or an ability, this body and mind are in a constant state of deterioration, you might say. Of course, when we are able to give over completely, how refreshing. can seem effortless when we are in that place. When we feel wholehearted, it can feel effortless. In Fukanzo Zengi, Dogen says, he has that line, if the least like or dislike arises, the mind is lost in confusion.

[31:05]

So what happens when we find that wholeheartedness isn't there. We feel divided. There's a conflict internally. One practice period at Tassajara, Linda Cutts was leading it. I remember she was great at telling stories during practice period. And she introduced us to, I think they were siblings, Ida and Noah. Anyone heard of them? Ida, Juana, And Noah won't. These two. Oh, my goodness. I think all of us have them. Right? So maybe you've experienced Ida and Noah sometime during this sashim when the bell rings. I don't want it. Maybe some of you, when the wake-up bell happened yesterday after being dragged out of bed at one in the morning.

[32:11]

505 comes along. I don't want to. No, I won't. If the least like or dislike arises. So how do we recognize self-ing? Self-ing when Ida and Noah arise? We can feel like we're knocked off our cushion, in a sense, our composure that maybe we've cultivated diligently. Zazen period after Zazen period. In a moment, it can just kind of crumble. There we are, facing, you know, resistance. Something that doesn't feel wholehearted. Division. Is it possible within the midst of this lack, this feeling of a lack of wholeheartedness, is it possible to drop body and mind in that moment?

[33:31]

Oftentimes, I think when we, well, when we start practicing, but even when we continue practicing year after year, it It can seem like we can get caught in ideas of the right way to do things or purity. That if I'm not feeling a certain way, then there's something wrong with my practice. There's something wrong with me. Something that needs to be fixed. And then we hear things like zazen, good for nothing. And it's like, what is that? This little droplet that can fall into our wanting to know, wanting to control, wanting to have a say, to not be in our little boat with the barge barreling down on us.

[34:39]

There's a case, my favorite, I think, case koan in the Book of Serenity. And it's a little bit long, but I want to mention it. Case 37. Guishan asked Yangshan, if somebody suddenly said, all sentient beings just have active karmic consciousness, boundless and unclear, with no fundamental to rely on, how would you prove it in experience? Yangshan said, if a monk comes, I call him. Hey, you. If the monk turns his head, I say, what is it? If he hesitates, I say, not only is their active karmic consciousness boundless and unclear, they have no fundamental to rely on. To which Guizhan said, Good.

[35:52]

In the commentary, Wang Song says, he talks about this story, a very similar story, where a monk had asked Yunnan, he said, in the Avatamsaka Sutra, it is said that the fundamental affliction of ignorance, which is, you all know what the fundamental affliction is, self, selfing, It's this belief in a permanent, fixed, inherently existent self. Not necessarily the way we can, you know, you don't have to conceptualize it, but it's the one we carry with us, the I that arises when it's threatened or when it needs something to bolster it. So The monk asked Yunnan, in the Avatamsaka Sutra, it is said that the fundamental affliction of ignorance itself is the immutable knowledge of the Buddhas.

[36:55]

What's that? This principle is most profound and mysterious in the extreme, difficult to comprehend. Yunnan replied, this is easy, it's easy to understand. At that moment, a boy happened to be sweeping nearby. Yunnan called to him, probably like, hey, you. The boy turned his head. Yunnan said to the monk, is this not immutable knowledge? Yunnan then asked the boy, what is your Buddha nature? The boy looked discombobulated at a loss, and then he sort of like hurried away. And then Yunnan says, is this not fundamental affliction of ignorance? So in this story, the boy turns his head when he's called. The immutable knowledge of the Buddhas calling and responding.

[38:03]

And then when asked, what is your Buddha nature? Confusion, maybe deliberation. and then fear and running away. How are these the same? How is our Noah and Ida, how can they be included in the moment? How do we turn to them? when we turn to them and we sit with them in Zazen, what happens? What happens when we, when the baby cries and we sit patiently with the baby? Tian Tong's verse on this case,

[39:12]

is the following. One call and he turns his head. Do you know the self or not? Vaguely like the moon through ivy, a crescent at that. The child of riches, as soon as they fall on the boundless road of destitution, has such sorrow. I like to think of this as all-inclusiveness. I became Abbott and I was struggling with the injury and the feeling of not being able to fully be here because of many doctors and physical therapist appointments. And I was feeling stretched. My identity, who I should be, what should be happening.

[40:16]

Was I meeting the moment? Was I not? Was I failing myself and others? All of that was there. And even so, when you could say, you could dismiss it all as, oh, that's just my conceptualization. It's just my thinking mind getting in the way. Maybe so. But I would also say that without words, without thinking, just the feeling, when one is injured, the amount of energy that goes towards just a feeling of protectiveness, of needing to be protected, has a certain level of being draining, right? Is it wrong? Is it something that shouldn't be? not at all.

[41:19]

It's part of the moment. So as we go forward and we see those areas in our own lives, whether it's during Sushin or out and about, that feel like they're in conflict, our project is not to Resolve the conflict by saying one is the right way and one is the wrong way. But how do they live together? All-inclusive. Nishiari Boku-san, in his commentary on the boat of the Genjo Koan, he's talking about the duality of annihilation and permanence on the line. Myriad dharmas are without a self, have no self.

[42:22]

He says, as myriad dharmas are without self, we are without self. Even if you understand the principle, you need to have a great capacity to be free from the dualistic views of annihilation and permanence and freely use annihilation and permanence. Those who fall into either of these views go against the true body of Dharma. For that reason, To maintain the self beyond these two views, using them freely and not getting stuck with either one indicates a great capacity. Annihilation and permanence are the left and right of Dharma, just where you are. So, as you go forward, When you feel wholehearted, enjoy it.

[43:23]

And when Noah won't and I don't want to show up, how do we turn to them and include them too? Because they are what's happening now when they are what's happening now. Shohaku Okamura, when he was talking about these various boat analogies, I didn't even get to the one. from Henzan. But he says, When we encounter a contradiction, should we simply choose one side or the other? Or is it possible to accept both views and try to find some common ground on which both make sense? Because I am a practitioner rather than a scholar. I love this. I believe we should study the contradictions in Dogen's teachings in relation to our own experience of contradictions we encounter in practice. So that's what I got today.

[44:31]

How do we live within the contradictions of our own practice? I'm sure we'll hear more about this soon. Thank you very much. . [...]

[45:42]

Thank you. The next period of discussion will begin at 11.10, and it's over in 10.10 until then.

[48:13]

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