This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Genjo Cohen talks about a fish swimming through the water. And... as it's swimming, it's completely actualizing reality. And in this form of Tai Chi, we're like swimming dragons, swimming through the water and swimming through the sky. And when our whole being comes together in giving ourselves completely to this activity, we can be a swimming dragon. Whether it's doing Tai Chi, or sitting still, or walking on the path, or scrubbing a pot.

[01:12]

So Genjo Koan, Genjo means like actualize, manifest, or realize and it can also mean manifestation or realization and this is one of Dogen's favorite words and I think he likes a kind of dynamic quality of the term that it can refer to what is manifest like what is and it can also refer to manifesting what we bring how we actualize the manifest koan. So koan, koan usually is like a way we talk about the stories of awakened teachers in China.

[02:17]

And a koan is like a... It's like a precedent of awakening. And koans are things that we can talk about koans. We can kind of try to explain them. We can turn them. But another thing we do with koans is we engage them. And we work on a koan. And the koan works on us. And the koan becomes a way of engaging our deepest question, our deepest seeking, what really brought us here. And so genjo koan, it's kind of a, it's a pretty dynamic thing to translate.

[03:19]

So some of the translations are, well, the one we use here, We chant here, actualizing the fundamental point. Some others are actualization of reality, manifesting suchness, the realization koan, the issue at hand, the problem of everyday life, the realized universe, the manifestation of ultimate reality, That's what we chant in Fukanzazengi. It's actually, it's Koan no Genjo that's in Fukanzazengi. The realized universe, the manifestation of ultimate reality, the spiritual question as it manifests before your very eyes, the koan of being alive, living what is according with the truth,

[04:21]

Absolute presence. So these are all translations of denjo koam. And I think Dogen would like this. I think this would make him happy. He was not really interested in kind of nailing down, like, this is what I mean when I say this term. He was more like, how can I use this term? How can awakening use this term to express awakening? And, you know, encourage us to practice. And Genjo Kuan is a text sometimes regarded as Dogen's most essential piece. And sometimes his most difficult. Sometimes it's called his skin, flesh, bones, and marrow. It's also called his words of iron. And one of the commentaries says that followers of Soto Zen...

[05:27]

should read this fascicle day and night with respect and make it the root of practice, birth after birth, world after world. And so we can study Genjo Koan by taking up the words, but to really study it, we take it up in practice. So one of the commentaries says, The way you study Genjo Koan is with your hands in shashu. So we study Genjo Koan with our lives. We study our lives with Genjo Koan. So I want to focus on the section about the fish swimming in the water and the bird flying in the sky. So this starts... like this. A fish swims in the ocean, and no matter how far it swims, there is no end to the water.

[06:32]

A bird flies in the sky, and no matter how far it flies, there is no end to the air. So we're swimming, we're flying, and we're flying through a myriad things. And things here could include things, people, sounds, smells, sights, colors, feelings, emotions, thoughts, ideas, mental states, anything we can experience. This is what we're swimming through. And in Genjo Koan, the way that Dogen talks about delusion and realization is in terms of the relationship of self and things. So, you know, he says to carry the self forward and experience myriad things is delusion.

[07:41]

Then myriad things come forth and realize the self is awakening. So one way we can experience this relationship of self and things is a separation. I'm here and I experience things and we each have our own existence. And so we carry a self around and we carry a self into the zendo, we carry it on the path, carry it into the dining room, we have this self. There's these things, there's these environments, there's stuff happening, but that's not me. I'm just this person. And so Dogen says that's delusion. There isn't, we don't exist like that.

[08:50]

That's not how we happen. That's how we appear. That's how we appear to happen. Our life appears to us in this way, a very compelling appearance, that we're separate. And we tend to believe that this appearance is real. So there's this appearance of separation. It kind of seems true, and we feel like it's what's happening. And so awakening is everything happening with us in relationship. We happen in relationship. We don't happen by ourself. Nothing happens by itself. Emptiness is that things are empty of this appearance of separation. We're totally relational beings.

[09:55]

to any kind of being, any kind of existence is relational. In my notes here, I called this section, a fish swims in the ocean. And after a while, every time I saw that, it reminded me of like, you know, someone walks into a bar, those kind of jokes. A fish swims in the ocean. Someone walks into a bar. Genjo Koan. That's the joke. Someone walks into the bar and the bar actualizes someone. Someone walks into a bar and someone actualizes a someone bar. The ocean is the ocean of swimming fish. The swimming fish is a swimming fish of the ocean.

[10:58]

It's one event. There's parts. It's not saying that the fish just dissolves into the ocean, but the parts aren't separate. If the parts were separate, they couldn't be parts. Separate parts couldn't come together to make something, like an experience. If we're separate from the frog, if we're really separate, we couldn't hear the frog. It's one event. The self is the self of myriad things. We're the self of our experience in this moment. We're the self of the zendo. We're the self of our memories. We're the self of each other. We're the self of what we did today, what we ate, the air we breathe. This is all here.

[12:01]

So one way of swimming is delusion. One way of swimming is realization. And so realization is not swimming somewhere else. It's not getting rid of the self. It's not getting rid of things. It's not changing the self or changing things. It's not finding better things. It's just a subtle pivot. So Dogen says, Buddhas have great realization of delusion. It doesn't say, Buddhas get rid of delusion and then have great realization. So we don't try to get rid of delusion, we also don't get mired in delusion, but we investigate what is great realization of delusion. There's this poem by Isa, and it's very short. The world of dew...

[13:06]

is the world of dew and yet and yet so the world of dew is the world of dew this is like the suchness of impermanence this is the world we live in and um and you know I think you could think of that as kind of like ultimate truth and then there's this and yet and yet so yes like Everything's impermanent. That's the suchness. And when we lose someone we love, we grieve. And realizing the koan is not just realizing the suchness of impermanence, it's realizing the and yet. It's realizing the grief. We don't get through the grief to get to ultimate truth.

[14:08]

So Buddhists have great realization of delusion. Buddhists have great realization of pain, great realization of grief, sadness, anger, depression. The fish swimming in the ocean, the whole ocean is swimming. The bird flies in the sky, the whole sky is flying. And we appreciate this when we're wholehearted, when we wholeheartedly swim, when we wholeheartedly fly. And so we're inquiring and thinking, what is wholeheartedness? What is fully swimming? What is completely being here? it's not something we figure out. It's something we open into. Is there any holding back?

[15:14]

Is there any holding in? Is there any holding down, holding away, grasping? And we feel it. We feel our way into our grasping and our holding. That's how we release it. We can't... Pry it away. Pry it open. That's just more grasping. But if we can feel it, we can feel like we're holding on. We can let go. So we have to get really interested in our grasping. So the Genjo Koan continues. However, the fish and the bird have never left their elements. When their activity is large, their field is large. When their need is small, their field is small. Thus each of them totally covers its full range and each of them totally experiences its realm.

[16:15]

So this right here, this is our element of practice. We don't leave the water. We don't leave the air. We don't become someone else. We don't need to go somewhere else. We work with this. The koan is this. It's here. It's manifest. And sometimes our activity is large and sometimes it's small. Sometimes we do big things. Sometimes we do little tiny things. And then our field is large or small. And so the water and the sky live with the bird and the fish. It's a... reciprocal intimacy of relational life. Whatever the size, whether it's big, whether it's small, it's totally relational. It's infinitely relational. Big or small, the koan is completely manifesting.

[17:22]

So, Ganjo koan also says, each reflection of the moon in the water, the moon in the dewdrop, Each reflection, however long or short its duration, manifests the vastness of the dewdrop and realizes the limitlessness of the moonlight in the sky. So we can measure big and small, but we can't measure a moment of our life. Our life right now is incomparable. What we can measure, what we can compare is just a little part of it. It's like a circle of water in a vast ocean. That's what we can compare. And if we forget about the ocean and just get into this little circle of water, the comparisons can confuse us. We can get kind of disoriented about comparing today and yesterday or being here or being somewhere else.

[18:31]

being this person or being someone else. We can get confused and we can become half-hearted. Some form of not being full-hearted, whole-hearted. And we don't, so whatever we're doing, we don't need to make it bigger or smaller to realize Genjo Koan. We don't need to make it easier or difficult. more or less painful and if we think when we think we need to change something then we obscure the koan we turn away from the koan we turn away from the issue at hand or living what is Suzuki Roshi said reality will be experienced only when you are in some particular condition like this one

[19:35]

And so Genjo Kohan is filled with these kinds of encouragements. Practice intimately and return to where you are when you see forms or hear sounds fully engaging body and mind. Keep your eyes closely on the boat. And this can be a kind of our trust or our faith. We don't have to trust what's happening, but we trust being fully present with what's happening. And so big or small, we totally cover our full range. We totally experience our realm. So back to Genjo Koan. Now if a bird or a fish tries to reach the end of its element before moving in it, this bird or this fish will not find its way or its place.

[20:52]

So this is like, sometimes we think freedom is freedom from, freedom from the bondage, freedom from however we are stuck, freedom out of here. And Dogen also talks about this earlier, like Buddhas have great realization of delusion. Sentient beings are greatly deluded about realization. I don't wanna swim anymore, I just wanna get out of this. And this is a natural response to the difficulties of life and a natural response when we believe in the appearance of separation. And there's many ways we can seek the end of our element before moving in it.

[22:03]

There's a quote attributed to Dostoevsky, one must love life before loving its meaning. I've also heard this, one must love the world before loving its meaning. And so we must love this life before the meaning can help us. And I would say Genjo Koan is, you could also say it's a koan of loving fully. Wholeheartedness is loving our life. Completely giving ourselves to this. Fully doing whatever we're doing. to love or wholeheartedly engage the difficulties, the pain, the hard stuff, the limitations of this moment of being us.

[23:40]

If the fish leaves the water, it will die at once. If we leave our samsara, we turn away from awakening. And so loving this life is also taking responsibility for this moment. There's this Zen teaching, just this person. This is what Dung Chan's teacher said to him just before he kind of wandered off and woke up, seeing his reflection in the stream. And just this person, before it was a Zen teaching, In Chinese legal practice it was the way that in court that someone would take responsibility for a crime. Basically they would formally assume guilt by saying just this person. So we let go of blame, we take ownership for this experience.

[24:50]

And this loving our life, we don't need to like it. For me, when I say liking, that's like a feeling. But loving is not a feeling for me. It's more like something we do. It's an activity of presence. And actually, it's really important to love our life when we don't like it. And you could say that this love, it's like a yes from our heart or a yes from our whole being. And it's a, again, it's like faith or the trust. It's a yes to being fully present. Yes, I will be fully present. Yes to fully being this moment. When we give ourselves completely to the world, the world gives itself to us.

[26:02]

If we hold back, the world seems to hold back. Meaning seems to hold back. Life seems to hold back. So this total mutuality of how we happen through relationship is expressed in this. We just can't feel the world meeting us unless we give ourselves completely to meeting the world. The fish is the water and the water is the fish. The bird is the air and the air is the bird. They have no existence apart from each other. We have no meaning apart from relating to the things of our life, relating to beings, relating to feelings, relating to sounds.

[27:15]

Awakening has no meaning or life or place apart from this world. from this person exactly this person that we are right now we don't realize awakening as someone else so Dogen continues when you find your place where you are practice occurs actualizing the fundamental point when you find your way at this moment practice occurs actualizing the fundamental point so actualizing the fundamental point that's Genjo Koan so finding our place finding our path loving this life saying you know being a yes to being fully present

[28:28]

I was reading a commentary by Suzuki Roshi on this, and I wrote down this quote that I really liked, and it was, eternity wants our constant effort. And then I went back later, and I looked, and they couldn't find it, and then I found, oh, I misread it. But anyway, if there is an eternity, it wants our constant effort. It wants our total effort right now. And practice occurs, or practice becomes genjo koan. Practice becomes the realization koan. Practice becomes absolute presence. Practice becomes the koan of being alive, living what is, manifesting suchness. So wholeheartedly intimate with this moment of being a deluded, sentient being, the koan is actualized.

[29:37]

And this is wholeheartedly swimming, wholeheartedly sitting, wholeheartedly engaging the activity of the present. So we make this effort, this effort to be fully present. to engage body and mind. Another way we talk about faith or trust is this effort is not to get awakening. It's an expression of awakening. This is a practice of awakening. This is practice realization. I don't think this is something we believe. We don't need to believe this. I don't think that's what the trust is. But it's how we're wholehearted. If we're doing this, even a little bit for the sake of something else, we're not totally here.

[30:45]

If practice is for awakening it somewhere else, we're not fully here. We're not fully loving this life. And the meaning can't help us. Awakening can't help us. And as our effort becomes more and more wholehearted, It's not our effort. It's happening with everything. All things are coming forth and realizing our effort. So there's this kind of seemingly small thing of just being totally present. That's like this profound pivot for our lives. hear a few lines from a poem called the little duck so this little duck is sitting in the ocean probably he doesn't know how large the ocean is and neither do you but he realizes it and what does this little duck do I ask you he sits down in it he reposes in the immediate as if it were infinity

[32:09]

which it is. That is religion, and the duck has it. Actually, the first time I heard this poem, I think Reb said, that is Zen. He changed it, and the duck has it. So it's easy to overlook the present. It's like the air we breathe or the water the fish is swimming in. And so how are we fully here? There's no technique or tool to hold on to. But there is inquiry. Living questioning, not just conceptual, but with our whole body and mind. We can use some techniques to help us settle or concentrate a little bit.

[33:11]

But actually, wholeheartedness, there isn't really a technique for it. One of my favorite comments on Genjo Con is, by Bokasan Nishiari, a 19th century Zen teacher. Suzuki Roshi, he's the teacher of Kishizawa Iin, and Kishizawa Iin was Suzuki Roshi's second teacher. And he said, we cannot step out of the koan. We swim in the koan, and no matter how far we swim, there is no end to the koan. And I feel like this affirms this moment right here, and it also affirms like this practice is endless. So Genjo Koan is not a Koan we finish, or it's not a Koan we solve or pass.

[34:18]

It's an endlessly dynamic realisational practice. It's, you know, the deepest question of our life is not necessarily something we should answer, but open. You know, and Dogen also says, you know, when Dharma fills your body and mind, you understand that something is missing. This is also the endlessness of practice. This is not about finishing or completing, but endlessly opening, endlessly investigating, endless paths of investigation. And there's a deep joy in this prospect of endless practice.

[35:34]

Does anyone know what time it is? Okay, time to stop before this becomes an endless talk. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma Talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving.

[36:16]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_97.32