This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. Can you hear me? Okay. Does everyone have enough room and enough stuff to sit comfortably? Okay. This is not a casual question. It's actually quite important, and especially because the air quality now is in the upper 170s for a particulate matter. I think that the question of our comfort and health is an important one today. So please sit in a way that you can sit comfortably. with attention to how you meet the... There's a couple of support cushions here if anyone needs them.

[01:10]

So just raise your hand and Ellen will get them to you. Okay? Just pass them on. And as you're sitting, if you bring your hands... your cushion and just mildly press down so that there's a sense of uplift in your lower middle body at the bottom of your ribs and if in your breathing you don't focus on making your breath much deeper but focus on the health of this part of the breath this part if you don't have a sense of it from inside You can put your hands around your lower ribs and just get a sense of how that lower rib, when it opens out, invites the breath. And breathe through your nose because we have, we all have, we're built with a filter that is better than the 95% filters that we can get at the hardware store.

[02:23]

these filters that are in here are built to process the air so that clean air comes into us. And so our best approach to getting the oxygen we need without extra particulates is to breathe through the nose. And you can feel that if you let, you may be able to feel, I don't know whether you actually feel this or not, but you may be able to feel that if you breathe through your nose and don't emphasize breaths that are too deep, that the body and mind come into a state of equilibrium, even though the air is heavy and full of stuff. And then with breath taken care of, we might actually be able to have a moment of care for the people who are threatened by the fire. or who have been hurt or killed.

[03:27]

And so, you know, it actually takes a certain amount of calmness and steadiness of body, speech, and mind to be able to understand that there are other points of view besides our own, to understand how to extend ourselves in this life because life is always inviting us to have that openness of mind. The minute we meet someone we don't know, the minute we meet someone who speaks a different language, the minute we meet someone who has been other places than we have been, that already invites us to go beyond the habits and preconceptions that we have.

[04:34]

The presence of other people, of all beings, is an invitation to reality. An invitation to live with reality, to practice with reality, to make that practice real, moment after moment and breath after breath. So even when we breathe... smoke, if it smells like smoke, if we've taken care of ourselves, we may be able to be reminded of the presence of other beings and other situations just by the fragrance or odor, depending on your point of view, of smoke. Okay? Even though smoke makes the air thick and hazy, we may be able to see clearly our lives and what to do. So that's what I want to speak about today, is a fascicle or chapter of the Shobo Genzo, the treasury of the true Dharma I, true meaning, true like in carpentry, true like when you true...

[05:51]

a relationship between two angles. You're justifying it or aligning it. And so it's the treasury of the true Dharma I, Shobo Genzo. And this particular chapter is called the Genjo Koan, the case that's always in front of us of everyday life and how to realize our life. So if you look at the Genjo Koan and share it, if you, you know, widely distribute them so that every few people can see one, there's a section, it's not in the beginning, that starts, enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water. And it ends with, it is so not only around you. but also directly beneath your feet or in a drop of water.

[06:54]

Can you find that section? And can you hold it up so that a person near you can also see it? Can people see it? Okay. So what if everybody helps me read this, because I can't make my voice very loud right now, but maybe together we can read this. And if you can't see it, you can hear it. And that will help. So shall we start? Enlightenment is like the moon reflected in the water. The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken. Although its light is wide and great, the moon is reflected in a puddle an inch wide. The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in dew drops on the grass. or even in one drop of water. Enlightenment does not divide you, just as the moon does not break the water.

[07:59]

You cannot hinder enlightenment, just as a drop of water does not hinder the moon in the sky. The depth of the drop is the height of the moon. Each reflection, however long or short its duration, manifests the vastness of the dewdrop, and realizes the limitlessness of the moonlight in the sky. When Dharma does not fill your whole body and mind, you may assume it is already sufficient. When Dharma fills your body and mind, you understand that something is missing. For example, when you sail out in a boat to the middle of an ocean where no land is in sight, and view the four directions. The ocean looks circular and does not look any other way. But the ocean is neither round nor square. Its features are infinite in variety.

[09:03]

It is like a palace. It is like a jewel. It only looks circular as far as you can see at that time. All things are like this. Though there are many features in the dusty world and the world beyond conditions, you see and understand only what your eye of practice can reach. In order to learn the nature of the myriad things, you must know that although they may look round or square, the other features of oceans and mountains are infinite in variety. Whole worlds are there. It is so not only around you, but also directly beneath your feet or in a drop of water. Thank you. Thank you very much. That really helps. It's not like Tinkerbell. I'm not asking you to clap your hands if you believe or something.

[10:06]

But this is a practice that... The practice of reading... the sutras or the teachings is a way to understand them by forming the words yourself. So it's called śruta maye prajna by the Buddha, which means perfect wisdom by means of hearing. And it's different to say something and hear it or just to hear it from someone else. And when you say it and hear it, it has more truth. There's two other sections to how the Buddha recommends that we study these texts. So the second one, I want you to hear this because this is important. It's a request. It's called cinta mayeprajna. Cinta is checking, verifying for yourself. So please, you know, take your...

[11:09]

and measure the truth of these words on your own and the truth of this text on your own, even a little bit of it. If you measure its truth on your own, you're studying the Dharma in a way that no one else can. And then the third one is called bhavana mayeprjna, wisdom by means of, well, bhavana is such a complex word. but it means becoming, maturing, kind of developing. Bhavana is an incredibly complex word, but Bhavana Mayaprajna here, in this form of Buddha's teachings about study, means that when you really hear the teaching very deeply, yourself, for yourself, and when you really check out in your own experience and in your own experiments, whether it's true or not, that develops and matures us as people and makes us to realize the teaching in our own bodies and minds.

[12:24]

Even if it's just a little, even if it's like, what on earth does it mean to say the moon? The moon. The moon here is a teaching. The moon. So, you know, we all know the moon. But what could it possibly mean in this context? You know, the moon reflected in the water is something that we can all understand. But why would he use that metaphor for... to describe reality or how we experience reality. And is it really like the moon reflected in the water, where the moon does not get wet nor is the water broken? Is the relationship between what's ultimately true and real and what we experience really like the moon reflected in the water?

[13:31]

You know, when we see... world from many viewpoints or, you know, with a greater understanding than we're used to. And then we're just going along, you know, on the bus on the way to work and someone sits down next to us and almost takes two seats. Is it really like the moon reflected in the water? Is it or isn't it? And if so, what does that mean? What does that mean? What part of our experience is that referring to? So these are questions that studying the text brings up for us. So I want to talk about why Dogen might say, when we sail out in a boat to the middle of an ocean where no land is in sight and view the four directions, the ocean looks circular and doesn't look any other way. And that the ocean is actually neither round nor square, and its features are infinite in variety, and whole worlds are there.

[14:40]

It can be like a palace or like a jewel. What is this teaching? And, you know, it might seem kind of obvious, because it's really true. It literally is true that if you go in a boat, you go on the ocean or on the water... and you can't see any land around you, the ocean will just look circular. It'll look circular this way, but if you turn around, it will look circular that way. And the circular this way and the circular that way might look exactly the same, but they're not the same because in one sense, one time you're looking this way and the other time you're looking that way, but it seems circular both times. It's just a different circle. One time you're looking north, the other time you're looking south. and both times it looks like a circle. But I'm not talking about some sort of weird relativistic notion of reality here, but rather this is actually a Buddhist teaching to shake us loose from a reified way of looking at the world.

[15:48]

And I think as far as I can tell, it comes from... a commentary on a treatise about Mahayana Buddhism by Ashwa Bhava, who lived in the 400s. And so he talked about ways of seeing water. He said, it's like the water, the nature of the water remains the same. But... As celestial beings, human beings, hungry ghosts and fish, don't carry the same effect from their causes and conditions, they each see the water differently. Celestial beings see the water as jewels. Shiny. People in the world see water as water.

[16:50]

Cheers. So a celestial being would look at this exact same water and see it as jewels. And we see it, water, as... I'm very conscious that I have a cup of water and you don't. Something to drink. You know what I mean, right? So hungry ghosts or... They're beings with very, very huge stomachs and pencil necks so food doesn't go in. They see water as pus and blood. It's just torture to them to see water because they know that if they try to take it in, they can't. It's poison to them. Fish see water as a palace. Swim, swim, swim, swim. Whoa. So a fish sees the water as a palace, or the fish might not see the water at all.

[18:03]

Like we might not usually see oxygen at all, but today we can see it because there's something wrong. Fish might not see water. That's another section of the Shobogenza that I won't go into. So there's a teaching about this which is very... concisely expressed by a scholar who lives not far from here. His name is Heejin Kim. And he wrote a wonderful book called Dogen Kigen, Mystical Realist, which talks about the teachings of the person who wrote this Shobo Genzo, Genjo Kohan, that I'm talking about today. So... Dogen, for people who don't know, Dogen was the founder of our school in Japan. And he lived in the 1200s. And he got the teachings himself in a very difficult way.

[19:08]

He actually sailed in a boat where no land was in sight. He went from Japan to China in the boat. And it was a peak experience for him because... There were storms. He began to see the ocean in many different ways. And the storms were life-threatening. It describes them in several biographies of Dogen that exist. Storms were life-threatening and finally they got to China. And where immediately the Chinese equivalent of ice held them up at the border. and they had to stay on their ship for a very long time. So the ship was full of things from Japan being taken to China to sell, and they were actually put in quarantine for quite a long time. And there's all sorts of stories about what happened during that time when they were at the border without being able to go in.

[20:13]

But I can't help but thinking that Dogen... described the ocean from personal experience of seeing it as a palace or as a jewel on his way from Japan to China to get the teachings and live out his life's purpose. He must have seen that ocean as a jewel from the point of view of his heavenly motivations. But then when it started storming and his life was at risk, he probably saw that ocean as poisonous and dangerous and awesome and monstrous. And then when he got to China, he just saw it as water. Could they please get off the boat and get on to land so he could get on with his life? Okay, but... Anyway, the teaching of the four views of water is called Isui Shikan.

[21:19]

And it means that every being, we are all limited in our perceptions by how we have come to be. There's actually a teacher in Mountain View who talked about this. He's a Pure Land teacher. And he has a son who had to bring his lunch to school. He was bringing his lunch to school. And in the lunch was a little container of spam musubi. And spam musubi is a kind of a... It's a rice roll, like a little sushi. And on top, instead of a piece of fish... you know, being held by the seaweed, is spam. And the other kids in the class were going, eww, spam, that's not food, eww.

[22:20]

And the teacher was amazed by what his son next did. And his son said, spam is good, and spam musubi is food. And he... he said, don't just say ew, taste it. And the kids tasted it, and they said, wow, this is good. And so this might seem to be a very simple story, but it's the heart of this teaching of one water, one nature of water, four views. So the kids who started out by saying ew, are actually not expressing the beauty of human life in any particular way. They're more in the realm of anger or hatred or preconception.

[23:25]

And they weren't in their reality. They were in some sort of dream about reality in which if it's not pizza, it's not good. Pizza or spaghetti was basically what my... nephew ate when he was growing up. Anything but pizza or spaghetti wasn't good. It wasn't food. But when the kids tasted the Spam Musubi, they loved it. And their minds were instantly transformed without them knowing it to a much more international way of thinking. So now, like if they ever go to Hawaii and get Spam Musubi, they might order it, you know, when they're They might not remember that this thing happened to them when they were six or eight. But when they're 50, they might go and order Hawaiian food, and that might be on the menu because of the inclusion of the Hawaiian palate. It includes, you know, in the state...

[24:30]

You can get a lot of different types of food and everybody eats everybody else's food because you're living together on islands. So Hee Jin Kim comments that our practice is like that because to practice we have to muster our bodies and muster our minds. We have to actually learn how to sit comfortably and If it's not comfortable, please change it. If you need to adjust it, not fidget, but if you need to adjust it, sit upright again and develop that stability in the body. And it has to be done again and again when we're learning it. It doesn't just kind of happen. We have to do that intentionally, but we have to do that without... bringing up our mind of control or anger at all the changes that we'll feel when we're in the sitting posture.

[25:38]

And so what Hee Jin Kim says is that mustering our bodies and minds, which the phrase is, we see things. Mustering our bodies and minds, we hear sounds. So we understand them intimately. However, it's not like a reflection dwelling in the mirror, nor is it like the moon in the water. As one side is illumined, the other is darkened. I hope my Japanese is not so terrible and that... because I don't really speak Japanese, but I'm trying to read these phrases so that people who do read it will understand how Dogenzenji actually expressed it, because that's important, because the English translation is approximate. And he uses a lot of wordplay in this Genjo Koan, so it's hard to tell what he's really saying unless you actually speak Japanese or study it for a long time.

[26:49]

And so Hee Jin Kim continues, here is Dogen's mystical realism, epitomized in a nutshell. The way is intimately understood in and through what he says man expresses, because he wrote this book decades ago, but what people express and enact by mustering body and mind. Thus, the human and the way are no longer in the dualistic relation of the moon and the water, or a mirror and reflection, or the knower. and the known. So Dogen's mystical approach is not philosophical. It has to do with reality. It has to do with the world of Spam Musubi and practicing with their thoughts around it. Non-dualism doesn't signify that we transcend duality. It means that we realize duality. We realize how limited Our point of view is I grew up in Valley Stream, New York.

[27:53]

You know, we didn't have, I didn't even know what an artichoke was until I was 18. You know, we ate the same thing all the time. Pretty much we ate some sort of meat, some sort of frozen vegetable and some sort of starch every night for dinner, cereal or pastries for breakfast. And school lunch, whatever that was for lunch. Can't tell you what was in it. But that's what we ate when I was growing up. And when I was 18, I became a vegetarian because I wanted to live more lightly on the planet. So then I understood that after some time of cooking vegetarian food, because my mother couldn't cook, I understood that vegetables could actually taste good and not just be a contribution to our life on the planet.

[28:56]

And, of course, through years and years of cooking, my appreciation of food became more through cooking at Tassajara, through living in San Francisco, and so on. And so, anyway, this... This business of the water is one water with four tastes is important. And the taste that we think that water has is like a dream. Our conception of water is like a dream. It's conditioned by our life. You know? And it changes. The conditioning changes. It's one of three ways in which we see and can practice with reality. There's so much I could do. I have about 10 pages of notes. I feel like throwing them over my shoulders because I can't possibly say everything that this simple metaphor of the ocean or the moon in the ocean brings up.

[30:07]

There's too much. It's too vast. It's as vast as the ocean. But... let's just say that there's three realities. There's conventional reality or conventional truth in which the ocean is just water. There's ultimate truth in which nothing we think about water is what the ocean really is. And then there's skillful truth in which we have to understand whether to bring up the... non-water side of water, whether to bring up the water side of water, because those are the two sides that we're most familiar with, depending on what's going on around us, on what the world is asking at any given moment. You know, there's so many... This has been part of Buddha's teaching since the very beginning of Buddhism. Like in the Dhammapada,

[31:10]

this is my ordination brother Gil Fransdal's translation. Verse 369 says, Bhikkhu, or monk, bail out the boat. Empty it, it will move quickly for you. Cutting off passion and aversion, you'll go to nirvana. And then in verse 413, he says... Well, whoever, like the moon, is spotless, pure, clear, and undisturbed, in whom the delight for existence is extinct, I call a Brahmin, supreme practitioner. But Gill then confesses in a footnote that he had no idea how to translate the phrase Nandi Bhava Parikhinam. He had no understanding whatsoever. I mean, he had... ways to translate it, but he couldn't resolve which one was real or true.

[32:14]

Because they all depended on going to one side or another of what that phrase meant. But it has that word bhava in it, or becoming, or existence, or maturation, or fruition. That word that I had trouble with before. Gil, who's much more trained, who has a doctorate in Buddhist studies, he's been teaching about this forever and speaks many languages since he was a tot, still has trouble understanding what this phrase means. It's not about not knowing the words. It's about having to understand the tune or the song. So let's just use some metaphors that we... might be a little bit more familiar with in California in 2018. So just use a few metaphors from different cultures and different writers to see if we can get a sense of the song, not just the words or the notes.

[33:29]

So here's a little phrase from the Upanishads. From delusion lead me to truth. From darkness lead me to light. From death lead me to immortality. And St. John of the Cross talks about the same three realities that the Buddha talked about, but in a different form of spiritual conversation. Again, I'm going to try to say the Spanish, and please, someone who speaks Spanish, please correct me if my Spanish is wrong, because I don't speak Spanish. I can say a few menu items, and that I'm a girl and I drink water, basically. Soy una niña. Agua!

[34:31]

That's about the extent of my Spanish, but I'll try. So this is from St. John of the Cross, who was Spanish. And this is from... With no light or guide except the light that was burning in my heart. So that combines the three levels of truth with no light or guide except the light that was burning in my heart. The light is the ultimate. No light or guide is... Well, let's just say my heart is the relative. I can't tell whether no light or guide is the ultimate or whether light is the ultimate. One is... ultimate.

[35:33]

Perhaps we could say that no light or guide is the skillful because we have to meet the dark. T.S. Eliot describes it in four quartets on playthings of the wind. Descend lower. Descend only into the world of perpetual solitude. World not world. but that which is not world. Internal darkness, deprivation, destitution of all property, desiccation of the world of sense, evacuation of the world of fancy, inoperancy of the world of spirit. This is one way, the other is the same. I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing. Wait without love, for love would be love for the wrong thing.

[36:36]

Yet there is yet faith. But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. Or here's another one from the Psalms. This is Norman Fisher translated this in a book called Opening to You. And this is Psalm 139, a section of it. You have searched me inside and out with your beam. You have known me. You know my sitting down and my rising up. You think my thoughts before they arrive in my mind. You are my walking. You are my lying down. All my living is your knowing. Even before there's a word on my tongue, you speak it. You're behind me. You're before me. Your hand touches me wherever I am, and my knowing this is impossible, for it is indecipherably sweet, too exalted for my heart to grasp.

[37:48]

Inconceivable. If I said, I'll pull up the darkness, cover all the world's light with the dark, Even that darkness wouldn't be dark but would be bright as clear noon because in you darkness and light are one. Search me inside and out with your being. Pour your awareness throughout my heart like honey. Find the crookedness and selfishness there and lead me away from it on the way to your heart. Timeless time. How am I doing for time, speaking of timeless time? Hmm? It's 11? Two minutes before 11? So how about another five minutes or so? Is that okay? Are you ready?

[38:50]

Still sitting upright? Still breathing but not too heavily or deeply? Through your nose? Okay? Yeah. So I just want to talk very quickly about these three ways of practice and how this same event in practice can be so different. Not to mention for different beings. Like anybody in the room who told this story would be able to tell it a different way. And those differences are important because the truth is not understood except by understanding all of them together at the same time. All of us together at the same time. All of this together at the same time is one form of the truth. The ocean is not just one fish.

[39:51]

It's not just one piece of seaweed. It's not just one trash island the size of Texas. The ocean is all of those things. We can cultivate the health of the ocean by knowing the ocean, by caring about the ocean, by being the ocean's people. So there's a text in Zen. The name of it is Kyoju Kaimon. It's also by Dogen Zenji. And it talks about the different ways of practicing with the three different levels of truth. And so I'm not going to say all the different things because it would take too long. But just to say that... I'll take an example of Sangha.

[40:54]

Sangha is... all of us sitting in this room together at this time. And so I'll give examples from Dogen's Kyoju Kaiman of what Sangha means in those three levels of truth. So if you just look around you, you'll see people. Sangha just means together. And the Sangha in this room is everyone sitting together in this room or online. Online. Or in the dining room. It's going to be hard to bow backwards to the dining room, but I'll try. Okay? Or anywhere that people are practicing right now can be called the Sangha. And the wider view of the Sangha can be the whole ocean or the entire world. And so in the ultimate sense, which Dogen calls the single-bodied

[41:55]

way of practicing and realizing. The sangha, us, is the virtue of peace and harmony. So it's the single body of peace and harmony that's manifested by all of its limbs, which have different names, like you and me. And in the relative or conventional way of understanding, That's the world of the different names, like Ellen is here and I'm here, Paul's here, Ed's here, Barbara's here. All the different people are here. I could keep naming people, but it'll sound like romper room if I do, so I won't. And then in the maintained truth, which maintained means that everything that comes up reminds you of both the ultimate and skillful truth because your conscience has been kind of attached to your meditation practice.

[43:03]

Sangha is defined in that world as the act of relieving suffering and being free from past, present, and future. It means being in the present moment, responding appropriately. So in the ultimate, Or single-bodied, it means peace and harmony. In the relative, it means us with all of our histories. And in the world of practice, in which the conscience acts as a link to remind us of both ultimate and relative, it means all the little acts of freedom we can each do and do together. So that's the example of the sangha seen in the different ways. And so when we're practicing, let's say a person who's in the relative world, seeing what the eye of the relative world can reach, will say, oh, hi, Mary.

[44:08]

Hi, Ingetsu. Thank you for being here. Thanks, Enos, for doing this. That's in the relative world. In the ultimate world, I'll just see their goodness. And in the skillful world, they'll say, five minutes left, three minutes left, you know, and I'll feel that goodness, and it will be expressed through the act of respecting the boundary of time. Okay? So I just want to say that, and I think that that is probably enough for one day. It's a lot of flights of fancy and dreams to express something that's so true that these words can only mess it up. So in just a moment, you're going to be reciting a verse to end this talk so that you can go about your day.

[45:16]

And it's another example of... anybody who recites that verse will be reciting something about ultimate truth and about this truth and about what we're going to be doing throughout the day. Anyway, may the positive energy, may any positive energy of this study and this lecture of the Genjo Koan, of their life in the ocean, may it reach everyone, whether in the fire or whether they're safe. But may it particularly reach people who are suffering from the oppression of my own, of the effects of my own greed, hate, and delusion. May I transform

[46:22]

the unwholesome impulses that affect me and afflict me and the people around me and realize freedom with all beings. And I thank Bernie Glassman for that. And let that, let that, those words live even as he has gone. Anyway, thank you very much for your attention. Please have a good day. Please continue to breathe. And may everyone you see and meet and work with today be happy. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost, and this is made possible by the donations we receive.

[47:27]

Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[47:41]

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