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. Good afternoon. Thank you for coming. Good. It's one of the hardest things to do is to talk in front of people you actually know. I'm quite used to and comfortable with, by now, giving talks in front of strangers. That's kind of what I do all the time. But this is kind of weird. So, just to make things harder on myself, I chose the most vilely, pretentious topic possible. which is Dogen's concept of God. I decided to just, if you're going to do something, do it big, right?

[01:03]

Or if you're going to fail, fail big. But I wanted to talk about my own personal, probably one of my favorite chapters or fascicles in Shobo Genzo, which is Immo. And... I'll preface it, I'll start it off, I'll start off explaining maybe why I like this one, which is because I, a lot of people think of Buddhism as a religion without God, and that's the way it was first, I think that was the first description I'd ever come across of Buddhism, was a religion without God. Oh, that's weird, a religion without God, what the hell could that be? I was not raised with any religion in my family. So, unlike a lot of people who I meet these days who came to Buddhism because they wanted to get away from God, because they've been... There's a lot of people, probably some people in this very room today, who got into Buddhism at first because they were

[02:16]

sort of oppressed by this idea of God that they've grown up with, and then they discover Buddhism as a way to sort of be spiritual or something, you know, for want of a better word, I'm not really fond of the word spiritual, but to be spiritual without God. I came to it from the opposite direction. I... My parents were not atheists or anything. They just weren't interested in religion. And neither were my grandparents. So there's a family history of not going to church. We had a Bible in the house. We had a couple of Bibles in the house. As far as I know, I'm the only one who ever read them. Because I was interested. But it was just the thing you had now. So I guess we were vaguely Protestant by virtue of the fact that we weren't Jewish or we weren't Catholic. And those were the three choices you had in Northeast Ohio.

[03:18]

But we weren't anything. And I became very interested in this idea of God. I had some friends. We lived in Africa for a period when I was a kid. And one of my best friends was Tommy Kashangaki. His mom was Jewish and his dad was from Tanzania. And for whatever reason, they were raising the kids Catholic, you know. So go figure what that was about. In retrospect, it makes no sense. But anyway, they believed in God, you know, the family, the Kashangaki family. And I was fascinated. I used to quiz them about God, and I wanted to figure out what God was. I kept up that interest. But the problem was, God, as presented to me by television evangelists and the churches that I went to in and around where I lived made no sense. It seemed so obviously silly.

[04:21]

I couldn't, you know, I don't hope I'm, well, I think I can be confident in a venue like this. I'm not insulting anyone by saying that. At least I hope not. But it seems so deeply silly I couldn't understand why anybody waste a lot of time following such a thing. So I began to, but I still wanted to believe in God, you know. So I began to investigate other things and I stumbled across the Hare Krishna's and their version of God was just as silly as the Christian one. And it was through Buddhism and through my initial Buddhist practice that I started to get an idea of God that made sense. And I had My first teacher was a guy named Tim McCarthy, Timothy John McCarthy. I think his parents had come over from Ireland and raised him a good Catholic boy. He'd also been disillusioned by all that and ended up becoming a student of Covencino Roshi, who some of you probably know.

[05:29]

Maybe some of you know him personally. If you do, let me know or knew him personally. I'm sort of trying to find people who knew Colbin, because I never got to meet him. And what I know about Colbin comes through Tim, and Tim would often relate things and stories that he'd heard. And Colbin was a Japanese Zen teacher who liked to use the word God a lot, apparently. But his idea of God was quite different. from this version that I'd come across in the churches and things like that. And it made sense. And it was something that I could get into. And later on I moved to Japan and I had another teacher, Nishijima Roshi, who's the guy who translated this version of Shogo Genzo. And he also would talk about God, although his take on it was slightly different from Tim's because he didn't

[06:32]

grow up with the notion of God, but he used to, his little mantra whenever anybody would ask him about God was, God is the universe, the universe is God. He liked to say that little phrase. But for a long time, I was sort of, I got into Buddhism and the philosophy and started to study it, and I was a little scared, you know, because I was afraid at the end of this tunnel of Buddhism, whatever you should want to call it, that it was going to turn out to be materialism. I mean, that's the way I would explain it now. Nishijima Roshi would often talk about realism, and my exposure to the word realism usually indicated materialism, usually indicated a belief in the material universe as explained to us by science as the sort of end of all things.

[07:34]

And it took me a while to realize that Nishima Roshi was not talking about that when he talked about realism. That his idea of realism was something quite different. So I got into Shobo Genzo because I was following this teacher who had dedicated a lot of time and effort and energy into translating Shobo Genzo, and would give lectures on Shobo Genzo. And I decided if he went to all the trouble to write this silly thing, then I should go to the trouble of reading it. So it's in four volumes, and I read the whole darn thing through several times. You know, it's one of those things that, you know, I'm sure a lot of you have tried to read Shobo Genzo, and probably a lot of you have actually read Shobo Genzo. It's a very, as you're well aware, a very difficult work, and Imo is one of the most difficult chapters.

[08:36]

But Imo, to me, at least in the first section and then towards the end, is where I think Dogen comes, at least in a single chapter, or single fascicle, popsicle, icicle, comes closest to just talking about what I think of as God. And Dogen was not, of course, acquainted with the Christian Jewish Islamic God at all. The very concept, it's really strange when you think about it, that this very sort of monotheistic notion of God that we are all well acquainted with was completely unknown in Japan at this time. There was nobody around to explain. I mean, there may have been a couple of missionaries here and there, but I'm sure they weren't very active by that time, by the 1200s.

[09:43]

So it was completely unknown, and probably even the Hindu ideas about God were, you know, Dogen may have had some acquaintance with those, but probably not a whole lot. When he came into Japan around the 15th century, the first Jesuit missionary showed up. So there wasn't any at all. Of course, there's a legend in Japan in northern... There's a town in northern Japan where they claim that Jesus emigrated after he supposedly died on the cross, but he wasn't actually dead. And then we went there and started a family. There's really a bunch of people who believe that. So, you know, maybe Christianity got there sooner. But the title of this chapter is Immo. And it's not about, you know, emotional punk rock. It is... I need a laugh.

[10:49]

I need a laugh. And Immo... Nishima Roshi and his student Chodo Cross, Michael Cross, translated as it, which I like as a translation. I'm going to read you what the two things where he, Nishima, comes out in the introduction and in one of the footnotes explains why that word was chosen. So it says, immo is a colloquial word in Chinese and it means it, that, or what. We usually translate the word it, that, words it, that, or what, or usually use the words it, that, or what to indicate something that we do not need to explain. Therefore, Buddhist philosophy in China used the word emo to suggest something ineffable. At the same time, one of the aims of studying Buddhism is to realize reality. And according to Buddhist philosophy, reality is something ineffable. So the word immo was used to indicate the truth or reality, which in Buddha's philosophy is originally ineffable.

[11:52]

Nishijima loves that word ineffable. In this chapter, Master Dogen explained, he also loves the word therefore, you'll find that a lot. In this chapter, Master Dogen explained the meaning of immo, quoting the words of Master Ungodoyo, Ungodoyo, Master Samganandi, Master Daikan Eino, Master Sekito Kisen, and others. Throughout this book, he uses the Japanese versions of the Chinese masters' names, which is why I'm really bad with remembering that Daikan Eino is Huinang and all these other things. So that's what he consistently uses. Then in a footnote, one thing I like about this version a lot, which I just started going through the Tanahashi version, and unfortunately they don't do this, is Billions of footnotes. So anytime there's a sort of a translation of a word that might be somewhat questionable or someone might question, they footnote it.

[12:54]

So the first time the word immo comes up, the footnote says, immo is used not only as a noun representing the state which is the subject of the chapter, it, suchness, the ineffable, parentheses, but also as a common adverb, adjective, or pronoun. So, like this, like that, such, such a state, as it is, the very moment, in such a way, thus, etc. In the latter cases, translations of ingmo in this chapter have been marked with a symbol, like a little cross. Though in some sense incidental, this frequent usage has the effect of emphasizing the inconspicuous, ever-present, and normal nature of the state Master Dogen is describing. Whenever I read this, I always tend to occasionally substitute the word gal for inlog, because I'm weird. And I would like to read just the beginning, and then I'm going to skip over the middle and then read a little bit of the end from this.

[13:54]

So it says, Great Master Kokaku of Ungozan Mountain is the rightful heir of Tozan. is the 39th generation Dharma descendant of Shakyamuni Buddha and is the authentic patriarch of Tozan's lineage. One day he preaches to the assembly, if you want to attain the matter which is it, you must be a person who is it. Already being a person who is it, why worry about the matter which is it? In other words, those who want to attain the matter which is it must themselves be people who are it. They are already people who are it. Why should they worry about attaining the manner which is it? And the reason he repeats himself there is because the original quote for his original audience would have been in Chinese, and then he restates it in Japanese so that they can understand. The point of this is that directing oneself straight for the supreme truth of Bodhi is described for the present as it. The situation of this supreme truth of Bodhi is such that even the whole universe in ten directions is just a small part of the supreme truth of Bodhi, which I love that.

[15:04]

It may be that the truth of Bodhi abounds beyond the universe. I don't know what better description of God you could have than that. We ourselves, bless you, are tools... It doesn't say bless you. LAUGHTER We ourselves are tools which it possesses within this universe in ten directions. We ourselves are tools which it possesses within this universe in ten directions. How do we know that it exists? We know it is so because the body and the mind both appear in the universe, yet neither is ourselves. which was always a big hang-up. That's a big thing for religions and that's a big thing for philosophy in general, really. Western philosophy especially has gone kind of back and forth for thousands of years about whether the body is the real true self or whether the mind is the real true self, if you really think about it.

[16:12]

The idea that the body is the true self would be the kind of materialistic point of view, that we are just bodies, sort of mechanical things that move around and we think we're alive or we think we have feelings or whatever, but that's just an illusion because it's created by chemicals racing around in this bag of meat inside of our head. And that would be kind of the representative materialistic point of view. The idea of the mind being the true self would be more like the religious or idealistic point of view, you know, that mind, or if you want to get into the idea of soul, you know, that there is a sort of this immaterial substance that lives inside our body. I mean, everybody's sort of acquainted with that idea. It's sort of the general... feeling of a lot of religions that there's this thing that lives inside your body and when your body dies it leaves and the Hindu cosmology basically says that straight out and it seems like a lot of the Christian ideas are basically the same thing but he says because the body and mind both appear in the universe yet neither is our self the body already is not I

[17:34]

Its life moves on through days and months, and we cannot stop it for even an instant. Where have the red faces of our youth gone? When we look for them, they have vanished without a trace. Well, I have pictures of mine. When we reflect... Well, something Dogen didn't have. When we reflect carefully, there are many things in the past that we will never meet again. The sincere mind, which is also a red mind... It's another, Nishijima loves that one, etc. The sincere mind, too, does not stop, but goes and comes moment by moment. Even though, sorry, although the state of sincerity does exist, it is not something that lingers in the vicinity of the personal self. This is another line I like, which I'm going to read again because I love it. Although the state of sincerity does exist, it is not something that lingers in the vicinity of the personal self. So, I just take that state of sincerity to mean something like God or something like this sort of ultimate thing that we all sort of partake in and express, but which is at the same time not exactly us.

[18:51]

It's not quite true to say that we are God. Unless you're me. Come on. Come on, guys. I'm going to get a little laugh, but I'm going to get a sign. Even so, and even so is marked with a little cross, so even so is Inmo in the original. There is something which in the limitlessness establishes the Bodhi mind. Once this mind is established, abandoning our former playthings, we hope to hear what we have not heard before, and we seek to experience what we have not experienced before. This is not solely our own doing. Remember, it happens... like this because we are people who are it? Somebody tagged us and we're not it. How do we know that we are people who are it? Because somebody tagged us. We know that we are people who are it just from the fact that we want to attain the matter which is it, which is kind of an interesting idea. So that was kind of a big question for me.

[19:56]

in terms of just bringing back the idea of God, which I know, by the way, is a sort of an ill fit to the chapter, but I'm using it to kind of hook into it. But I would always want to know, well, how do we know there's a God? Well, if I'm lying, may God strike me dead. You know, these things, these little tests don't work. I can remember being a little kid, though, not even that little, like junior high school age and doing things that, you know, like try to see if I could make God appear, you know, by, I can't remember anything specific, but like, you know, just trying to, you know, trying to sort of make God strike me dead if I'm, you know, if I'm not six feet tall or something, you know, stupid thing like that. Doesn't work. So that won't work. But here it says, we know that we are people who are it from the fact that we want to attain the matter, which is it, which is kind of a funny leap of almost faith there, to accept that just because we are interested in this or we're pointing towards this thing, this something, this ultimate something, that that is reason enough

[21:18]

to take as evidence that there is an ultimate something. Because we could all be deluded about it. But these days I tend not to think so. Already we possess the real features of a person who is it. We should not worry about the already present matter which is it. Even worry itself is just the matter which is it. We can't get away from this guy. And so it is beyond worry. Again, we should not be surprised the matter which is it is present in such a state. And state, again, is evil. Even if it is the subject of surprise and wonderment, it is still it. And there is it which we should not be surprised about. This state cannot be fathomed even by the consideration of Buddha. It cannot be fathomed by the consideration of the mind. It cannot be fathomed by the consideration of the Dharma world, and it cannot be fathomed by the consideration of the whole gosh darn universe.

[22:22]

He didn't say gosh darn. It can only be described in quotes, Already you are a person who is it. Why worry about attaining the matter which is it? Let's see. I told you I would read the ending because I think the ending also gets into this. And it ends like this. And now I'm giving away the ending. So this is a spoiler. Zen master Daikan of Sokeisan Mountain on one occasion teaches Zen master Daie of Nanraku there is something coming like this. And this is also marked with a cross. These words saying that These words say that being like this is beyond doubt, for it is beyond understanding. Because this is something, we should realize and experience that all the myriad things are truly something.

[23:26]

We should realize and experience that every single thing is truly something. Something is not open to doubt. It comes like this. And I really like that, because it's... I don't know. I started doing the Buddhist thing when I was like 18 or 19 years old, and by the time I was in my mid-20s, I remember having conversations with my friend Joe, who was my buddy since junior high school, since seventh grade. We'd always have these deep religious discussions, and we were talking about God, and I remember saying to him that at that point I felt like the question wasn't whether or not God existed. I believed God existed. I just wasn't sure if I existed. I felt like it was the most obvious thing, that there seemed to be something.

[24:32]

And the thing that I feel like Dogen really kind of gave the world gave us, which is wonderful, is this zazen nonsense that we do every morning, every night, and feel like, oh my God, when is this going to be over? When are they going to bang that door? Oh, I heard the person, oh, that's the person. Light the candle. Oh, right. Okay. And that's what I'm always waiting for. The candle person. And yet somehow with this practice you start to somehow move through layers of experience and understanding and something and get and become in touch with

[25:37]

Tim used to use, my first Zen teacher, used to use this phrase, the ground of all being and non-being. I don't know where he got this phrase, but it seems to be the case of gradually sort of peeling back these layers of the onion until you get to something. Which is a funny thing, because as everybody here is well aware, the zazen isn't always peeling back the layers of onion. Sometimes it's, goddammit, my legs hurt. And sometimes it's, why am I thinking of her again, you know? But at some point the practice does kind of open up these levels of understanding. And this can also feel, I think, there have been times during the practice where for me I felt like, well, is this just me fooling myself again? Because you can fool yourself in a lot of a lot of ways, in a whole lot of ways.

[26:41]

And just to go into a tangent I hadn't planned to get into, but I want to since I sort of opened it up for myself. Fooling yourself about your own understanding is a real, is probably the greatest advertisement, I don't know if that's the word I want, for for the idea of having a teacher in Buddhism. Because, you know, in my case, I've had a lot of experiences where I've had some sort of profound realization and brought it up to either Tim or to Nishijima and had them go, stop being an idiot. And... And the thing is, it hurts. Especially if the realization or whatever you've experienced is particularly profound, is particularly big.

[27:46]

And we can get into these sort of big things. And it's important to have that be questioned. Tim would say, what you need in order to practice Zen is an equal amount of doubt and faith. And I remember hearing him say that a lot of times. And I feel now that that's really, really true. Because you need a certain amount of faith just to do this. I mean, just to come down to a place like this. Even though this isn't practice period, but it's still tough. It's still getting up way too goddamn early in the morning, and it's cold, and you go to that zendo, and you're sitting still, and you have to have a certain amount of faith to do that, or a certain amount of stupidity, which I have equal measures of both, I think.

[28:55]

But it's also important to have that side of doubt, which Because if you have too much faith, it's far too easy to just go off the deep end, to just fly off into some never-never-land of believing your own bullshit, to put it colloquially, which we all have a lot. So, get back to the thing I planned to talk about. Oh, I already said most of it. Okay, good. I did want to kind of mention a little bit about one of the reasons I like, I tend to favor the Nishirima translation over the, you know, I hate to say anything bad about Kastanashi's translation. But he does the same thing that a lot of people, other people have done.

[29:58]

Thomas Cleary did the same thing when he translated the chapter. He uses thusness for imbo, and clearly uses suchness, and Nishima even also says that. And it's not that these are bad translations, because you're talking about the ineffable, and you're talking about something which cannot be described, and so on and so forth. I tend not to favor those words, because they add a bit of extra specialness to it, because thusness is not a word that you... having conversations when you're working at the factory. It's not a common word. It's one of those Buddhist buzzwords that you can get all, you know, just real meaning and thus. Well, I think the real meaning and thus is, you know, you can just waffle on for hours and waste the whole day. But I like it because it is a nice, ugly word, you know, like it came from beneath the sea or it comes to the world or it, the thing from beyond the stars, one of my favorites. And it's nice and colloquial, which I believe the original is, the original Chinese word, is just a sort of word that you threw around without really bothering to worry about too much.

[31:13]

Yeah, good. This is what always happens when I plan a talk, by the way. I always feel my best talks are the ones that are unplanned, and I spend too much time planning this one. which means I go back and forth on my notes and lose the feeling of spontaneity that I think is important. Since this is only scheduled for an hour, right? And I've already eaten up half an hour of that. Would anybody like to sort of bring anything up for discussion? Because I feel like that might be a good way to go. Yes? I wouldn't... When he said this was going to talk about God. Right. I mean, God is one of those words that sort of has an image attached to it. It's quite strong. And from where you're coming from. Yeah. And to me, it's sort of like... So I find it a really difficult word to sort of deal with, maybe.

[32:24]

To sort of... And what you've been saying, if I've understood this, is forget white cloud and man with white beard. Sure. And I wonder then, in that case, if you're not talking about this heavy image, you know, if you say God, everybody's got a particular image, if God is actually a useful word to use. I don't know. I... I like using the word God, and that's just a matter of personal preference. And I liked the fact that when I stumbled across this chapter, when I was reading Shogo Genzo for the first time, I felt like, okay, this whole Buddhist thing isn't just about... some kind of cosmic void or some sort of a dead universe.

[33:25]

You know, he's talking about something which is intrinsically part of us and which is, in a sense, could be said to have created us, you know, and create might be not exactly the word, but, you know, words are deceptive anyway, but which is somehow also beyond and forms this whole thing so that the universe is not something dead. But to use the word God, of course, you're bringing in a lot of connotations. And a lot of... My feeling is that there are plenty of people talking about Buddhism and scrupulously avoiding the word God. So that having a few people running around talking about Buddhism and just scrupulously... Or just... blatantly saying God might also provide a bit of a balance. But yeah, we're not talking about a big white man with a white beard on a throne, and we're not talking about a guy who rewards, you know, the football team, was that the news thing?

[34:32]

The football players are praising God wherever they get a touchdown. So we're not talking about that kind of God, but we are talking about something that's... you know, imminent and transcendent, you know, for example, to use it as a Catholic term. So, yeah, it depends. I'm just wondering why not it? Yeah, well, I... And what's wrong with that? I think it is a perfectly good word. Of course, it has, you know, a lot of connotations, too. But, yeah... I'm just wondering if you're over to the question more. If we say God, then each of us will have our own idea. If we say it, we're going to waft. Yeah, or the ineffable is another one. That's another one Nishijima favours. But ineffable is a little uncommon of a word and feels a little weird to me.

[35:32]

Some of those literary illusions. I was thinking about God's love. Yeah. God is love. Well... Yeah. That's an interesting one. Because it brings up to my mind something that made me angry when I first heard Nishima Roshi say it, which is that to understand Buddhism you need to have an equal amount of love and hate. So I think God is love and God may also be hate. But hate not in... It took me a long time to understand his use of the word hate, and what he was getting at when he would talk about hate would be something more basic than, you know, I hate that guy, or hate crime, you know, hate as in hate crime, or hating people of other races, and this kind of hate. It's a kind of more existential hate, I don't know if that's the right word, but a certain...

[36:41]

a certain degree of love would be the side in which we are all one and everybody's part of one big happy machine that works together and hate is that side in which we're not all one. And to me that's one of the greatest challenges for practice was for me to kind of get my head around this. I wrote this song where I tried to express it which the first line is every time I hear someone say, all is one, I think of all the people I don't want to be one with. So, you know, when you hear this, when you hear that phrase, all is one, I'd be like, that guy, you know, what are you talking about? You know, and that sort of all is one or that love side is nice and it's true to a great extent, but people sort of go, okay, all is one. I'm one with the flowers and the trees and the wonderful birds and then the wonderful birds who came and snatched my donut and then, you know, the poison ivy or poison oak, you know, around here.

[37:54]

So there's a certain aversion and there's a certain love and if you can kind of come into balance in which you are comfortable with with hate, you know, in which hate doesn't have to be something that you react to. To me, that's a lot of what practice has been about for me, is to say, okay, I hate that guy. I really fucking hate that guy. Big deal, you know? And I could be completely mistaken about that guy, but, you know, for the time being, I hate him, you know? And that doesn't have to be a bad or evil thing. You just avoid that guy or deal with him as little as possible, and you go on about your life. And you don't have to kill him. You don't have to change him around your way of thinking.

[38:58]

So the idea of God as love, so God... In the sense that in mo or it, God would be love and it would also be... What separated Buddhism for me from religion is the absence of God. In my mind, you couldn't talk about anything of the absence of God. God is everything and everything is God. What did separate Buddhism for me from religion is the concept of a creator. and not thinking God as a point of origination, but as everything that is and everything that isn't. There's nothing that isn't God. Yeah, and that, you know, that's sort of what Nishijima would say, that God is the universe, the universe is God. The idea of the creator, I mean, that gets, you know, that, well, then getting the sort of the Buddhist concept of time also comes into that, because if you accept the sort of linear idea of time, then, you know, creation becomes an inevitable thing.

[40:00]

You're thinking about it, well, there had to have been some first cause, you know. So you're stuck in that. You know, you have to have it. There really isn't any way around it. And the Buddhist idea of time seems to me to be the only philosophical idea I've ever come across that actually kind of solves that, which says that all time is now. So the creation of the universe isn't six bazillion years ago. It's now. Here's the creation of the universe. Here we are. Wow. The universe was created in the dining room in Tassahara. Which is a sort of a mind-blowing thing, but it is that sort of the idea that Dogen also talks about in fascicles like Uji and things like being time and things like that, that time is this, that all time is this. So, yeah. So there isn't that idea of a creator because there doesn't need to be an idea of a creator.

[41:02]

You know, somebody might be able to answer this, but Tim would always quote this thing, I've never been able to find it, so I don't, you know, sometimes you wonder if your teachers are making shit up. But he said to, he would say on several occasions that when Buddha was asked questions about the creation of the universe and God and things like that, he would answer, the question does not fit the case. That's right. Is that right? That's right. I've never been able to find that. There were questions you wouldn't answer, but then the idea of the question does not fit the case. Meaning that this is the wrong question. That the question itself is fine, but it's like asking, I don't know, I can't think of a good absurd, it's just asking an absurd question, because it doesn't fit. So the idea of creation, which a lot of religions have spent a whole lot of time trying to suss out. In science, it spends a whole lot of time trying to suss out. Even with the Big Bang Theory, you have to account for where that little baseball-sized nugget of matter and energy or whatever it was came from, because it had to have come from somewhere.

[42:11]

And then you're left with infinite regression. So even the sort of scientific view as it now stands is having a hard time coming to grips with it. with that, because they just go on forever, you know? It's turtles all the way down, isn't it, that one? A guy asking about, you know, the universe, the world is sitting on top of a pile of turtles, and he said, well, what are the turtles sitting on top of? And you can't fool me with that one, it's turtles all the way down. I forget already, I forgot what Dogen says, but when we're reading, this fascicle, something about the fact that we're longing for it, or that we're practicing towards it, is proof of it. Yeah. So, anyway, that really, that really, that really, uh, spoke to me, for some reason.

[43:12]

I, I, um, you know, that, uh, what I'm here is just talking about wasting your mind. Yeah. And that... It's good, and I tend to believe it too, but I can't find it. Yeah, but you're right. You're right. It is a bit... Basically, that's the ontological argument for some kind of transcendent being, in that all the evidence that we see in the universe says that there's nothing purposeless. And so that by the very fact that you have that longing, the rest of reality, by association, verifies that. I see the tree, it has a function. I see you, you have a function. I see my hand has a function. I have longing. Longing is a function, and therefore it is real. And that becomes one of the philosophic arguments that we're skirting around as we listen to the discussion here. Yeah, which is perfectly logical, but then, you know, of course, you could counter that by saying, well, you know, you can just make up a purpose, you know.

[44:16]

Then we get into the, yes, and you jump into the great dualism between idealism and positivism, or what we're calling reality earlier. But the, you know, the thing to me is when you get into logical arguments like that, it's, you know, just to get into it, I was like... digging myself into holes I don't want to get out of. But one of the things that kind of scared me that came out of my practice was a realization at some point in my practice that I had the capacity to justify absolutely anything. And I don't want to get into the specifics of how I came to that conclusion because It's far too personal. But I could see by extension how, to take the most horrible example, how something like Nazism could happen. Because you can justify anything.

[45:17]

You can make a rational-sounding argument for absolutely anything you want to, and you can make it stick. But the problem is there's always that little something there... that isn't rational, that will say, will be going, no, no, that's not right. Or sometimes it says, yes, that's right. And to me, that's where this comes in. I can't find it quickly enough. But that idea that we know, what was your paraphrase of it? Because I can't find it now. we know that we are it because we have the aspiration towards it, something like that, is more on the line of not even a logical argument, it's a feeling, or I don't know if it's even a feeling, it's sort of something which has become evident.

[46:18]

Along the lines of it, just to take a little bit of a tangent, another little tangent, something Tim told me once when I first started practicing Zazen was, it's more you than you could ever be. And the it being, again, this emo it, you know? It's more you than you could ever be. And I remember, you know, that's one of these phrases, you know, that probably everybody has this experience with their teachers, you know, these little things that they tell you that you're going, what does that mean? And then you're like stuck with this thing going. And then years and years later, you're walking along and you go, oh, that's what that meant. And I felt like the practice brought me to some, wore me down to the point where a phrase like that suddenly made sense. It's more you than you could ever be. And that's kind of the same it we're talking about.

[47:21]

And this idea of having that I mean, it's sort of a matter of faith, you know. Having the... Bodhicitta is what Nishijima Roshi likes to translate as will to the truth, which I like. I don't know. Other people translate it differently usually, but I like his translation. It's a will to the truth. So it's like a kind of a push towards it. And we must all have it or we wouldn't come to a place like this, you know. We wouldn't subject ourselves to that morning bell and all that stuff, and all these rules, not even walking. You know, you said something earlier. Sorry. You're moving along so quickly. Sorry. No, it's fine. That's what this is all about. But you rang a bell in the, that I love, because you brought up a couple subjects. We're talking about the it. And somebody said God, and somebody said love. And we're dealing with these abstract concepts. And I'm a Shakespearean, among other things. Mm-hmm. Shakespeare said in Midsummer Night's Dream, which is basically about love.

[48:27]

And I mean by love, everything from simple lust to compassion, which is another problem. But he said the heresies that men do leave are hated most of those they did deceive. And if you study the play, there's no one in the play that is not deceived. And that is it. Is that soon as we can take that abstract concept... And say it's a chair, we've already missed what it was. And because language itself, as you all said earlier, limits, you were talking about limitlessness. As soon as we use language, we start to restrict. And I'm going to wrap real quick and do a big condensation. In Catholic mysticism, we start with the negative way of defying God. Going all the way back to the Plato and the Neoplatonians, God is not this, God is not that. Jumping all the way forward to Saint Ignatius, he starts his spiritual exercises and he says, you start the exercises by saying, I am nothing.

[49:30]

I came from nothing. And I return to nothing. And that's even more abstract than saying it's it. Because you can't even then say... And that's what we're sitting in Zazen, that's what that is. I mean, the problem which you just kind of said is the problem with God is it's one of those words, and that's the problem we have with everything. Like you said, once you say chair, you're like, okay, got that. But that's a function of the brain that we don't want to lose. You never want to lose that function because you'd be in big trouble. If you couldn't name things, you've got to be able to say, go... go to the samovar. There's a word I learned recently. Samovar. What's a samovar? Go clean out the samovar. I'm like, oh, okay. You learn what the samovar is. But the samovar isn't the samovar. It's whatever it is.

[50:33]

And for the time being, we call it samovar so that you know where to go clean it out. And the same thing with God. It's a word, and any word you use is going to You know, this is one of the great things about Buddhism, is it has this ability to reinvent itself. That's what I really like about the practice. You've always got to tear it down. Well, I'm coming from the Jewish mystical tradition, which said that God is not outside, God is inside. And actually, I think one of the challenges that we confuse all the gods, which are existing within certain traditions, and have certain function, like from Jewish God is categorically not Christian God and that's not Muslim God. And they have their function with the spiritual practice of Judaism and Islam and Christianity and don't have any means. I for myself don't know why do people need absolute God outside religious practice.

[51:42]

That's interesting, yeah. I never really thought of it that way. But, I mean, there could be something to that. I mean, if you can kind of accept other people's gods as having their own functions, you know, that might be a way that you can get along with people. One of the things I know Nishidima wanted to do is find a way to get along with Christianity, you know, which he saw as important. But, yeah, the god of Yeah, God functions within religion, and then outside of religion, where is he? Well, it's more complicated. I had a wonderful conversation once with a gentleman who was a teacher at an anthroposophical school in Highland, and he insisted that he was an atheist. And I said, well, you're teaching a school that is teaching spirituality. What do you mean? And instead of arguing about whether he existed with God, I tried to understand what he meant by not saying I'm an atheist.

[52:43]

And what he was doing was because of his cultural construct that he lived in, God had become a word that had a very strongly pejorative context. And so within his social construct, he felt compelled by his own sense of what he ultimately agreed was God, to say, I don't believe in God because what he was saying to you or you or you, your God is not a true God. It is a limited concept. I can't accept a God. For instance, the one that says, in God we trust. And then we go over and bomb another country, or something like that. Well, that's, you know, one of the things I, if you want to get on the subject of atheism, one of the things I found when I was writing, I was writing this monthly column for Suicide Girls website, and it being a so-called porn website, although they hate calling it a porn website, it was porn website. But, but, One of the things I did, the thing that struck up the most controversy that I ever struck up when writing for Suicide Girls was I wrote an article denouncing atheism.

[53:48]

And that made people angry. And they got as angry as you would imagine like worshippers of some religion getting... if you said there is no God. That's why I think you said that's my point. His idea of God was atheism. So this is why I don't think of Buddhism as atheism, because it doesn't deny God. It doesn't require as much faith as atheism. Mara. Ah, Mara. Satan, right? Yeah. Well, that was another problem I had with God, you know, because you've got, in the Christian view, you have Satan, you know, which is also in Islam. But not in Judaism, right? There's no Satan. There is a Satan? Okay. He's different. A little bit different. Okay. Well, but, you know, the idea of Satan never made a lot of sense to me. And that Satan brings up the whole so-called problem of evil, you know, which is one of the things if you're in a...

[54:56]

you took as much philosophy as I did, which is one semester. You get into the problem of evil, and they always want to look at the problem of evil. And I kind of feel like, and I put this in one of my books, but I felt like evil is stupid. Evil is what happens when you try to go against what what Nichima always called the rule of the universe. So there is a certain, which is another, you know, maybe another way of saying God, but there's a certain sort of order that the universe wants to go in. There's a certain way things want to be. I feel that really strongly. And we all have, to a certain degree, access to that. And But we are also supremely able to shout that down.

[55:58]

And that's what I feel is where Mara comes. The thing that was fascinating to me, and maybe this is old news to everybody in this room, but I always heard the sort of traditional story of Buddha's life where Buddha is sitting there and Mara confronts him and offers him money and cars and hot babes and everything else to give up his quest. And he touches the ground and Mara's like, oh, I'm out of here. And he goes, what? And I was reading, I think it was a book called Gotama Buddha, which is really useful and great, but tremendously boring at the same time. I think the guy who wrote it is Nakajima. And it's one of the best books that gets into the history of early Buddhism as history. And goes into how the early Buddhist sutras sort of came to be. And apparently in the older strata, the story was not told that way. That's a variation that's become popular in more recent times.

[56:59]

But in the early versions, Mara doesn't just appear once in Buddha's life. He appears again and again and again. So what that says to me is even Buddha himself, the great guy, the guy who started this whole mess that we're in, could be stupid, you know, could bullshit himself, you know. And the only sort of advantage he had, it wasn't a supernatural advantage, but he was honest enough with himself to be able to say, okay, there I am bullshitting myself again, and get himself back on track. And that's another thing I feel that the practice has been... useful for. It's not that I don't bullshit myself, because I do. It's sort of a... I don't know how many people in this room feel this way, but occasionally I feel like it's kind of a burden.

[58:02]

I kind of wish I didn't know. Because occasionally I know I'm bullshitting myself, and I wish I had that out of saying, well, I just don't know any better. I just don't. Yeah, I'm going to do this. I don't know any better. Yes, you do. You know, that little voice going. But you're doing it anyway. Might be worth it for the times you know you're not. No, I've still got like two minutes. So, um, any, what would you venture to say, uh, would you say, what would your guess or idea be of the Sanskrit or, you know, what term they're using, yinmo? Well, oh, I don't know what you mean for the Sanskrit for yinmo.

[59:05]

I think yinmo is something that came out of the Chinese tradition and probably doesn't have a Sanskrit equivalent. That's just a guess. I'm not much more historian. From hearing, you know, I just kept on thinking, oh, there must be, you know, some term they're referring to. It comes up, I don't know the historiosity of it, but the introduction and the other things I read about it in studying this, say the yinbo is something that a lot of the Chinese masters would throw into their talks. And it was, as it says there, a colloquial Chinese term which just meant, you know, that thing, that something, you know, whatever. And... And then when Dogen is using it in Japanese, so he's already using a foreign word for his audience, you know, it's a word they wouldn't have understood that he has to, you know, explain. And I believe this fascicle was probably written as a way to explain to the monks who were studying ancient Chinese Buddhism, to help them understand what this word yinmo was that they kept coming across when they were studying.

[60:14]

But I don't, you know, I can only go by what, and I think it's, I don't think it's a common, I actually asked a Chinese guy who worked at the office that he used to work at in Tokyo, if he'd ever heard the word, and he hadn't, so I don't, I don't think it's a common issue anymore. Should we wrap it up? Wrap it up, I'll take it, because I've got to get ready to go to work again. For more information, visit SSCC.org and click Giving.

[61:04]

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