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 evening. I hope everybody had a good personal day. Good. So tonight I'm going to... We're going to talk about the third talk. And this talk covers the four lines of the Sandokai. The spiritual source shines clear in the light. The branching streams flow on in the dark. Grasping at things is surely delusion. And according to sameness is still not enlightenment. So there's a lot here in those four lines.

[01:02]

The spiritual source, you know, when we chant, the meal chant, we pay homage to Vairochana, the Dharmakaya Buddha, to Sambhogakaya, the Lochana Buddha, and to Nirmanakaya, to Shakyamuni, the Nirmanakaya Buddha. So these are... the three bodies of Buddha. Dharmakaya is, as the sixth ancestor expresses it, is your true nature. Dharmakaya is your true nature, which is essential nature, which is epitomized by Vairacana. Vairacana is the Buddha Radiant light, the lamp Buddha sometimes called. And Maira Chana sits in the center of the universe and radiates light.

[02:15]

And there are four bodhisattvas, or Buddhas, and many bodhisattvas in that mandala. I can't go into that, but it's really interesting. So when we say Vajrojana Buddha, Vajrojana represents or epitomizes the potential, I don't know about energy, but energy is good. the potential for all activity. And so, although Vajrojana is the Buddha of radiant light, we don't have a name for Dharmakaya other than Dharmakaya, which means the Dharma with a capital D.

[03:28]

So there's the potential from which everything emanates. So Locana Buddha, the Sambhogakaya Buddha, Amitabha actually is, for Locana it means Amitabha. And Amitabha is the Buddha of infinite light and a pure land school. the adherence to the Pure Land School, which is the biggest school in Japan, chant the name of Amitabha. And in China, they chant the name of Amitabha. I remember doing that with Master Hua in Chinatown when he was called Tolong back in 1964, 65. I could tell you a story about that, but I won't. Actually, it was my first seshin.

[04:33]

I sat my first seshin with Master Hua, the late Master Hua of the city of 10,000 Buddhas. And in 64, he was called Tolan. And I just started practicing with Suzuki Roshi at Sokoji. And I had some friends, Dharma friends. And there's three other guys, and we said, maybe we can ask Toh Wellen if he would get us in a sashin. Nobody knew really what a sashin was, but they kind of thought that they knew. And he said, let's ask him. I said, okay. So we asked him, and he said, yes. And so it was just the four of us. He had a building on the corner of Saru and Yaguna, one block from Sakoji. And so the four of us went and we sat Sashin.

[05:35]

It was just us four. And none of us had ever done this before. And it was difficult. He didn't sit with us, but he was there, you know, in the big house. And we'd have a break every once in a while, I think probably after lunch. And we'd all go out in the alleyway and smoke and laugh. But it was a great sushim, and he was hoping that somebody would get enlightened. He said, if you keep doing this, you'll get enlightened. But the great thing about the sushim was the lunch, because they only ate one meal a day. But we could hear the Chinese women rustling around in the kitchen while we were sitting. They were making this sumptuous lunch. And at lunchtime, we'd sit around this big table. Everybody would sit around this big table.

[06:39]

And they were just like piled high with Chinese vegetarian food. And everybody was talking and laughing and eating. It was a great event. That was my experience with Tolan. One of my experiences, but I had other experiences later. But that was the beginning of his... his practice with people, and he went on to do other things. So anyway, the spiritual source, source, sauce, Suzuki. A little farther down, you see that Suzuki Roshi uses that as a pun. He kind of substitutes source, sauce for source. But we didn't add that. did something else because it's not a kind of corny. You didn't want to do that. Include that. Anyway, Dharmakaya is our nature, our essential nature, Vajraljana.

[07:43]

Lojana Buddha is Amitabha, the Buddha of infinite light. And Samogakaya is called the reward body. usually in the literature, but the sixth ancestor calls it your wisdom. He says, dharmakaya is your nature, samlokakaya is your wisdom, which is the reward for your practice, and it's jinju yuzamai, which we chant at noon. Jijuyuzamai is our wisdom body. It's not our wisdom body, but it's our wisdom. The expression of our wisdom is Jijuyuzamai, which is our practice. And nirmanakaya is our activity.

[08:53]

Nirmanakaya is our activity, our enlightened activity. the three bodies of Buddha are one body. They needed this kind of, the Buddhists needed this kind of division because if you only paid your obeisance to Shakyamuni, there had to be something behind Shakyamuni. So the Mahayana came up with the three bodies. A little bit like the Trinity, but not exactly, although it is the Trinity. Dharmakaya is your nature. Sambhogakaya is your wisdom, or your reward body, or your practice, which is, and for your practice, which is Jijuyuzamaya, self-fulfilling samadhi. And Dharmakaya is Buddhist activity.

[09:59]

or your activity, actually. You know, sixth ancestor doesn't talk about, you know, when you read the literature, it looks like the Buddha and the Buddha's activity and wisdom's all out there. But in Zen, we bring it back here. This is your activity, it's not some other Buddha. So the spiritual source shines clear. I bit my lip, and so it's a little hard to me go. So the branching streams flow in the dark. So we had the source and then we had the branching streams, which are the activity of the source. The source expresses itself through the branching streams. Stillness expresses itself through activity. The spiritual source is clear in the light.

[11:03]

This is Dharmakaya. The branching schemes flow on in the dark. Grasping at things is surely delusion. Yes. But according with sameness is still not enlightenment. So grasping at things means samsara, reactivity, dualistic activity. And according sameness means oneness, right? So when we study Buddhism, we always want to reach oneness. But actually, just reaching oneness is not actually enough. We also have to realize that oneness expresses itself as duality. So we live in a world of duality, and we're always getting admonished for being dualistic. You can't help it. You can't live without being dualistic. You can't live in this world without expressing our activity in a dualistic way.

[12:08]

So this is the basis of the Zen koan. All the koans mostly are about this. Dogen's Genjo koan. Dogen kind of devised the Genjo koan as the summation of all koans. If you practice Ginjo Kohan, you'll be practicing all the Kohans during the book. People say, well, you guys in Soto Zen, you know, you don't practice Kohans. But that's all we do, is practice Ginjo Kohan as I practice. So we should study Ginjo Kohan. Ginjo Kohan is our practice. Your life as it extends from Zazhen. Your daily life as it extends from Zazhen. and your colon. So your colon is right in front of your nose all the time, but we don't see it. It's always there, right? It's like those little flies, you know?

[13:11]

That's your ginger. And those little flies are also your colon. So I'll go on to the Suzuki Roshi. The spiritual source shines clear in the light. The source is something wonderful, something beyond description, beyond our works. That's Thavakaya. What Buddha talked about is the source of the teaching beyond discrimination of right and wrong. That's non-duality, beyond right and wrong. That's the Koan. This is important. Whatever your mind can conceive is not the source itself. So the source is something only a Buddha knows. Only when you practice zazen do you have it. When you practice zazen, you have it. If you practice zazen, which is not the same as just sitting down. You know, there are the four postures, sitting, standing, lying down, and walking.

[14:17]

In Buddhism, they say these are the four postures of a person. Zazen is not one of those. Zazen is not the same as just sitting down in a chair. Zazen is letting go of discrimination, letting go of discriminating mind, the mind of good and bad, right and wrong, like and dislike, pleasure and pain, without falling into duality. If you can do that, then you have it. We're always experiencing this, but we don't necessarily know it. So the source is something only a Buddha knows. Only when you practice zazen do you have it. Yet, whether you practice or not, whether you realize it or not, something exists, even before our realization of it, and that is the source.

[15:20]

So whether you... whether you... you experience it or not, it's there. But this is tricky because sometimes he says it's not. It is not something you can taste. This is where he gets into sauce and source. The true sauce, the true source is neither tasty nor tasteless. But he did say the true sauce. Anyway. it's neither tasty nor tasteless. There's a saying that the food of the sages, the tastiest food of the sages tastes like nothing at all to an ordinary patient. So, in the last of these four lines, Sakito says, according with sameness is still not enlightenment.

[16:24]

So, just to recognize the truth, is not enlightenment either. Often we feel that the truth is something we should be able to see or figure out. But in Buddhism that's not the truth. The truth is something beyond our ability to describe, beyond our thinking. And truth can also mean the wonderful source. Wonderful beyond our description. So this is the source of all being. So, you know, we have actually two truths. according to the Majanaka, conventional truth and ultimate truth. So conventional truth, you know, people thought, well, you know, if ultimate truth is the only truth, then what are we doing, you know, when we live our lives in this world? So they said, well, there are two truths. There's the ultimate truth and the conventional truth.

[17:28]

So the conventional truth is the way we live our daily lives in a dualistic manner. We have to. We have to make choices based on good and bad, right and wrong, like and dislike. And at the same time, we have to practice non-duality, within-duality. and duality within non-duality. So, the problem with falling into one side or the other, even if we say, well, we reach the truth and it's oneness, that's not complete. It's only complete when the other side is also there. So you can't say we don't separate samsara from nirvana.

[18:31]

Within samsara is nirvana. And within nirvana is samsara. Within the good is bad. Within the right is the wrong. Within the like is the dislike. So everything contains its opposite. Rather than trying to chop off the opposite in order to have the thing you want, you can't do it that way. You can only, you have to include the opposite in order to have oneness, to be complete. So opposites complete each other and then everything falls away. So this is difficult. That's why practice is difficult. This is called pure practice. And in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, Zyukriya, she says, Zen is difficult, but not because of the pain in your legs.

[19:33]

That's not what's difficult. What's hard is to keep our practice pure, to not fall into emptiness of form, to not be attached. Grasping at things is delusion, but we have to live our life within delusion. Delusion is where we live our life. So that's okay. We don't try to get rid of delusion, even though we say we do. We have to find realization within delusion. Otherwise, you'd go crazy. So the wonderful source beyond our description, this is the source of all being. By the way, when we say being, being includes our thoughts as well as the many things that we see.

[20:44]

Usually when we say truth, we mean some underlying principle. Like the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. whether the earth turns in a certain direction, is truth. But in Buddhism, that is not ultimate truth. It is also being. In other words, I'll go on. Being that is included in big mind. Whatever is in our mind, big or small, right or wrong, that is being. If you think about something in terms of right or wrong, you may say, this is eternal truth. But for us, that idea of eternal truth is also on the side of being, because it simply expresses something in our mind. It's just an idea in our mind. And when we talk about spirituality as being separate from or being something grand, which is different from samsara,

[21:51]

That's simply spirituality in our mind. It's just on this side. On this side is nothing. And everything else is on this side, which is something. So we do not make much distinction between things that exist outside and things that exist within ourselves. You may say something exists outside of yourself. You may feel that it does, but it isn't so. When you say, there's the river, the river is already in your mind. A hasty person may say, the river is over there. But if you think more about it, you will find that the river is in your mind as a kind of thought. That things exist outside of ourselves is a dualistic, primitive, shallow understanding of things. So we live in a dream world and a world of transformations.

[22:55]

When you think about this statement, when you say, well, the river is over there. I mean, it's wet. If I go over there, it's wet, right? But river exists. When you say river, you're thinking of something separate from something else. The river exists because of the ground that's under the river. And then the river is just a channel for water. And then what is water and what is the ground? We don't investigate it much further than this. But the river exists because of the rain and because of the clouds. And Thich Nhat Hanh talks about this a lot. And everything is... interdependent with everything else. So to single out the river is okay, but that's just an idea that we have. It's just an idea. It's not a river. A river is not a river, but we call it a river.

[24:01]

So the characters of the first line, reigenmyoketari, koketari, refer to re. So we have to... learn these two terms, re and g. Re refers to the source, and g refers to the expression or phenomena, re and g. So this part may be a little technical, so I'll clear with that. So the characters of the first line Regen, Myoniko Ketari, referred to Ri, which is the source of the teaching beyond words. The true source, Ri, is beyond our thinking. It is pure and stainless. When you describe it, you put a limitation on it. So, that is, you stain the truth or put a mark on it.

[25:06]

In the Heart Truth Sutra, it says no color, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no objects of mind, and so forth. That is Ri. No. Does the dog have Buddha nature? No. Does the dog have Buddha nature? Of course. Which is it? Yes or no? So, the next line reads, shiha-anni-wuchusu, the branching streams flow on in the dark. Shiha means branch stream. Sekito says, Shiha, for poetic reasons, to make these two lines of the poem beautiful, and to contrast Shiha with Reigen, source. I'm not going to explain that. Reigen is more noumenal, and Shiha is more phenomenal. To say noumenal or phenomenal is not exactly right, but tentatively I have to say so. So, you know, he's naming these, but he knows that the names are not correct, and that just naming is not correct either.

[26:12]

because they're not exactly opposite. They contain each other. So that is why it's good to remember the more technical terms, ri and ji. Here, ji is used in the third line, referring to the phenomenal. So something you can see here, smell, taste, as well as objects of thought or ideas, Whatever can be introduced into our consciousness is ji. Something that is beyond our consciousness, the noumenu, is ri. So consciousness means discrimination. This is why he talks about ri. When we sit sazen, it's ri. Although ji is included, but it's ri, which means beyond consciousness, which means not beyond, it doesn't mean there are no thoughts, but it means without discrimination.

[27:24]

So basically consciousness means discrimination, if you think about it. There are various levels of consciousness, and in Mahayana Buddhism is the eight levels of consciousness, and they're all about discriminating mind. So conscious discrimination, consciousness basically is discriminating mind. Because when you, in order for consciousness to arise, there has to be a subject and object. When the subject and object are divided, are discriminated, That's consciousness. Consciousness arises at that time. Okay. I don't want to go any further there. In the darkness, the branching streams flow everywhere. So this is the second sentence.

[28:27]

Like water. Even when you are not aware of water, there is water. Water is inside our physical body, and in plants too. There is water all over. In the same way, the pure source is everywhere. Each being is itself pure source, and pure source is nothing but each being. They are not two things. There's no difference between ri and ji, pure source and the stream. So the stream is pure source, and pure source is the stream. The pure source is flowing all over, and even though you don't know it, this don't know is what we call dark, and it is very important. So the various meanings of dark and light Basically, in this kind of conversation, dark means the essence, the essential, where there's no discrimination. And light means everything is distinguished. All objects, all dharmas are distinguished in the light.

[29:30]

So if we turn out all the lights and we can't see anything, there's no distinction between things. So this is the source. When you turn on the light, everything shows up. Well, there you are, and there's this, there's a chair and the table. That's the phenomenal side. The noumenal side is dark. So Tozan, Master Tozan, carries this understanding in the Hokkyo Zamai. Do you chant the Hokkyo Zamai? No. Yeah, well, sometimes. But the Hokeo is on my toes on, in his five positions, five ranks, makes this kind of understanding very clear, or maybe cloudy.

[30:36]

So grasping in things is purely delusion. Grasping in things means to stick to the many things you see. Understanding that each being is different, you see each one as something special, and unusually you will then stick to something. Yet even if you recognize the truth that everything is one, that's not always enlightenment. It may be enlightenment, but not always. It is just intellectual understanding. An enlightened person does not ignore things. and does not stick to things. I think we talked about the fox co-on a little bit in my first talk. When the fox man asked Master how could you, I was the master on this temple many, many decades ago, a monk asked me, if his investor is subject to the law of karma.

[31:50]

And I said, no. So he was a fox for, it made him a fox for 500 lifetimes. And when he asked Yakujo, what would you say? Yakujo said, I was in last year, does not ignore things and does not stick to things. Does not ignore things and does not stick to things. So there's not even to the truth. So there is no truth that is different from what each being is. That's a radical statement. Each being is truth itself. So you may think that there is some truth that is controlling each being. This truth, you may think, is like the truth of gravitation.

[32:52]

If the apple is each being, then behind the apple is some truth working on the apple like gravitation. To understand things in that way is not enlightenment. To stick to beings, ideas, even Buddha's teaching, saying Buddha's teaching is something like this, is to stick to G. This is the backbone of the Sandokai. So no matter what you do, you're wrong. So this reminds me of Steve Jobs and Chino Roshi. One day, one night, Chino Roshi was in bed with his wife in Mountain View in Los Altos. At midnight, somebody knocked on the door and he went to open the door. His wife was saying, don't open that door, don't open that. But he opened the door. And there was this guy in jeans and beard and scruffy hair and his knees had holes in them, you know, pants that held his knees.

[34:00]

And the guy said, I need to talk to you. And his wife said, he's crazy, close the door. But he said, I looked into his eyes and I could see he was not crazy. So I put on my mold and closed the door and we walked into the town. There was only one place open, which was a bar. And we sat in the bar and talked. And then he went home. And a week later, the same thing happened. And he opened the door, went to the door, opened the door. And the same guy was there. When they were in the bar, this guy said, you know, I think I'm enlightened and I would like you to verify my enlightenment. And Chino says, well, show me your enlightenment. And he said, okay. So they went away.

[35:02]

And a week later, he came back and knocked on the door. He said, I can show you my enlightenment. And Chino said, okay. So he had a little metal box. And in the box, he opened the box and there was a chip, a computer chip. And he said, here it is. I've done this. Chino Sensei said, that's wonderful, but it's not enlightening. Sorry. But they became very good friends. And Chino Sensei became his teacher. That was Steve Jobs. So, according to Samuels... So, the truth, you may think, is like the truth of gravitation. If the apple is each being, then behind the apple is some truth, working on the apple-like gravitation.

[36:09]

To understand things in that way is not enlightenment. To stick to beings, ideas, even Buddha's teaching, saying Buddha's teaching is something like this, is to stick to Ji. This is the backbone of the Saindokai. Courting with sameness is still not enlightenment. To recognize the truth is not enlightenment either. It may be better not to say anything, but still you have to say something. It is better not to say anything, but you have to say something. If I translate Mri into English, It is already chi. Enlightenment is not something you can experience, actually. It's beyond our experience. If someone says, I have attained enlightenment, that's wrong. It means that person sticks to some explanation of enlightenment. That's delusion. At the same time, if you think that enlightenment is beyond our experience, something that you cannot experience, even so, enlightenment is there.

[37:09]

So you cannot say that there is no enlightenment or that there is enlightenment. Enlightenment is not something about what you can say there is or that you can say there is not. And at the same time, something that you can experience is enlightenment too. You know, I have this little saying, you can be it, but you can't see it. As soon as you try to grasp it, It's gone. So that's why we say just practice and practice in a non-self-conscious way. Whether you're enlightened or not enlightened doesn't make any difference. Suzuki Roshi would say, enlightenment is not so difficult. Enlightenment is not so difficult at all. The difficult thing is practice. People used to criticize him because everybody's idea of enlightenment came from Titi Suzuki, who said, get their sudden enlightenment.

[38:27]

But Suzuki doesn't talk about enlightenment. He doesn't get his students to get enlightenment. He only makes them practice. So he emphasized the practice side, rather than the enlightenment side. If you emphasize the enlightenment side, people think that practice is just a means to get enlightenment. And then what I'm doing now is nothing. If it was, it'd be great. But what I'm doing now is nothing, you know, compared to what I'm going to get. And when you get stuck with thinking that what you've got now is nothing compared to what you're going to get, then you're totally lost. That's total delusion. Lightning is now. You just don't recognize it. As soon as you start to practice, it's flourishing.

[39:34]

It's blooming. As long as you don't get... As long as you don't... worry about it. So we don't worry about enlightenment or delusion. Just practice. And self-consciously. But the problem is that we want to peek. This is our biggest problem. We want to peek. Am I getting enlightened? So it's just the bare bones of practice. But this is just bare bones of practice. What is that? Because we don't recognize what we already have. We think that this must be something else, like a billion dollars. Yeah. Something like a billion dollars. Wow. But if we really realized just ordinary, stupid activity, what that really is,

[40:42]

We'd immediately happen. Anyway. So, you know, this is the third month, the end of the third month, my practice period. In the beginning, I think it is, right? In the beginning, everybody's enthusiastic, and we're still enthusiastic. I've had it to you. You're really doing well. But still, you know, it changes. That initial enthusiasm changes, and then we start thinking about things, and life gets a little harder, and And we have to go to Zendo again? We have to get up from that one? We do. But if we simply just realize that they go good and bad, right and wrong, and just do, and self-consciously just do, we're very happy. But I did have a mess. It's different than real happiness.

[41:47]

So, in the last talk, I referred to the big dispute in Sekito's time. How many of you have now read the Platform Sutra, have not read the Platform Sutra of the Sixth and System? Keep trying, because this is connected with this. I know you have, because you got the book. In the last talk, I referred to the big dispute in Sekito's time about sudden enlightenment and gradual attainment. The Sutra of the Sixth Ancestor denounces Jinxiu's way, I talked about this last time, as a way of gradual attainment, while declaring that the Sixth Ancestor's way is sudden enlightenment. According to the Sutra of the Sixth Ancestor, it seems that just to sit is not true practice. Because if you read that Platinum Sutra, there's a line in there that says, no need to sit Zazen. But maybe that was not the Sixth Ancestor's own idea.

[42:52]

There's actually not much difference between Jinju's way and the Sixth Ancestor's way. The Sutra of the Sixth Ancestor was compiled right after the Sixth Ancestor's death. And maybe 50 years later, the criticism of Jinshu's school of graduate attainment was added by Kataku Jin, a disciple of his sixth ancestor, by a disciple of Kataku Jin after he had passed away. So Kataku Jin was a great Zenist who was very active and was critical of Jinshu's practice, but probably not as harshly as the words of the sutra convey. Well, the sutra is this wonderful document the autobiography of the Huin-Nan, and then a lot of wonderful instruction. But if you have discernment, you can tell which is the sixth ancestors talking and which is somebody else talking.

[44:00]

So the sutra became a kind of political thing. at some point, with a lot of additions and discriminating criticism. So, Kataku Jin, or his disciple, may also have added this poem. And then, Our Body is the Bodhi... This is the... Jinshu's poem. Our body is the bodhi tree, our mind and mirror bright, carefully wiped them hour by hour, and let no dust to light. And then the Aino's poem is, there is no bodhi tree, no stand of a mirror bright, since all is void, where can the dust to light? The way I see these two poems is not as one is better than the other, it's that they complement each other. This is, to me, this is...

[45:02]

Aino's poem is about the essence. There is no Bodhi tree, no standard of mirror bright, all is void, work in the dust of light. This is like emptiness. And Jinji's poem is like form. Our body is the Bodhi tree, our mirror by the mirror bright, carefully wipes them hour by hour, let no dust to light. So this is about practice and this is about reality. Qin Shi's poem is about practice, and Eino's poem is about enlightenment and realization. So the two go together. The argument is not so good. That's why Suzuki Rishi says, because it's not such a good poem, many people criticize it and think it cannot be the sixth ancestors' poem. So in those days, it was an honor to own a copy of the Sutra of the Sixth Ancestor.

[46:10]

There are many versions of it, and the oldest ones do not include this poem or any criticism of Jinxiu's school. Yeah, I can point out to you the... I can't remember the name of the translator. He's Chinese. No, no, Jan Polskis later. Jan Polskis is a criticism. He does have a translation, but it's a scholarly translation. Whereas, I'll point it out to you if you like. So one aim of the Sandokai is to clarify this wrong understanding concerning Jinshu. Yeah, Polsky did use that version, rather early version, it's true. So one aim of the Sandokai is to clarify this wrong understanding concerning Jinshu, who made it look as if he sticks to rituals or scholarly work. Scholarly study belongs to Jiri, which is the phenomenal side. Ri is something you can experience through practice. You may think that scholarly work is Ri, but for us it is not so.

[47:14]

To really realize or have complete understanding of Ri, to accept Ri, is our practice. So even though you practice Zazen and think that is Ri, or the attainment and realization of Ri, it's not always so. According to Sekito, if you understand this much, you already understand the whole Sando Pai. So, you know, we say there's the first principle and the second principle. The first principle is practice. The second principle is study. But sometimes study is also practice. You can't say that study is not practice. But it's the second principle. So study is important and necessary, and and so-called practice without study is also important, but the two complement each other. So the first line of the poem, first lines of the poem are the introduction. The mind of the great sage of India is intimately transmitted from west to east.

[48:18]

Here, great sage can also mean hermit. In Sekito's time, there were many Taoist hermits who were proud of their supernatural powers. and who were seeking some elixir to prolong life. They were not much interested in Buddhist practice, and they couldn't understand why practicing zazen was so necessary. So this was also a question for Dogen Zenji. If all of us had Buddha nature, why is it necessary to practice? Dogen suffered over this point, and he couldn't resolve his problems through intellectual study. That's why he went to China. So when you really know yourself, you will realize how important it is to practice Zazen. Before you know what you are doing, you don't know why we practice. You think you are quite free that whatever you do is your choice, but actually you are creating karma for yourself and others. You don't know what you're doing, so you don't think there's any need to practice Zazen. But we have to pay our own debts.

[49:19]

No one else can pay our debts. That is why it is necessary to practice. To fulfill a responsibility, we practice. It means karmic debts, of course. We have to. If you don't practice, you don't feel the good, and you also create some problems for others. But not knowing this, you will say, why is it necessary to practice then? Moreover, when you say, we have Buddha nature, you may think Buddha nature is something like a diamond in your sleeve. But true Buddha nature is not like this. A diamond is G, not Re. We are always involved in the world of G without realizing we. I don't know if this is confusing, but, you know, there are five minutes. So, he talks about freedom, true freedom. He's talked about this a lot. We think that to do whatever we want is freedom, but actually doing whatever we want often

[50:22]

creates big problems. Most of the problems we know. True freedom is called practice. When we sit in Zazen, which is the most confined posture, we have the most total freedom. And practicing within parameters gives us a container in which we can find our freedom. But just wandering over the hills and dales and going around the world, it is not what we consider freedom. We can do those things, but true freedom is not the ability to do things that we want.

[51:25]

but the ability to be free from confinement. So even though we may run around the world, we still may feel confined. So the true freedom that Suzuki Moshi is talking about is to be free from being caught by anything. To be free of everything, not to be free to run around, but to be free of everything so that we can be totally free in any situation. This is what he calls being the boss. It doesn't mean bossing people. It means that you are free within every situation. There's nothing that can catch you unless you don't have a thought.

[52:28]

So he talks about being a vegetarian here. And it's interesting, but not that interesting. He says, in Japan, we should be ashamed of ourselves for eating meat and fish. But you Americans... you don't know any better. You're just kind of innocent. He doesn't realize that we're not innocent. We're just like the people in Japan. This is the problem when somebody's giving a bunch of lectures. Not everything is that relevant. But here he says, so you may ask, what is the real teaching of Buddha?

[53:46]

If you don't understand it, you will keep asking, what is it? What is it? What does it mean? You are just seeking for something you can understand. And that's a mistake. We don't exist in that way. Dogen Zenji says, there is no bird who flies knowing the limit of the sky. There is no fish who swims without knowing the limit. knowing the end of the ocean. We exist in the limitless universe. Sentient beings are numberless, and our desires are limitless. But we still have to continue making our effort, just as a fish swims and a bird flies. So Dogen Zenji says, a bird flies like a bird. Fish swims like a fish. That is the Bodhisattva's way, and that is how we observe our practice. When we understand things in this way, according to Dogen, we are not people in Mapo. In Dogen's time, people came up with, there was this old way of thinking that the first 500 years after Buddha, people could still practice in a correct way.

[55:03]

The second 500 years, it was like the imitation. It looked like people were practicing, but Then the third 500 years, this 1500, is about the time of Dogen, which is called the area of Mapo, in which it was impossible to practice. This is why Shinran actually took up the Nebutsu chanting in the name of Buddha, because he said, this is the era of Mapo, and there's no way that we can actually practice. in a true way other than just, you know, giving ourselves over to Amitabha, Uda, who will lead us to the pure land. That's called pure land. I have one minute. So Dogen said, even though this is Mapo, it doesn't make any difference.

[56:07]

Just practice. You can do it. We can, we'll do it. So when we understand things in this way, according to Dogen, we are not people in Mapo, the last period. Our practice is not disturbed by any framework of time and space. Dogen said, Buddha is always here. In some way still, Buddhism exists. And when we really understand what Buddha meant, we are in Buddhist time. Thank you and good night. For more information, visit SSCC.org and click Giving.

[57:00]

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