But Suge Roshi always hoped there would be a lay, non-priest Roshi. His teacher, in fact, is a hospital administrator, Yamada Roshi. And for those among our students who are studying to be doctors, that's a good example. Also, Agent Roshi is, I think, the teacher, maybe the teacher. Anyway, one of the teachers, maybe the teacher I enjoy sharing students with the most. And many students have started with him and come to live here in the mainland, so-called mainland. What do you call it? Mainland? Come to the mainland, and I find they can continue practice here very well. And sometimes students have left here and lived in Hawaii, and then after a few years come back,

[01:01]

and it seems to me their practice has continued uninterrupted and developed considerably, being in Hawaii with Agent Roshi. And also, his group has the distinction, I think, of being, developed the most consciousness of women's role in practice. And they publish a magazine called, some Hawaiian word... Kahawai. More, what? Kahawai. Yeah, it means little stream. And this little stream may become a big stream, but the magazine is characteristic. Anyway, it's a very good magazine, and I think one of the most innovative things that's happened in the Western Buddhism is this magazine. So I feel very grateful for all of us that Agent Roshi is here today for a little while and can give a talk this morning. I'm delighted to be back at Zen Center again to renew friendships with Bigger Roshi, and Virginia, and Dan, and many others of you.

[02:24]

I'm always impressed when I come, not only with the quality of practice here, but the quantity. In Marxism, you know, it is often said, quantitative addition brings qualitative change. And with the wise guidance of Bigger Roshi and his leaders, we see that qualitative change has a deepening and a spreading of true Dharma. I thought I would take up with you this morning the subject of the self, which has rather preoccupied me in the last year or so.

[03:52]

How to present the truth of the self. What is the self? In the Enmei-jikku Kanon-gyo, you read, Yo-bu-tsu-u in Yo-bu-tsu-u, and Bu-po-so in Jo-raku-ga-jo. With the Buddha, we have direct affinity. With the Buddha, we have indirect affinity. Affinity with Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. Eternity, Comfort, Self, and Purity.

[04:58]

Perhaps it would suit our purposes to take up that word, self, at the outset at any rate, in the context of this sutra. But first, let's examine the context a little. We have direct affinity with the Buddha, as the tree has direct affinity with its former seed. And we have indirect affinity, as the tree, with rain, soil, air, fertilizer, so on. We have that affinity with the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, the fundamental treasures of our path.

[06:12]

And with that affinity, realizing that affinity, we find Eternity, Comfort, Self, and Purity. Eternity is not endless time, but rather the great timeless void of which we are formed. It is, we may say, nirvana, not something to be attained, but as Hakaren Lengti said, this very place is the Lotus Land. Right here now. And comfort, vaku, is a word that may also be translated joy or ease.

[07:24]

And purity is not the opposite of impurity, it is not a word reflecting moral condition in this context, but rather the expression of the internal realization of that great timeless void. So what is that Self doing in there? That's the question. D.T. Suzuki translates that word, Self, in this sutra, as autonomy. And this is not incorrect, but it might be one-sided.

[08:29]

With realization, I stand resolute and alone in the universe, but I am also with one with the universe. Autonomy is true as a translation of Self here, but it doesn't reflect the aspect of interpenetration, which is also true. We turn to Dogen Zenji to help us to understand this autonomous Self that is also one with all things and all beings.

[09:47]

He wrote in Genjo Koan, To study the Buddha Tao is to study the Self. To study the Self is to forget the Self. To forget the Self is to be confirmed by the myriad things. Quite a lot of information is packed into these three lines. First of all, it is commonly supposed by beginning students of religion, whether Christianity or Buddhism or whatever, that it is important to get rid of the Self. I used to suppose that when I was a younger Zen student.

[10:50]

I remember once I was in correspondence with a woman, Roshi, in Japan. Nakazawa, I think. Anyway, in the stream of Harada Roshi, and one of our friends was studying at her abbey at this time. And through correspondence with our friend, I got in correspondence with Roshi. And once I wrote, I am trying to get rid of my stubborn ego. And she wrote back saying, don't worry about getting rid of your ego. Nobody gets rid of the ego anyway. I sometimes say to my students, Shakyamuni Buddha had a big ego.

[11:53]

He knew precisely who he was, where he came from, where he was going, and what he had to do. That is to say, he had a very clear self-image. And what is ego but self-image? That's really how we use our ego. How clearly we see the Self, that is important. The Self itself is a given. There you are. Lots of Selves. Here too. There is a big difference between forgetting the Self and getting rid of the Self. Getting rid of the Self is really a denial of the effort. But as Yamada Roshi, my teacher, Yamada Kobun Roshi has said,

[13:09]

the Buddha Tao is a matter of forgetting the Self in the act of uniting with something. How do you forget the Self? In a task, in an act. Well, the Dharma may be seen as a verb. This is a key to what Dogen Zenji meant when he said that Zazen is itself, realization. And it's also true, of course, in the act of fixing the roof, or drying a cup, or whatever.

[14:14]

Now, what is the intention of the last line of the three lines that I quoted to you from Genjo Koan? To forget the Self is to be confirmed by the myriad things. This is just as important a line as the other two. Please examine the meaning of this line. To forget the Self is to be confirmed by the myriad things. The original says ten thousand things. And if you look up the word myriad in the dictionary, you'll find the first meaning is ten thousand.

[15:23]

It's the same metaphor in English, meaning all things, but with emphasis not upon the all, but upon the things. So, in your Zen practice, it is fragrant incense that sits upon the cushion. The bird song makes vows before the altar. And one, two, three, and your breath counting goes to bed at last at nine o'clock. When the old-timer, Rei-un, Tang period teacher, was a middle-aged monk, he was on pilgrimage

[16:57]

and in the distance he saw peach flowers. Now, if he had done a pilgrimage to that orchard of peach flowers with the fixed idea, I am coming to see the most famous peach flowers in all of China, he would have dominated those peach flowers. And there would have been no real experience of them. So, this reveals the second important point about the self, which Dogen Zenji takes up

[18:11]

in the Genjo Koan, that the self advances and confirms the ten thousand things is called delusion. That the myriad things advance and confirm the self is enlightenment. Because Rei-un's mind was empty at that time, the subtle dominance of those blossoms could move him, truly move him. Once I took a visitor from Japan to see Waikiki Beach at his request.

[19:12]

And we strolled along the sidewalk next to this narrow little crowded strip of sand. And he said, Ah, Waikiki, the most famous beach in the world. He couldn't see that this was a crummy beach. So, he was advancing and confirming that beach out of his own conceptual frame of mind. Recently, in the past couple of years, I've been doing sessions for Catholics in Tacoma.

[20:24]

So, I've been doing much more reading in Eckhart and Blake and other writers in Western tradition. And I found on page one of the Blakely translation of Eckhart, his little homily on obedience. Eckhart stresses obedience as the first and foremost motive of the student of religion. And when we translate that into our own frame of reference, we can see that Rei-un was truly obedient to those peach blossoms.

[21:41]

And the word confirm used by Dogen Zenji is very interesting, that the myriad things and advance and confirm the self is enlightenment. Because it is the same word that is used in the term inkashome. Sho is the word that means confirm. Inkashome is the formal confirmation by the teacher that his senior disciple is ready to teach. And it's the expression of transmission unbroken from the Buddha himself down to this disciple. We may say that those peach blossoms confirmed Rei-un.

[22:49]

He needed, of course, his own teacher's confirmation in order to move in the world formally as a Zen teacher. But the act of transmission had already taken place. Once one of my Japanese teachers told me about his opinion of Western art critics. He said, when a Western art critic looks at a good painting, he will explicate form and line and perspective and color and so on. But when a Japanese art critic looks at a good painting, he will say, ii na, meaning, oh, that's good, isn't it?

[24:07]

I don't know whether this is a fair comparison of, say, American and Japanese art critics, but it does present two different ways of appreciation. One is projection and the other is acceptance. It is this obedience by the empty self of the sound of a stone striking a stalk of bamboo on the part of Kyogen of words. This is spoken in his dream by Yamaguchi.

[25:09]

If I may speak personally, once in the old days of the Kokoan Zendo, before we were at our present site near the university, back in 1961, Soenroshi shouted, ka! in the dojo. He didn't shout it like that either. And I found my own voice joining his. Ah! Almost perfect obedience. I didn't get the ka in there or the ts at the end, but the middle part was perfect obedience. If I may say so. You know, we read in the Hwaien Sutra,

[26:33]

and incidentally, Bekaroshi said, I have been studying Buddhism for a long time. Actually, I resonate to what Soenroshi once said to me, and that is, he said, if I were to be given an examination on the subject of traditional and conventional Buddhism, I would flunk. I'm that way too. I've done almost all of my study of Buddhism in this position. But anyway, I've heard that in the Hwaien Sutra, the net of Indra is taken up as a model of the universe.

[27:36]

This is a multidimensional net, and at each knot, so to speak, of the net, there is a jewel, and each jewel perfectly reflects and echoes each other jewel. And this is not a static model, but dynamic, in time and through time. An expression of the essential nature at each moment, the absolute nature at each moment, of the dynamic process of the universe.

[28:42]

And we find the Hwaien Sutra expressed so concretely in Zen, always echoing and re-echoing. In the Mumonkan, what case is it? Around 17 or so, we find the monk, Tangen Oshin, perfectly reflecting Chukokushi. Chukokushi called his attendant three times, and three times the attendant responded. That's the first sentence in the case. There's only two sentences in the case. But so much can be said about that. And I can remember Senzaki, Yogan Sensei's Teisho on this case, dramatizing it.

[29:51]

Chukokushi, of course, was very old. He didn't begin teaching until he was in his eighties. Oshin, he called. And Oshin came up from below to the teacher's quarters and said, yes. And Chukokushi said, oh, I don't need you now. You may go back. And later he called, Oshin. And Tangen Oshin came again, yes. Oh, thank you for coming, but I would like you to go back now. And then again, Oshin. And Oshin came again, yes. The national teacher, Chukokushi said, I thought I was standing with my back to you, but I find you are standing with your back to me.

[31:00]

There are many translations for this last line. That's Yamada Roshi's translation. That's the koan portion of the case. But generally you can understand that Chukokushi was praising and confirming his student. In what must have been a Teisho on this case. R. H. Blythe tells a story of what must have been a Teisho on this case. In his Zen and English literature. The Roshi saying, when someone calls you, Oi! You should respond, Hai! Oi means hello. And Hai means yes.

[32:01]

Hello. Yes. Hello. Yes. Hello. Yes. When I first went to Ryutakuji, the temple where I trained for a while back in 1950 and 51. There was no telephone there. And all communication with the outside world came by letter or by telegram or by messenger. Then in 1957, Ann and I visited there and they had a gorgeous telephone in a booth right outside the office where the senior monks sat around drinking tea and discussing weighty matters.

[33:05]

And when that telephone, it had a particularly penetrating ring. And when that telephone would go off, all the senior monks would shout with one voice, Hoi! The whole monastery would shout, Hoi! Really, the whole universe shouts, Hoi! Hoi! Perfect echoing. Perfect reflection. And this is the nature of our dojo, isn't it? By the way, dojo is a very interesting word. Probably you know about it. It is used to mean place of zazen, place of practice.

[34:10]

And in the martial arts, it's used even to mean gymnasium. But you notice that the kendo or judo players will gassho and bow when they enter. So there is that residue of devotional feeling in connection with dojo. And dojo is a translation of the Sanskrit bodhimanda, which means place of bodhi, place of enlightenment. And it's the name for the spot under the bodhi tree where the Buddha had his great kensho. And bodhi is translated into Tao, the Tao of the Tao Te Ching. When Kumarajiva and his colleagues sought translation of bodhi, they did two things.

[35:16]

One, they transliterated, and we have the word boji or bodai in Japanese today, meaning bodhi. Bodai-sakba, you know, in Hanyu Shingyo. And they also used the word Tao. Tao meaning way and way to. Practice in its two senses. You have the doctor practicing medicine, that is, doing medicine. And we have the practice which makes perfect. Anyway, what is the nature of our dojo but empty selves echoing and reflecting each other in the fulfillment of the task to make this place a better place to do zazen.

[36:19]

Okay? Thank you. Even better place. Thank you very much. Thank you.

[37:35]

Namo'valokiteshvaraya Sentient beings are numberless. I vow to take them. The entire earth are inexhaustible. I vow to attend to them. The animals are harmless. I vow to master them. The earth's weight is unsurpassable. I vow to attain it. Zazen. Thank you.

[39:27]

Thank you.

[39:33]

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