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 morning. It's raining. Just thought I'd mention that. Okay. Everybody can hear? Anybody not hear? And I'm thinking that maybe because it's raining, I'll need to speak up a bit. So wave your arms if you're not hearing me. Okay. This is good. It's the right talk. So...

[01:00]

Looks like we won't see the moon for a few days, but it's a waxing gibbous. And that means that, you know, the moon rises about 45 minutes later each day, more or less. And that means, you know, the full moon's coming up next Tuesday. So full moon rises with the sunset and sets with the sunrise. And I hope that you have a clear sky that night. I believe that Monday is supposed to be clear, so you'll see. something close to a full moon on Monday night. Yeah. You know, when I first started teaching school, I kind of made it my mission to educate my students about the moon because I discovered that they didn't know much about the moon. And so we went on a little research project. I had each of my students go out and ask I can't remember if it was five or ten adults to explain the moon to them and then come back and, you know, let's see what we got here.

[02:10]

Well, very few adults knew much about the moon. Like, why is it sometimes full and why you can't see it sometimes? And the kids would say, well... The grocery clerk knew it perfectly well, but my doctor couldn't seem to come up with an explanation. So I thought, that's interesting, you know, something basic like the moon. So maybe I'll make it my mission to give you a couple moon facts each time it's my turn to speak. So moon fact. The circumference of the Earth is approximately 25,000 miles. Approximately. The distance of Earth to moon is approximately 250,000 miles. So that means 10 times farther away from Earth than the circumference of the Earth. Those numbers are approximate, but if you remember them, it's easier to remember them. The moon has an elliptical orbit, which means that it's sometimes, I think the closest, which would be next Tuesday, is more like 220-something.

[03:22]

miles away. So that's your moon fact for today. And what I'm going to talk about today is Dogen's fascicle, only a Buddha and a Buddha. But before that, I had a couple of things about meditation. One is a story. which won't sound at all like a story about meditation. But anyway, you'll see. So this is a story about Judy Brown. Judy Brown is Ed Brown's sister-in-law. Judy Brown is married to Ed Brown's brother, Dwight Brown. And Dwight Brown is, I'm pretty sure, still an Episcopal minister. somewhere in Northern California. And when Judy and Dwight lived in Berkeley, and I also lived in Berkeley as a young student, I think I answered a little wanted babysitter ad on the Berkeley Zendo bulletin board on Dwight Way, and I knocked on the door of Judy and Dwight's house and met

[04:48]

Judy Brown. And I just immediately just loved her. She was wild and wonderful and creative and smart. She was a quintessential hippie, complete with grandma's tablecloth hanging, you know, over the window and lots of fringes everywhere and embroidery and things. And I just had so much admiration for everything about her. So my job with her was to take care of her two-year-old son, Aryeh, so she could get some space. She had a garden, and she was having trouble finding time to work in the garden with a two-year-old. So I would... every day for about four hours and take Aryeh for the afternoon.

[05:52]

I would put him in Judy's car and we would drive up to Cordonisi's park. We would go to different parks. What's the other park? The Oak Park over... Yes, that one. And sometimes Aryeh would sit on my lap and, you know, we don't do that anymore, but we did then. And Judy told me something about how she took care of Aryeh, and this is what she told me. She would go to the playground and sit on the side with the other moms. And, you know, she was a little odd, so she probably didn't make a ton of friends, but she may have. She was very social.

[06:56]

She would maybe talk to some moms or just sit and watch. And she noticed that the moms, their eyes would be glued to their child. And if a child fell down, she noticed the child would first look at mom, and if mom's face is like panic attack, then the child would start to cry. And she thought, huh, I think that child is crying because the mom is alarmed. And so she thought, well, I think I'll do this thing differently. I think that what I will do is I'll watch Aryeh sometimes. And when he falls, I'll look away. I'll just look away, look up at a tree, talk to the person next to me. And if I hear him crying, I'll know that he's hurt. But if he doesn't cry, I'll know that he can deal with it, that he can deal with his own situation.

[08:02]

And so it was with that teaching from Judy Brown that I took care of Aryeh. And I learned so much from that teaching in the playground. And then when we had children and we brought them here, you know, when they were very young, seven months old. And so they were two. They were one and two. When children are just standing up and learning to walk, they are gleeful. it's for them it's like downhill skiing you know suddenly they're up high and then they start to run and they just get this insane gleeful look on their faces and they just run you know so our boys were doing that all over the place and I remember one day we were taking them to work meeting work meeting was out here just as it is now your take all the kids would come to work meeting And our boys were running to work meeting, and I saw Aaron run with this crazy, gleeful look and then take a nosedive and land flat on his belly.

[09:12]

And so I looked away. I looked here. I struck up a conversation with somebody there. Everything was quiet. And I turned around, and there was Aaron lying on his belly playing with the sand. was like, okay, I'm here. That's good too, you know. I thought, wow, okay, that worked. And, you know, that doesn't always work, but it worked. And if you ever take care of children or if you ever have children of your own, remember this story because you will never hear anything like this in the lure of taking care of children these days. So what does this have to do with us? You know, it's characteristic of our meditation craft to work indirectly.

[10:17]

Not that we can't work directly, but it's more characteristic to work indirectly. So when we are plagued by strong thoughts and strong feelings, we don't so much look at them directly. in meditation. Looking at them directly often means we get involved, like a mother and child, with judgment, with analysis, with terror. And the consequence is that we've amplified the thought or the feeling. So we tend to the body, the breath, the sensations as they arise. anger or sadness or excitement? What is happening with the breath? What's happening with the heart, the chest, the shoulders, and the back?

[11:17]

Can we reside in this body as it is, even if there is discomfort? Can we enliven the body from the inside with the air we breathe? Can we enliven the body from the inside as we lift up with our breath? Can we fully inhabit this body and begin to discover our meditation body? Our meditation body is like a keel on a boat. It steadies the boat. It does not control the sea. Can we share space, in Jane's words, with thoughts and feelings? Like a mother sharing space with her child, not hindering or being hindered.

[12:22]

If she watches her child all the time like a hawk, a helicopter parent, she loses her own space and eventually her patience, which is a bad deal for everybody. In our meditation practice, when we are helicopter parents with our oh-so-precious thoughts and sensations and feelings, we'll get tired and grumpy. Now, I'm not saying we won't get tired and grumpy anyway. Another thing we can do when we're plagued by thoughts, especially kind of the running commentary type, like during oryoki meals, that running commentary, like, okay, where's my chopsticks? Okay, how am I going to eat yogurt with chopsticks?

[13:27]

What was anybody thinking? Okay, maybe if I put my hands in Gassho, somebody will come and find my chopsticks for me. Maybe I could put some neon tape on my chopsticks. Wait, do they use chopsticks in India? Did Shakyamuni Buddha ever use chopsticks? I've never been to India, I don't know. I've been to China, Korea, Japan, they all use chopsticks. But I don't know about India. This is, you know, the running commentary. If you ever find yourself in a running commentary like that or any other kind of running commentary about the serving and the food and the arrangements, one thing you can do is swap thought for sound. Just swap it out. Just trade. Because... The field of sound around us is always available.

[14:30]

It's complex, it's compelling, and also it widens. It takes us beyond our own commentary. It does take some effort. You have to kind of like put your attention back to the sound and back to the sound. But it's a good way for me to take a break from the drone of mental activity when that is taking place. There's the steady sound, the roar of the water in the creek. Now there's the sound of the raindrops. On a sunny day, there might be the sound of bird, which punctuates the steady sound. There's tiny sounds or not. going on in the zendo. There's sounds of people walking outside. So the field of sound can be very compelling.

[15:32]

And it is a way of changing our focus. So it's an example of working indirectly. So on to Dogen's Bassacle, which is only a Buddha and a Buddha. I'm using an old translation by Kaz that he did sometime in the 80s. He revised it sometime in the 90s, and a lot of the language is different, and for some reason I just have this other copy, so I'm using it. And I find it really interesting. But anyway, some passages are a little different. Here it is. The fascicle starts with this paragraph. Buddha Dharma cannot be known by a person. For this reason, since olden times, no ordinary person has realized Buddha Dharma.

[16:37]

Because it is realized by Buddhas alone, it is said, only a Buddha and a Buddha can thoroughly master it. So this paragraph can seem off-putting and discouraging. So we need to move into the zone of Dogen language. What this means to me is that realization means transformation. Person transforms to Buddha. And the nature of that transformation is the realization that Buddhas are and always were all around us. That we see Buddhas with our Buddha. So the nature of this transformation is connectedness. Dogen goes on, when you realize Buddha Dharma, you do not think, this is realization just as I expected.

[17:46]

Even if you think so, Realization invariably differs from your expectation. Realization is not like your conception of it. Accordingly, realization cannot take place as previously conceived. What you think one way or another before realization is not a help to realization. Although realization is not like any of the thoughts preceding it, This is not because such thoughts were actually bad and could not be realization. Past thoughts in themselves were already realization. But since you were seeking elsewhere, you thought and said that thoughts cannot be realization. So in this pithy paragraph, Dogen begins to discuss... the relationship between our thoughts and expectations, and realization, and the relationship between past, present, and future, when he goes on to say that those thoughts preceding realization were not bad thoughts, and that realization itself shines light on how we are always realized beings, that is, Buddhas, except that we keep looking elsewhere.

[19:15]

He continues with the point that thoughts do not interfere with realization. Rather, it is our manipulation of thought, including attempting to cut off thoughts, that interfere with realization. So, it's this activity of self to manage thought, to control experience, to manage to pick and choose thought and feeling experiences. That impedes us. And once we see that, even the impediment is not an impediment. Because realization was there all along. Why? Because this is what we do. We polish mirrors.

[20:18]

Sometimes we polish mirrors to get the task out of the way so we can check it off and get on to the next task. Sometimes we just polish mirrors as fully embodied mirror polishers. Sometimes you might feel fully embodied mirror polisher with a crew member, and you might look at each other and see that you both are doing the same fully embodied mirror polishing. This is only a Buddha and a Buddha. In this moment, we recognize each other. It is a quiet moment and it can go unrecognized, unnoticed. It doesn't matter. The next moment, we're hurrying to finish because the bell rang and thinking of what we're going to do next. A human and a human. The Buddha and a Buddha moment is not diminished at all.

[21:25]

In fact, the human and a human moment has new depth. It touches our hearts. In Dogen's words, shines a light on how we are always realized beings. So we're talking about a transformation. It's kind of like falling in love. Falling in love is an extraordinary experience that's pretty common. The experience changes us in the present, and it changes our past as well. So a person might think, oh, now I know I was always looking for you or waiting for you. And the sentence, I love you, with its subject, verb, object, sentence structure, does not describe the experience at all. Now that I love you, I love me, too.

[22:32]

I love me when I am with you. You and me. We are love. Love is a transformative experience in this way. And our language, you know, human beings have been trying to capture the transformation of love in words as long as we've been around. Sometimes we do a pretty good job. We catch it. But our language, the structure of our language, kind of works against us in that experience. So, anyway, Dogen goes on. That which is accumulated is without self. And no mental activity has self. The reason is that not one of our four great elements, of the four great elements or the five skandhas, I'm going to start that sentence over.

[23:42]

The reason is that not one of the four great elements or the five skandhas can be understood as self or identified as self. Therefore, the form of the flowers or moon in your mind should not be understood as being self, even though you think it is self. Still, when you clarify that there is nothing to be disliked or longed for, then the original face is revealed by your practice of the way. So here, Dogen refers to all the dharmas that we average together making a self, that we can't really find that self anywhere, even in mental activity.

[24:48]

Mental activity is where we are most likely to look for a self because self is a construct of mental activity. Dogen gives a hint about this. In the words, you clarify that there is nothing to be disliked or longed for. Then the original face is revealed by your practice of the way. So, to me, this is like putting down the tool metaphor that I spoke about the other day. It's a point when we pick up and use the tool, that is, feel the anger, perceive the memory, hear our mother's words, is picking up and using the tool. There's a point when we interpret the feeling, the memory, the sound, in the same way we've always interpreted it

[25:58]

missing that this is a new experience, a new moment, and that old story is old news. Actually, we've changed, but we didn't notice because we've taken this tool, this human capacity for feeling and memory and thought, we've taken this hammer and dressed it up in a bunny costume. And then we beat ourselves up for doing that. We do that rather than just putting down the tool, being ready and open for the next moment. So, you know, the way you put down a tool is you aim for the toolbox, and when you get close to the toolbox, you open your hand. So that kind of putting down the tool, we can do in our meditation Dogen says, a teacher of old said, although the entire universe is nothing but the Dharma body of the self, you should not be hindered by the Dharma body.

[27:21]

If you are hindered by the Dharma body, you will not be able to turn freely no matter how hard you try. So regarding the Dharma body as an object is turning it into a hindrance. Regarding enlightenment as an object, something to strive for, something to hope for, something that's happened here and there, something that will happen in the future, happened in the past, something that is other than me. something that belongs to you, something that belongs to somebody else. That mental construct is the hindrance. And with that hindrance hanging over our heads in the midst of the intensity of our practice is stressful.

[28:26]

And Dogen is not recommending it. He goes on. Buddha manifests a body and awakens sentient beings means that awakening sentient being is itself the manifestation of the Buddha body. I'm going to read that again. Buddha manifests a body and awakens sentient beings means that awakening sentient beings is itself the manifestation of the Buddha body. in the midst of awakening sentient beings, do not pursue manifestation. Seeing manifestation, do not look about for awakening. Hui Nung offers a parallel metaphor in the Platform Sutra.

[29:31]

He says, good friends, what are meditation and wisdom like? They're like a lamp and it's light. When there's a lamp, there's light. When there's no lamp, there's no light. The lamp is the light's body. The light is the lamp's function. They have two names, but not two bodies. So we can see this sentence Buddha manifests a body and awakens sentient beings, not as Buddha's to-do list, not even as a subject-verb-object sentence. Just as Hui Nung said, they have two names, but not two bodies. Rather, the awakening of sentient beings and the manifestation of Buddha's body are the same.

[30:33]

There is only a Buddha and a Buddha. Hello? Are we back? Are we back? Yes? Exciting in here, isn't it? So this is not like our normal way of thinking or using language. Like somewhere there's an awakened Buddha and I just have to find that awakened Buddha and stand close to him and get awakened myself. That concept is very well supported by our language. So we're using language differently here to try to express

[31:38]

transformation. And as for that idea of somewhere there's an awakened Buddha, I just have to find that Buddha and stand close to him or her, both Dogen and Hui Nung address this trend in human religious thought and behavior, as does the old woman of Taishan It is the foundation of superstition, which is, if we perform these rites and make these offerings, we will acquire merit. There are power places and power objects in this world that we want to get close to, like Mount Taishan. So some of the power might rub off on us. And there are power places to be avoided that suck out our power and corrupt us.

[32:43]

So we walk around in fear of exposure to bad juju, anticipation of finding and collecting some of the good juju. We teach children this sort of thing, like in fairy tales. And the purpose of teaching children these things is to keep them safe. We scare them so that when they encounter a situation when we are not present, they will be safe. Be afraid of strangers. There's an evil other that must be avoided and a benevolent other that must be sought out. Sometimes we can't see it, but it can see us. Like the guy in the red suit who can see us when we're sleeping and knows when we're awake and knows when we've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake.

[33:53]

To me, that's just creepy. I myself don't know if there is such a creepy guy around, watching me. But I do know that I don't want to live in that world. Sometimes we may find ourselves thinking this way as adults, even though we think we've left that behind. Superstitious beliefs like this diminish us. They put our lives on hold, and they corrupt our integrity. Both Dogen and Huinang rail against it. And our practice allows us to face this head-on. Just this body, this breath, this moment is the entire universe.

[34:56]

Dogen quotes a verse, The entire universe is the true human body. The entire universe is the gate of liberation. The entire universe is the eye of Vairocana. The entire universe is the Dharma body of the self. And this verse reminds me of the Platform Sutra, the refuges in the Platform Sutra. I take refuge in the pure Dharma body Buddha, in my own material body. I take refuge in the myriad-fold transformation body Buddha in my own material body. I take refuge in the future and perfect realization body Buddha in my own material body. This practice is not so much about what we believe.

[36:05]

more about where we are committed. That is, in my own material body. And what is this material body? Mutually connected with all being. We ourselves are an ecosystem. Our bodies contain more bacteria cells than human body cells. I love that. It's a hot topic in science these days. And these cells mutually depend upon each other. I used to tell my seventh graders, we've got a lot of bacteria cells living inside our bodies, and they'd go, eww, and I'd say, well, they're not going anywhere, so you may as well think of them as your guardian angels. And the fact of it is, they are. They... Our life depends upon these populations that we support and support us.

[37:11]

Our body's structure and our body's functions are determined by the Earth's gravity and by the atmosphere. Our size, our volume, our muscles in relation to our bones. You know, there's a limited size, and a mammal, an animal can be on land. So the biggest mammal on land is maybe an elephant, I'm not sure. The biggest animal ever to live on Earth is alive today in the ocean. It's the blue whale. A blue whale could not live on land because of the Earth's gravity. in the atmosphere. A blue whale requires the buoyancy of water to support its tremendous weight. A blue whale tail might fit in this endo, it would have to take the roof off, but, you know, a hundred feet long is a blue whale.

[38:24]

That's kind of the max. The smallest animal that can live in the water, in the ocean, is a sea otter, the smallest mammal, warm-blooded animal. The smallest animal on land is some kind of little tiny mouse or some small rodent. This is the physics of our world. So our bodies are organized by... the Earth's atmosphere and the gravitational pull of the Earth. The ground we walk on, the air we breathe, is the Dharma body of the self. And this is so whether we notice at any given moment or not. We are always supported. We are never alone. This realization

[39:24]

in our everyday experience may seem to flicker in and out. And as Hui Nung in the famous koan about the wind tells us, it's not the realization that's flickering out, it's our mind that's flickering. This realization is not fragile. And it's not uncommon. It's our birthright. It's our evolutionary inheritance. I think we all felt this as babies and children, this sense of bigness and connection. So when we step into this way of experiencing our life now, it may feel like returning home, familiar and familial. Dogen has a beautiful line about transmission in another fascicle.

[40:37]

I think it's Face-to-Face Transmission. He says, Transmission is like pouring water in the ocean and spreading it endlessly. You know, I'm an ocean nut. I'm very aware when I see water, when I'm near the ocean, I feel my ocean responding to the ocean. You know, we're 75% water or more, actually a little more, and it's mostly salt water. So, you know, it's like I'm sloshing around in my own personal ocean here. And when I see the ocean, I just feel, I just feel the connection. I think we all feel that all the time with each other, with sound, when we see the body of another animal. I think we just, we feel that. And that is only a Buddha and a Buddha. I'd like to end by reading a passage from Maureen Stewart Mio'on Roshi's book.

[41:51]

Mio'on means subtle sound. She was a musician. She was a concert pianist before she became a Zen teacher, or maybe it overlapped. And so her book is called Subtle Sound. And she has a beautiful passage about this. Of course, reading is going to be a challenge. She's talking about seeing clearly. What does this seeing clearly mean? It doesn't mean that you look at something and analyze it, noting all its composite parts. No. When you see clearly, when you look at a flower and really see it, the flower sees you. It's not that the flower has eyes, of course. is that the flower is no longer just a flower, and you are no longer just you.

[42:58]

Flower and you have dissolved into something way beyond what we can even say, but we experience this. This kind of seeing, this kind of understanding is as-it-is-ness. As-it-is-ness. This wonderful, intuitive wisdom infuses everything we do if we just open ourselves up to it and forget about all our selfish, petty concerns, forget about what we want, what we must get, whether this is doing something for us, forget it. We are here for the sake of all sentient beings, and we are one with all sentient beings when we come to see this as it is-ness. Meister Eckhart, a 13th century Christian mystic who really understood this, said, The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me.

[44:06]

The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me. Meister Eckhart and Dogen. on only a Buddha and a Buddha. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

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