This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. Here we are again. Miraculously, as that may seem. At least it seems kind of miraculous to me. what a kind of beautifully typical winter San Francisco day it is. At least that's the way I think of it. Kind of that gray, kind of rainy, chilly, you know, beautiful. So as I was looking at it this morning, I was thinking, it reminded me of a Because these kinds of days not only are totally unique, never been a San Francisco day like this ever before, but at the same time draws up memories of other San Francisco days like this.

[01:13]

And so this was one of those days where I had, I think, come up from Tassar for winter interim, and I was supposed to fly home and see my parents, and but at the last minute I decided I just couldn't deal with it and stayed here. This is one of those things that most young Zen students have to deal with, which is what their parents are, how they're handling this sort of, how you gave up your illustrious career to do this, or whatever it is that you're doing that they don't quite understand. So there's that complexity, plus there's the general complexity of a, like my mom, who was the most disappointed about this. I think there's an art form in how a mother and a son disengage, unentangle themselves. They've spent their life protecting you, taking care of you, and there you are off in some weird mountain monastery doing who knows what.

[02:18]

And you don't even have a girlfriend. You're not married. So it's very concerned. And of course, my father, who... doesn't know why I don't have a career yet. And so that's the other side too, which is like Odysseus who had to go down back into hell to get his father's permission to become king. Ulysses did. Because a man somehow can't own his own life until he's somehow gotten his father's permission. I'm doing a lot of pop psychology here, but I think there's some truth in there somewhere. Not that you ever completely get released. There is that story of the famous Supreme Court Justice who, whenever he went home to visit his father, his father treated him like a child. So there's still that part of my brain that's going, yeah, good, but not quite good enough.

[03:19]

Because my dad was always sort of pushing me. Anyway. So it was one of those. So I was a little bit down because I had not satisfied my parents. And so I didn't know what was going on. There weren't many people around here because it's kind of quiet at Christmas time. And also I'd had a sashim that I didn't feel I'd gone very well or I hadn't gotten out of it what I'd wanted to. So anyway, I walked... on a beautiful day like this, out to 24th Street, there was a coffee shop there. I think it was called the Meat Locker or something. I don't know if it's still, probably not still there. But anyway, me and three other souls, I was reading some obscure German philosopher's understanding of Zen, which was totally incomprehensible to me, and trying to figure out what Zen was about. I know it was the Meat Locker because they had this sort of long iron thing that... that they would hang the beef off of, which coincidentally reminds me of the sort of famous analogy of the beef on the meat on the hook.

[04:31]

And you buy some and they weigh it. And so do you look at the scale to see whether you're getting the right amount that you're paying for? Or do you look at the meat to see whether you're getting something decent? So this is a metaphor for ourselves. We're studying ourselves today, right? And do we look at all of our mental descriptions, our objective measurements of what's going on with us? Or do we look at the meat, the flesh, the warm body, the painful back, the actual experience that you're doing here? So, of course, sometimes it's good to look at the scale and make sure you're not being cheated. But it's pretty important to take a look at the meat as kind of... This human body is pretty, you know, real. Anyway, just thought I would... Because that is part of what we're talking about now.

[05:37]

We're studying ourself through the Genjo Koan here. So... Back in those days, we bought these things from some Amish place, catalog place, that were these sort of little vests that you had that were made out of wool, wonderful. I remember walking back in that kind of dewy rain, cold and down. And I got back to the building, and there were people around. It was warm, you know. I had returned to the sangha, and we had dinner together, and I was washing the pots. you know, back in the sinks that are to the left of the stove back there, the pot washing area, had one of those pots that was, you know, a big one, and it had really gotten burned on the bottom. There was just, it was a lot of work. I was in there using a lot of force and washing that pot. And then, for some reason, something just happened.

[06:39]

and I was awake to everything. I was sort of one with a pot, and it's a mystery, you know, just didn't happen seven days of Tasara Sashin, no, but somehow washing a pot over in that sink in the kitchen. Do not underestimate dishwashing. It's very, very, I love dishwashing. We should have a book called Zen and the Art of Dishwashing. We've got them for motorcycle maintenance. We've got a whole Tenzo Kyokin about cooking. Somebody should do something about dishwashing. Back at Tassar, when I first went to Tassar, the dishwashing area was out on the south side of what was the zendo back then. Now it's the student eating area. So it overlooked the stream. What a fantastic place to wash dishes.

[07:41]

Well, that was interesting. Well, I walked down here and there was the winter. Well, it is day four, right? We've been spending a lot of time discussing obscures and texts. I don't know. By this time in the Sashin also, I kind of have this off-kilter feeling a little bit in my body. I don't know what it is. It's kind of like it's sort of two things at once. In certain ways, I feel like more awake and more sort of like there. And then in other ways, I'm sort of stumbling around like in a new body, forgetting bells and, I don't know, various different things. So I was reminded of, I mean...

[08:45]

we are paying a lot more attention to our body, aren't we now? I mean, haven't you noticed that, you know, when you sit down to start a period of zazen, you spend a lot of time making sure you've got the cushion just right, you know, making sure those sit bones are really right there, because you know, probably you're not going to move for 30 minutes, and better be good to begin with, because, and, you know, and, and so, then you think, well, oh wow, if I, If I open my chest up a little bit more, maybe that'll help a little bit with those shoulders. It's definitely a relationship with your body going on here. But anyway, so I was reminded of this poem called Carrying a Ladder by Kay Ryan. Kay Ryan's a wonderful Marin poet. She was, I think, a national poet or something at one point in time. We are always really carrying a ladder. but it is invisible.

[09:46]

We only know something's the matter, something precious crashes, easy doors prove impassable, or in the body there is too much swing or off-center gravity, and in the mind a drunken capacity, access to out-of-range apples, as though one had to climb out of the damage and apology. I don't know, I just sort of thought it was a wonderful representation for me today, something. Sure, we are always really carrying a ladder, but it is invisible. We only know something's the matter. Something precious crashes. Easy doors prove impassable. Or in the body there is too much swing or off-center gravity.

[10:49]

And in the mind, a drunken capacity, access to out-of-range apples, as though one had to climb out of the damage and apology. last line I've never really totally grasped there's something in me about it as though one had to climb out of the damage and we certainly create enough damage and apology so at first I thought why isn't it climb out of the damage and apologize but no you're climbing out of the damage and apology she's so good with words she doesn't Leave one word out. And the mind, a drunken capacity, access to out-of-range apples.

[11:54]

That mind that's reaching for things it can't get. Okay. So, on to the Genjo Koan. This is where we were on Monday. I think we're on Wednesday now. We went somewhere else yesterday. To study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized, awakened by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind, as well as the bodies and minds of others, drop away. No trace of realization remains, and this no trace continues endlessly. So as I said when I first introduced this, Kuchiyama said this is a summary of everything that had come previous in the Genjo Koan, and then I was just reading a short essay.

[13:09]

that said that according to this person, these five sentences are Dogen's interpretation of the five ranks, Dengshan's five ranks. And I did a quick analogy between the first rank is the first sentence, the second rank is the second sentence, all the way through. Dengshan was the person we were talking about yesterday. Remember that Dengshan was Yunnan's student. Dengshan was making the offering to the image and explained about just this is it. So one of his most famous works is The Five Ranks, describing his understanding of the relationship between the absolute and the relative. Anyway, we're not going to go into that because I didn't have enough time to actually understand what was going on. I just thought it was an interesting thing. So I... I so enjoyed this book that we studied, the three commentaries on the Ganjo Koan.

[14:14]

So I thought I would share a little bit of one of the commentators on this particular sentence, because I thought we might review a little bit what to study the self is, because it's already been two days, and who can remember? I could barely remember what we covered. So this is Kosho Uchiyama. which I don't know if any of you know him, became a very well-known person. He was Shohaka Okamura's teacher. And Shohaka Okamura is well-known because he teaches genzoes here in America and wrote Realizing the Genjo Koan. So he studied under Kosho Uchiyama, who was quite an expert on the Genjo Koan and Dogen and wrote a whole commentary on the Genjo Koan, which is just what it is. But anyway, he studied under... I think it was Kodo Sawaki, who was also a pretty well-known Roshi. He was head of Sojiji and then one of the two main temples in Japan.

[15:19]

And then he had a separate monastery where he had monks sitting, and that's where Uchihaama sat. And he described in his little biography that was part of this thing what their five-day sashims were like, and I thought I would just share it with you. They got up at two in the morning. and would sit for 50 minutes and then do 10 minutes of walking, which would go on all day long until midnight. There were no lectures, you know, no fun time, no storytelling, just straight through. I mean, somehow they had horioki meals in the midst of that. And then, and of course, there was a stick carried during those 22 hours to make sure you didn't fall asleep. And then at midnight, the only difference was, of course, you stayed seated in your seat as they put the stick down and didn't carry it for two hours if you fell asleep. look how far we've come. I mean, that's only like 60 years ago.

[16:19]

That's two generations from us, you know. So anyway, Uchiyama used to get such swollen shoulders, apparently, from the number of times he got hit that at the end of Sashin's he was just really in bad shape. So when he was running Antaiji, he said, enough of that, seven hours of sleep. If you sleep better, you'll sit zazen better. And I think that was a good decision. So anyway. To study the Buddha way is to study the self. The self Dogen Zenji talks about here is not ego in the term of egoism. This is the self as all inner penetrating self. That is the reality of life itself. prior to separation into dichotomies such as self and other or subject and object. Okay? So to study the self is not your ego self.

[17:21]

It's the reality of life prior to separation into dichotomies, the non-dual part of your life, such as self and others or subject and object. Well, that part is, how do we get to that? You know, that's like, you can't think it, you can't experience it, because all experiences and thoughts are of a duality nature. It's the bigger, the big mind, as Zika Rishi would talk about it. And so the problem, of course, is you can't study the big mind. The only object you have to study the big mind with is the small mind. So you are back to studying the small mind because the small mind is part of the big mind in terms of getting to the big mind. Then he goes on to, just to clarify that because that's really one of the key things.

[18:25]

There's small self with a small s and big self with a big s. Previously, Dogen Zenji said, conveying oneself towards all things to carry out practice enlightenment is delusion. This is one of the probably other really famous lines in, and I want to make sure it's... Put it somewhere in here. Ah, yes. To carry the self forward and illuminate myriad things is delusion. That myriad things come forth and illuminate the self is awakening. So this came, this is about three or four paragraphs before the paragraph we're studying. And it's, again, that classic interaction between you and the other.

[19:27]

to the extent that you carry yourself forward and illuminate the myriad things, that is, mess with the myriad things to get what you want, that's called delusion, according to Dogen. And if you let the myriad things come forth and illuminate the self, that's awakening. So he's sort of bringing that forward. Previously, Dogen said, conveying oneself toward all things to carry out practice and enlightenment is delusion. Although the self is originally living the all-interpenetrating self, my brain produces all kinds of non-interpenetrating thoughts. Yes, it does produce all those thoughts, thoughts that aren't connected to everything. Thoughts well up such as, I want money, I want sex, I want a higher position, and so on. When we are pulled by such thoughts secreted from our brain, he always refers to our thoughts and our brain as thoughts. brain secretions.

[20:28]

Like you have an organ that secretes various things. The brain is an organ that secretes thoughts. Brain secretions. When we are pulled around by such thoughts secreted from our brain, that is certainly delusion. And yet, even though such thoughts are delusion, the fact that the lucid thoughts come up is nothing other than a function of the reality of life connecting with heaven and earth. To study the Buddha way is to study the self, means we should study the self, which includes all heaven and earth. So yes, we study the brain secretions too, connected to all heaven and earth. I love this next paragraph too. Concretely speaking, we should accept everything as the contents of our self. Everything we see, everything we hear. We should meet everything as a part of ourselves. To study the self means to awaken to such a self.

[21:34]

For instance, many people visit my home or write me letters. Many of these people talk or write about their troubles and anguish and ask for my advice. I never feel troubled by such requests. As soon as I am asked about such troubles, they become my own. I meet people and problems in such a way. As long as I have such an attitude, these problems are my own and they enrich my life. If I reject other people's problems saying that is not my business, my life becomes poorer and poorer. Therefore, to meet everything without exception as a part of my life Therefore, to meet everything without exception, as a part of my life is most essential in the Buddha way.

[22:36]

This is what Dogen's engine meant by saying, to study the Buddha way is to study the self. Beautiful, huh? Big cask, right? Everybody's suffering that comes to you, you say, oh... Bring me your suffering. It enriches me. This is part of studying myself because you are part of myself. Therefore, your suffering is part of myself. Well, that's what our bodhisattva vow is when we chant our bodhisattva vow all the time. I had some thoughts about that. So his term anguish, right? So this is a path that leads to the heart of anguish. This is the path that leads into suffering. People keep thinking, oh, I'm going to study Zen and get rid of all suffering.

[23:39]

This is a man who says, no, the path of Zen leads you in to the heart of suffering, of anguish. And that's intimacy with another person. by wholly giving yourself and wholly receiving the gift of another. So, how do you do this and how do you act? Like yesterday, I mentioned that one of the things I learned from Suzuki Roshi was the whole point of this is love. It's compassion. But I either forgot to mention or didn't get around to it. But the other side of it that is wisdom, to know how to act. And it's with someone else's suffering. And this is not simple. You can have a lot of rules, and certainly in the early days of Buddhism, the Vinaya was 256 rules, or maybe more for women, lots of rules.

[24:47]

And we have our precept rules and our paramitas, and we have all kinds of rules about how we're supposed to act. But when it comes right down, to the particular moment with you and another suffering human being, there's no rule that's going to cover it. You have to figure out how to act. And it's your responsibility. This was part of what I was also saying earlier about freeing ourselves from our parents, that we have to at some point own our own life and say, no, it isn't my parents, my teachers, no, me. I have to know what I'm going to do in this situation. I have to make an action. I have to do something and accept the responsibilities of that. Well, I mean, first I guess you have to decide whether you're going to actually enter into the heart of anguish and suffering. And then once you've actualized that vow you make every morning when we do our chanting,

[25:55]

you're faced with how to do it. Yesterday, I think I pointed, quoted something from Suzy Kershi saying, when we have no concrete, when we have no particular concrete idea of good and bad, we expose ourselves and accept criticism. That is enlightenment. So when you've given up your measuring of things and entered into an intimate relationship, you expose yourself. And you accept the criticism that comes. That is enlightenment. So, of course, when we were studying this in the class, somebody said, what about burnout? people that are in the helping profession, people that take care of... people that are suffering.

[27:03]

Burnout. What about burnout? What's going on there? Just giving yourself, bring me my... There's an issue there. This is the real world we're talking about. And clearly, self-care is an important part of our practice, and certainly... Drawing boundaries is an important part of our practice. In many cases, of course, boundaries are actually the wisest and most compassionate thing to do. Somebody is asking too much from you, Sometimes they don't have any understanding of you and they've come from an environment where that's all they're doing. And by setting boundaries, you make them aware of that aspect of their life and at the same time, take care of yourself.

[28:07]

So many times that is the compassionate thing to do, to set boundaries. That's for sure. And how to know, again, how to do that takes great skill. Patience. So I think that's sort of, of course he was a famous end master. Maybe it's easier to invite everybody's sufferings when you've been practicing for 40 years or 50 years. When you've dealt with the suffering that comes from sitting five-day sishins, 24 hours a day, probably you have some intimate sense of suffering. So he also goes on to say, to study the self is to forget the self. As an example of forgetting the self is a mother's attitude towards a child. And he emphasizes that mother's attitude towards a child, how much you give up to raise a child.

[29:15]

And it's not just something thinking about it, but it's an actual... doing of it. And I was reminded, I told that story yesterday of seeing my face in Suzuki Roshi's face, and I had told that story when I was Shuso at Green Gulch, and there was a mother who was in the audience who came up to me and said, I had that exact same experience with my child. I looked in the baby's face, and the baby's face became me. You know, baby's faces apparently are quite much more mobile. And that baby obviously was quite in love with her mother or attached to it or intimately connected to the mother and just became the mother. Interesting thing. So just to share a little bit more of Uchiyama before we go. Again, I would like to bring up the example of driving a car.

[30:18]

He used car driving as an example of driving our life. How to live your life is how you drive a car. It's one of his fundamental metaphors that went through all of his commentary. Driving is not done by thinking. It is awkward and dangerous if we drive thinking about what we should do each moment. I think we sort of remember that. When we first started driving, we were thinking all the time and the car would go all over. You sort of had to kind of relax and sort of groove with it, paying attention to the scenery and the road and everything. when we actually drive, the scenery, which is always changing, is the content of ourselves. The scenery becomes ourselves. We forget ourselves and operate various devices with our hands and feet in response to the changing scenery. Our life driving is the same. This is to forget the self and to be verified by all things. Verified by all things is another translation of that translation. forget the self and be actualized by all things, or forget the self and be awakened by all things, those characters have different interpretations.

[31:25]

Verified is interesting though, isn't it? I mean, it's one thing to say, to forget the self and be actualized by all things feels like things are acting through you. Or forget the self and be awakened by all things feels like, oh, I woke up. Forget the self and be verified by all things feels like that stamp of approval I wanted from my father, yes, your life now at this moment, as you're experiencing, is real. You're verified. It's just interesting. Like car driving, we act as one with the scenery which is always changing. So I thought I would share a little bit of... Kosho's version of those things this morning. Will we get through these five sentences in this sasheen?

[32:27]

It's now becoming the crucial question for us. Well, we still have three more days, so I have great hopes. Maybe I'll just make a quick summary of a couple other things so we're prepared tomorrow to move on. One of the things we covered last time we studied this in the area of studying the self, as I pointed out, that there's another self in you called the Buddha body, the Buddha body that's sitting with you. That's sort of making you sit, helping you sit. And I also talked about the one who's not busy, I use that koan about the one who's not busy, and I was wondering if some of you have noticed that you've slowed down enough to notice how busy you actually still are. You know, like you've got a short break, you've got a lot of things to get done, maybe get a shower in, you just rush, you've got to get everything.

[33:30]

Still a little bit of business going on there, you know, so try to remember there is one who's not busy there in the midst of all of this. And then I emphasized before when studying the self, which of course was brought up by what Kausha said, is two things. Self-concern. When you're studying the self and you're trying to forget the self, what you're trying to forget is the enormous amount of energy you're putting into your own self-concern. How am I doing? What's going on with me? How can things be better for me? Me, me, [...] me. So some effort to experience your life without so much, or at least notice that there's a fair amount of your thinking is involved with the self-concern. And then I use those examples from the Diamond Sutra and the Pimala Kirti Sutra about no self, all those metaphors about the fact that, so forget about the self-concern, that's sort of a,

[34:43]

thing we can notice but is there really a self underneath all of this that you have concern about that you think you need to completely organize and take care of and um uh just a very interesting question i mean clearly we have some sense of consciousness that seems to be pretty similar at least as far as we can tell from as early on as we can remember. Although I don't know. Tell me, when does Maya have self-consciousness? When is she aware? Do we know? I expect you to have answers for these things. It could be here already. What is all this consciousness about anyway? Is our consciousness the same as the deer outside my house in Mill Valley that seem to have different concerns than I have for some reason?

[35:49]

Yes and no? Good Zen answer. Thank you very much. I opened the floor to some other Zen answers. I've been talking too much. It's time to hear from some of you about all of these things. What is our humankind? It's weird, isn't it, having consciousness? And we have a kind of, I think, more stable relationship to it now, during a day like today. We get to kind of ponder a little bit. What is this consciousness? What does Dogen mean when he says dropping body and mind? What are you dropping? What are you letting go of? And we are at that time, so I think instead of diving into dropping in body and mind, I'll sort of end it here.

[36:53]

Actually, we have two minutes before the bell rings, so if somebody has a question. What about what? What about the pot? That pot was clean. And I think my mind was very clean too. My mind was as clean as that pot at that moment. In fact, I think the entire kitchen felt clean. In fact, I thought the entire world was just perfect, which of course it was. Maybe that's a good place to end. I don't know, three seconds? Pretty quickly, I think I wrote a poem in my mind about it. I tried to grab a hold on it, keep it. No trace of realization. You've got to let it go. Holding on to those big experiences are no... I mean, if they encourage your practice, that's good.

[38:01]

But you're never going to have that experience again. You'll have other experiences and you'll especially have other experiences if you don't hold on to either the good ones or the bad ones too long. May you have some good experiences. 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, please visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[38:48]

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