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 evening. I decided to start this talk with a joke. And it's one of those jokes that it's how it's told, you know? That's what really makes it funny. And I think I'm going to screw that part up. But amazingly, it has a relevance to the part of the Genji Okan that I'm going to talk about. Is this okay, the sound volume?

[01:03]

Okay. So here's the joke. Someone told me this in the spring when I was teaching in Eastern Europe. Two people are chatting, and then one of them says, you know, I just got myself this information. absolutely marvelous house. It's on a hill and from my living room window I can see like right across the bay I can see the whole way over to Oakland and it's a marvelous view. And the other person said well I don't live on a hill However, when I go into my backyard, I can see the moon.

[02:09]

That was a joke. And I must confess that when I heard it told, I left. Enough of that. But hopefully, when we get to the part with moon and moonlight, you'll have some happy association. I've read this, the material of the Genjo Koan, the different translations, different commentaries. And it's marvelous how different they are. I was reading one part and I was thinking, oh, this is the classic part where this symbolizes this in a metaphorical way and here's the consequence of that symbolization.

[03:23]

And then I read one of the footnotes to that section and the concept the author of that commentary said, and this is not how that's usually thought of. The usual metaphor does not apply here. So, still, maybe our life is like that. It's a puzzle. We all have our own point of view. And it can sort of draw us into a kind of mixed up mess. And yet, the first sentence of this part is like this.

[04:28]

I'll read Kaz Tanahashi's and then Nishijima's version. Then you can see in your mind which one you think is. Well, that's the better one. Or that's more accurate. Or maybe they'll both sound like gibberish to you. When you see forms or hear sounds fully engaging body and mind, you intuit Dharma intimately. Unlike things and their reflections in the mirror, And unlike the moon in its reflection in the water, when one side is illuminated, the other side is dark. It's one translation. Here's the other translation. When we use the whole body and mind to look at forms, and when we use the whole body and mind to listen to sounds, even though we are sensing them directly,

[05:35]

It is not like a mirror's reflection of an image. It's not like a mirror's reflection of an image, and it's not like water and the moon. While we are experiencing one side, we are blind to the other side. As some of you know, we've, sometimes we turn, Kaz Tanahashi, that was the first translation I read, we turn it into a chant. And especially at Zen Mountain Center, Tassahara, we chanted every five days. So there's a certain resonance in our mind of the first version we chanted.

[06:36]

When you see forms or hear signs fully engaging body and mind, you intuit Dharma intimately. What is it to see or hear with full body and mind? What is it to engage anything? full body and mind. I have a friend who for most of his life practiced in the Gurdjieff tradition. And once he told me they came together for a weekend and someone had written his brother who was also a member of the Gurdjieff Sangha. He had written his brother a letter

[07:45]

And Gurdjieff says, for the whole weekend, we're going to chant that letter. And there's something about giving our body and breath time and time again. Something starts to become familiar to them. It's almost like a muscle memory. or a mental memory. Experientially we learn something about whole body and mind participation. I was thinking Before I came down, I was thinking that we have terms like, be wholehearted about it.

[08:57]

Or a term I was using a couple of weeks ago, when it touches your heart. There's a way in which that whole body and mind participation or engagement or maybe even non-separation, can arise spontaneously. It's like the moment has a certain palpable authority, and we feel it. Like coming in to the Buddha Hall to give a lecture, and all these Buddhas sitting there. It has its kind of exemplifying body and mind, full body and mind participation.

[10:09]

And it's interesting because our opening chant puts the emphasis on the participants. I vow to hear the Tathagata's words. It's like saying, well, even though you're sitting here, you're still invited and maybe challenged to listen and hear with your full body and mind. And in a way, the Genjo coin is the coin of full body and mind participation. Is it an act of concentration? Or is it an act of giving your body over it completely?

[11:18]

it opening up to the wonder that's already present? Or is it reminding yourself how ephemeral and transient existence is? And living this moment, like I saw somewhere an ad for an course of having one year to live. So I assume on the course that's the theme. If you had one year to live, how would you live it? What about if you had one week to live? What about if you had this moment to live? And there was no guarantee how many future moments you had.

[12:35]

How about you're living here and nowhere else? There isn't a part of you that's living somewhere else. So that's my notion of what Dogen is trying to say to us. And I'm sort of charmed by the way Kaz Tanahashi says, and in that state you intuit dharma intimately. If you intuit the nature of what is, You intuit, this is where my life is happening.

[13:40]

Seeing what I'm seeing, hearing what I'm hearing, feeling what I'm feeling, thinking what I'm thinking. This is being fully alive. This is it. And then Kaz goes on to say, unlike things and their reflections in the mirror, this simple, well, this is what it is. And here it is. And I can see it and touch it and feel it. This object enters through the sense doors and they create an image like a mirror.

[15:04]

creates an image. And if you take away the object, the thing, there is no experience. If you take away the sense doors, there's no experience. And he says, unlike that, unlike the moon and its reflection in the water, kind of a play on you know often the metaphor which one of the other commentators debunked the metaphor is that the moonlight illuminates the moment it brings it into experience makes it available for experience.

[16:06]

And the moonlight shines on the water and without making it anything else other than just what it already is, it illuminates it. So this is a very common metaphor in the Zen world of how to describe the activity of awareness. And Dogen says, unlike things and their reflections in the mirror, and unlike the moon and its reflection in the water. And then as good Buddhists, most of us know, well, form is emptiness and emptiness is form. But he said, instead of saying, and both sides illuminate each other, and together, like the object in the mirror, they create a relationship.

[17:20]

He says, no, quite the opposite. When one side is illuminated, the other side is dark. When we're in the throes of the subjective, when we're living in a house that we built on a hill and have created the possibility of seeing across the bay, when that side is illuminated, products of our individual and collective efforts create the world. They create a version of reality. And we tend to get caught up in that.

[18:22]

We tend to forget. Yes, you can see the whole way over to Oakland from Pacific Heights. or somewhere like that. But you can see the moon. Beyond your doing, beyond your human agency, our collective human agency, there is a vast world of being. There is an enactment of wholeheartedness in being that includes the whole universe. I read an article about a month ago and it was saying maybe this web telescope in giving us

[19:35]

It's contradicting our notions of how the universe came into being. Maybe we're going to have to make up a new story. And the author of the article never got beyond maybe. Just saying, well, you know, this doesn't seem to fit inside our definition of reality. When we live in that definition of reality, something else that's illuminated and something else is in the dark. And our universe is a wonderful example for 83% of the universe, according to the article I read, is dark matter.

[20:42]

Dugan's saying, these two aren't always these two sides. the singular version of reality that is now, and this endless potential of interbeing that includes this moment, and this moment is simply a blink in 15 billion years. And when we open up to that, when we open up to the endless interbeing of everything, maybe singularity of our individual being and our collective individual being is...

[22:02]

not so relevant. So, and all that to set the stage for the next paramita. But bear all that in mind. Maybe you can just remember the joke, even though none of you laughed. I'll tell the person who told me next time I see him. I told that, I'll tell, I'll say to him, I told that story at the start of a dormit talk. Really didn't work. So sila, you know, sila as an internal process,

[23:04]

we can think of it as cultivating virtue, as an interbeing, a contextual interpersonal being, or maybe beyond the interpersonal interbeing, including all forms of being. What we might think of as ethical conduct, And then, from the context of awakening, what is the sila of awakening? There's a place in one of Suzuki Roshi's many talks where he said, sometimes...

[24:10]

We break the precepts to keep the precepts. And I think many people have got themselves into trouble holding that one and using it to get and do what they want. But this notion, what promotes... There's a term in Pali, samma. And usually, very interestingly, I think it's very interesting, that in English we translate it as right. And the more accurate translation is appropriate. Appropriate view.

[25:13]

intention, appropriate sila or shila? What is the appropriate way of being that invites this interplay of singular existence and bindless all existence? How does it stimulate for us that wholeheartedness, that full engagement? What's coming to mind is thinking of sports fans watching their favorite team play, you know. and with how exuberant they are when their team scores or wins.

[26:34]

Sometimes our wholeheartedness is in the service of our preferences. And then sila, the discipline of sila, the request of sila to illuminate the virtue of the moment. And yet Dogen is saying, please don't forget, when one side's illuminated, the other side's darkened. I think of it as we conduct ourselves in this karmic world. The very nature of how we conduct ourselves as humans has a dualism to it.

[27:35]

One of Dogen's early questions in his own life was, if everyone has Buddha nature, why do we even have a concept of practice? If we're just living in the suchness of the moment, do we need to intend anything? then he goes on in his fascicle and he says to study the way and I've read somewhere where that word study that comes from the word to do to learn by doing you know when we study the way when we're learning by doing the way learning what the way is learning the sila

[28:47]

the sila of the way. To study the way is to study the self. And so each week in the class, I set up reflections. I'll read to you maybe some or maybe all of what I wrote. Spend some time considering how your perspective of sila or sila may be influenced by your family, your childhood religion, or your culture. Talk to someone from a different cultural background and explore the similarities and differences in how ethics is viewed in your two cultures. Think of ourselves as the product of conditioning.

[29:57]

You were born somewhere, and you grew up somewhere, and you were somehow participating or influenced by some kind of culture. You were raised in some kind of environment. To study the way is to study the self. Not to say the influences on you were wonderful or shameful. Not to parse it into good or bad, but rather to hold this notion of what's crafted by our karmic life and then this vast endless potential of interbeing.

[31:20]

And how Play with it just by talking to another human being who came from a different culture. So I'd encourage you to reflect on that and maybe take a risk. chaplaincy course that I co-teach, we often will say, and go to a religious service in some religion that you've never been to. And then for good measure we also say, or you could go to an AA meeting if you've never been. Somewhere where humans

[32:26]

engage in a heartfelt, in a wholehearted way. That they hold up something and say, this is significant in a human life. This is worth valuing. This is worth remembering. This is worth engaging. Then the second reflection, consider the inner process of practice and how do you respond to the requests it makes of you. What I was trying to get at there was, if you were to fully do your notion of practice,

[33:26]

what would that look like? What does it ask of you? What is it to engage sila in a way that's wholehearted? Sometimes I think that we're afraid to ask that question because of what our own answer might be. Well, if that's the case, wouldn't it be wonderful to explore that? Am I setting the practice up in such a lofty way that I'm already intimidated?

[34:45]

Or that I'm already incapable of doing it? Does that open up? a new realm of possibility? Is wholehearted something that we just do in extreme or very unusual circumstances? Or is it just... standing on the roof and looking out over the city, or just listening deeply to another human being and realizing that they live in a world the same as I do, but their way of living in it is embodied in a different personality.

[36:08]

And it creates a whole different set of behaviors and judgments and attitudes. Yeah. And I would say to you that when we start to think and feel like this, the Genjo Koan comes alive. this existence is just amazing. And all the things we all get up to are just amazing. Sometimes we conjure up a conclusion and we're utterly convinced by it. That we enact

[37:16]

Dogen sang, and when one side's illuminated, the other side's darkened. When you're utterly convinced by the world according to me, the world according to other, the world of possibility disappears. What is it that the inquiry of Shila, the inquiry of the Genjo coin, and witness it play itself out in being Zazen. When a certain thought or image or feeling arises, it snatches your awareness and pulls you into... What is the intimate workings of being that we studied then?

[38:35]

What is it to hold that and learn from it? Then the next line I offered was, what important lessons do you learn from the times when you're most ethical or most unethical? Sometimes we learn so much from our so-called mistakes, our so-called behavior? What if we take them both appropriate and inappropriate as our teachers?

[39:41]

When we get lost in a reckless selfishness, Or will something within us breathe more easily? Oh, I don't have to be perfect. Just me as I am is worthy of holdheartedness. What about that? And then the last one, just for good measure, I added each morning... consider what actions or behaviors could remind you how to engage the day that you're about to be part of. Okay, so 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.

[40:55]

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.

[41:10]

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