Yeah, both might have. Good evening. Welcome. I'm going to hit the bell so we can sit quietly for a few minutes before returning to the magnificent Genjo Koan. Hello again.

[06:19]

First thing I wanted to mention this evening is that in the chat there is information about Sangha Week, which I did do some exploring with Zen Center about how that's working. Apparently it's not being offered on the website because the summer at Tassajara this year is not public. It's basically... series of sangha weeks or one one large teaching that's being done by gill and paul which is going on for a month so everything is basically offered in a kind of teaching with a teacher package and the teacher has the um responsibility for inviting their participants to sangha week so that the thing i put in the chat tells you more about that. It gives you a phone number, which I think is what you'll need to call if there's any chance you could join us at TASAR, which would be great. It would be a wonderful thing to do. I think the link, which is bad, doesn't work.

[07:24]

I tried it. You can't push the link and nothing happens. So you do probably have to call the phone number for TASAR reservation. Hi, Sue. I'm so sorry. I don't think there is anything in the chat. No. I'm not seeing anything. Lisa's shaking her head as well. Oh, it says, I see food to everyone. Why is that happening? All right, let me give you the phone number. That's really the only important point. Basically, it says, Sangha week, August 8th through the 13th. You're warmly invited to join Etasahar. It will be... Practitioners will be invited to join the community in three hours of work practice daily in the temple kitchen or garden and enjoy the natural beauty of Tassajara, which indeed there is. And then for more information, please call the Tassajara Reservations Office. And the phone number is 415-865-1899.

[08:25]

415-865-1899. 865-1899. And again, the dates are August 8th through the 13th. And what you might ask them too, Guy is planning to come, I'm happy to say. And he wanted to know if there was a possibility of staying an extra day in front or an extra day in back or any extra time. So that would be a question you can ask them when you contact them about that. And also about transportation, which I know is always a big question. and they have lots of answers to how you can get there from wherever you are. Okay, and if there are any more questions, please don't hesitate to let me know, and I'll find out as soon as I can. Okay, so that's Sangha week. So this evening, I'm going to continue talking about these commentaries

[09:34]

on the Genjo Koan, the first one being by Nishihara Boko-san. Boko-san, as you may recall, was a very, very important teacher of Soto Zen in the early parts of the 20th century. He was the teacher of another teacher by the name of Kishizawa Iyan, who lived, his temple was very nearby Rinsuin, which is Suzuki Roshi's temple. And I mentioned to you that I have photographs of these different temples, and I I did put together a little bit of a slideshow and I have all these temple pictures and pictures of Maya and I in different locations around the gardens and so on. But they're not in very good order as yet and I need to get Maya back to make sure I'm telling you that this is the right temple that you're looking at here. So I will be putting that. I am working on it. And one of these days I'll have something to show you. I would like to do that. So we'll just stay with Nishiya Bokasan for a little while and then also be taking a look at Suzuki Roshi's commentary on the Genjo Koan and Okamura Roshi's teacher, Uchiyama Roshi's commentary.

[10:45]

Those are the three that are in the book on the Genjo Koan that was edited by some Zen-centered teachers and also by Okamura Roshi. Okay, so... So in the last couple of weeks, I've been talking about the first two segments. So these teachers, particularly Boksan, divide Zika and Chukwana into three segments in this first paragraph, three segments of the first paragraph. So the first segment being, as all things are Buddha Dharma, there are delusion, realization, practice, birth and death, Buddhas and sentient beings. So these are the... The content of the Buddha Dharma are things we talk about all the time. We talk about delusion and realization and birth and death, you know, existence, non-existence. We talk about practice and we talk about Buddhas and sentient beings. So as all things are Buddha Dharma, all of that is contained. And then the next sentence, as myriad things, our next segment, as myriad things are without an abiding self, no self, there is no delusion.

[11:54]

No realization, no Buddha, no sentient being, no birth and death. So today I'm going to be talking about segment number three, which is the third sentence of this paragraph. The Buddha way is leaping clear of the many and the one, of the many being abundance, the many things. phenomena, and the one being one universe, one reality. So the Buddha way is leaping clear of the many and the one, or of abundance and lack, another way of saying many and one. Thus, there are birth and death, delusion and realization, sentient beings and Buddhas, kind of repeating what's in the first segment. Yet, in attachment blossoms fall, and in aversion weeds spread. attachment blossoms fall we love those blossoms and they fall and we don't like those weeds and they spread it's very human that very final sentence is sorry our human experience so in dogon's teaching transcendence as with all things does not separate itself into being and non-being transcendence is being and non-being are transcendent there are no separate selves in what we call

[13:14]

persons or things. There are no separate selves. They're not separate. Everything is the one. Everything is part of the one tapestry. All things have no separate self. The threads aren't separate. They can't be by themselves. They require each other. To make a universe, somebody, I think it was a wonderful, oh, it's Carl Sagan, I think he said, if you want to make a universe, first you have to know if you want to make an apple pie first you have to make a universe right so it's it's true of all of us i think there's this i'm just looking at this um series this online i'm going to start watching i think it's called the universe and it basically that's the premise of what they're offering is that in order to have a human being or a salamander or oceans or rocks or anything else you had to start with solar systems and and black holes and and the creation of of these fantastic galaxies spinning in seemingly infinite space.

[14:15]

So to get an apple pie, you start by getting the universe. So here we are, no separate selves, no separate parts. So there are no separate selves, and Bokasan says, and yet, if being, existence, and non-being, non-existence, are not spoken, then transcendence is not heard. So without the teaching, we don't have any way to orient ourselves. You know, we depend, we humans depend on language and symbols in order to orient ourselves in what is otherwise, you know, basically a kind of crawl through the dark. which I think our ancestors did and are doing and they did fine, you know, obviously, they, they did fine there in the dark without language or meaning or symbols, they just use their noses and ears and found things to eat and found one another and made more of themselves and so on. So it's not like required that we understand. But for humans, there's something that drives us that we really do want to understand what we are, where we are, how to be here.

[15:23]

Yeah. And so this is what we have learned to value. the virtue of the relative truth, the finger pointing at the moon, a truth that is offered to us as symbols and language, which as we have seen, you know, over and over again, Dogen certainly values as well. He spent a lot of time at his desk with a brush and ink. So Dogen's intention in all of his teachings is to walk with us along the Buddha way. You know, along the Buddha way, All being and all non-being are transcendent. And that's what he says. So as a serious student of what is called the Tendai tradition in his early years of monastic practice, Dogen studied quite thoroughly the Lotus Sutra. And I don't know if any of you have read the Lotus Sutra or read some of the parables. You've certainly heard them because a lot of Zen Center teachers will use the parables from Lotus Sutra in their lectures.

[16:24]

So one of the most famous ones is called the Parable of the Burning House. And in that parable, the Buddha is standing outside of this burning house, and inside the burning house, which is huge, are all of his children. He's basically presented in this particular parable as a kind of a wealthy landowner or householder. homeowner who has lots of kids and they're all in a house that's on fire and they're playing and they're having a great time and he's yelling at them come out come out you're in danger you know so fire is like that symbolizes samsara the world of suffering you know rounds of suffering and without realizing what's causing our suffering, we just continue to circle around and around. So that's what's happening in this story, that the children are just playing, they won't listen to their father, they won't come out of the burning house. So he yells into them that he has these three carts for them. One's an ox cart, one's a goat cart, and one's, forget the third one, a deer cart, I think.

[17:26]

And they're all decorated with deer. beautiful bells and tapestries and so on. So he says, come on out and you can each have the cart that you like best. So these carts represent different types of approaches to realization or to awakening. And one of them would lead you to extinction. You know, the Arhat cart would take you to the end of suffering because you would disappear along with all of your karmic tracings. You would be gone. And that would be one way to get out of here. And then another one is more like the Pratyekabuna, where you are a solitary, enlightened being, you don't have to teach or have to study, you just get it. And you live out your days in that way. But the Buddha, when the children finally come out, they're excited, they like this idea of these carts, so they come running out of the house. And the Buddha says, Well, actually, there's only one cart. There's just one cart, the great vehicle, it's called the Mahayana. It means literally the great vehicle. And the great vehicle takes them only, the only place the great vehicle is going is to the full complete enlightenment of the Buddha.

[18:35]

It's the Buddha way. So that Buddha vehicle is the one ride that we take to Buddhahood. So there's a big question sometimes about that parable. Would the Buddha lie? He lied to the children. And I think the teaching of skillful means has often been used as a response to that question about the Buddha lying. No, that wasn't lying. He was basically using a skillful means in order to save them from their destruction and from endless suffering. This is often you can hear about that particular challenge among the Buddhas. You're not supposed to lie. What's going on there? So these three segments of the Genjo Koan are also like this. They are free of abundance or lack. They're free from the many of the one. They're free of being or non-being. They're free of delusion or awakening. And that all of these words, including the word free, are pointing to the entire universe from which words are neither born nor perish.

[19:42]

So a universe which is not stagnant. in any way or anywhere it's constantly moving constantly changing the universe of change you know so how do you point at that how do you point to change you know already gone already passed through that just like words they've already passed through so this great dynamic functioning is our precious human life so bokasan goes on to tell us that it's not enough to study these matters thoroughly And it's good. It's good to do that. But in order to grow and develop, we have to practice them. We have to embody them, you know, while not abiding anywhere, by not getting stuck in any particular view or understanding, you know, just like the magicians that we truly are. We know how to do that. We know how to get, not to get stuck. We don't get stuck. We've never been stuck. Sometimes we think we're stuck. But when we begin to look closely, like stuck,

[20:45]

what or at what or on what you know or just stuck i just feel stuck yeah so the closer we look the more we realize that you know we're kind of like a cat chasing its own tail you know it's like maybe i should stop doing that i should stop sticking to things that are already gone you know that we're already free that's the primary teaching already free in every moment So Nishihara Bokusan talks a great deal about this third segment in his commentary on the Genjo Koan, following what was a very thorough discussion of the first two segments. And he reminds us that all three segments are Dharma gates. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. It's one of the things we chant at the end of lectures on Sunday. I think if you heard Jirya's lecture this morning, at the end that's chanted. You know, beings are numberless. I vow to save them. Delusions are inexhaustible.

[21:47]

I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. And Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to become it. It's called the four vows. So these segments are all Dharma gates. And whether they're taken one at a time or they're taken all together and viewed individually, all three segments are Genjo Koan. Genzokon. So he then, Rokkasan then proposes that for the time being, for the time being, which is a very famous phrase used by Dogen, and it's actually the name of a fascicle, the Shobo Genzo, you know, which is, fascicles are these different essays or lectures that Dogen gave. We're looking at, we looked at the... The Fukanza Zengi, that's a fascicle of the Shobogenzo. Shobogenzo is the collection of all of the essays that Dogen gave, not all of them, but ones that were chosen by him and his disciples to be included in this collection.

[22:52]

So there's another fascicle called Uji, which means time being. It's a wonderful one, and I think we'll look at that one of these days. So for the time being, you know, We regard the first segment as a characterization of existence, and the second segment as a characterization of non-existence or emptiness. So form, segment one, emptiness, segment two. It's familiar to us from the Heart Sutra. And then the third segment, which we're looking at now, as the transcendence of existence and non-existence of form and emptiness. So, you know, this is how, this is the settling place of the Buddha's teaching, of the Buddha Dharma. It's a transcendence, this idea of transcendence. So then we have to look at that a little bit and not think, you know, not get stuck there. I mean, that's the other thing. You know, each one of these is tempting.

[23:53]

Like, I get it. Oops, they just reversed it. So now I don't get it. Now they put them back. together again. And so maybe I get it now, you know, oops, I better not hold on to that either. So each time we we get some understanding, that's good. But then what's the next understanding? What's the next layer underneath that one? You know, I often have, I think I've told you, did I tell you all about the story of the turtles all the way down? Anyone remember that? Have you heard that? Lisa's heard it. Yeah, yeah, you've heard it. Okay, never mind. Anyways, turtles all the way down, you know. So, all right. So, you know, there's another familiar line from the end of the Heart Sutra that that always seems a little mysterious, you know, gate gate, paragate, parasangate, bodhisvaha. So this is kind of the finale of the Heart Sutra, where you've got all this long series of nos.

[24:57]

No eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind. No suffering, no cause of suffering, no cessation of suffering, no path. I mean, it's just brutal, you know, the number of no's that are included in the Heart Sutra. And at the very end, they are gate gate, paragate, parasam gate bodhisattva, gone, gone, completely gone, completely gone beyond, awakening, hallelujah. It's that Manjushri's sword. Gone, gone. No, don't get stuck. Don't get stuck. Let go, let go, let go. Black rain on the roof of Fukakusa temple. Gone, gone. Hallelujah. That's our freedom, that things go. If they didn't go, we would be really stuck. So about the first segment, when all dharmas are Buddha-dharma, again, She thinks first sentence, first segment. I'm still on the first paragraph of the Genjo Koan.

[25:57]

About the first segment, when all dharmas are Buddha dharmas, Bogusan declares that this opening statement embodies the essence of the entire Genjo Koan, when all dharmas are Buddha dharmas, adding that people in the past broke their bones working on this opening sentence. Please don't try that. Don't try that at home. Anyway, people of the past, I think he's wanting to inspire us, you know, to great effort. But they broke their bones working on this opening sentence. He then says about the second sentence, the second segment, when the myriad things are without an abiding self, that this existence that we just heard about, the first sentence, is not separate from non-existence. So both existence and non-existence are equally Genjo Koan. You're going to hear this over and over again. So is transcendence of them both. I think, in fact, we would be hard-pressed to name anything that in itself is not Genjo Koan.

[27:06]

Reality itself. All-inclusive reality. Each thing, each moment, each person, each object, each experience. Genjo Koan. Genjo Koan. No way in, no way out. So this reminds us that Genjo Kwan in Dogen's teaching is the time being of existence, of non-existence, and of transcendence of existence and non-existence, is the entirety of the Dharma Datu. So now we have a new word to look at, the Dharma Datu. So I spent a little time this last week looking into the Dharma Datu, which I've heard that word many times. I called my teacher and I said, tell me about the Dharmadhatu. I looked it up, I read about it. So I have a little bit to say, not too much, because I got a lot of information about the Dharmadhatu. So this term Dharmadhatu itself designates the realm or the sphere of ultimate reality.

[28:08]

So the Dharmadhatu, think ultimate reality, you know, the whole works. So other terms for the Dharmadhatu are Tathagata, thus come, thus gone. Another name for the Buddha. Reality as it is. Emptiness. Dependent co-arising. And the deepest nature or essence of existence. All of those terms are often interchangeable and are interchangeable with each other and with this term dharmadhatu. Dharma meaning... the truth, the teaching, and Datu is the sphere or the place where the truth or the teaching arises. So Dharma, Datu and Zen is the fundamental ground, or the mind ground, which when realized, is also referred to as the Dharmakaya, translated as the body of truth.

[29:10]

So the Dharma Dhatu is associated with the Supreme Cosmic Buddha, Vairochana, you know, the pure Dharmakaya, the pure Dharma body. So you have this personification of truth in the person of Vairochana Buddha. So he's got kind of a human form and I'm going to show you a picture of him right now. So the Vairochana Buddha is the Cosmic Buddha. And the Cosmic Buddha completely fills dharma sphere the dharma datu is complete it's like his suit it's like an outfit he has on the entire universe all the reality is is the outfit or the the embodiment of this supreme vaira chana buddha the pure dharmakaya and i'm here here's the picture of the supreme this one is from china as many of these extraordinary images are If you've been to China, I have not, but I've seen these images and one of these days I would really like to go and witness them in person.

[30:14]

I'm sure they're quite stunning. So this one I'm going to show you now is... There are little tiny people down here. Little tiny stairs. for these little tiny people, like little tiny ants, crawling up to this figure, which is 502 feet in height. So that's Vaira Chana Buddha, as human beings might, you know, depict such being. It's really gigantic, really awesome. And he's teaching, he has the teaching gesture there. offering the Dharma. Bhairochana Buddha, pure dharmakaya. We chant that. For those of you who have joined us in practice periods, Bhairochana Buddha, Lochana Buddha, that is the Buddha, the next Buddha we chant, the activity, the one who oversees our activities, and then Shakyamuni Buddha, who's the human.

[31:32]

who who arrived here to be with us in that form and more like right sized for us to be with us and and help us to understand who we really are, you know, Dharmakaya, Dharma, Dharmakaya Buddhas. So according to my reading and my conversations with my teacher, the source of the term Dharmadhatu, the sphere of the location of the Dharmakaya Buddha, it's where Bhairachana lives, that's his hangout, as taught in the Mahayana tradition is the Flower Ornament Sutra, in Sanskrit, Avatamsaka Sutra. And as I've mentioned to you, we are beginning to read the Avatamsaka Sutra as part of our study with our teacher, Reb. And he's getting quite into it, and we're getting quite into it. I think I've read three chapters now, which is commendable because it's challenging. And it takes quite a while to read. Although, as all of us are beginning to recognize and comment on, in reading the Avatamsaka Sutra, you are basically induced into the visionary trance that is being written there, is being offered there.

[32:47]

The repetition, there's no, there's no visible narrative, although we're looking for one. to kind of glue it all together into a story that might hold your attention a way a novel would do. This is more like just kind of presenting you with images, kind of like looking through the Hubble telescope at the galaxies and imagining that what might be there, you know, what might be spinning around those multiple billions of stars that we can see now. through our big eyes, our big eye lens. What's out there? It's our Imaginarium. It tries to produce some kind of idea of something we may never know. What's out there? It's very far away. The light from those stars were sent, many of them, long before Earth was even formed. So it's arrived here today, but there wasn't even an Earth when that light left the location of those stars. hard to imagine, but science, you know, science is becoming more and more like the avatamsaka sutra.

[33:54]

So understanding that perhaps this term can most easily be found in the dharmatattu term in the avatamsaka sutra. At the same time, you can go further back in the Buddhist sutras and find the term and it appears in the very earliest Pali Canon in this text. the third of the three baskets, reaching way back into the beginning of our conversations together, the trepitika, or the three baskets or collections of teachings that make up the canon, the Buddhist canon of all the works attributed to the Buddha and all of the teachings about deportment attributed to the Buddha, and then a kind of distillation of those teachings, which is the third basket, the Abhidharma. trying to explain what the Buddha was teaching, because he wasn't systematic. He wasn't very organized in the sense of, I'm going to talk about this here, and then I'm going to talk about that, and it'll all be strung together.

[34:56]

Very nice thing. You'll have this nice little sequence of teachings, but he taught different things depending on where he was and who he was speaking to. So the monks over the centuries tried to make sense of all of that by creating this Abhidharma. So in the Abhidharma is the Dharmadhatu. It's there and it's understood as a kind of confluence of all perceptions and all objects of perceptions coming together. Pretty much the same feeling we get when we hear about it in the Mahayana Canon. So I'm not going to go into the whole history of the Dharma Tattoo and how it came to be transformed from the early understanding in the Pali Canon to the Mahayana vision. even though I assure you it is very interesting. If you like such things, you can certainly do your own looking in. But maybe it's enough to say that in the Mahayana, the Dharmadhatu or the Dharma realm means reality itself. Reality itself, including all the particularities, such as Buddhas and sentient beings, and how they interact with one another.

[36:05]

So this whole weaving You know, creation weaves her loom, spins her loom and shuttle, weaving the ancient brocade, incorporating the forms of spring. So that's the Dharma Tato. It's the whole works, working together, how all the parts work together and creating what we call reality itself. So it says in a verse from the Avatamsaka Sutra that the Buddha body, the Buddha body, the Dharmakaya, I show you a picture of the Buddha body. Bhairachana Buddha, the Buddha body fills the Dharma Dhatu without end, without end. So this indicates that the reality body is the place or the realm where all the elements come to a singular point. So here we're going from the great big to the great, to infinitesimally small. So that's how our mind has been trained to work from very big to very small and back again.

[37:07]

kind of like an accordion. You can do that. So the singular point is taught in Zen. So the dharmakaya, dharmadhatu in Zen, is essentialized by the word thus. Thus. Or justice. So that has the invitation to us to kind of, again, the old hippie word, to grok the vastness that all things coming together in the present moment, at this time, at this place, in you, each of you, thus, is the entirety. You're basically an expression, but you're also a receptacle for the entire universe. You're representative. it's a representative universe and each of us is a representative of the whole and is therefore not separate at all in any way from the whole you know this one reality that includes everything and everyone you know the many as the one the many as the one so this is how the these teachings are really you know very uh like poetry like good poetry they they give our minds some kind of exercise

[38:37]

that they otherwise don't get, you know, just linear thinking is kind of like, oh no, just on and on and on. But this sort of thinking brings you back around and like, one of the readings I gave you a while back was about the somersault, the somersaults that the mind does. And I think these teachings are very much about teaching us how to somersault and then land back upright, you know, and smile. I mean, what fun, what a thrill. to have our usual stuck, kind of stuck presumptions and beliefs and opinions and preferences, you know, let go, you know, to let them free. So I have another image, I've showed you this one before. This is the one of the digital image of the, of the Dharmadatu. It's like kind of the cell body of the, Vairachana Buddha. This is what Vairachana Buddha is made up of.

[39:38]

This is what we're made up of. These remarkable reflected, like spheres that are all reflecting one another. Jewels, these are jewels. Each jewel reflects all the other jewels and so on and so on. Infinite array of mutually reflecting awareness. This is all awareness. Every one of these jewels is an awareness, an awakening to itself and to everything around it. So kind of like that's what they're doing here. So Boksan says that what Dogen has expressed in these three segments, first and second and third sentence, is the bullseye of Genjo Kwan, which misses nothing in seeing through the past and the present of the entire world at a glance. The bullseye of the Genjo Kwan, which misses nothing as it sees through the past and present of the entire world at a glance.

[40:41]

Therefore, shallow, deep, high or low are not discussed. All of these measurements, all these ways we measure things like that's better than that. And I like her better than I like him. And, you know, all this picking and choosing that we do is a kind of our daily fare. It's not discussed. high or low, shallow or deep, smart or not so smart, none of that is irrelevant. Everything is included. Everyone's included. So the settling point of each of these segments is Genjo Koan. The Buddha way is nothing but Genjo Koan. And the Genjo Koan is nothing but the entire world. So at this point, you have leapt clear of the many and the one, of form and emptiness without abiding anywhere. And this is what it means when we say practice. This is our practice, leaping clear of stuck, you know, getting unstuck.

[41:44]

So the pivotal point in all of this teaching is finding our freedom. And that's what the whole thing is about, is finding our freedom. Not by leaping away from form and emptiness, but by going beyond leaping Where, as this last segment says, there are birth and death, delusions and realizations, sentient beings and Buddhas. We're not going anywhere. We're not trying to get out of here. We're trying to see that we're not stuck. And that we can recognize differences. We can recognize our opinions about things. We can recognize our preferences. But we're not stuck in them. We're free of them. Here comes another one. And there it goes. It's very easy. I don't have to do anything. Just watch it come and watch it go, as it does. So, what is this that we're talking about?

[42:46]

Well, to say it again, we're talking about right here. And what does right here look like to Vairacana Buddha? I'm going to read you a little sample from the Avatamsaka Sutra. to just give you a little taste of what is the languaging of this text, which is basically kind of the verbal version of what I just showed you, that image, that digital image. So you've got the Buddha, that big golden figure. You've got what the Buddha's eye, it's kind of like flies eyes. He's got these eyes that are the Indra's net, this infinite reflection of one to the other. And then these are the words that would go along with what you just saw. The realm of the Buddhas is inconceivable. No sentient being can fathom it. The Buddha constantly emits great beams of light and each light beam are innumerable Buddhas. The Buddha body is pure and always tranquil.

[43:46]

The radiance of its light extends throughout the world. The Buddha's freedom cannot be measured. It fills the cosmos and all space. With various techniques, it teaches the living. sound like thunder, showering the rain of truth. All virtuous activities in the world come from the Buddha's light. In all atoms of all lands, Buddha enters, each and every one, producing miracle displays for sentient beings. Such is the way of Vairochana. In each atom are many oceans of worlds, their locations each different, all beautifully pure. Thus does infinity enter into one, yet each unit is distinct, with no overlap. In each atom are innumerable lights pervading the lands of the ten directions, all showing the Buddha's enlightenment practices. The same in all oceans of worlds. In each atom the Buddhas of all times appear according to inclinations, while their essential nature neither comes nor goes, but by their own power they pervade the worlds.

[44:47]

How about that? That's just like a quarter of a page of this. this amazing text. So that's pretty much what I wanted to share with you today. And next week, I'm going to finish up with the third segment commentaries by Nishira Boga-san along with some added teachings on this on these three segments by Suzuki Roshi, and then Uchiyama Roshi, and then finish up first three segments and move on to the rest of the text, which also has an awful lot contained in there. So You're very welcome to offer your own question, comments, gestures. Yes, good. Hi. You are always full of surprises. Really remarkable.

[45:51]

Because early in my practice, my early teachers, they talked about Dhamma Datu, Dhamma Datu. And the way I understood the way they were phrasing it is that was, I would say, the background connectivity of everyone, of all of us to each other, practitioners, teachers. And that they were actually acting as a conduit for Dhamma teaching in that Dhamma-Dhatu connection. And so it's a beautiful explanation you had, Dharma-Dhatu. Now that actually makes a lot more sense to me many decades later. Thank you for that. Thank you, Fu. Same path.

[46:53]

Same path. Make the time. I'm right with you. Same words. Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah, it's wonderful. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Nice to see you. Hello, Fu. Hello. I have a technique question. Okay. When you read the Avatamasaka Sutra, do you visualize? Do you attempt to visualize? Because the bits of it that I've read, they're clear pictures. They try to make a picture. Mm-hmm. But of course the picture, you know, the world arising from the center of an atom with innumerable risings from the center of that atom.

[47:58]

Your picture, your mind space explodes, which I assume is the point. But I'm just curious how you experience it. Well, I would say I get little glimpses of imagery. You know, it's fractals. They're kind of little fractals. Oh, they're totally fractals. Yeah. Kind of pop in and out of my, whatever that visual cortex is that's running right now and thinking things. So, yeah, I have moments when I feel more entered into the language of it and the kind of yielding to the imagery of jewel, trees that are made of jewels and that are festooned with banners of multiple colors. So I get I can see a rainbow, I can kind of get a Buddha on a tower that you know, suddenly the tower is is a job on his high and so then I lost it. How vast it is I don't have, you know, so they like you said, they kind of they kind of give you something and then it's like they expand it to such an extent that you're like, you kind of snap back into your limitations.

[49:13]

But there's something quite the invitation is there for all of us and as some people are probably better visionaries. I'm a bit of I once thought, you know, I think of all the senses there are places in the sutras they talk about which of which kind of bodhisattva which kind of body sought for you are you a vision, or auditory or factory or, you know, what's what's your specialty. And I thought, about that quite a bit. I think mine is visual. I think that is my strength that I, I see I see that until I get an image in my head about something. It's very hard for me to understand it. So I doodle a lot. I do little drawings of things of philosophical stuff. So I can like balance beams and things like that, to help me to have a way of remembering some of these. Other people are very much about the literal, the letters. People who do math in their head, I can't even imagine doing math in my head.

[50:18]

So, you know, it depends a lot about what kind of thing you are, what kind of incarnation is here. as you become familiar with yourself. So I feel I'm more visual and more likely to have visions when I'm sitting Zazen, pictures of things run into my head and so on. But they're like, I think like, they melt away really quickly, and they turn into other things. And they're literally, you know, they're not very reliable sources of information. But yeah, I think it kind of kind of runs through the visual cortex. How about you? Oh, I'm totally visual. And to read, and I did chemistry because I can see the molecules. Oh, great. But to read, I always put pictures to it. And I was just thinking about when you confront a text like that, how do you put those pictures to it? Can you even, or is that how, are there other ways to approach it?

[51:20]

Well, it depends on you. Yeah, okay. This is my idiosyncratic way of being a person. I got this one choice. So that's the way I know. The only thing I know, you know, I don't know. It's really interesting to me that other people... I was walking with a friend in the Haight one time, and I was looking at all the stuff. It was just fascinating, you know, all the hippies and everything. And she said, do you hear that? Do you hear that chord? I said, no. Wow. what are you talking about and she's a musician and so for her walking along the hate was sound it was all about these sounds that she was hearing i thought wow that's not my realm that's not my field you know i i really don't know and uh and people i know who are great cooks or who love this odors you know perfume we went up to you've gone to try out perfumes It's quite fun, because you realize, wow, no, I can't tell the difference between that one and that one. And, you know, they all smelled fine.

[52:22]

But to try and select from all of that, and some people do that, they just are so masterful with their noses. And so it really is about offerings are made, all of these texts are basically offered to all the ways we are, all the beings that we are. And, and we all can find a little channel in for ourselves. So you might enjoy trying a bit of the Avatamsaka Sutra for your visual, you know, experience for your own visual experience. Certainly isn't harmful. Right? Yeah, not not long lasting. And it doesn't sound like it would be addictive. No, I'm not very well, I wouldn't promise that. I wouldn't promise that because I do start to look forward to my little sessions with that book. Something very soothing about the vision that's being offered there of an incredible world that, you know, there are a few short verses you can memorize.

[53:25]

And Reb was telling me that he memorized this one verse. And so when someone asks him because he's repeating it throughout the day. So this is his practice he's telling us. And then when someone asked me, how are you? This little verse comes to his mind. He said, I'm this verse from the Avatamsaya Sutra. So I thought, well, okay. That's one way to roll. So, yeah. Thank you. You're welcome. Next time I'm at Green Gulch and I can get a hold of a copy? Yeah. I think it's online. Is it? Oh, really? I think you get anything. you want on TeraBest, is from what I understand. It's a whole server by itself, though. I know, but it's like, I know. Luminous Al sends me all this stuff, I say, is this legal? Can you do this? So I don't really know, but maybe we should, maybe I shouldn't be saying it out loud. But anyway, it's something, yeah.

[54:26]

Marianne. Hi. Good evening. Good evening, Vu. Thank you for your teaching tonight and good evening, Sangha. So good to see everybody. By the way, your last comment about the stuff that's free on the Internet, we all have to put our hands together and hope that the cosmos will not take that away from us, but the Supreme Court might do that. There's a case of the Supreme Court, yes. Internet archive versus publishers. So anyway, you know, I had the extraordinary experience a couple of times of going to Indonesia and experiencing that wonderful Borobudur temple. And when you show those pictures of the Buddha and when you talk about the intricacy of reading the flower,

[55:32]

the Flower Ornament Sutra, what is the place of awe to make you realize just this is it? Where does awe come in? Because when I saw the Vodabhadur up against that rising sun, awe, just this is it, and everything connected. And I was just wondering, what is the place of awe, whether we're reading a very intricate sutra, We're seeing a huge Buddha walking up the steps of the Buddha. Where does awe come in to help us realize justice is it? It's totally essential. I don't think there's access point more effective or self-proving. It self-proves. I'm experiencing awe. It's my experience of awe. at the sunset or the buildings or the sutras or babies or puppies, you know, it's all over the place. And I feel like I have committed a great deal of my opportunity throughout the day to pausing and experiencing awe.

[56:44]

I just have to look out the window here. You know, all year round, there's something out there. I've got a little garden here that does its thing. You know, the magnolia and the cherry blossom and the crabapple tree. And they do a concert throughout the year of changing from one outfit to another. And right now they're all green and it's just fantastic. And so, you know, I think I often suggest to people that just don't see if you can just stop walking every now and then and just turn around slowly. You know, it might be a little embarrassing depending on where you are, but don't worry about that. Just stop and turn around and just look at where you are and what's there. Or just look at your hand or just look at anything, just long enough. There's an exercise that we did, one workshop I did a long time ago, and suggesting to people just, you know, go in the kitchen and somewhere on your windowsill, there's something there. And just look at it.

[57:45]

I have a little stone I got when I was in my 20s, the top of a mountain in Wyoming that has a seashell embedded in it. I didn't know about that. When I found that thing, I was like, how did this get here? And so, anyway, I've learned a bit since then. But anyway, the seashell is sitting on my windowsill. And just look at something. for a long time past when you're getting bored okay i want to go some do something else now just keep looking at it and then that kind of conceptual veil drops off and that kind of awesomeness is just right there beneath the conceptual you know naming and calling and point you know all of the nonsense that g comes up with just allow that spaciousness to become And the flip side of awesome is awful. So lest we forget. Awful is awesome too. It's so awful what happens.

[58:49]

That we also face that as part of what is all-encompassing of all sides, all-inclusive of our human life. Not to think that we should go live in the awe. I think that's the temptation is is to just I want to go there, I want to evaporate into that sunbeam. You know, and I don't want to see the suffering of the homeless people, you know, all the other places, where it seems to be. So I think that's a very, very good question. I think it's very important aspect. It's one of the emotions that I think there's a book about that. And it's called the 11th emotion or something. Oh, It's been kind of under promoted in some way, but as spiritual people, I don't think we do. I think we promote it just right. Great. Thank you so much.

[59:50]

Thank you. Okay. Awesome ones. Let's to gallery it's nicely rounded out an hour that's amazing see a little extra time this evening you do some avatamsaka sutra reading if you like i wish you all the best hope you have a wonderful week and um and yes please you're welcome to um i was gonna say defund no not defund that's another thing it's another project you're welcome to uh Unmute. Say goodbye. Good night, everyone. Thank you, Fu. Thank you. Thank you so much, Fu. Good night. Thank you so much. Good evening, everybody. Thank you, Fu. Good night, everyone. Thank you, Fu and Sangha. Good night, everybody.

[60:50]

Good night, everyone. Lovely to see you. Lovely to see you. Bye. I came in a little late. What did you say about Sangha Week? I'm sorry that I missed that. I'll give you the phone number. Oh, great. I'm ready. That's the main thing. Because apparently my little message that I put in the chat, only I can see. So I don't know why. I don't know. This stuff just doesn't like me very much. Okay, 415-865-1899. That's the Tassahara Reservation Office. And the dates are August 8th through the 13th. And they can also tell you about transportation to Tassahara. They have down pretty well. And Guy's also looking for a ride. So maybe if any of you figure out that you're going to come, which would be wonderful, maybe we can kind of help each other figure out how to transport to Carmel Valley together for the ride in to Tassara. That'd be great. Oh, thank you so much. You're welcome.

[61:52]

I hope so. I hope so. Fingers crossed. Yeah. All right. Have a wonderful week. Night, everyone. Good night. Bye-bye. Do you have a second? Yes. I have a story for you. Okay. It's my thesis advisor, my PhD thesis advisor. There was a symposium for him for 50 years. And I got to go back and see...

[62:24]

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