This podcast is offered by San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Hi, everyone. Welcome back to everyone that was here last week. And for those who weren't, it's okay. This is part two of a three-part series, but if you didn't catch part one, you missed nothing. And I want to thank the Eno for the extra couple of minutes of sitting that we got. It was a wisdom far more profound than anything I could offer you. And I think that is one of the keys to understanding Dogen's teaching. The understanding in many ways is to give up the teaching and live your life in this moment, one moment at a time. And that is the ethos of the Tenzin Kyokun.

[01:00]

this essay I'm supposed to be talking about. I didn't talk about it last time, and I don't even know if I will tonight. There's a lot of good stuff in there. I hope I get to it. But last time I introduced Dogen's teaching, what I understand to be Dogen's teaching, or let's just say my current version of a lack of understanding, sounds like that, which is... wholehearted practice of every moment is the invitation of your life. And so he wrote this essay about working in a kitchen to monks who probably thought that where the action was was either in the meditation hall or in the study hall, that studying the ancient texts, the philosophy, getting really into the intellectual poetry of the tradition was a great path, or that just meditating hours on end was the best path.

[02:03]

And he wanted to say, actually, everything you do is required. Every moment of your life is what enlightened reality is requiring to unfold in this moment and as this moment. And teaching work is no different. And I brought up Dogen's life. because I think it's a great story that doesn't get shared very often, and I think it really colors the way his teaching can be viewed. And for those of you who didn't hear, basically, he had a life of quite a lot of difficulty. Japan at the time was in a lot of turmoil. There were natural disasters and famines that I went into quite a bit, extremely tragic. And that was the most major of which was just prior to his life, but I... The history indicates he also lived through very lean years in terms of the crop yield and famine in Japan.

[03:07]

And also that death was always a constant companion for him, that his parents died by the time he was seven, and he had at least three or four dharma teachers die in pretty quick succession. By the time he was 27, everyone close to him had died, including children. the most important person in his life, his teacher, Ru Jing, who transmitted the lineage of Soto Zen to Doga. And so just to even back up a little more, the Buddha lived in India 2,500 plus years ago, and Buddhism flourished in India, making its way to China. In our lineage, a monk named Bodhidharma was an Indian, and he was the first monk. to make it to China with our lineage. And then the lineage flourished in China, making its way to Rujin. And Rujin was the teacher Dogen met and the teacher Dogen trained with for a couple of years.

[04:11]

And that's the teacher who transmitted the lineage to Dogen. And then Dogen moved to Japan, where he was from. He went back to Japan. So Dogen is the first Japanese monk in our lineage And then 700 years later, Suzuki Roshi received Darwin Transmission in the same lineage and moved to California to start San Francisco Zen Center and bring the lineage to us. And so I talk about the lineage because it was extremely important to Dogen. So much so that he actually tells a lot of stories. I talked about this a little bit last time. He was unable to train at the monastery Ru Jing was the abbot of because he didn't have the requisites. He hadn't taken enough monastic precepts. So the abbot at the time wouldn't let him in. But the teacher he had been training with, someone named Mio Zen, was able to get in. Dogen traveled to several other temples before the abbot of Tiantong died and Ru Jing became abbot.

[05:22]

Myozen was still there, so Dogen wanted to go back and train with Myozen. Myozen died only a month, I believe, after Dogen got to Mount Tiantong, but Rijing was the abbot, and Rijing really became a close teacher of Dogen. Dogen became a fast student of Rijing. Rijing meant everything to Dogen. And... I say that because it obviously meant a lot to him to be allowed to train in this monastery, and I'm guessing it was even more profound and poignant that he didn't miss his Dharma friend's death, that he got to actually move into the monastery before his teacher of sorts and his friend died. And to his maybe discredit, the abbot Dogen spent a lot of time and energy discrediting and criticizing the lineage of the abbot who did not let him in to Mount Tiantang. So I'm trying to highlight the various facets of Dogen's personality, but to be admitted into Tiantang with Rejing obviously meant a lot to him, and not just because he got to be with Miozen, the monk who had brought him to China, but because he was given the lineage.

[06:37]

And so I talk about all the different temples he went to because he tells I think, five different stories of monks in these other temples who he had become friends with, showing him their lineage papers and their lineage documents. And what that is is a list of names going all the way back to the Buddha. We have it. We chant these names also. We chant the names starting from the Buddha and going all the way to Dogen and some of his students. And then Tazahara, sometimes we chant the names all the way up to Suzuki Roshi in a... What we'd like to think of is an unbroken lineage all the way from the Buddha to the present day. And the reason I bring that up is because in each of these stories, the monks, they get out their lineage papers kind of secretly and they say, I'm not supposed to be doing this. I'm not supposed to be showing you this, but you just seem so enthusiastic about the practice and about the Dharma. I want to show you my lineage. And every single time he looks at the names and he just bursts into tears. And one of the stories he says,

[07:39]

My sleeves were soaked with tears. And so for Rujing to actually bestow upon Dogen the lineage and make Dogen a part of the lineage meant everything to him. And he, of course, wept. And I wonder how much that had to do with how tumultuous his family was and how his parents died so young. And the first teacher he had at a monastery in the Tendai tradition was his uncle who also died. when he was just 17. And I... My notes are in disarray. The more I tried to organize this talk, the messier it got. And that actually is a great... metaphor for Dogen's teaching, because there is no getting out of pairs of opposites, and that's really what I want to get to.

[08:46]

So the more I try to organize the talk, the messier it got. There's a great line in the Xin Xin Ming, which says, the more in haste, the tardier they go. So we'll just embrace the messiness. This is what Ruijing said to Dogen when Dogen moved to Tiantag Monastery. Dogen, You must seek instruction from now on, whether during the day or night, whether in formal robes or not. Come to the abbot's quarters without reservation to inquire the way. I will always forgive your lack of propriety, as would a father. And for Dogen to really include that way of speaking, it may be a direct quote, it may be with Dogen Roe, but I feel like being a part of the lineage, being a part of this family, really meant everything to Dogen. And so did Rijin as a father figure. And what Rijin taught Dogen was the practice of dropping off body and mind and the practice of wholehearted sitting and wholehearted living.

[09:58]

So wholehearted sitting is dropping off body and mind and dropping off body and mind is awakening in this life. So it's awakening to the present moment. And what Dogen understood was that to awaken to the present moment only lasts a moment. And then you have to renew it every single moment. And that is an important aspect of the teaching that was missing in his understanding before he went to China. So he trained in a Tendai monastery early in his life. Tendai monasteries, they're based on the Lotus Sutra. That's their sacred text, and it's the energizing force. The same way Zen is considered the school of seated meditation, the Tendai school is the school of the Lotus Sutra. And the Lotus Sutra teaches that we are...

[11:06]

all on the great vehicle headed for Nirvana. And there's nothing you can do to get off the vehicle. There's nothing you can do to hinder its journey. We are all on the way. And so much so that we may as well be there right now. And there's chapters in there where Buddha says, even though I seem to have disappeared into Nirvana, what you are experiencing is my aid to you on this journey. And we are never separate from Nirvana in that way. Dogen, of course, lived a very difficult life and a life of a lot of uncertainty and pain and confusion. And most people come to practice because of uncertainty and pain and confusion. And so he had a big question about this teaching. And the question as he wrote it was, all beings everywhere possess Buddha nature. The Tathagata exists eternally and is without change.

[12:06]

If all beings possess Buddha nature, why do we still develop the mind of enlightenment and engage in practices in pursuit of it? That was his big question that he didn't think, well, he didn't find an answer in Japan. Another quote from him is, I first developed the mind for enlightenment because of impermanence. So that's the death of his parents. And I asked about it in all corners. At last I left where the Tendai monastery was, and entrusted myself to a Rinzai Zen temple. During that time, I did not encounter an authentic teacher. In my disillusionment, deluded thoughts were generated. Then he met his teacher, learned about this practice of dropping off body and mind. And another quote from Dogen that encapsulates his understanding is,

[13:07]

The Dharma is completely present in every person, but cannot be realized without practice. So I brought up Dogen's relationship to confusion and uncertainty. And it seems like in his younger years, before he made it to China, before he met Rui Jing, his quest was for certainty. And what Rui Jing helped him understand was a type of freedom from those pairs of opposites and an understanding that as long as one quests for certainty, there will always be dragging confusion along with them. And dropping off body and mind is a type of freedom from the personal reference point that I consider to be myself, a personal reference point that's separate from everything else.

[14:20]

So what Dogen understood was that thinking of oneself as a reference point outside of everything else is suffering, and that all we are is a relationship to everything else. Dropping off body and mind allows the relationship to come forth. However, that relationship is beyond conception. So any ideas we have about it are just trying to find a new version of certainty, which will drag along another brand of confusion along with it. And so his wonderful move is that if freedom from these pairs of opposites is the relationship between them, which is beyond me, I have to wholeheartedly be my leg of the relationship in order to keep the process going.

[15:27]

The process of the relationship itself working through all of us and we depend on it and it depends on us. And so for this life, I am being asked to be this reference point. And so what I mentioned last time was if I can forget my attachment to the reference point through wholehearted sitting and this experience of dropping off body and mind, I can then pick up the reference point again. but now without the belief that it's real, or that it's a real separate entity cut off from everything, but that it's merely a reference point in a relationship with all beings. And I want to use Herman Melville to say it much more beautifully.

[16:38]

I actually just came across this. I've read Moby Dick many times, but I actually just came across this and it says it beautifully about our relationship to pairs of opposites and trying to find either. Usually we try to find safety and certainty within the self, within my self, aspect of the relationship cut off from everything else. And that doesn't work. And there's a danger in getting into this practice, which I think Dogen experienced when he first sought enlightenment of wanting certainty outside of the relationship or in transcendence of the relationship, or certainly beyond the uncertainty that I experienced as merely a member. And Herman Melville talked about it in terms of narcissists and the narcissistic story of looking at one's own reflection in the water and which is great because dogan also writes about reflections in the water in terms of kyokun herman melville wrote still deeper the meaning of that story of narcissus who because he could not grasp the tormenting mild image he saw in the fountain plunged into it and was drowned but that same image we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans it is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life

[18:01]

And this is the key to it all. And Dogen understood that as well. He understood that he wanted to drown himself, you could say, in the ocean of enlightenment. And he learned that that is not a way out. There's a verse in the Tenzo Kyokun that gets at this as well. One character, three characters, five characters, seven characters. Have you thoroughly investigated the 10,000 things? None have any foundation. At midnight, the white moon sets into the dark ocean. When searching for the black dragon's pearl, you will find they are numerous. And that's another way, and this has been written of, is that the black dragon's pearl is the moon reflected in the water. And every single wave has the moon reflected in it. Those are the numerous pearls of the black dragon.

[19:05]

And we can only see these reflections. We can't reach the moon. The moon has set into the ocean. All we can do is we can think and we can talk about it. As the verse says, one character, seven characters, five characters, it doesn't matter. We just keep talking and talking and none of them have any foundation. They're all just reflections of the moon. However, in this tradition, The reflection is where our practice lies. So we stick with the reflection. We just remind ourselves not to get caught in them and not to think that they are in the absolute reality. I want to bring up an introductory quote from a teacher I brought up last time, Brad Warner. He wrote about this essay, Tenzo Kyokun. And... It's a nice one. The general message of Tenzo Kyokun applies to everyone who tries to practice, not just to chief cooks at temples.

[20:11]

It's all about what some people like to call wholehearted practice. Whatever you do, put your body and mind into it. Whatever work you're doing is important work. Dogen focused on temple cooks because he saw that in Japan, the position of temple cook was looked down on. lowly service position. But Dogen didn't allow for such distinctions as lower and higher. People just have roles to perform, and who answers to whom is merely a part of what a given job entails, not an indication of some kind of status." Which is really cool, and something Dogen had to learn the hard way, actually. because he tells stories about two tenzos, the tenzo being the head cook at a Zen temple. He met two tenzos in China that really helped him understand. But he was the one, he was one of those people that thought that that was just a lowly servant position and that a senior monk should really be sitting zazen or studying suttos.

[21:20]

So I'll get into it here. This is... When he was at Tian Tong Temple, the monastery of Ru Jing, he says, I met a person named Yang from Qingyuan Prefecture, who was the Tenzo. I happened to be passing through the eastern corridor, and the Tenzo was drying mushrooms in front of the Buddha Hall. He carried a bamboo cane, but had no hat on its head. The sun beat down on the hot pavement, and the sweat flowed down and drenched him as he resolutely dried the mushrooms. I saw he was struggling a bit with his spine bent like a bow and his shaggy eyebrows. He looked like a crane. I approached and politely asked the Tenzo his age. He said he was 68. I asked, why do you not have an attendant or a layperson do this? The Tenzo said, others are not me. I said, esteemed sir, you are truly dedicated. The sun is so hot. Why are you doing this now? The Tenzo said, what time should I wait for? I immediately withdrew, thinking to myself that this job expresses the essential function, the essential function of actually Buddha appearing in the world.

[22:30]

And I love this story because I'm not sure it really happened or it happened this way. And the way he writes it is very dramatic. And I think intentional. I should say that this essay about practice in the kitchen and practice as a kitchen worker at a Zen temple. We often chant it in the kitchens. It's a long one, so we have to only chant a part of it. But I spent five plus years working in Zen center kitchens, so I chanted it many times. And as I chanted the story over and over again, it started to really occur to me how the image of it is really, really potent that I think of this monk, his intention is to dry the mushrooms, right? However, while he's doing it, he's just pouring sweat. I feel like that's a literary image of I want to try to dry. The more I try to dry mushrooms, the more I get them wet with my own effort. I'm just soaking these mushrooms that I want to dry, but I'm just soaking them with my effort.

[23:35]

And and however, then Dogen says, why are you doing it now? It's so hot. It's so uncomfortable. And Tenzo says, what other time can I wait for? Which is a nice. sort of philosophical nod to the reality that there's nothing other than the present moment, but also that the exact time practice is required is exactly when it's seemingly impossible. That the exact time two dry mushrooms is the exact time that I am set up as a being who's just going to sweat all over them and just soak them. And It can feel, this Bodhisattva way, it can feel kind of hopeless in that way. And I really love that Dogen puts that story in here and says, this is the essential function, that this Tenzo just continued trying to dry the mushrooms, even though he was soaking them with his own sweat. And even though he could have been doing something else, you know, he said, others are not me, sort of.

[24:43]

I think of that in many ways, too, as the difficulty of my life and the seemingly impossible moments presented to me are nothing but my practice in this moment. They are my difficulty, and others are not me. I can't have someone else's life that seems to me like it doesn't have difficulty, nor can I avoid the difficulties presented to me. They are mine, too. Dry in the hot sun. or soak with my inadequate effort. And that actually is a good place. I don't know how I'm going to find it, but I want to talk about Sujata. I think it's a good place to talk about Sujata because Sujata is the woman who fed Siddhartha, the rice milk, that allowed him to practice and attain enlightenment.

[25:50]

We chant a name, a list of women ancestors, and Sujata is on that list. And there are a couple different Sujatans. So I don't know if this is the one, but I really hope it is, because... She is extremely important. Yeah. Probably should have figured out how to find it. Well. Okay. As for the attitude while preparing food, the essential point is deeply to arouse genuine mind and respectful mind without making judgments about the ingredients fineness or coarseness.

[26:55]

Have you not heard that by offering to Buddha one bowl of water left from rinsing rice, a woman attained wondrous merit during her life? Let's spend all that time just finding that. But that's the story of Sujata. And the reason I wanted to share that is because it took me forever to understand what Dogen was saying. And that's also part of the reason I really laid it on thick about how important the lineage is and that the living lineage is really just, it's not any given person. It's a living, breathing tradition, moment by moment. and generation to generation, and it doesn't exist without teacher and student. And the story of Sujata is the Buddha... When the Buddha, like Dogen, wished to attain enlightenment, he thought the best way to do it would be to deprive himself of everything.

[28:12]

That caused pleasure. Because attachment to pleasure was seen as the cause of bondage. And he sought freedom. And so he said, this is the Buddha now, suppose I were to take only a little food at a time, only a handful at a time. And eat only once every seven days or every 14 days. My body became extremely emaciated. Simply from eating so little, my limbs became like the jointed segments of vine stems or bamboo stems. My backside became like a camel's hoof. My spine stood out like a string of beads. My ribs jutted out like the jetting raptors of an old rundown barn. The gleam of my eyes appeared to be sunk deep into my eye sockets like the gleam of water deep in a well. My scalp shriveled and withered like a bitter gourd. shriveled and withered in the heat and the wind. The skin of my belly became so stuck to my spine that when I thought I touched my belly, I grabbed hold of my spine.

[29:19]

And when I thought I was touching my spine, I was grabbing a hold of the skin of my belly. If I stood up, I fell over on my face right there simply from eating so little. If I tried to ease my body by rubbing my limbs with my hands, the hair rotted at its roots fell from my body as I rubbed simply from eating so little and it was at this moment collapsed that a young woman there's walking along her way took pity on him and had some rice milk or according to do in just some water from leftover from rinsing rice which doken writes a lot about washing rice so he's tying that into another part of the tons of kyokun but she saw him and fed him some of that water and that sustained his life and he realized that the practice couldn't be just, again, escaping the extreme of devotion to sense pleasure by finding the extreme of deprivation and pain and asceticism.

[30:24]

And I love how Dogen includes that in this essay, because without Sujata, there is no Buddhism. It took me forever to actually understand that he was... saying that that buddha would have just been some loser who starved himself to death this entire tradition it does not exist without sujata's single act of kindness and the same way atenzo cooking a meal the tradition the entire tradition does not exist without the kitchen worker doing their job and it's the same for literally everything we do putting on a mask to go wait in line at the grocery store. That is the wholehearted practice that the entire reality of our lives depends on. And we depend on everything that makes that happen as well.

[31:35]

And so He brings up Sujata saying, so this is somebody we don't really talk about much because we talk about the Buddha. We talk about the famous people. We don't talk about the people who he wouldn't even be here if he didn't have in his life. Oh, the reason I brought that up in terms of drying mushrooms, because he said at that moment, how he realized the middle way was it's like having a log in a river. and it's completely soaked and waterlogged, and trying to light a fire on that log is like trying to achieve freedom and lasting happiness in the world of sense pleasure, with devotion to sense pleasure. It's just not going to happen. But trying to achieve freedom in this polar opposite of asceticism is like trying to light a fire on that same log just taken out of the river. So you still have the same desire mechanism acting and it's still completely soaked with water.

[32:38]

It's not going to generate nourishing heat. What is required is a dry log outside of the river. That's what he realized is sort of the appropriateness of each thing is what he finally understood that it wasn't about finding, it wasn't about escaping one end of a pole of a pair of opposites because they just They live together. And our life is merely to be wholeheartedly in these relationships in order to help others as we hold them less strictly, help others hold them maybe less strictly. And so he says the same way we view that everyone is important. You know, we shouldn't see others as good or bad or consider them as elder or younger. Even the self does not know where the self will settle down.

[33:39]

How could others determine where others will settle down? So he's talking about enlightenment. I think this is about this sort of idea of spiritual attainment, which probably existed a lot in the monasteries of the day, but I think also exists in our lives as well. And so if you When am I going to be happy at this kind of thing? It's like, we don't know. The next moment could be a total surprise. It always is. And so just to practice with each moment as it comes and not really worry about which direction it's going. I really appreciate that philosophy of I have no idea where myself will settle down. And so to just be who I am right now and also not think I know where others should settle down is very helpful. a full piece of advice. Dogen also says, how could it not be a mistake to find others' faults with our own faults, which is an interesting way of putting it.

[34:42]

So it can be seen so many different ways in terms of, of course, the psychological reality of everything I disdain in others, I also have in myself and just can't recognize it or refuse to recognize it. So Dogen talks a lot about turning the light inwardly. And I think it's, yeah, So not to project my faults onto others is one way to look at that. How could it not be a mistake to find others' faults with our own faults? But another way to look at it could be to just, why even consider somebody else as being at fault when I have so much to work on in myself? And so yeah, the wrong in the past may be right in the present. So who could distinguish a sage from a common person? So this harkens back to Sujata. This is only a couple of paragraphs after giving homage to Sujata.

[35:44]

And also, like I said, every moment is a surprise. And so there's no reason to think that, oh, I'm wrong now, but I'll be right later, or I'm right now, and then forget that I might be wrong later. If you have the spirit of not arranging everything into right and wrong, how could you not carry out conduct of the way that directly proceeds to unsuppressed awakening? The bones and marrows of the ancient are found completely where this kind of constant effort is made. And then he tells a story about Tenzo he met in Japan who he thought really didn't understand how to do the job. He did not yet discern that this was Buddha's work. How could he possibly understand and comply with the way? Sincerely, we must have compassion for those who never meet a true person and recklessly tear apart the conduct of the way.

[36:50]

I saw that this monk never once supervised breakfast and lunch. He entrusted it to a servant without brains or feelings and ordered him to take charge of all manners, large or small. So in the kitchen, We have a Tenzo who does all the menu planning and food ordering and generally maintains the practice space of the kitchen. And then there's somebody called a Fukuten, which just means the assistant to the Tenzo. And that's the person who manages the crew, makes sure all the vegetables are cut and the meals get out on time. And so when I was Fukuten, that's what I used to call myself, the servant without brains or feelings who was entrusted to breakfast and lunch. Yeah. And he said this Tenzo, yeah, and he said that the real tragedy of this, he said, how pitiful and sad he was a person without a way-seeking mind who never had the chance to see anyone with the virtue of the way. So he's lamenting that this Tenzo did not have a regime of his own to teach him how to, how important it was to feed the monks, that it's,

[38:03]

And a vital part of that relationship that the monks need food to continue practicing the same way their practice is how the Tenzo's able to do the Tenzo's work. And this relationship continues to unfold. And... Yeah, it's really funny. And this translation, which is Shohaku Okamura and Dan Layton, they don't really write it. But in other versions of the translation, he says, since he didn't know how to do the job, he wouldn't be able to train the next Tenzo, which is, I think, really important to convey the spirit of what Dogen is saying. And it's not about you being a great Tenzo. It's about training the next Tenzo, because this goes on endlessly. There is no... there is no ground to stand on there is no lasting abode to find and stay in forever and so actually the heartbreaking reality of not doing the job properly or not learning the job properly is not being able to teach the next person um yeah i it's i've only in exploring all the other translations did i did i catch that uh this time because i don't think it's in

[39:31]

the Okamura translation. And that's the fun part of Dogen's words, is that they can be translated in any number of different ways. So here's the Kaz Tanahashi translation. When it comes time to train a young monk, He still will not know anything. How regrettable it is. Like returning empty-handed after entering a treasure mountain or coming back unadorned after reaching the ocean of jewels. Even taking sand and offering it to Buddha is beneficial. How much more so to be tenzo? If you act in harmony with the minds and actions of our ancient predecessors, how can you fail to bring forth their virtue and practice? And then he talks about, you know, Guishan and Dengshan. our great ancestors who had this job he says and Guishan actually became attained enlightenment while he was tenzo and Dengshan caused enlightenment in another monk while Dengshan was tenzo and he says Guishan didn't become tenzo to get enlightened and Dengshan didn't become tenzo to awaken someone else but it happened and just by them doing their job wholeheartedly this eternal lineage is every single wholehearted moment

[41:01]

And I realized that I just ran out of time, I think. So thank you very much. Next week, I promise to know what I'm going to say. And we're going to get into the three kinds of minds of the Tenzo. Joyful mind, nurturing mind, and magnanimous mind. And how those minds, I think a really important part of being Tenzo is to... And the reason Dogen chose this job in particular is because every meal that's eaten, there's just another appetite right around the corner. There's no final meal that satiates you for all time. And so his practice is one of meeting every single moment, brand new and wholeheartedly. So thank you for your time. 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.

[42:04]

Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[42:17]

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