Again, welcome, welcome. It's good to be here. Every week I feel that. It's nice to have you come, and I really am grateful for the chance I get to look at these teachings and think about them. It's like doing my homework. Very familiar, doing homework. But in this case, it's something I very, very enjoy. Spending time with these texts and learning more about familiars. Dogen is very familiar to me. I've read all of the Shobo Genzo. We did that as part of our priest group over many years. We read each fascicle, and we were assigned the task of writing a four-line poem of our own for each of the fascicles, which was a very interesting discipline to do. And so, you know, that... That walkthrough of all of these fascicles is quite a number of years ago now, several decades, as a matter of fact. So going back and looking at them again with kind of a fresh feeling has just been very enjoyable, very joyful, actually, for me.

[01:23]

So I want to welcome you to our first discussion of a new fascicle, the Bendowa. which according to Nishiar Bokusan, whose name you hopefully remember from our study of the Genjo Koan, so he did a number of commentaries on the Genjo Koan. And Nishiar Bokusan was a teacher of Kishizawa Iyan, who was a teacher of Suzuki Roshi. So we have a very direct connection to this teacher who was a very important teacher in this last century. And he commented on the Bendo Wa. as well. And Bokusan says that along with the Genjo Koan, meaning actualizing the fundamental point, and another fascicle called Bu Sho, meaning Buddha nature, that Bendo Wa is one of the most important fascicles of Dogen's treasury of the true Dharma I, the Shobo Genzo. So the whole collection of his writing, he's pulling out these three as the most important.

[02:26]

Genjo Koan, Bendo Wa, and Bu Sho. which I haven't looked at, and I'm going to. Maybe we can look at that next. So last week I said to you I wasn't certain whether Bendawa was included in our liturgy here at Zen Center. It was part of the chant book, and now I am certain. It is. It is in the chant book. It's under the title of Self-Receiving and Employing Samadhi, which if any of you have been here for... practice period or during the practice period, we chat that every noon, noon service every day. So it's a very familiar portion or aspect of the bendawa. It's not the entire thing. The entire thing has a lot more complicated narrative going on and a whole bunch of 18 questions and answers that Dogen has included, which I'm going to talk about a little bit as well. So I'm mostly going to focus on the self-receiving and employing samadhi rather than these other parts of the bendawa, which makes it kind of bulky and rather long.

[03:33]

So that particular part, self-receiving and employing samadhi, is in the chant book. And I guess that also means it's online. And you can find it in the collection of chants on the Zen Center website. And if not, let me know. There's also a really wonderful resource for studying this teaching, a book called The Wholehearted Way. The Wholehearted Way, which is another way of translating Bendawa, which was published way back in 1997 by Tuttle Press. And this book includes a translation of Bendawa and commentary by Uchiyama Roshi. who also commented in the series of three commentaries in the Genjo Koan book that we were looking at last time. So Ushiyama is the teacher of Shohaku Okamura Roshi, who you may be familiar with Shohaku. He's done an incredible amount of teaching and really wonderfully respected translator of Japanese.

[04:35]

Every time I've gone to one of his workshops or sessions, He does these Genzoe special Dogen-focused sessions, has done them for many years. I think he's retiring now. But he's such a wonderful scholar and so clear in how he explains some of these really very challenging and esoteric teachings of Dogens. So this book, The Wholehearted Way, was translated into English by Shohaku Okamura and also by Taigen Dan Leighton, who is Tenshin Reb Anderson's disciple. So one of our very own. So I'm really grateful for the information that's in this text, in particular Okamura Roshi's introduction to the Bendawa. He gives a lot of historic context for this text and what Dogen was up to, how old he was, where he was at the time it was written and so on. So I'm really happy to be able to share some of that with you along with this portion of Dogen's fascicle that's included in our liturgy. So here's a little background.

[05:38]

to the Bendawa, which was written around 1230 AD. Dogen was born in 1200, which makes it very nice, because you can figure out how old he was when all of these things were happening. So he returned from China in 1227, when he was 27. So he was still a very young man when he began his teaching career. And he wrote Bendawa just a few years after he returned to Japan. following his awakening experience in China. And so here's what Dogen has to say about himself at that time, which is recorded in the very first sections of the full, complete Bendo Wa. Dogen says, I returned home in the first year of Shetting, which is 1227, to spread this Dharma and to free living beings became my vow. I felt as if a heavy burden had been placed on my shoulders. In spite of that, I set aside my vow to propagate this in order to wait for conditions under which it could flourish.

[06:39]

And for now, I will live alone, moving from place to place like a cloud or a duckweed and following the way of the ancient sages. So, along with the Fukanzazengi, Bendowa was written in the very earliest part of Dogen's teaching career and became a foundation for what he would later on when he established his own monastery and for all of his later writings. These foundational teachings, you can see the thread of them running through everything else that Dogen wrote. So at this time, he was saying he returned from China and he briefly stayed at Keninji Temple where he had been before going to China and studying with a Rinzai teacher, Miozen. Miozen is the person he traveled to China with. Miozen died in China. Sadly. So he returned without his Rinzai teacher. However, Dogen had become, you know, awakened and inspired by Soto Zen teachers.

[07:40]

So this is when the lineage shifted for us from Rinzai to Soto Zen. Excuse me. So anyway, so he had been at Kenenji Temple and then he went to China. And he came back to Kenenji Temple, but it wasn't very satisfying for him. He no longer had the same inspired wish. He wasn't seeking. He had found what he was looking for. He was content. He'd found the way. He dropped body and mind. You know, this amazing experience that he had under Ru Jing. So instead of staying at Kenenji, he left there and moved into an abandoned temple in the town of Fukakusa. So that's... Fukukusa is about halfway between Kyoto and another city called Uji in Japan. So he's kind of out in the countryside. He's moved himself away from the urban areas of Japan. And he doesn't have his own monastery yet. So in order to leave what he had learned from Rujing, his teacher in China, for those practitioners that he says are looking for the true Dharma, he wrote Banda Wa.

[08:44]

So had he not survived or he'd never been able to establish his own temple, this was his effort to pass on his teaching or his understanding of the teaching that he had learned in China. So he says... There might be some sincere practitioners who, on their own, do not seek after fame or profit and who have priority to the mind and give priority to the mind that seeks the way. But they still may be mainly led astray by false teachers and recklessly cover up correct understanding and become drunk in their own confusion, sinking into delusion for a long time. How will it be possible for them to nurture the true seed of prajna and have appropriate occasion to attain the way? Since this unworthy wayfarer is now living like a cloud or duckweed, how will they find the mountain or river where they can visit me? So he's not located. Most of these teachers were named after mountains, so you could find them.

[09:45]

It was sort of like they didn't have our nice navigational systems. You could kind of tune in to where they are. You had to know, in terms of the names of mountains, where to find a teacher. So... So he said, where will they find the mountain or the river where they can visit me? Because I care about these people, I have recollected and written about what I saw with my own eyes of the style of practice in the Zen monasteries of Song China and what I received and uphold as the profound teaching of my master, Ru Jing. I leave this for the devoted practitioners of the way of serenity in order to let them know about the true Dharma of the Buddhas. So it wasn't until some years later, in 1233, again, he's a very young man, that Dogen founds his own temple called Koshoji Temple or Koshoji Monastery in the town of Fukakusa. So this was his first effort as establishing his own teaching venue.

[10:46]

And yeah, as we know, I mean, the famous location for Dogen and for our understanding of Dogen's primary teaching was A. Heiji. which is way up in the mountains north of Kyoto. But he was still many years away from the founding of Aeiji, which didn't even come into being constructed until 1243, when he was quite a bit older. And yet a number of his important disciples, including his Dharma successor, Koanejo, came to study with him at Shoji Temple in Fukakusa. And Koan showed up in 1234 while Dogen was still in this very beginning phase of transmitting the teaching. So this kind of conditions for him to begin to become this teacher that we know and understand from his vast volume of work. He's just a seedling right now or just a tiny little shoot that's popped up. A young man and yet he's got a reputation already. So Koan Ejo was a well-studied Dharma student.

[11:50]

He'd done a lot of scholarly work. And he was looking for the next step in his own seeking, way-seeking. And so he heard about the Dogen and he came to check him out, basically. So one Soto Zen scholar proposes that the 18 questions and answers, which are in the full version of the Bendawa, are mainly based on discussions that Dogen had with Ejo during their first meeting together back at the Rinzai Monastery. of Keninji, when Dogen had first come back from China, he briefly stayed at this Rensai temple, and Eijo came there and heard about Dogen and asked for a meeting. Okay, so that's seeming clear. I hope so. So he meets Eijo, who's going to become his primary disciple, and they have this conversation. And basically, it's a challenge. So Eijo, Cohen Eijo, who studied Dogen, He studied Tendai Buddhism as had Dogen. He'd studied Pure Land Buddhism and he had mastered Rinzai Zen as well.

[12:53]

So he began his new relationship by arguing with Dogen about his understanding of Kensho. Kensho being seeing true nature. One of the hallmarks of Rinzai Zen is that you have Kensho. You have some experience that you can talk about and you can display to your teacher and it can get verified. So after a while, Eijo came to realize that Dogen's understanding was quite a bit deeper than his own. And this reawakened Eijo's bodhicitta, the thought of enlightenment, and thereafter he became a lifelong disciple of Dogen Senji. So in terms of the bendowa itself, Okamura Roshi considers it to be a commentary on Dogen's most important writing of them all, which for Okamura Roshi is the Fukanzazengi, you know, the thing that we started looking at at the very beginning of our Dogen study, the instructions for Zazen. So it's interesting, I was very interested to see that, that Okamura was proposing that out of the entire Shobo Genzo and all of other Dogen's writings, that all of them can be seen as commentaries on the Fukanzazengi, that they are all commentaries on the practice of Zazen.

[14:08]

which is what the Phukat Zazengi is basically about. So Okamura Roshi says in his introduction to the wholehearted way, the Shobo Genzo explains Zazen from many different aspects. The philosophy of what is the Buddha Dharma, what this world looks like as seen from Zazen, what is the structure of our life, and what kind of attitude that we should have to maintain our Zazen practice and how it affects our daily activity. So he goes on to say, it is on the foundation of upright sitting practice that we should create our way to encourage each and every action in our day-to-day lives. In using zazen as the base, everything that we see, say, think, and do is seen as just another part of ourselves. So this is a kind of integration. Zazen allows for the integration of what we often consider to be the other, like the world. other people, objects, and the way we objectify the world.

[15:11]

In our zazen practice, this kind of objectification becomes much softer and more difficult to actually continue to believe or to perceive in the same way. Just as the Buddha saw the star in the morning of his awakening during his own meditation practice, that experience of not seeing things as external is characteristic of a rather deepened sense that comes from meditation, or regular meditation. So in Bendawa, Dogen explains what has been transmitted from Buddha to Buddha, from Shakyamuni Buddha to himself, which is called the Jijuyu Sanmai. Jijuyu Sanmai, Japanese, meaning the self-receiving and employing samadhi. The name of this portion of the Bendawa that's in our chant book. And that's referring to zazen. So these are the terms that we're going to be looking at in these next few weeks. Giju zamai and also samadhi and what this means.

[16:12]

What are they talking about? So I'm going to end this evening reading you a portion of the bendawa, a portion of what we chant in daily service during sesheen. But first I wanted to say a few words about the title of this fascicle. which I found very interesting. I hope you do as well. The Chinese characters, depending on how carefully the character is written, these are quite old, these characters, and some of them are very close to one another. There's a slight little tail on top of one of the characters that makes it a different meaning and so on. So this Chinese character that translates as Ben, in the Ben de Wa, Ben, It can be seen in two different ways depending on this one little line that is or is not distinguishable depending on who wrote it. So if you see it one way, it means a sword. Ben means sword and would mean that this was referring to cutting through or making discriminating thinking.

[17:20]

Or cutting through or knowing the right way from the wrong way. Or delusional or dualistic thinking. So the sword that cuts things into two. And you can either use it for wisdom or you can use it as the basis of your delusions. So cutting or discriminating, if it's written one way. And if it's written the other way, it can mean strength. As in to put all of your energy into practicing the way. And as you can imagine, that's the interpretation. that most scholars give to this character, Ben, in Bendawa. This is putting your whole energy into practicing away, or wholehearted practice, as I think you've heard that phrase over and over again. That's kind of characteristic of Soto Zen, wholehearted practice, wholehearted effort. It's a very Dogen thing to say. So Okamura strongly argues for this meaning that implies a wholehearted, energetic engagement with the practice of the way, meaning with the practice of life. Everything you do, you know, with kind of your give it your all, whatever that means.

[18:26]

Whatever that is, you know, that kind of feeling of generosity, of offering that is really emblematic of what we think of as Buddhist practice. So the second character in Bendowa is Do. This one's really interesting too. So we've got ben, meaning wholehearted effort. And then dou or dao in Chinese means way. And this is one of the most important words in East Asian religion. And I think we've all heard the dao, dao of physics, dao of Winnie the Pooh. There was a book like that back in the 60s. So the dao, daoism. And in Japanese, the word is dou. Like my name has... dou shin, wei, heart, mind, is my last name, furyu dou shin, so wei is part of my name, so dou. So originally the character for wei meant a path to reach some place.

[19:27]

Go this way. And if you look at the character, in Japanese, Chinese characters are called kanji, kan is China and ji is a letter, so the kanji, or the Chinese character, for way has two parts. And one part represents the head or a face. So one part of way is this character for face. And then the other part means to walk in a certain direction. So in other words, you walk in the direction that you face, right straight on, right straight ahead. That's pretty much what we do, right? We walk the direction that we're facing. It's pretty hard to walk facing a different way. That's not so safe. So for the Chinese, the way meant one of two things, and this is deeply into their culture. For the Confucians, it was a set way that should be followed by everyone in the society, like a kind of moral certitude. Confucianism was about society and different castes and how appropriate way of behaving and so on and so forth.

[20:40]

That's a little simplistic. It's more complicated than that. But that's kind of a feeling around the Confucian approach, standards and morality and so on. Now, for the Taoists, on the other hand, Tao, Weiists, the way wasn't about society, customs, and rules at all. The whole universe itself is the way. It cannot be named. It cannot be defined. And the way is a naturalness. you know, of the whole universe without any human-made distinctions or discriminations. So this is quite a different sense. One is a very human-based understanding of which way, which way is, how do we do it, what's the proper way, what's the right way, etiquette and manners and rules and so on. And this other one is like this kind of naturalism, like finding the way, wayfaring as opposed to navigating. You know, navigating, you have your tools and your equipment and you have a sense of how to get there and there's kind of like maps and all that. Wayfaring, on the other hand, is like more like, hmm, which way?

[21:45]

Which way do we go? I think the Polynesians basically were wayfarers. You know, they were looking for the big cloud formations that would indicate there was a land, some land over there and so on. That's wayfaring. And certainly for our sense of practice, wayfaring is more of the way of understanding how you go rather than navigating. So when Buddhism was introduced into China from India, the Chinese word for Wei, Dao, was used to translate three different Sanskrit words. So we've got India with the source of all the Buddhist teaching and it's all in Sanskrit or Pali. And they're trying to find words to translate these Sanskrit terms just as we've been trying to find words to translate Sanskrit and Chinese and Japanese terms into English. This is a wonderful, wonderful project. In fact, I was just at a birthday party a couple days ago for Kaz Tanahashi, whose name might be very familiar to all of you because he has translated an enormous body of work into English to our great benefit.

[22:53]

I said I was... very honored to be able to welcome everyone to the party, Causes 90. Many of his long-term colleagues and fellow translators and admirers were at his party. As I said to him at the introduction or welcoming, I first met him back in 1984 when I was studying at Tassajara. I was a new monk at Tassajara. Munin and Dewdrop had been published, and I got a copy of Munin and Dewdrop, which is all of these beautiful translations that Tanashi-san did with Zen students, with many of our senior students, including Reb and Mel and I think Norman and so on. So Munin and Dewdrop, for me, was like a candy store. I remember every minute I had off during that practice period, I was reading this brand new publication.

[23:53]

that Kaz had basically was the primary translator, these beautiful things. He's done, there was a pile of books on a table in our pool deck area where the party was that were all Kaz's translations that he'd done, collaborated with other English-speaking poets and other authors to create these beautiful, beautiful works of translation. So anyway, translating. So translating from Sanskrit, to Chinese was the order of the day, and then into Japanese, which is what Dogen had to do. So this word Dao was used for three different Sanskrit words, all having somewhat different meaning. So the first use of the word Dao, Chinese word Dao, was to translate Bodhi, meaning enlightenment. So this term Mu Jou Dou, Dou, Dao, in Japanese, means the supreme way. This is in keeping with the Taoist view of reality.

[24:56]

The supreme way is reality itself, the magic of existence, the marvel of the universe, which cannot be contained by human concepts or human effort, human language. So just reality itself, the Tao, and awakening, awakening to the Tao. So that's the first way they translated it. The second Sanskrit word that was translated as dao was the Sanskrit word marga. And marga means the path. So as in the eightfold path. In Japanese, that's hashido, eight, hash, and do, we. So this is the way, in this case, that's a path, more like the Confucian. It's the way that you walk in order to reach nirvana. So it has a sense of go this way, Go this way and then you'll get to Nirvana. You'll get to your goal. So there's more of a feeling of there is a way. And if you follow it, then you'll have this outcome.

[25:59]

It's kind of somewhat predictable. So then you have ideas like the right view. There's a right view. There's a right intention. There's right speech. The Eightfold Path is about these things that you do right or correctly. So that's the second Tao is the mark or the path. And the third Sanskrit term that was translated as Tao was a word gate, G-A-T-E, which basically can be found in Japanese with this six gate or six realms, the rokudo. The rokudo are the six realms. If you remember from the 12-fold chain, there's the 12-fold chain of dependent core rising, also known as the wheel of birth and death. We went over that a few times some time ago. But it doesn't matter. If you don't remember, you can look it up. It's very easy to find on Wikipedia. Just look up the six realms. And those six realms are these psychological states that we humans transmigrate through all through our lives, all through our day.

[27:03]

You can spot them pretty easily if you're looking. So there's the top one. They're like a pie. The six realms are divided into these six slices, the top one being heaven. which we think is the most desirable. And then to the left of heaven is the fighting gods who want to get into heaven. So they're ambitious. And then the other side of heaven are the humans who are not that ambitious, but they're working hard, accomplishing nothing, kind of like Gringold's form. And so those are all the hardworking areas of human existence and psychological states that we're familiar with. Ambition, heaven, bliss. And then human going to work every day. And then below the line, the other three slices of the pie, right below heaven is hell. Because when heaven ends, you go to hell. It's kind of pretty familiar. When you lose whatever it was you thought you had, you know, whether it was a good job or a nice relationship or that beautiful car that got wrecked or all those things that happen, you go from this really happy, blissed-out state and, you know, darn, not again.

[28:12]

So impermanence is a big job to do around the six realms. And on either side of hell, you have the hungry ghosts who are never satisfied. And then you have the animals who never have any ethical considerations whatsoever. They just have sex and they run around, eat things and whatever. I mean, it's not a very nice way to characterize animals. But these are human psychological states. So these are the ways that we transmigrate. So that's another use of this term, Tao or Do. the way of delusion. So this is kind of funny. So we have one Tao is awakening itself. Another Tao is the path to awakening. And the third Tao is the delusional state that you need to leave in order to take the path to awakening. So it's kind of like a full set. But they don't actually share the same meaning. They don't have the same implications in terms of practice. So this is kind of interesting how translators deal with like... how do we get the essence of these terms and how do we actually understand what's going on here?

[29:17]

You have to have a pretty well-grounded sense of the source language and then the one you're translating into, right? So, these are all the kinds of things that translators get to work on and that we have to have a little bit of understanding about what's going on. I appreciate the work that Okuma Roshi's done. He's a wonderful translator from Japanese into English. So, So one can find each of these three terms in use, you know, the dao or do in Japanese. These terms are throughout Buddhist terminology, both in China and Japan, and now for us, you know, in English. And we're sort of trying to, you know, move through these various parts and figure out which is which are for ourselves. So the do, the way of deluded beings, do, the path from delusion to awakening, and do as awakening itself. So Okamura Roshi says that when Dogen uses the word Do or Dao, it's in an abbreviation of Butsu Do.

[30:19]

Butsu, Buddha, Do, way. The Buddha way. So that's the only way that Dogen refers to Do. It's the Buddha way, the path of Buddha. The path is Buddha. Enlightenment is the path. The path is enlightenment. Now we're getting into Dogen speak and how Dogen views. what happened, what he understood when he went to China. So this means the truth to which the Buddha awakened and the truth that he taught as a way to liberation. Okay, so that's, now we have Ben, Do, and then the last word is, the last character is Wa, Ben Do Wa. And Wa is an easy one. It just means a story or a talk. So Ben Do Wa means that a discourse about how to practice the Buddha way And so, furthermore, for Dogen Zenji, the way is not a direction that leads from this place to that, but rather a circle.

[31:23]

So Dogen talks about the circle of the way, which is more like altogether now, arising in each moment as one complete presence and awareness, one completeness. That's our Buddha nature is complete in each and every moment. And that's our true nature. So what he says in terms of the circle is the thought of enlightenment is aroused moment by moment. We become fully aware within each moment, moment by moment. So the thought of enlightenment, a full awareness and nirvana are all moment by moment. They're all in each moment, each step of the way. is the way and each step is perfect and yet within this perfection there is a direction there is a direction this facing you walk the way you're facing in the direction is toward the bodhisattva thou is the alignment of our lives are in alignment with the bodhisattva thou not so much with an aspiration to get something for ourselves never that the aspiration to do something for others

[32:36]

you know, to wish to live for the welfare of others. So that's the direction of ours. It's perfect, and within each moment is this direction toward Buddhahood. Okay, so what I want to do is read you a little bit of this beautiful self-receiving, self-employing samadhi. I'm not going to read the whole thing, but I invite you, if you get a chance to look it up, to read through it somewhat slowly. And one of the things that I notice happens in service, and certainly happens for me, and I've been going to service for a long time, is that I'm really familiar with these chants, but it's a little bit like watching a train, you know, from standing at the station, and the train's going like that. And, you know, there's one car, and there's another car, and there's another car. So we're chanting, and there's no way to kind of stop and go like... That's an interesting thought. You know, I hadn't really thought about that. So unless you take some time to spend with these texts, these chants that we do, which are really wonderful, they're foundational to our understanding of Buddhadharma, it's really easy to just have the words run through you, you know, and not really have some sense about like, well, what was that all about?

[33:57]

What did that mean? So that's one reason I'm enjoying going back over these texts because I get to reflect. and kind of think about it a little bit and also read some of these commentaries, which is extremely helpful. And then when I go back to service and I'm chanting that, there's a little bit more of a sparkle for me. You know, it's like, oh yeah, I remember that. I remember when we looked at that. I remember that when the Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi, each of those phrases, the poetic verses, you know, we'd spend some time with each of those. So it's cozier. It's become a cozier experience. That kind of intimacy that comes from a little deeper level of familiarity than the one that I'd had by just kind of knowing the song, knowing the tunes, but not really listening to the lyrics so clearly. So self-receiving and employing samadhi. Just that alone, self-receiving. Think about that for a minute. Self-receiving and employing samadhi.

[35:00]

So that's our moment-to-moment experience according to Dogen. This is what is happening for us. And when we realize that, then that's the way. That's the Buddha way. Self-receiving, self-employing samadhi. Wholehearted. Now, he says, now, all ancestors and all Buddhas who uphold Buddhadharma have made it the true path of enlightenment to sit upright, practicing in the midst of self-fulfilling samadhi. Those who attained enlightenment in India and China followed this way. It was done so because teachers and disciples personally transmitted this excellent method as the essence of the teaching. In the authentic tradition of our teaching, it is said that this directly transmitted, straightforward Buddha Dharma is the unsurpassable of the unsurpassable. From the first time you meet a master,

[36:00]

without engaging in incense offering, bowing, chanting Buddha's name, repentance, or reading scriptures, you should just wholeheartedly sit and thus drop away body and mind, as Sudogen did. He wholeheartedly sat and his body and mind dropped away. Then it dropped away again. It dropped away again. And then his teacher said, now drop that. So then that dropped away. So this dropping away is a really important key. And this is impermanence. Things don't last. Norman gave a nice talk this morning about that dropping away. Impermanence. It's not how we think. It's not how we've studied the world. It's not what we've been taught. But if you really look, you know, if you spend some time just quietly looking, which is a nice thing about Zazen, it gives us time to basically take a look. self-receiving, self-employing, concentration, samadhi, presence.

[37:06]

We don't do that so often. I told you about the boy that I was, he was a kid, sixth grader, one of the local schools. I was teaching them sitting, a very brief sitting. I sat for five minutes or something. They were mostly pretty restless except for this one boy who was very still. And I asked him how it had been for them to sit quietly. And he said, No one ever asked me not to do anything before. And he really liked it. So that's Zazen. Don't do anything. Just sit there. Just sit there quietly. It's hard. It's hard because we're tuned for action. We're tuned for response. We have a very responsive neurology. It takes some... effort, wholehearted effort to stay at your seat and to not respond to those urges that just seem to bubble up, you know, unwelcomed urges to like do something else.

[38:11]

I think boredom was one of the daughters of Mara that visited the Buddha while he was sitting there. Aren't you bored yet? Don't you want to do something else? Wouldn't you like to come and dance or sing or play the ukulele or something? So this Boredom and lust and anger, all of these forces that are surrounding the Buddha. He wasn't immune. Not at all. When you read the sutras, there was vibration around his sitting. I think all of you who said you feel that vibration, there's an incredible energetic force pulling on you, which actually is helpful. Fill in the space that you occupy, self-receiving and employing. Samadhi is like to really meet the energy of the world as it's singing to you and calling to you and the temperatures and asking you to open a window or close a window or do something. All of these things that are raging around you.

[39:12]

And the big ones are greed, hate, and delusion. You know, I like it. I don't like it. I'm not sure. And wanting to take action based on those preferences. That's very strong. That's one of the things we're watching. And the other one is the techniques we have for getting our needs met the way we want, the things I want, things to go the way I like. And if I want it to be a certain way, I could be violent, I could be angry, I could be aggressive, I could pay somebody, I could do all kinds of these strategies to get my way. So that's all these, there's imagery of the Buddha sitting there in these flames. And I think that's a really important thing. It's called komyo. It's the flames that are surrounding the Buddha who's in the middle of those flames. And he's really cool. He's kind of chill. He's sitting there allowing all of that and not engaging, not being caught. He's not following those trains as they're running through.

[40:14]

He's just letting them go. I like the image of snowflakes on a hot iron skillet. Just like psst. So this is a training. This is what zazen really allows us to do is to teach ourselves self-receiving. Nobody else has got the experiences that I have sitting. No one has the experiences you have when you're sitting quietly. Nobody knows. It's all you and it's all yours to understand and to explore. I was talking to a young student this morning about she's getting really interested in all the different elements of her body. I did a little bit of posture adjustment for the last Sashin, three days Sashin we had last month. So I went around and I kind of moved their spines a little bit. I kind of pushed in a little bit the lower back to give them a deeper curve in the lower back and then lifting up from the sternum. It's a kind of complement.

[41:16]

deepen that curve in the lower back and you lift from the sternum, automatically you get a lot taller because you feel it. And I was instructing them to lift from the center point at the top of your head, which is where gravity is hitting, to resist that push of gravity and relax. That's another thing, once you get all that going, then you relax your shoulders. Relax the muscles in your face and all of the muscles. You don't need all the muscles to hold you up. Your spine can do that work. You know, so all of these different parts, as she was telling me how excited she was that she's just walking around noticing her spine and noticing her feet on the ground and noticing her... I said, oh, that's wonderful. She was extremely excited about that. I said, well, I hope that keeps going for you because it's a really wonderful thing to be tuned in to your own body. And, you know, your thoughts are not, you know, they're kind of whatever. You can't catch them very well. I don't know. I've been trying recently to see if I can catch what's going on in there.

[42:18]

Just a random, two weeks ago it was about Hawaii and this morning it was about the poor people in Morocco. So, I mean, the news shows up, whatever's happening, the suffering of the world comes in right away when I sit down in the morning. And then other different things that I, you know, just all these visitors come in. And they go out. It's like a little performance of various thoughts and images that don't stay very long. But there's a whole bunch of them in 40 minutes. It's like, wow, quite a parade of stuff. Not that interesting. Not wishing to actually make more of a story out of it than it's already there. A little bit more like a little TikTok thing just happening and going away. So... Yes, wholeheartedly sit and thus drop away body and mind. When even for a moment you express the Buddha's seal in the three actions by sitting upright in samadhi, the whole phenomenal world becomes the Buddha's seal and the entire sky turns into enlightenment.

[43:23]

Because of this, all Buddha Tathagatas as the original source increase their Dharma bliss and renew their magnificence in the awakening of the way. Furthermore, all the beings in the ten directions and the six realms, Rokudo, six realms right there, including the three lower realms, hell, animals and hungry ghosts, including the three lower realms, at once obtain pure body and mind, realize the state of great emancipation and manifest the original face. At this time, at this time, all things realize correct awakening. Myriad objects partake of the Buddha body, and sitting upright under the Bodhi tree, you immediately leap beyond the boundary of awakening. At this moment, you turn the unsurpassably great Dharma wheel and expound the profound wisdom, ultimate and unconditioned. Those are the first three paragraphs of the self-receiving and employing samadhi.

[44:27]

I noticed when I was reading through these that, you know, he says every time he, you know, he keeps hammering at this idea of even for a moment, you know, at this time, at this moment. So, again, it's the circle of the way. It's this right now-ness of his vision. This is right now. When else could it be? You know, where else is there but right now? And, you know, we tend to not... I appreciate that so much. It's always right now. This is just the right now that he's talking about. He's inviting us to keep coming back to, as I mentioned, Angel did in her talk. Just return. Just return to your physical body. A lot of Dogen's teaching is about the body. He's running through all of his beautiful thinking and poetic inspiration. But it's really addressing our physical body, this amazement, because the body is always in the present.

[45:30]

It can't get out. It's like a good dog. It's always in the present. That's where it feeds. That's where it has friends. That's where it goes to the store. It's always in the present. So the more we can stay with our body, the more we're in the realm of our senses. Come back to your senses. Come back to your senses. So you tell people when they're getting a little cuckoo, come back to your senses. So what do you see? What do you smell? What do you hear? What do you taste? What do you think? And that's tricky. That's a hard one. But that's one of them. It's one of the things we sense. It tends to be the one we sense most of the time. And that's why we're so confused. Because the true reality is not conceptual. It's not what humans think. It's more like Taoists. universe itself, reality itself is beyond human comprehension. Okay, so that's Bendowa, first swipe, first look at Bendowa.

[46:33]

And I'm very happy to hear anything you all would like to say or bring up. Helene. There you are. Okay. All right. You're on. Thank you. Hi, Fu. Hi, everybody. It's great to see everyone. And when I was reading through the Bendo Wah, I mean, I was just struck by the intensity of the advice to do Zazen. I mean, that's just, you know, just kind of cut to the core. Does that work for you? Did that get you on your question? What is this book about? Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

[47:35]

Well, he's watching, you know, he's watching you. That's good. I need it. Yeah. Yeah. As soon as you get there, as soon as you do that, you're right in line with the Buddha ancestors. That's what they were doing, right? As soon as you do that. As soon as you open that door, you're home. Yes. They're all there. They're just smiling away. Hi, Tim. Hi, Trude. Last weekend, I had a four-day retreat with Bhikkhu Bodhi, of all people, on the four protective meditations.

[48:36]

And I found it very interesting. I'm always sort of mapping the one dharma. And those protective meditations are... awareness of buddha for recollection of buddha like character uh metta loving kindness uh awareness of the parts of the body and theravadan you know they're they have big numbers they're 32 identified parts of the body yeah without going through them and then awareness of death and mainly my meditation this week when you're saying just sit just sit and i can't say how many times i was telling myself this is really not a fun moment right now just don't open your eyes don't get up don't go do whatever just sit there just sit there and i i think it's that

[49:49]

I would say deepening awareness of the body and deepening awareness of my own, I would say the imminence of my own death is really, it's pretty intense. And so, yeah, that's, I think, I'm really keying into what you said. Just sit. Just sit. without expectation, without clinging or pushing away, just sit and ride the Bronco. Ride the Bronco. There you go. You know, at some point they get tired and stop bucking. Yeah, it stops bucking after a while. After a while. Get a little bit of a lope. Yeah, settle down for a little bit, yeah. You want to stay there. Yeah. Yeah.

[50:50]

All right. Thank you, Fu. It's always a pleasure talking to you. Yeah. Nice to see you. Hey, Melissa. Am I unmuted? You are. Yes. Okay, great. Good evening, Fu. Good evening, Sangha. I first wanted to express gratitude for... Having been in that session and having received the gentle nudges of posturing has totally changed my practice. Yeah. And I think in a way that is being echoed by one of my fellow attendees. And it's just made me kind of rethink about how I walk and how I hold myself and where my eye rests when I'm engaging with the world. And I've really, I've started to walk differently and to, I now see a little bit more in the residents of Green Gulch, the ones who are really focused on that.

[52:05]

the longtime residents who are really like Jiryu and Kika, just really focused on that alignment. And I can now embody the understanding of why that's so important. So I wanted to express gratitude for that instruction. Great. Great. Happy to hear that. And also one second or one minute before we close, I wanted to put in a pitch for Tenzo Kyokun. If that's a fascicle we could visit. I don't know how much time we're planning on spending on Dogen, but that was the one, especially Uchiyama Roshi's commentary. I think that was the first fascicle I read, and to this day is my favorite. Yeah, I'm with you on that. When I was head cook here, we did that every day. I'm sure you did in the kitchen, too. We'd read... the little bits of the Tenzo Kyokun. And some of those things, like treating the food like your own eyeballs, whoa, I mean, that stays with you.

[53:07]

How more gentle could you be? And not one grain of rice, don't waste one. I really kind of took that on. I don't leave rice in the pot. I actually would get all the rice out of the pot. And there's something about that meticulous attention to what you're doing, just like with your body. It's such a, you know, all this troubles in the world are going to keep on happening. But somehow this way of which we can, you know, walk through life with some awareness of our own presence and our own body. I think that's the best gift you can give yourself. Yeah, I love that one. I think I described it to somebody as like sort of a philosophy of. a really simple philosophy of engaging in the work of your life, whatever that work is and engaging with it. It's quite a challenge that I'm embracing, but I really love that classical.

[54:10]

Great. Well, I will put it on the list. I think we've got a lot of time for Dogen. I'm not going anywhere. He's kind of a cornerstone. Yeah. Yeah. I'm with Tim, you know, a little aware that time's winged chariot. But even so, I think I love the Tenzo Kilken. I'm very happy to spend some time with them. Great. Thank you. Hey, you're welcome. Hi, Ying. Hi, Fu. Yeah. I just want to thank you for actually mentioning how the band, the word, was constructed. I never thought about it. I just always memorized it when I was a kid, right? But now I thought about how you set the structure because on both sides, there's a symmetry. On both sides, that word means wholehearted. You work on something like really hearty, you know, like devoted.

[55:16]

And in the middle, there's a knife. And I just noticed, yes, that word, like in the middle, So it's like the discriminate. It's in there. So somehow we are wholehearted in our practice, but we still keep our discrimination, right? It's not like we want to throw out the... I mean, I know not the dualism, but we need to discriminate. Yes. I was thinking about that when you said it. I feel like it's so deep. Yeah, I think you're a very lucky person to have that much... what, training or whatever, education around these characters because they're amazing. You know, the more I look at the, I mean, I don't have the privilege of being able to read Chinese characters. I mean, I try a few of them. But it's so amazing because they're little pictures, you know, which is a different way of understanding things than just the sound of it. There's something about the picture, like of a hand holding a pen. You know, writing is like a hand holding a brush. Isn't that amazing?

[56:16]

It's just so, it's so, something very physical. But I was blindsided, right? When I was like, you look at it, my mind already have its own screen covered up. You know, this is the word. I don't think about it. The perception is very blinded. Yeah. So even you, huh? Yeah. We're in the same club then. So thank you for bringing up this freshness. Good. Great. Good. Good. Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. All right, good people. Unless there's another hand, I think we can all say good night, good evening, and very nice to see all of you. It's nice to have your cameras on. I really appreciate that. I wanted to suggest, by the way, our precept study group is meeting every other Wednesday. Those are the folks... some of whom are in this group, are wishing to take bodhisattva precepts.

[57:17]

So that might be something some of you want to think about. And if you ever do want to think about that with me, we can talk about it. But right now, we're kind of in the middle of about, I think we've done about eight classes. And one of the things we did last week, which I just was so wonderful, is everyone took a few minutes to do what's called a way-seeking mind introductory. When we're in the monastery, the new monks will give way-seeking mind talks and they talk about basically, again, here's the way, the Tao or the Do, how did you come to practice or what brought you here? What brought you to this study of the precepts or what brought you to the Buddha Dharma, to this study? Somewhat brief because there's so many, but I was thinking it might be very nice for this group also to have a chance to get to know each other a little bit. I would love to do that anyway. I'd love to hear a little bit about each of you and where you're sitting right now in the world and what brought you to practice.

[58:18]

So if that's something you'd like to do, I'd like to do it. And I'd like to invite us to spend a couple of our sessions just kind of going around the room, around the windows, and inviting anyone who'd like to share. Maybe we can do, you know, three or four a week or something like that, and give everyone who'd like a chance to do that. Would there be any thumbs up on that? Some thumbs up? Oh, wonderful, wonderful. Okay, well, that's a date. So I will be inviting that starting during our next week. So that'll be great. We'll have a little bit more variety to the Bendowa and to all these other texts, which although I enjoy them very much, I would really like to get to know all of you. That would be a real treat. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. Thank you so much, Fu. You're welcome. Thank you, Sandra. Thank you all. Good night. Good morning. Good night, everyone.

[59:20]

Good morning. Bye-bye. Thank you. See you next week. Bye-bye. Thank you, Fu. Thank you all. Have a good night. Have a good morning. Bye-bye. Thank you. Enjoy your week. Enjoy your week.

[59:39]

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