This morning, I want to review what we simply went over yesterday, the opening state four lines of Dogon's Ginja Koan, and then move on. I hope I can. But there are various ways. to which to look at these four lines. You can look at them from the point of view of the Heart Sutra, where, when all dharmas are Buddhadharma, there are enlightenment and delusion, practice, life and death, Buddhas and creatures. This is like the phenomenal side. Form is form. When the 10,000 dharmas are without self, there are no delusion, no enlightenment, no Buddhas, no creatures, no life, and no death.

[01:08]

This is like emptiness is emptiness. The Buddha way transcends being and non-being or leaps clear of being and non-being. Therefore, there are life and death, delusion and enlightenment, creatures and Buddhas. This is like form is emptiness and emptiness is form. And nevertheless, flowers fall with their attachment and weeds spring up with their aversion. This is, things are just as they are. This is the message of the Heart Sutra. And you can also see it reflecting Tozan's five positions, sort of, even though there are only four. When all dharmas are buddhadharma, there are enlightenment and delusion, practice, life and death, buddhas and creatures.

[02:09]

This is like the absolute hidden within the relative, which is the first position, or concealed within. This is the non-dualistic aspect of existence. And when the 10,000 dharmas are without self, there are no delusion, no enlightenment, no Buddhas, no creatures, no life and no death. This is like the relative hidden within the Absolute, the second position. And the Buddha way transcends being and non-being. Therefore, there are life and death, delusion and enlightenment, third position of the coming from within the real, where the relative and absolute are not differentiated or completely balanced.

[03:29]

And nonetheless, flowers fall with their attachment and we'd spring up with our aversion. This is the real world of our experience. So Dogen's statement here sums up, actually, Buddhadharma and the whole understanding of Zen. And it's not as simple as it may seem, although it probably doesn't seem so simple. And it's possible to investigate these four lines more and more deeply. And as a matter of fact, this is what Dogen proceeds to do. He explicates these four lines in the rest of

[04:36]

So then he goes on to say, to carry the self forward and realize the 10,000 dharmas is delusion. That the 10,000 dharmas advance and realize the self is enlightenment. It is Buddhas who enlighten delusion. It is creatures who are deluded in enlightenment. Further, there are those who attain enlightenment above enlightenment, and there are those who are deluded within delusion. When Buddhas are truly Buddhas, one need not be aware of being Buddha. However, one is the realized Buddha and further advances in realizing Buddha. So these are eight lines, and they're presented as four couplets. So each one of these couplets has a positive and negative side to it.

[05:56]

And Dogen is talking about enlightenment and then he's talking about delusion. He's talking about delusion and then he's talking about enlightenment. And he keeps talking about delusion, enlightenment, delusion, enlightenment, delusion, enlightenment. And looking at enlightenment and delusion from four different points of view. But one thing we have to be careful of when we're studying, it's easy to fall into the view that Dogen is saying that enlightenment is better than it's easy to look at enlightenment and delusion from a judgmental point of view. So Dogen is looking at delusion and enlightenment from various points of view.

[07:03]

And mostly from, even though It may seem that he's speaking in a dualistic way. The duality is always based on non-dualistic point of view. So he says, to carry the self forward and realize the 10,000 dharmas is delusion. That the 10,000 dharmas advance and realize the self is enlightenment. So, self, you know, I think we need to clarify delusion, illusion and enlightenment. Delusion actually is a technical term in Buddhism for this world. All the activity in this world

[08:09]

This is the saha realm, the realm of delusion or illusion. Things are not an illusion, but they tend to be illusory. In other words, forms are not necessarily illusions, but they tend to be illusory. It's not that the forms themselves are illusory, it's that our understanding is illusory. Because when we see a tree, do we see it as a tree? Or what is it? When we look at each other, what do we see? Do we see each other as we really are? Or do we see some picture that we tell ourselves is what that thing is? So we do create a picture. As soon as we name something, we create a picture.

[09:12]

So what we see is our picture. Just looking at something is a picture. The mind is a kind of camera. The eye works as a camera, just like a camera. And we have certain kinds of information that we base our perceptions on. So we have a kind of preconception of what things are. And the older we get, the more preconceptions we have, and the more information we have, and so forth. And then we create a more elaborate picture. Children have a simpler picture, because their minds are not so elaborate. They don't have the mechanism to create elaborate pictures like older people do. So we create a self out of this information and this way of thinking and our picture gathering equipment.

[10:22]

And we establish an idea of who we are and what the world is. And a notion about who this person is. And so we create a self. And to carry this self forward, to carry this self forward and realize the 10,000 dharmas is delusion. In other words, to go outside to take this self and try and find some truth out there. That's one way of looking at this, or what Duggan is saying. That the 10,000 dharmas advance and realize the self is enlightenment. That when there's no self, when we can let go of our preconceptions and just see reality with our naked eye, just as it is.

[11:31]

then we realize that all the dharmas are our self, because we don't have any separate self. You know, in the Heart Sutra it says, form is emptiness and emptiness is form. The same is true of, or for, forms, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. Form is empty. Feelings are empty. Perceptions are empty. Mental formations are empty. And consciousness is empty. And emptiness is what they are. That's what the Heart Sutra says. So empty of what? No self. There's no real self, no substantial self.

[12:36]

We all know this. There's no substantial self in things. Therefore, everything, no self or emptiness is another term for interdependence. As human beings, or as animals, or as trees, or as anything that's organically living on the earth, including the earth itself, there's interaction between all the dharmas. Nothing but interaction between all the dharmas and their various forms, which we call trees, birds, and people. And as these forms move through the earth, there's called breath, and blood and the various squishy organs and fluids and solids and so forth.

[13:40]

Although nothing is really solid, we call them solids because we compare them to liquids. Although a liquid is a kind of solid too. Air, oxygen, the atmosphere is also a kind of solid. We're actually, from one point of view, we're solid beings living in a solid state. Another point of view, we're empty beings living in an empty state. So both sides are so. But none of it has any self-nature or own being. They're just systems. which are related to each other. So as we walk through the atmosphere, the atmosphere fills our lungs. And breathing just takes place.

[14:42]

The blood runs through the veins. The thoughts come up by themselves. The hair grows. The nails grow. The eyes see, the ears hear, the tongue tastes, salt and sour. But there's no self in the things. And this is wonderful. But we feel insecure. This makes us feel very insecure, actually. Even, you know, we know this without telling it to ourselves. We feel it. We feel this insecurity. And then we try to figure out, well, what's going on here anyway? And the Buddhists come up with something, and the Christians come up with something, and the scientists come up with something to explain what's going on here. Dogen doesn't come up with something terrible.

[15:49]

Dogen is very original. But what he's saying is just basic So to carry this self, which is not a self, forward and realize the 10,000 dharmas is delusion. That the 10,000 dharmas advance and realize the self is enlightenment. That the 10,000 dharmas advance and realize the self. What does that mean? There is self in both passages. There is self. That the dharmas realize the self. So one way of looking at it is, when there's self, there's delusion. And when there's no self, there's no delusion. That's true. But delusion and enlightenment are two sides of one realization.

[16:56]

Because as long as there's this realm of delusion, There's no way to get out of delusion. This world is the world of duality. We live in the world of duality. There's no way to get out of it. So, we can all breathe a sigh of relief. Because this is our realm. This just happens to be the realm called this life. And it's the realm of duality and of illusion. and delusion. That's where we live. Things are not what they seem to be. They're not. Things seem to be solid, and yet they're not. Things seem to be real, and yet they're not. They are real. Things are real, but their reality is not what we recognize as reality.

[18:00]

Everything is real. The Buddhists went through this for centuries. What's real and what's not real? Discussing this problem. Are things real and aren't they? Are they not real? Are dharma's real and dharma's not real? But... Everything is real. I will say that everything is real because everything is unsubstantial. Everything is real, unsubstantial. That's what its reality is. But we tend to think a thing is real when it's substantial. We think its substantiality is its reality. That is part of reality, being substantial.

[19:07]

But the reality of a substantial thing is its non-substantiality. So the reality of a substantial thing is its non-substance. That's its reality. So all of us are real. But our reality is in our non-substantiality. But it's also in our substantiality. We're all substance. But this substance is elusive. Because the hair grows by itself. The nails grow by themselves. Everyone is getting older. No one is getting younger, except some of the older people are getting younger. But everything goes by itself.

[20:09]

Nothing is fixed. There's nothing fixed. There's only change. That's reality. The great reality. And everything exists within that reality, as real. that reality is elusive. So usually we're only concerned about the existence side of reality. That's what we're mostly fixed on. Because, and it's natural, as non-substantial selves, as formless selves, we are very concerned about our preservation.

[21:10]

And we eat in order to stay alive and we do various functions. We go to work and we form families and we have society. But our focus is on this side of reality. And we put all of our effort into this side of reality. And so it's a world of delusion because even though it looks like it's going someplace and we're doing something, we have a purpose in life. What is our purpose in life? We create various purposes, but they're short-lived because So we create short-term purposes that make us happy, which please us.

[22:22]

We try to do that. Some people just struggle for existence. Most people just struggle for existence. In America, in the Bay Area, in California, about careers and pleasure in life and, you know, try to create a real wonderful purpose in life, which falls short of the true purpose in life. But it's, you know, that's why California is called flaky and fatty and all these various things that people think you have to do, which make passing the time on Earth interesting. But there are a lot of people that are just struggling for existence. But whether it's one side or the other, there is a big problem, no matter where we are. There's a big problem.

[23:22]

Whether we're a billionaire or a poor person, it's still the same problem. We all have the same problem. The problem of birth and death. and enlightenment and delusion. So delusion and enlightenment are just two sides of the coin. And delusion, the delusory world is where we live, so enlightenment is not necessarily a better state. We think that if I have enlightenment, then I won't have any more problems, and I'll know everything, and life will be better for me. And I haven't said that's not true, but it doesn't get you outside of samsara. It doesn't get us outside of the problems of existence.

[24:26]

But it helps us to see, when we have enlightenment, we can see what the problem is. You know, what's the purpose of practice? What's the purpose of sitting sashimi? Why do we do this? Is it just another California Does it make us feel better? And a lot of people sit zazen because it makes them feel better, which is fine. But the purpose of studying ourself, studying Buddhadharma, sitting Sijin, is just to be able to see clearly. To see everything as it is. to be able to see the illusion and the delusion, to be able to see illusion as illusion, delusion as delusion, and emptiness as emptiness, and form as form.

[25:42]

That's all. And it's the first of the Eightfold Path, the first link on the Eightfold Path, to see clearly. So, Dongen says, to carry the self forward and realize the ten thousand dharmas is delusion. That the ten thousand dharmas advance and realize the self is enlightenment. So, another way of looking at this couplet is, when we actually put ourselves, the self, out into the world of delusion. This is turning Dharma. And that the 10,000 things advance and realize the Self is Dharma turning us.

[26:54]

In other words, to step out into the world and act, put our illusory self into the world is to turn the dharma, to make things work, to engage in life. We turn the dharma. And to allow the dharma to turn us is to be open to everything. So, Dogen has a very well-known statement, when to turn the dharma and to allow the dharma to turn us, this is what practice is. And when we turn the dharma, we are in the strong position and dharma is in the weak position. And when dharma turns us, dharma is in the strong position and we are in the weak position.

[27:59]

So, where we practice enlightenment is in the realm of delusion. And the realm of delusion is where enlightenment comes up. So, rather than try and get rid of delusion, we use the realm of delusion as a place to practice. That's the place where practice takes place, is the realm of delusion. We don't try to get rid of delusion. And enlightenment informs delusion. Then he says, it is Buddhas who enlighten delusion, and it is creatures who are deluded in enlightenment. It is Buddhas who enlighten delusion.

[29:05]

In other words, enlightenment is to be able to see clearly what is delusion. And within delusion, to lead an enlightened life. And it is creatures who are deluded in enlightenment. Within enlightenment, which is our true nature, is where delusion is. The delusion is right in the midst of our enlightenment. And this is just like, you know, the two of Toson's first positions, right within the realm of delusion, which is the realm of existence, is hidden.

[30:10]

Right within the light is hidden the dark, which is enlightenment. So within all of our activity, enlightenment is present. Within all of our delusive activity, enlightenment is present. and our enlightenment takes place in the realm of delusion. So it is Buddhists who enlighten delusion and it is creatures who are deluded in enlightenment. So it's like seeing through enlightenment or seeing through delusion without getting rid of it. And then he says, further, there are those who attain enlightenment above enlightenment, and there are those who are deluded within delusion. And Dogen also talks about Buddha going beyond Buddha.

[31:20]

He's always talking in this way, going beyond Buddha. He has a fascicle called Buddha going beyond Buddha. And he's always saying, Buddha must go beyond Buddha. Not get stuck in being Buddha. Not get stuck in enlightenment. Not getting stuck in one side. And he said that those further, and then there are those who are deluded within delusion. Being deluded within delusion means being completely enlightened. Deluded within delusion has the feeling of when there's nothing outside of delusion, then when there's nothing outside of delusion, it's enlightenment. So delusion within delusion is like saying the realm of non-duality.

[32:24]

Dogen is in a position, because he's always in the non-dual point of view, he can use delusion to mean enlightenment, and he can use enlightenment to mean delusion. He can use any word he wants to mean anything he wants it to mean. Whereas we're stuck in thinking words have to mean something, have to mean what they mean, or have to mean what we think they mean. But he'll take a word and use it in an opposite sense, because he's using it in a dualistic way. If you're using a word in a dualistic way, you can use any word you want to make it mean anything you want it to mean. Joshu, when asked if the dog has buddha nature, said mu, or he actually used Chinese, so he said wu. means no, but everybody knows the dog has buddha nature.

[33:31]

The monk who asked him knew that the dog had buddha nature, but he said no, because Joshu's Mu is a non-dualistic way of speaking, so he can say no. On another occasion, the monk said, does the dog have buddha nature? He said yes, So, Joshu's mu also includes its opposite. Joshu's yes also includes its opposite. But when we say no, we mean no as opposed to yes. And when we say yes, we mean yes as opposed to no. But Joshu's mu includes yes and no. So, in a dualistic sense, when you talk about samsara, you eliminate nirvana.

[34:41]

And when you talk about nirvana, you eliminate samsara. But in a non-dualistic way, when you say nirvana, you include samsara. When you say form, you include emptiness. When you say emptiness, you include form. So Dogon is always speaking in this way. So when he says, deluded within delusion, he means completely enlightened, because there's nothing outside of delusion. Delusion here includes its opposite. Isn't being self-conscious? No, it's not being self-conscious. Which seems to be saying being completely deluded.

[35:47]

Being one with your activity in the world. That's right. Being one with your activity in the world is to be completely deluded. That's different than being deluded without knowing that you're deluded. Or having a psychiatric delusion beyond our normal delusion. Right. That's different. It is different. It's not completely deluded. Yeah, it's not complete delusion. When I hear that, deluded within delusion, it sounds like completely ignorant within delusion. Sounds like it, yeah. But it's not the same as delusion, which is the opposite of enlightenment. This delusion has no opposite. It's completely deluded within delusion. If it was just delusion, then it would have an opposite of enlightenment. But this is delusion within delusion. So there's a special emphasis on within.

[36:50]

Why is it creatures then that are that and not Buddhas? Because creatures here implies Buddhas. It's very important that we understand that Buddhas and creatures Creatures are funny. Sentient beings is the usual translation. Ordinary people and Buddhas is the meaning, actually, for creatures. Dogen would never speak about ordinary beings without saying that they are also Buddhas, although he does tend to. Sometimes he criticizes people, but he also goes back and forth between ordinary and not ordinary, between duality and non-duality, even though all the time, even when he's talking about something in a dualistic sense, it's still enveloped within the non-dualistic rubric.

[38:06]

Do you think you're a Buddha or a creature? Who are you defending? Well, I just... because he's distinguishing, I mean, there's a point where you can just say any... you know, from that point of view, he could say anything that he wants and you could say, well, it's all the same. I mean, there's got to be some point where you can't just say, well, whatever word I say is okay because I'm speaking in the realm So that's why he's making clear distinctions between form and emptiness, between samsara and nirvana. These are all very clearly, actually what's being talked about here is the distinctions within the unity and the unity of the distinctions. So he's not leaving out distinctions. There's a difference, otherwise he wouldn't be saying those two different things.

[39:29]

What's the difference? The difference is that we're looking from the point of view of Buddhas, and we're looking from the point of view of ordinary creatures. So, looking at it from the point of view of Buddhas, you can say, there are those who attain enlightenment above enlightenment. He didn't say Buddhists, he just says, there are those. There are those who attain enlightenment above enlightenment. And so this is speaking from the point of view of enlightenment. Enlightenment from the point of view of enlightenment, which includes delusion. And then he's saying, and there are those who are deluded within delusion. So he's speaking from the point of view of enlightenment. He's speaking of enlightenment from the point of view of delusion. But if he uses dualistic terms, then you won't get it.

[40:33]

So you have to make a leap. You can say, there are those who are deluded within. Deluded within delusion. Creatures. Creatures who are deluded within delusion. This is using language non-dualistically. Because language is necessarily dualistic. That's what language is. So in order to express something in a non-dualistic way, you have to use ordinary language in a non-dualistic way. So you have to use a word that's dualistic to mean something non-dualistic, to stand for something that's non-dualistic, or to use a dualistic word in a non-dualistic way. Sounds crazy. It always brings up objections. Does the dog have Buddha nature? Move. But it does too! It always brings up your other side.

[41:38]

So it's those things you argue with right away that have a little flag on them. That's right. That's right. The thing that you argue with right away is that it should be a flag. So then he says, when Buddhas are truly Buddhas, one need not be aware of being Buddha. However, one is the realized Buddha and further advances in realizing Buddha. This is like Tozan's fifth position. This is like... He's not necessarily talking about ordinary people. He's talking about someone who has realization. When one is the realized Buddha. When Buddhas are truly Buddhas, one may not be... So, when someone... This is the position of someone who has realization through many years of practice and who's no longer concerned about it because existence, non-existence, birth and death, form and emptiness, the conditioned and the unconditioned,

[43:26]

are no longer a problem or a duality. And the person just goes about their business. There's no Buddha-sentient being duality. The Buddhas and sentient beings are not two, but they're not necessarily integrated in most of us. Our Buddha nature and our existence. So this is a person whose existence and Buddha nature are integrated in a non-dualistic way. no longer has anything to do, and whose life, whose expression of realization is compassion.

[44:45]

So, why did Dogen write that? Well, that's a good question. Should we ask Dogen? Short of asking Dogen. You mean, why did he write the whole thing, or why did he write this passage? How did he write? What's the impulse to do that? Well, I think his impulse was, in the first place, when Buddhism came to Japan from China. It was in Japan for quite a long time, but it became the property of the elite, of the aristocracy. And Doggen studied Tendai Buddhism, but he found it unsatisfactory. And so he had this question,

[45:58]

If everyone has the Buddha nature, if Buddha nature is intrinsic to everyone, why do we have to do anything? Why do we have to practice? That seems to have been his question. And he was rather a young man when he became a monk. He was about 13 or something. And he was very intelligent and very brilliant. And so he went to China with his teacher, one of his teachers, Myozen, to see if he could find some good teacher in China. So he felt that the Buddhism in Japan was just not on a high enough level to really be... He was a very critical person. So when he went to China, he had realization and he found a teacher and he brought Zen back to China, to Japan.

[47:09]

There was a little bit of Rinzai Zen in Japan, Eisai brought. And Eisai was, he studied with Eisai maybe for a little bit before he died. But Eisai's Zen was the first attempt to bring Zen into Japan. So when Dogen came back from China, he was actually still quite young. And he was burning with zeal for Zen. And he wanted to inform people. So he wrote a lot. And one reason he wrote a lot was because he wanted to express himself and let people know what he understood. And part of that was the fact that he had been brought up in a very literate society. And he was a person with extreme talent and wanted to express himself through that way. And most Zen teachers don't express themselves through writing.

[48:10]

But Dogen's writing, why it's so difficult to deal with, one reason is because most of it. But in the original, he writes in a non-dualistic way. And this is very unusual. Many Zen teachers will write poetry, or some a little bit, you know. But Dogen had this enormous talent where he could write stuff and express himself in a non-dualistic way. So Dogen's work is not informative. It's like listening to music or reading, you know, you go through it with him. You don't stand outside and study it. In Genjo Koan, you know, we can analyze it and study it, you know, but the real way to study

[49:14]

a fascicle of Dogen is just to go through it with him and not think, not get your thinking up. Because when you start getting your thinking up and challenging what he's saying, then you realize that you're not allowing yourself to go through the non-dual experience that Dogen is presenting. Well, is that right? Three pounds of flax. The oak tree in the garden.

[50:08]

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