warm for the class. I think all the different teachers do them slightly differently, but a lot of us like to sit for a few minutes just to arrive from your day at work or wherever you were and dinner digestion and all of that. So we'll just sit for a minute. Good evening, everyone.

[01:15]

Thank you to those of you who've come in 10 or 11 of us and for everyone online. First, I'm going to put my class coordinator hat on and just remind everyone that there is a fee for the class, if you will. And if you haven't already paid online, you can do that by going into the generosity team. You can also pay by check by sliding it through the the mailbox door that's in the laundry room. So thank you very much everyone online too for that. Nice to see all of you out there. Welcome. So for tonight's class, it's a little unusual one in a certain kind of way. All of the people who are leading the classes were all assigned a particular reading to work off of, to demonstrate surgeon's teaching and understanding. The one for tonight is Zenki.

[02:16]

It's a fascicle of Dogen. And Sojin didn't explicitly teach a lot of Dogen. He talked a lot about Genjo-Kaan and has edited a nice commentary about it that's in a three-way book of commentaries. And he always was alluding to Dogen's teaching. He didn't really talk about it a lot directly. And if he did, It wasn't so much in philosophical or abstract terms, it was much more in practical, ordinary kind of embodied terms. But this is one of the ones that's more philosophical. It was kind of daunting to take it on in a certain way, and as I have gotten into it and have kind of explored its overlaps with GGUI in Bendowa and a teaching some of us recently did with Shohako Okamura on Menzon's use of mine.

[03:20]

That really opened up Zenki for me. That said, I feel like I'm still digesting it. So I'm going to do the best I can to present what I know today and you'll I know that if I ever were to do this again in another two or three years, it would sound somewhat different. This will be in two parts. In the first half, I'm actually going to talk about Shoji. Shoji is the fascicle of Dogon's that is almost always paired with Senku. They're two sides of the same. I'm talking about birthlessness and deathlessness and the way in which that understanding is freeing. I wanted to also say, Mel talks so much about things in philosophical terms.

[04:26]

He was always kind of nudging us away from the ideas talked about form and emptiness, but he was really nudging us away from that kind of duality and into our lived experience, the place of intersection or a blending of the phenomenal of our lived lives and this kind of idealized Buddha experience, absolute experience, including all of it. It all is a part of one thing, and that is, I think, in these two teachings, The opening of the doors to that understanding. The idea is to transcend it by living naturally, unselfishly, and continuously in all of it. And he embodied those qualities in his teaching. That was his expression of spiritual freedom. At his most encouraging, I think, he could bring those two worlds together in a seamless, dynamic picture of life.

[05:27]

That's part of what was so happy about sitting in the Zendo with him. He lived his life in one piece. Not just one thing, but actually everything seemed to fit together. We kind of joked, those of us who were his students at the time, especially in our early and middle years of practicing, we kind of joked about he never seemed to be bothered by things because he didn't have the kinds of problems we had. That wasn't so. He had in his young life, in his middle years, all kinds of problems. And then I'm sure building a community, he had problems too. We just didn't see them. And he held them in a way that seemed problem-less. He really took it in as the inhalation and exhalation of the Buddhist life lived. Zenki, our main section for tonight, is translated to being full function or total dynamic function or total function.

[06:38]

It's Dogen Zenji's discussion about life and death being a manifestation of the motive force in each of us. Motive force meaning the conscious and unconscious, the karmic and vow in us. It's that manifestation. We're working up everything as a universal functioning within each of us. Shōji is literally translated as life and death. It's always paired with Zenki. Both are very short, short as fascicles, and the Shōban Gengs is the impression of masterworks of Dōgun Zenjus. I wanted to include both of them because it seemed easier to me, it's easier to me to understand the depth of Sojin's understanding and teaching, using both of these teachings as a reference. I feel like Soji kind of for understanding our own lives and having some understanding of Dogen's Buddhist way, Buddhist way of understanding our lives, it's easier to get what he means in his Anki.

[07:53]

So I hope that this is helpful. Let's talk about the cycles of birth and death. I should say one thing, I'm gonna talk about SOGI first. I timed it to be about 20 minutes maybe, we'll see. And then I'm gonna open it up for kind of questions, comments, and I'm really interested in everyone's thoughts and your thoughts about life in death, how you experience it, even in terms of what it's like to think about death, your experience of death, what Dogen's talking about here of transcending death. How real can that possibly be in a regular everyday kind of way? So both of these talk about the cycles of birth and death from a Buddhist perspective and the release from samsara into nirvana.

[08:57]

That is, a practitioner finds freedom in the midst of their own lived experience. That is, it's not really a freedom from the fear of dying exactly. We're still human beings. We're still going to have experiences. to act and be fully alive moment after moment in the trust that that contains everything about your life. So, Seeing One Thing Through has one very short entry on this topic. It was included in the PDFs that were sent your way. It's not at all for Osahagal, it's just kind of very straight ahead. Soji is speaking about his experience, but the more I looked at it, the more impressed I was by the depth of it. I'm going to read it at the end of, right before we open for questions. He gave many questions about Soji, and specifically by talking about Case 55, the Blue Cliff Record, Dao Wu's Alive or Dead,

[10:08]

I'll read that case too, but although there's not much in living by, there's not much in seeing one thing through that alludes to that. A lot of his, particularly in the past years, the last year or two of his life were. So he talks about birth and death frequently, and frequently in lectures over many years, speaking about it like breathing, like the coming alive, Inhalation is coming alive and the release of the exhalation is the letting go or the dying. So constantly breathing in, coming to life, letting go, dying. That's what our life is. There's emergence, there's manifestation, and then there's release or nonexistence.

[11:09]

Sojing would say it's like coming to life and extinguishing life. He also said that he would simply breathe until his last breath, when breath becomes air, that it would be that natural as his last breath because all his life he had been coming to life and leaving life. Shoji is like our Zazen. We open the hand of thought, just allowing sensations and thoughts to appear and disappear, rising and passing. The next thing becomes very natural. Very natural. Whatever happens is the natural of life, of one's own life, as natural as the breath. Sojin said that he always had raging emotions. emotions are always appearing and disappearing.

[12:14]

It's just that he didn't get caught by them. Just like the exhalation, emotions emerge, emotions pass. Allowing the next thing to come, a different moment is born. Release is necessary for the next moment to appear. Coming to life, and expiration or letting go or dying of the moment is the heart of Odogan's teaching on shoji. It relates to the cycles of samsara. So usually we think about samsara as transmigrating from the six realms. There are actually ten realms, but most of our lives are lived in the six realms. That's where most of us reside. The others are Arhats and Bodhisattvas and Buddhas and higher realms.

[13:16]

Those six realms are the hungry ghosts, the realm of Asuras or the fighting demons, the hell realms, the heavenly realm, the human realm, and the animal realm. And usually we think that we're in one realm and that's kind of the way it is. I have a tendency to be an anger type, so I'm kind of a fighting demon. That's how I used to think about it. But that's actually not Dogen's teaching, nor was it Sojin's understanding. We transmigrate not in the next lifetime or in that next year. We transmigrate moment to moment. One moment we may be an instinctual animal reacting. The next moment we may be relatively calm and present. Another moment we may be really fussing about something and fighting.

[14:18]

This is the transmigration moment to moment, breathing in, breathing out, letting go. It teaches us that in any moment we can change the direction of our karmic activity by how we direct our action. It doesn't take months or years to change from our place from one to another. It can happen in a moment, and it does. Sojin had a favorite quote. I think there was a time that he was working on forgiveness in my life, and he was lecturing a lot about that. I understand it was before my time here. And he liked to say, He liked to use this quote, when you hold on to ideas of people's mistakes, you participate in perpetuating them. So we can hold on to our ideas about our mistakes and who we are, and we can stay in whatever that realm is.

[15:27]

We can do the same for ideas about other people, and that can hold them in their realm, at least mentally, at least in our ideas about them, which can't. with them, which can't help but have an impact on what's happening. This was Sojin's idea of the transmigration. He'd say, when we aren't aware of our mind and emotions, we get pulled from one realm to the other. This is called living by karma and by our reactivity and our conditioning. When we see with the eye of practice, we can make a choice. That's living by vow. or our deepest intention, or a Buddha mind. You know, the great manner, you know, the Han, the wooden block that gets struck particularly in the Zendo to call people to practice at Tassajara. And it is in the Dokkasan hut still, I think, the original Han from Tassajara is still there.

[16:33]

It's also the subject of another one of Dovin's fascicles. that the great matter, don't waste time, wake up, has to do with, you know, you're going to die sometime, right? So you better put your nose to practice and get real about it. But actually, I think it's a little more subtle than that. To resolve this question about death, life, and death, about the deathlessness of life and the life of death, so to speak. That there is a continual change, a continual flow that naturally is a part of the other. Sojin used to talk about compost. He talked about how when Dwight Wei originally opened, the very first Zendo, had a big garden and he wanted to garden.

[17:37]

I don't think he had But he wanted to learn how to garden and he realized the most important thing about it was making compost. So he spent a lot of time watching and looking at how things decompose and made this really rich nutrient for other things to grow. And had, I think, this understanding in your hands, understanding about how death begets life. He did that across the way in the yard next door also for many years. So that is, our life is not fixed. And to realize that freedom within our life, even when life feels limited, is to recognize also the fluidity of our experience in Zazen. So again, in Zazen there's sensations, thoughts, emotions arise and we let them go.

[18:38]

not chasing them, the new things appear, are always appearing, rising and fastening in our Zazen, which I think, at least, I think is a foundation of this understanding that Dogen has. I think this is a direct understanding out of his Zazen that life and death naturally, expiration and inspiration coming coming and going naturally follow one another naturally interpenetrate each other can't in some ways be separated by from one another so i think i've said this again but i'll i'll say it again to make another point sojin never seemed to be bothered by things always created an air of ease about him it was just thought, you know, he's just another, he's just in another world.

[19:45]

Our lives aren't like that, or he isn't feeling things the way we do. He didn't get caught by ideas, his physical death. I feel he was able to see Buddha alive in his students, even if he didn't always see them as people. He saw saw them deeply enough that he didn't tend very often to get caught by them, at least not in his later years. That he saw the eventuality of his death, of the changes of the world, that it was expected that war would happen, that famine would happen, that catastrophes would happen. It was expected that there would be work for justice. but things just continually move like that. One thing gives rise to another thing under all the variety of conditions."

[20:53]

He said, it has to be okay if Berkeley Zen Center burns down tomorrow. Even the Berkeley Zen Center that he was a part of creating for over 60 years needed to change. because that's what life is. It goes on living. It goes on in response to the cycles who comes and goes. I was reading through this night and I was really touched by that. Berkeley's Ed Center is changing. It's changing in physical ways. The forms and the rituals and the way we do things have changed over the years and continue to evolve. The activities are different. I think his teaching was to expect this, and that he wouldn't have been the least bit bothered by it. He would have seen it as natural as exhaling and beginning again, manifesting what's real and what's really happening here.

[21:54]

He would say that the purpose of practice is the cycle of birth and death, but to, as the bodhisattvas that we're all aspiring to be as we practice together, to engage with it, to engage with samsara, to stay right here and be in the cycles of birth and death because that's where our work and as people committed to a spiritual way of life are and to find our ease and peace within the middle of it. There is no other place to be but within the body and mind and accept it all. Be the anger, he would say. Don't run away from anything. If you're leaving, go towards something. Don't run away. More than anything, he wanted us to step up and be ourselves in our life. His way of teaching was always to illuminate what we didn't see.

[23:00]

It was always to show us that this was not separate from that. but whatever we thought we saw so clearly contained the other thing that we didn't want to believe or didn't believe could be there. And then to hand that problem back to us, how to bring those things together. Dogen is saying in Shoji, and Sojin would say that our own life and death moment to moment and across our so-called lifetime is the life of Buddha. that it is Buddha's life, the life beyond the usual conception. I think this is the same thing as Suzuki Roshi's waterfall. I think most of you know that story. Suzuki Roshi was in Yosemite Valley, probably in a beautiful spring when the Merced River was particularly full. And it's flowing to the edge of a river cliff in Yosemite Valley.

[24:03]

rushing river tumbles over the side of the cliff and breaks up into a million different droplets as it falls. And then at the bottom, they all rejoin. That's like our life. Somewhere, somehow, emerging, manifesting, and we'll talk a little bit more about that, and Zenki, and then becoming one again. In Shoji, Jogen says, to seek Buddhahood outside of life and death is like pointing towards the south and expecting it to head to the north. Sojin would say that we can only live our life right here in this life we are living. If we try to practice outside of our life and death, we lose our way, just like the cart that's pulling the wrong way. And it's like plugging up our energy. At the end of his life, he was slowly losing his capacity.

[25:06]

He was having a hard time going outside of his home, and he decided that he would try, much to his consternation, he would actually try and take the walker and see if he went outside. He really didn't want to. And he took the walker, and he went about four houses down and around the corner. He insisted on going up kind of a steep little walkway around the block. And he got up, not even to that little hill, and he stopped. Plugs were wobbling a little bit. And he said, I'm going back. Back he went to his house, just barely made it up the stairs. And that was it. He never went outside again. He tried. He saw that that was what his life where he really was. He wasn't fussy, wasn't any agony, and he didn't put himself at any risk.

[26:10]

He stopped when it was time to stop. Later, he was up sitting on the couch in the living room, and he was up most of the day. sitting there you know instead of reading or playing his recorder or engaging some some things he looked really tired he didn't want to go back to the bedroom which was probably about 30 feet or so ago away 30 feet or so away because it was too much effort to do it he didn't like the idea of putting a hospital bed here in the living room this beautiful Where would it go? No, I would never want that. The next day, people arrive. There's a hospital bed in the living room. One thing gives way to another.

[27:15]

Dao Wu's condolence call is from case 55 of the Blue Crypt Record. And it was really a favorite koan of Sojin's. I think he taught it many times. It forms part of the content of Zenki, too. Monks, they're talking Dao Wu is the teacher and Zhui Yuan is the monk. And they're going to make a condolence call. Now this koan, you'll find it in many different forms. It has different middles and different endings, but the basic exchange is this. So they go to someone's home to go to a ceremony and make a condolence call, as priests do. So they get in there, family's not around, and Ji-Huan strikes the coffin and says, Alive or dead? Dao Wu says, I'm not alive, and I'm not saying dead.

[28:21]

Ji-Huan says, Why won't you say? I won't say. I won't say. That's it. Alive or dead. Which is it? In or out. Inhale it. Alive or dead. Thank you. And I wanted to end this section by reading Sojin's words. I am able to not hang on to anything. That's my secret. I believed my teacher when he said, don't get caught by anything. I really believed it. And then not only did I believe it, I started acting it out. To dwell on something. The news is what the news is.

[29:23]

My anger is what my anger is. That's all. I'm going to die. I'm on my way. What should I do? Worry about it? Everybody does this. Nobody escapes. Every single person that ever lived. What should I worry about? This is what I decided when I was young. I said I'm going to live my life all the way up to the end. And when it's time to go, I go. Experience at every moment, here we are. Next moment, we're not. This happens every moment, actually. Every moment, we're not here anymore. So that's what I... Soji, and then I wanted to stop and see what's come up for you as you've been...

[30:26]

hearing a little bit about Sojin's teaching of this fascicle and reflecting your own experiences of coming and going, coming to life, letting go. Your own experiences of dying and thinking about dying, or your experiences in your family. Excuse me, this is being recorded, right? Yes. Yeah, please. My question about not being caught and fully being where you are. And I think I'm curious if you could speak about like fully being our anger and also in a real way for me it's important to remember that there's like another side, like this deathless side, even when it's just like an idea that I'm caught with. or caught up by?

[31:28]

That like, oh, there's something beyond this and what's the role of remembering that in our lives? Yeah, I think that's a really important basis. I think that's a really important basis, basically. To be the anger doesn't mean to have a screaming fit at someone. To be the anger means to allow yourself to fully experience it. knowing that anger is just anger in two passes. It's just kind of a karmic coming together of experiences that lead this person to have a new response. So that's the absolute side. Does that actually address what you're saying or not? Kind of. I think what I'm hearing you say is like holding the whatever kind of realm we're in with like a sense of space like within the kind of broader context.

[32:43]

There's believing the anger to be something that's real. Or that's like me. That's me. That's right. This is my anger and I'm I'm angry at this because it's usually because I don't like it. But just to allow pure anger as a normal human emotion that comes up at times within you without personalizing it or projecting it. And so maybe the memory of, or that idea, there's another side to the thought that is more of part of the experience itself. yeah yeah to just allow the physical experience of being angry i think that's actually grounding it in the body it's really like breathing in and breathing out a really helpful way just to allow it to diffuse getting it caught in the mind is where it becomes a storyline and we reify it into the self but just allowing it to be if you will a physical sensation within the body or however

[33:52]

allows it to pass more easily and not get attached. Yeah, Hacks. One thing that came up for me in hearing you talk about this and even reading the section, when I was a child I used to have like a really skinny part of dying in my sleep. And it drove my parents crazy because I hated sleeping. And then I was just reflecting, like, several years ago, I was really dealing with intense anxiety, and I was really into counting my pulse. I was really into that. And I was experiencing this thing where I noticed, oh, when I'm inhaling, my pulse isn't increasing. That was actually kind of making me anxious. And then I noticed when I exhaled, it would slow down and that would actually kind of soothe me.

[34:57]

I was thinking about those two different times where actually the release, like when I was a child, that's what terrified me, this idea that death was terrifying. And then later as a younger adult, I don't know, I feel like I could approach as something not so potentially overwhelming and actually part of the soothing. Yeah, that's really a beautiful observation of just feeling the naturalness of the slowing on the exhale and just like almost pleasurable about that, unexpectedly so. I think connecting the exhale to death in this reading, it kind of made me, that's like what really brought up that particular experience really clearly. Oh, this releasing is actually kind of enjoyable.

[35:58]

Thank you. Who else? Yeah, Tara. One of the things you described, I find the idea of being able to say something like, if Berkeley's on a center or if a place in my life is important or a person in my life burns down and dies, then that's okay. in a way that I find kind of puzzling because when the really bad things happen and I've experienced a number of them and in the aftermath I'm often able to actually receive and be like bad things happen this is what's happening and actually move through it but it's when the thing has not actually happened that it was almost like a brick wall And so, like, I experienced anxiety around the house burning down and I'll leave and be like, oh, I can store a lot of houses and I'm so deeply not open with the possibility. I'm just curious what you'd say to that because I feel very far from being able to make this seem like that. Yeah. Well, it's, you know, it's just an idea, right?

[37:05]

It's a worry. It's an idea. And it's kind of born out of... one's anxieties. It's not just what's happened. It's just as you say, it's kind of the projection and the . And when it happens, when the earthquake hits and all these buildings go down, you know, that's just what it will be. Yeah. It seems to me like we're living and dying. I'm just paraphrasing you and our other teachers moment to moment. And our practice is to sit and observe that living and dying without grasping. And so my question... Even with enjoyment? Even with enjoyment. My question is that in that moment of acceptance and enjoyment,

[38:09]

how do we approach action? If we accept all things as rising and falling, how do we determine what am I going to do in this world? What am I going to do in this life? What is the right course of action? Where am I not struggling against something? To me, it's not always clear on my day to day. I think this teaching, I feel, is about things as they are, totally accepting things as they are. That doesn't mean that we don't want to take action to remediate the suffering that we see. But I think also the letting go into things as they are includes in it the realization that our ideas about what needs to be done are just our ideas.

[39:11]

They're going to be tainted by our point of view about things. And so it creates some space and openness about how to proceed. The more it's possible to open to accepting all of the circumstances as they are, I think the easier it is to actually know what's needed and to know how to respond. Does that help? Thank you. Anyone online? Raghav and... Wherever you are, speak. I think he'll come back. So maybe I should speak. We can see him. Anyone else out there? How did this land for you? What's come up for you about dealing with life and death? Can you hear Raghav?

[40:12]

Go ahead, Raghav. Can you hear me, Raishin? Rondi, is that you with your hand up? Can you hear me, Raishin? Can you hear us online? We may be muted. I can hear. I can hear. I don't know if they can hear us in the room. Our volume was not up high enough, thanks to one of the tech folks. Thank you, Joe, for figuring that out. All right. And I'm not a host, so I can't do a different view. Next time I make you co-host, maybe, if we can. Can you hear me now? Yeah, I can hear you just fine. Sorry for that frustration. I was really enjoying what you were saying, how you weaved everything in. And it struck me in the simplest way.

[41:18]

Like when you asked how we go beyond life and death. And you've been talking about it in the sense we go beyond life and death by not thinking about life and death. in a sense, we are being able to operate on thinking. And thinking too much sometimes can be unproductive, unhelpful. So the practice of Zazen shows us, at least briefly, uh maybe not do that because it's accessible or maybe at least do um um she was a way to step away from that and um and i think that's why it has high value or or uh um beings who think and you know who may be excessively doing that um that's what kind of came to my mind

[42:28]

Yeah, thank you for that. I think that's absolutely key. It's part of what those of us who have been teaching on body posture and breath really because I do think that's the freedom from the mind, unlocking the mind is coming into the body. Thank you. Rhonda, did you have your hand up or were you just gesturing to turn up the volume? No, just saying that I heard Raghav. Yeah, sorry. Hey. Jill. I'm wondering what is wrong with transmigration? If like things are just arising, causes and conditions, anger shows up because of XYZ and sadness shows up because of some loss or something. Um, um, hunger arises because I haven't eaten, you know, for a long time or something.

[43:35]

Um, uh, what, what is the problem of bouncing around between these worlds? It seems like we do it, like we don't, it's just part of life. It seems like, so I'm wondering what's, what, why is, um, samsara bad? Yeah. Yeah. Well, um, I'm sorry to give the impression that there's something more to say that that's our reality. We're always transmigrating. So not to get set on the idea that you're getting stuck in any of them, but to recognize these are all places that we're constantly visiting, and not to have any ideas about ourselves, about one or the other. We're going to move through them. And samsara is a requisite for being a bodhisattva. There's no way to practice unless you practice in samsara. To actually live a human experience and to know the realities of the human life, that's the soil of waking up.

[44:46]

It's said that the diva realms, you know, the heavenly and the heavenless realm, is actually not a good place to be. It's kind of like being in Hawaii on the beach all the time. You get lazy and you don't have to work it. I guess I'm wondering, like, I feel like part of the teachings, though, are that liberation is also possible, though, liberation from samsara, and it's like, about this, I don't know. As far as that, isn't it true that something else is also possible? Yes, we don't leave the human realm. But we can find freedom within it. This freedom is living in the world of samsara. That's pretty good, actually. It's being able to move within it and not be caught by it, even though at times it's difficult.

[45:50]

It doesn't take away the fact that at times there's anger, or grief, or sadness, or any of that. That's part of our . But we can learn to move through it and not be caught by it. I think we're at just about the halfway point. So maybe we'll take a five-minute break and the bell will be rung in five minutes. Please come back and we'll pick up our conversation with Zenki. Thanks very much for your attention and questions. So, you'd like me to just make sure it's off.

[47:36]

Some of them are really funny, but Garfield's gone. Mostly. Have you seen that other press, right? Yeah. But then when you were with the cat, he's talking to his head. That's like, I went to a stand-up comedy show. I lived in Boston in undergrad. And this guy was, the most shtick was like that he was depressed. And I was like, I don't want to laugh at this. I'm sorry. I don't know. I hope this is for you. You mean you just turn their suffering into their comedy? Yeah. I think sometimes when you're in that too, you know, not in a current way, you can find so much humor in it. Yeah. Lack that sort of bizarre things I've done. Chapter two points. Yeah. How do we do it while it's happening? How do we latch while it's happening? Another one. How do we cry while it's happening?

[48:55]

That's what I want to do. Taryn, do you want to see this great background? Of course, that answered Margot's question. Why are we even in the spots? Should I show this to you? You have to go. I just finally showed this to Margot as a response to their question. That may wind up in an email to everyone in the next class. Welcome back.

[50:52]

Thanks to all of you who are sticking it out. I'm going to move on to Zenki. I wrote this somewhere. So Zenki, Zen, in this case, means the entirety. And key means function. So this is usually translated as full function, or total dynamic function, or all, or total function. So how it all works. This was written by Dogen in 1243. And I wanted to mention that because when I realized when he wrote it, I thought it was actually really interesting.

[51:55]

He wrote it right before he moved from the outskirts of this temple that he had founded there, Koshohoranji, to Echise, where he eventually founded what became Eheji. I think the timing of this writing is important. He was moving from one thing, that which he had In Kyoto, the times were changing. The political realities were changing in that time. The political climate was one of instability and Rinzai Zen had come into being and was really taking a precedent in Kyoto. Dogen's writings and Dogen's teachings were really not well thought of. He was under some pressure. There was even some thoughts, some teaching, that his temple was actually burned, and that was part of why he left when he left.

[52:56]

So this was a time of hot that he was in, and he was going off to begin something anew. Also, focusing his practice, so at Kosho Horanji, it was somewhat of an open temple, there were lay practitioners, there were women practitioners. It was not just a monastic, like all men's temple kind of place, and he became more focused on a really concentrated kind of monastic practice as he was moving to ecchisa. So all of that was going on or about to go on. This is his thinking as that's happening. The opening lines of this this fascicle or paragraph. It's always true in the Shobhogenso fascicles of the very opening paragraph actually contain the entirety of what's being taught. So if you focus and pay attention to that, it will kind of reveal itself, maybe.

[54:04]

So this one starts, the great way of the Buddhas, where it is exhaustively investigated, is transcendent, is realization. This is pointing to the insight or experience from sitting that thought in our Zazen when we let go, dropping body and mind and opening to just this, this transcendent, is realization. Sojin said our question is not why, but what. What is an expression of here and now. Zazen opens us to what. moment after moment. So going back to the opening paragraph, the great way of the Buddhas where it is exhaustively investigated is transcendent, is realization. This means life transcends life and death transcends death.

[55:04]

Therefore there is leaving life and death and entering life and death. It kind of sounds like it's garbled, doesn't it? It's quintessential doga, using the paradox of words and turning them on their head, a way that doesn't seem to fit to break our usual ways of thinking in the world. So here, life means the universal life. I like to use a capital L of life. Universal life, but absolute Actually, the life, the whole organism of this planet and this world, unlimited by space and time, everything that's come before, everything that is unfolding now, everything, everywhere. A world beyond the wall of our conceptions. That is the life that transcends life and death. It's a cycle.

[56:07]

It's an ongoing cycle. It's an ongoing arising and passing of all things, moment by moment, life and death, breath and exhalation. And in saying there's leaving life and death and entering life and death, that's leaving our ideas about life and death and fully entering into life and death and Dogen's understanding. of the continuousness of life throughout life and death and being unlimited in our view or experience of this life, the world of life, if you will. I think part of Sojin's brilliance as a teacher is that he understood this pith of Dogen's teaching Again, he didn't really talk in the abstract or really talk so much about these kinds of words in Dogen, but he actually deeply understood them.

[57:16]

He never got hung up in enlightenment or absolute as any kind of endpoint. There was a transcendence of that. It was a light mention. The practice isn't to transcend the difficulty, but to live everything, including everything. life in death is a manifestation of life. He included both, both the individual and the big life in the expression of the moment and in seeing his students. And although he acknowledged the helpfulness and maybe even the necessity, I don't think he necessarily said that in public because he really didn't recall, of experiencing reality beyond our usual way of think of perceiving, maybe a so-called experience of emptiness. He never directly pushed towards that or emphasized it or considered it more than an encouragement or an accident.

[58:18]

He understood that we live in both worlds, Buddha mind and all mind. And it isn't that we're sometimes Buddha and sometimes we're deluded. It's that we're always both. We're always both. They aren't like a light switch or day and night. It's all one or the other. He taught instead that big mind, if you will, contains our usual ways of thinking, our ordinary small mind, which is actually an expression of big mind. It's one of the manifestations of big mind that you can't remove it. This is a very, very important and fundamental teaching of Dogen and fundamental the Sojin's understanding to be taught. Use all the paper rattling wherever you are. Being a Buddha or Buddha mind is not a place we go to outside of ourselves.

[59:26]

It's not like someday we'll be a Buddha. when we rid ourselves of our three poisonous states of mind, but when we be the anger without taking on the anger, Buddha is all right there. And it's true that when we're angry, and it's also true that when we get angry, as opposed to feel anger, we are generating a lot of not so great karma. That's what Sojin highlights when he quotes Waddell when they say all dharmas, small d dharmas, that is, things including mind states, beings, emotions, in the universe are the Buddha Dharma. The Buddha Dharma, the total reality of everything, is clearly in all things. You can't separate them out. Dogen had a great deal of faith in this, kind of a deep experience of this, and so did Sojin. More than anything, he had a real confidence in things as they are and life as it is as a completion of the Buddha Dharma.

[60:36]

And I think that's why he wanted to live so freely in his life and respond to us so freely in our exchanges with him. As Sojin says, the Buddha Dharma of the small dharmas is their reality. This teaching is described in the Lotus Sutra, which is a Tendai text which was foundational of the young monk Dogen before he went to China. And that teaching is called the Ten Suchnesses. Each being, each of us, have the ten suchnesses. that's our form, our physical form, our nature, kind of our, if you will, our personality, our embodiment of how we move in the world, our function, maybe what we do, our energy, you know, the kind of force or vitality we have it, the effects generated through cause and effects, so called the primary effects,

[61:50]

and the circumstance and recompense, that is the latent effect and the manifest effect dependent upon circumstances than our own individual actions. And together this makes a complete fundamental whole. I think that is to say this is an expression of the total dynamic working of things within our individual lives. of us is our own universe. He's saying that we are each our own complete expression of the Buddha Dharma. That's our ten suchnesses. And this expression is formed by and a part of the whole of the Buddha Dharma. Although we live our lives in these five skandhas, expression, function, and shape by circumstance, we are not separate from the total functioning of the whole. In fact, according to Buddhist teachings, we are completely apart and inseparable of it.

[62:54]

And because we can only act from where we are in this moment, in that way each of us is the center of the universe right where we are. That is, although we are individuals, we as individuals are not the center of the universe. We manifest universal activity in each moment. And that is the center of the universe in that moment. In this way, we're each the center of the universe. For example, right now I'm sitting here and talking, and I have the responsibility of trying to say something about Sojin's teaching. It is my whole universe and all of you are in it. as are all of your experiences in this universe, all of Sojin's lifetime of experiences, etc., etc. But only I can act out of this body and mind right now, the center of this universe."

[64:04]

Sojin didn't talk this way, really. Well, he did from the front seat, but his expression was really, he was called ordinary. of the Abbots at San Francisco Zen Center, they all get labels for certain qualities, appreciated for his ordinariness. With students, he would hang out with students, and he'd really do whatever they needed. Whatever they did, he would join them. He played music, he played music. If they walked dogs, he would walk dogs. So I would walk with a dog with them. One time, we hadn't been dog walking very often. One dog, one time I was meeting him out at Point Isabel, and you may know they're two different places to drive at and park, and I couldn't find him. So I was walking around, and I was looking, looking, looking, looking for him. Across at a distance, I don't know, more than a hundred yards away, I saw this funny little man with a pot belly and a booty.

[65:10]

He just looked so... like any other body man with a pot belly. But he just looked at his body. Then I got my attention. It was Sojan. He was just so naturally in his place. The whole universe was really just right there with him. He was just so himself. So, Kikan, which is described in by Sojin and in this fascicle, is the motive force of each of our lives. It's the unique expression that we make moment after moment. Zenki is the universal activity that is expressed in this moment, everywhere, by everything. So when Joshu answers Mu to the question about the dog's Buddha nature, he's saying in essence, of course,

[66:12]

Of course, there is a total dynamic functioning at all times in that dog or monk, however you read the koan. It's neither dog nor not dog. It's neither Buddha nor not Buddha. They are completely each other. The moon, one side is illuminated, the other side is dark, but it's all one thing. This is where Shoji and Zenki point towards each other. Birth and death are happening on each moment. Birth can't happen without death. It inevitably follows birth. He says, emptiness in this sense is the space in which something can happen. that allows the possibility of whatever is going to happen to happen.

[67:14]

That each thing is not just itself, but invariably contains everything else. This is necessary for new manifestation to occur. Manifestation is a word he uses to both express birth and death in the relationship. It's very close, I think, to the activity of the total dynamic working relationship. Dogen says emancipation means that life emancipates life and death. This total dynamic working, this universal activity frees life and death. They become one thing. That is, it doesn't stay as a fixed and as such there's always movement, always change. Life is always manifesting. This is a key point in the Buddha Dharma and Dogen's Zen. that one is immersed in birth and death and doesn't leave birth and death.

[68:16]

There is no other place for a bodhisattva to live other than the svahal world of samsara or the suffering of impermanence. We are made of impermanence. To be in the flow of life is to be alive. To show up completely to it is bodhisattva's worth. Whenever you knocked on the door, he always said, hi. He was always looking to teach. He always had an eye to what people were doing. Always engaged in both suffering and awakening in our lives, in each of his students. Dogen says, when the great way is realized, it is nothing but life's total realization. Nothing but death's total realization. This dynamic working readily brings about life and readily brings about death. It is not necessarily limited or unlimited.

[69:21]

It echoes of Genjo Poan, right? It's whatever the size is, whatever the activity is, it's exactly the right thing for whatever that activity is. It is what it is, whatever present situation or happening, It just fits just right into that moment. So those who would say this is in harmony, like the milk and water of being students together, or like water following its natural course. He's pointing to each moment being complete by itself, everything leaving nothing out. Kind of a corollary to that, he would talk about virtue and worth. In the normal paradigm of our ordinary, usual lives, we talk about value or worth, the relative importance, cost, meaning of things.

[70:26]

But in Dogen's world, in Sojin's world, with how he handled things, how he handled people for the most part, there was virtue. virtue, and our virtue is all equal. There is not someone who's better or worse, someone no matter what their form was as a student. Everyone has their own virtue. Virtue in the Buddha Dharma, we live in the world of virtue. Everything's essential. We can't leave anything out. Each being, each Each happening is all essential to the functioning of this moment. And each Dharma has the same virtues as every other. No comparison, no competing. It's all complete, whole and essential and of itself.

[71:28]

To say again, Dogen was described as ordinary. That's because he just was a complete confidence He had complete confidence in his life, wherever it was, as being in the right place. And he often would tell us to find our place right where we were. He also had complete confidence in our completeness. I think that's why he was such a respected teacher. Sojun says, when we sit zazen, we manifest the great matter. The manifestation of life is inseparable from birth and death. That is the total reality of doge, the other side of birth and death, manifestation moment after moment.

[72:29]

An example of that, of that total dynamic functioning just as it should, everyone taking their place. There was a machine probably over 20 years ago. It was a five day, back in the days where we would have 50 or 60 people in the Zendo, if you can imagine. And it was time to have breakfast. Yeah, the Zendo. There's the people on the upper tawn, and then there'd be a roll of zabutons below the upper tawn, as well as the roll of zabutons across the way. So the serving tables couldn't fit in there. They were off the back porch in the yard, and there was only the head server who was there directing traffic, and the servers would come in their pots and serve everything. And this particular sushine, there was someone who was assigned to be a server. who was kind of someone who came periodically to the community over many years and never really engaged, but kind of didn't know how to, but kind of didn't know how, kind of an awkward older fellow.

[73:42]

And he was put on the serving crew for the first time, really competent head server. So they come in with a polenta, six big, big pots of polenta. First pot comes in, goes over to the abbot side, second pot comes in, the other time, third pot comes in, it's this fella, and he trips and spills the polenta all over the floor in the bath, right by the doorway. You can barely get in without stepping the polenta. without any break in action of other pots coming in and people being served. Other servers went to the kitchen, got the mops, got the towels, wiped it all up, and the meal just went on as if nothing had happened. Everyone in the place performed their function. I mean, we could have played it out another way and it still would have been zinky, but I think it's a wonderful example of

[74:49]

people just filling their function in the moment of changing circumstances without having to be told what to do. They just saw and they did. I think we have not quite 12 or 13 minutes left. So this really gets us only about two-thirds through this teaching of Zenki, but I felt like this was complicated. that I would stop at this point. Maybe you'll hear about this in some other venue in another way. This teaching of Zenki has echoes of Genjo Koan. Actualizing the fundamental point is another dimension of this. Ellen and Carol will be teaching that next week. Maybe at some point they're going to be teaching that in two weeks for the fourth class. So I won't say much about how this fascicle and that relate to each other.

[75:55]

But I'll instead stop and ask what, if anything, comes up for you about what you've heard about this section, your own experience of the unfolding of things as they are, the total dynamic working of things in your life or around you, or anything else that came up about this. I don't remember exactly the context you said this, but I wrote it down. But you said, get angry. And it was sort of put in opposition to feeling angry. Yeah, just being the anger, just experiencing this within your body is really different than kind of revving it up and getting angry.

[77:06]

Yeah, it really struck me that that word get, it made me think of cleaning. Yeah. And that for me, when I'm getting angry, That's when I might raise my voice or want to throw something or all those things. And yet it has to do with that. It's like a holding. That's right. It's a holding on. And that's what actually generates the activity, the karmic activity. Getting, having, experiencing anger is just a human emotion. But getting angry is something extra. Thank you. Anyone else here? Yeah, Tara. The story about the polenta, I feel like a miniature version of that happened in my classroom today. Very first class, the day that I was teaching, before we started, I walked by my table, I put my coffee cup closer to my computer than I normally do for various reasons.

[78:14]

He bumps the table, coffee pours directly into the laptop keyboard. It happened like five or six years ago, not quite the same thing. I remember I was so distressed and I was upset and the whole rest of the day I was like in this kind of panic. And it was like what you were describing. Kids jumped up and ran off the door without me noticing. We had paper towels, other kids moved things that went and shouldn't have been. I turned off the computer, flipped it upside down, and then within like two or three minutes we went on to the class. Wow. And I just had this tented computer on my table for the rest of the day. And it was able, I think, from years of practice to be able to be like yeah I might be broken and it's just there and it's still sitting on my desk upside down but it was and I hadn't really thought about the role of the kids as much but like there were two sets of paper towels on my desk within a minute from various places in the school they just weren't. It was very cool. Very cool.

[79:18]

Oh, good. Welcome back, Ellen. Thank you. I don't have very much of a voice. But I actually couldn't hear Taryn's question, but if she already asked this, you know, that's fine. And this is exactly the same question I asked you the last time you told this story. But my question is, you know, you express a lot of preference for that the polenta got cleaned up. Is that just a preference or is that better? And the Buddha Dharma, it's not good or bad, better or not better. It's just, it wouldn't have been much of an example, I think, if people have just walked through it and kind of gone on or got really upset and everything stopped and we missed a period of zazen. I could have told that story too, but it wouldn't have... in the same way as the story is after.

[80:22]

I think it would have. I appreciate you pushing me in that direction. I really do. I'll try that variation on it next time I do. Yeah, try that one. The fundamental question I'm asking is, sometimes... this practice seems idealized? Well, you know, I really take that. I understand and I do think one of the things that I want to say is that things just happen. You know, I've talked a lot about things falling apart, burning down, war and bombs dropping and all of that as being part of this. If there's just the coming and going and manifestation, it's manifestation after manifestation. Believe, though, also, that our ability to respond on those situations and to take it in, to not get wigged out that your class is going to maybe be behind and you're out $700 because your computer keyboard is broken.

[81:38]

that's maybe not the idealized, but that's also an experience that's very real that's a part of this. It doesn't mean that bad crummy things don't happen. It means that we find a way to respond to them in which we don't suffer so much and we can deal. Okay. What do you think? Well, you know, I guess I really... think that if we're going to embrace life, you know, there are going to be times when we don't respond that way. And also when we, you know, when we act out, you know, get angry or any of those things. And yeah, I guess I just feel those have to be included when we feel, when we suffer, I guess when we suffer. Yeah. I, I totally, I totally agree with you about that. And I, when we talk about Sojin never getting caught sort of, It sounds so much better than the way we are.

[82:43]

Yeah, and of course he got caught at times, right? I very subtly put in, mainly, or mostly, or in a few of those instances, and I knew him in the last 25 years of his life. I didn't know him earlier. There's a different story there. But it's the fruit of practice, and the teaching's supposed to be a little encouraging. But I will work on it, Ellen. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Yeah. Jeremiah, did you want to say something? I don't know exactly what I want to say, but when Ellen was talking, it made me think of, I was listening to someone talk about, maybe instead of the word accept, you used the word welcome, because you could welcome everything, but then go, maybe not that. Do you know what I mean? You could welcome the polenta being everywhere, but maybe we don't want the polenta there.

[83:46]

You don't have to accept the polenta being on the floor. You could welcome it being on the floor, and then you can clean it up. Yeah, I agree with that. I'll tell you why. I think no matter what happens, our practice is to accept the fact that it has happened. We may not like it. I think welcoming is kind of the same thing. I don't want to welcome the Lent on the floor. My use of the words. But we have to accept it, and then we can figure out what to do with it. It's a cooler word. Rioshin Kabir has his hand up. Hi, Kabir. Hi, Kabir. Hi. What about composure? Sojan often talked about it, and he gave a really good talk about composure. Yeah, please tell us something about it. What he described was a container that holds hot iron, melting iron.

[84:58]

The container holds it. So that container is sort of like us. And over time, you know, we build it. And who knows what gets poured in there and what comes out. But I think just having that container. And sometimes we do lose composure. But even in the midst of losing it, acknowledging that, yes, I'm losing it. As a moment of anger, a rage. Yes, I am losing it. Just acknowledging that. So much accepting it. Because then if you're trying to accept it, then there's pressure that you have to. So you're acknowledging, seeing it, see as is. Uh-huh. I take your point. I think in the way I understand it,

[85:58]

accept in a Buddhist way I think it's probably close to what what you're saying like just it really is happening it really has happened I may not want to look at the fact that I just lost it on my neighbor about something I was really upset about but I have to accept that that happened and then I deal with myself and I can deal with the situation that way yeah the man who was hanging from these tree roots where there's a tiger down below and one on top and he tasted the strawberries. Yeah, yeah, like that. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. For Oma, we have time for one more, probably. If anyone else wants to say something, a closing word, an insight to share. That's a good question, and I'm kind of hoping that it makes sense that it might not. But I think you were kind of talking about to paraphrase small self and big self are just one experience, or that it's all part of the same thing.

[87:20]

believe or trust because I trust the teachings, but have the felt experience that those two things feel very different. And I sometimes wonder if it's like a carrot, but at some point if they're both together or is it just to like really see that even though like maybe another example of the same question would be like moving through different states of samsara are all just part of big self I know that they feel different yeah I think it's the Trust, you know, it's avoiding the second arrow. When we do things that we don't feel so good about or are difficult, often we then judge it or regret it.

[88:23]

No, regret's not necessarily a bad thing, but we hold on to it and we reify it. We reify it. We make it into a self and something that we, who we are. To just accept it as something that arises and we all have different different ones of these to arise more often. That's just the nature, the form of you in that moment, but that it moves, that it changes, that it is really part of the Buddha Dharma, capital BD, I think is the thing. So the longer we practice and experience life, both I think are important, there's more of a kind of forgiving oneself and just moving on to the next thing with some insight and commitment to wake up, to do better, to live my vow. Does that help?

[89:26]

I think we're at time. And so I think tonight we're going to do the clunk and do the four vows once to end. Beings are numberless, I vow to awaken with them. Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to end them. Dharma gates are bound, I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable, I vow to become it. Thank you, everyone. See you next week online. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Bye.

[90:26]

Thanks to everyone online and elsewhere who made this class happen. We really appreciate everyone's efforts. Thank you.

[90:36]

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