Welcome and thank you all for being here. This is really great. The Zen Do has been full mornings and afternoons and full class and full class online. Welcome to everyone online. So it's practice period. You can tell and it's lovely. So the class will be on Dogen's fascicle Genjo Koan and I want to tell you a little bit about the structure of the class and what we'll be doing. This is not to teach so much about genjo koan, but to deepen your practice with genjo koan. So it very much has that focus. The genjo koan is fairly short. It's the last chant in the book. It starts on page 21. It's dense. It's very poetic, it's very philosophical, and it's fairly difficult.

[01:01]

So, and there are a number of translations of it, a number of really good translations and commentaries, and they do not all agree, as you could guess, because there's more than one. Otherwise, if it covered the whole thing, they wouldn't have more. They have different shadings, and that makes a lot of sense because, you know, For each translator, for each commentator, they're coming through their own filters, their own background, their language, their culture, their when they lived, where they lived, their view of the world, and their intention. Like, why are they talking about this at this time? What are they hoping to convey? So, we'll be going over some of different translations, but it's mostly about how do you understand this? What's the sense that you make of it? How can this support your practice?

[02:05]

So how do you want to orient you? How to enact, as Dogen says, practice realization or practice verification. How will you manifest that? What does that look like in your life? We're not living in a monastery. We're all living in one way or another in the world. So how does that come into your daily life and not just in Zaza? That was very much Dogen's intention, was that we manifest this throughout our lives, not just on the cushion. So that part of that is a wider or more expansive way of relating to practice overall. And in the The one-day sit we just had on Saturday, I was inviting you to consider different ways that you could engage more deeply in practice without adding something extra, but just to bring a mind of practice into daily life. That's what happens in the monastery, because people in India didn't have to work.

[03:17]

They were prohibited from working as monks. But in China, that structure didn't work the same way. So since they needed to work to support themselves, to grow food, to cook the food, to take care of the monastery, they actually made work a part of practice. I think particularly today, many of us would find it a lot easier to have a mind of practice in more repetitive, silent tasks. Many of our lives are not like that. So again, How do we bring that mind? How will you bring that mind? So that will be the ongoing theme. What does this mean for you? How does this teaching apply to my practice, my life? This is very much an all-levels class. There are very senior students here. There are people who have taught on the Genjo Kawan and studied it deeply.

[04:21]

And there are people who barely know who Dogen is, may not have read Genjo Koan. So those of you who have more understanding, please share your understanding. You are warmly invited. And we'll do breakout groups every week. So please also share that in the breakout groups. Because if it happens to be a breakout group with lots of people who are very new, they may not know where to begin. It's like, okay, I hear the words. I don't know what to do with that. But this is very much a co-created class. We're doing this together. We're arousing the mind of practice together. And if you're newer to practice or Dogen or Genja Koan, maybe you don't have a lot to say, but you can ask questions. You can ask questions in small groups. You can ask questions in the group. Which reminds me, please ask questions as you have them. Don't wait until the end when the question's kind of gone colder, it's not so relevant anymore.

[05:28]

Especially if it's a clarifying question, you don't understand something, just put your hand up, I'll finish my thought, and then we'll go there, because the dialogue is alive. I wanted to say in terms of questions, Often people have a fear of asking dumb questions, like asking something they think everybody knows. There really are no dumb questions. And many of the questions that I've been asked in a teaching role that have been the most challenging have been from people who are very new to practice because they're not using the vocabulary that I've become accustomed to or they're asking like really basic questions and it makes me really think about how to convey that. So however your question arises, do it. And I hope you will come away from the class with more questions than you had coming in, that you will deepen your questioning mind and deepen your curiosity.

[06:42]

Actually, in practice and in many things, the questions can be more interesting than the answers. Because an answer can kind of like, in a way, kind of shut the door on further inquiry. But the questions can keep things very much alive over time. So, as I said, many of you are, I think, fairly familiar with Dogen. So... I'm not going to go into much about Dogen. I will bring up factors of his biography that are relevant to the text when they are relevant, like certain images or something. It's like, oh, this probably came from this in his life. But I do suggest that you read something about Dogen, who's very interesting. He was born in 1200 and... He lived until 1253, so medieval Japan.

[07:45]

And it was a very interesting and difficult time, very much like ours is today, a lot of war and distress and upheaval. And he was well known in his time and for a few generations after that. And then because Dogen is difficult, it went out of... so much awareness for hundreds of years and then came back into awareness within Japan and then also in the West because of the Japanese teachers coming here. So today he's regarded as one of the truly great philosophical and spiritual minds and writers. So that's a little bit. You can find out biographical information on Dogen in a gazillion places. Wikipedia is not bad. Not great, not bad. It will give you the basic outline. Most books that are about Dogen will include something, and usually a fair amount, and well-written.

[08:51]

And I'll just mention the books that I'm referencing during this. So here's Dogen's Genjo Koan. Three commentaries is how you would identify that one. The new one that came out, Meeting the Myriad Things by Shinshu Roberts, and she will be leading the class on our last session, and that will be basically Q&A. So after you've accumulated more things that you would like to ask, here's somebody who really knows a lot. And Realizing Genjo Koan by Shohaku Ukamura. There are more, but these are the ones that I've been using and find. find the most helpful. One of the reasons that I, besides the fact that it's a new book, I wanted to use Shinshu's book, Meeting the Buried Things, is because part of her intention in writing it was specifically to keep asking herself the question, how does this teaching apply to our practice in life?

[10:03]

So she was always doing it with that kind of a lens. And besides books, there are literally innumerable Dharma talks, transcriptions, articles, writings available online. I've recently been enjoying listening to Norman Fisher, who's been talking about Gensho Koan. It's on the Everyday Zen site. But there's a ton. And you can see what approach resonates for you. And I sent out the six translations. And we'll be using the version, we'll be mostly referencing the version in our chant book, but you're welcome to also reference the other ones if you're doing more of that. I also want to encourage you, give you strong encouragement, actually, to memorize part of the Genjo Koan. You can memorize the whole thing, but to memorize at least a small part of it.

[11:08]

I think the first part of section one, which we'll be chanting in a few minutes, the opening lines and then the ending, you know, the opening paragraph and then the last paragraph of part one, you know, to study the Buddha way is to study the self are great ones. So why memorize? It is a way of engaging deeply and differently with the text than just reading. If you're memorizing, you're really spending time with the words. It settles into the body in a different way. I memorized it when I was a shuso in a practice period at Tassajara. So we studied it for three months. And we were invited to memorize it. And I felt like if I'm the shuso, I should memorize it. And what was amazing was that my mouth knew it even when my mind didn't. like that pattern of muscle memory, like when you're playing piano and you don't quite know the notes, but your fingers are kind of going in the right direction.

[12:18]

So I could just kind of start going and then figure out what the words were from what my mouth wanted to do. So it was accessible to me. It is still, 20 years later, accessible to me in a very deep way. And that has been, so it's become a part of me. just over time, just by having that repetition. The same way if you come here to practice in person, then the Heart Sutra will be deeply embedded within you just through chanting it. Mostly I'd like to start, so that's general orientation class, and I'd like to start with chanting. So let's open to page 21, and we're going to just chant section one.

[13:21]

Actually, why don't we chant the whole thing just for fun? We'll have a schedule so far. No, oh, sorry. Let's just chant section one. I always look down around this time, and I think... Oh, we just started, and I forget we start at 7.15. And we'll go until 8.30. Okay. So. Genjo koa. As all things are buddha dharma, there is to wish and I have beautiful asceticism. Practice and work and that. And there are buddhas and thanks to the beings. As the myriad things are allowed in the body to spell, there is no delusion, no utilization, no Buddha, no subject beings, no birth and death. The Buddha maybe is basically eating clear of plenty and the wine.

[14:25]

Thus there are birth and death, delusion and realization, subject beings and Buddhists. Yet in attachment blossoms fall, and in erosion weeds spread it. To carry yourself forward and experience the immediate things is delusion. Magnific things come forth and experience themselves is awakening. But those who might break the realization of delusion are delusions. For those who are greatly deluded without realization are sentient beings. For the very narrow are those who continue realizing beyond realization, who are in delusion throughout delusion. When the dust starts to read with us, they do not necessarily notice the payoff of the dust. However they are actualized with us, we go on actualizing with us.

[15:31]

When you see forms or hear sounds fully engaging body and mind, you grasp things directly. Unlike things and their reflections in the air, unlike the moon and its reflection in the water, when one side is illuminated, the other side is dark. To study the world is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and eye as well as the bodies and eyes of others drop away. No trace of realization remains, and this no trace continues endlessly. So Dogen's own disciple, Sene, wrote a commentary on Genjo Koan referred to as the Gosho.

[16:48]

It has a longer Japanese title, but it's generally referred to as Gosho. And in it, Sene writes... So I just want to say that... Sene, because he was Dogen's disciple, got to hear Dogen in many different contexts for a long period of time. So he got the context that wasn't just looking at one fascicle at a time. And he got to practice side by side with him for a number of years. And also in Gosho, Sene's disciple, Kogyo, also wrote a commentary. And I'm unclear how closely Dogen and Kogyo practice together, I think somewhat. So Sene writes, the word Genjo Koan can be used with any term. Therefore, the title of each of the 75 chapters or fascicles of Shogo Genzo, Dogen's life work, can be called Genjo Koan.

[17:53]

So we're just going to talk about the word, Genjo Koan tonight. I used to think this was ridiculous. Now I totally understand why. I said, why are we getting through this? But there is so much packed into that, and particularly, like you can put Genjo Koan Mountains and River Sutra, Genjo Koan Buddha Sutra, Genjo Koan Fugansasengi. So, and Dogen placed the fascicle Genjo Koan first in his own collections. There are different collections of the Shobo Genzo. The ones that Dogen did all begin with Genjo Koan. He felt that that was so central. In Zen, often Zen teachers would have like one phrase or one gesture that they would use very consistently. If there was one finger butte,

[18:56]

He would just, like any question, he would respond like this. You know, just this is it. You know, all these different sayings. And for Dogen, it was Genja Kalan. He said a lot of other things too, but that was the one that he kept coming back to. And he wrote it when he was just 33, which is pretty amazing. It was pretty early in his teaching time. It was maybe the third thing that he wrote. So in other Shobo Genzo collection, treasury of the true Dharma eye, if it's done chronologically, it would be third. Jonathan, could you make it the gallery view, not me? Thank you. I have a question. Yes. As you know, .

[19:56]

A fascicle, you could say it's a chapter or an essay. Probably essay is the more usual. But for whatever reason, it's called a fascicle in this context. Any other questions? That's what I thought I was doing. I'll just go on. So Sene, the disciple, defines gen. So it's four characters. It's four kanji, four characters, genjo and kawang. So gen, Sene defines as manifestation and jo as to become, as in to become a Buddha. So from Sene, So Senai says, every fascicle, every chapter, every essay can be understood as instruction on manifesting Buddha nature through Bodhisattva practice.

[21:03]

Instruction on manifesting Buddha nature through Bodhisattva practice. And each one of these fascicles of these essays is coming from a different point of view. It's talking about mountains and rivers, or... how the tenzo, the head cook, takes care of the practice, takes care of the kitchen. So each one of these is a window into how this manifests. So I'm going to do a little sort of collage, verbal collage, of the different translators, I'm sorry, the different commentators sense of Genjo Koan, which is really great to just go from one to the next. So I'm going to start with Suzuki Roshi. The secret of all the teachings of Buddhism is how to live in each moment, how to obtain absolute freedom moment after moment.

[22:18]

This is the theme of Genjo Koan. Moment after moment, we exist in interdependency with past and future and all existence. In short, if you practice zazen, concentrating on your breathing, moment after moment, you will be keeping the precepts, helping yourselves and helping others, and attaining liberation. We do not aim... for or emphasize some particular state of mind or some particular teaching. Even though it is a perfect and profound teaching, we do not emphasize the teaching only. Rather, we emphasize how we understand and how we bring the truth into practice. This practice does not mean some particular practice only. When we say Zen, Zen includes all the activity of our life.

[23:19]

It says, by practicing the practice that was started by Buddha, Buddhism is carried forth. It's by the doing of it that it happens, that it manifests. In Buddha's day, the practitioner's way of life was Indian. In China, there was the Chinese way of life. In Japan today, there is the Japanese way of life. Although the way of living is different, actually what we do is not different from what Buddha did. We all express absolute freedom. There are not two absolute freedoms. And then a little bit from Uchiyama Roshi, who was Shohaku Okamura's teacher.

[24:25]

And Uchiyama Roshi was born in 1912. And I forget when he died. Oh, 19, yeah. Yeah, he was born in 1912. And... So here's his commentary. He says, in the Shobo Genzo, all words should be understood as meaning beyond dichotomy. In the Shobo Genzo, all words should be understood as meaning beyond dichotomy. And I take that to mean the individual words and the meaning of the words and the meaning of words together is beyond dichotomy, beyond duality. Since ancient times, many commentaries have been written on the Shobo Genzo.

[25:30]

Among them, Gosho, written by Sene, is especially valuable for us as practitioners of the Buddha way. Since Sene studied personally with Dogen Zenji, his commentary gives us helpful guidance about the fundamental attitude we should keep in mind when we read the Shobo Genzo. That is to say that each word used in the Shobho Genso should be understood as a word of the Buddha Dharma. To read the words of the Shobho Genso as the words of the Buddha Dharma, the Buddhist teachings, is in short to understand them beyond any dichotomy, beyond any duality. Usually, All words we use have meaning only in relation or dichotomy. Sorry.

[26:34]

Like poverty has meaning in relationship to wealth. Unhappiness has meaning in relation to happiness. Delusion has meaning in comparison to enlightenment. Thus, living beings are the opposite of Buddhas and life is paired with death. So what does it mean to go beyond that? Usually people think that there are big things and small things and never question this. But big or small in conventional usage has meaning only in comparison. This is truly an incomplete way. When the word big is used in the Buddhadharma, it goes beyond such comparison and relativity. To understand words in this way is to read words as the Buddhadharma. So genjo, which could be translated as appear or become, does not mean that something which was concealed appears at this moment.

[27:42]

We should not understand genjo as opposed to hidden, appearing versus hidden. Gen or appearing has nothing to do with the dichotomy of hidden and apparent, what is unseen and what is seen. Joe, becoming, has nothing to do with effort and study. We could say that true gen is beyond appearing and disappearing, existence and non-existence, and Joe is beyond creation and destruction. And then finally, going back to Nishiyare Bokasan, who lived from 1821 to 1910. And... Suzuki Roshi was very much influenced by his commentaries and teachings.

[28:54]

And Sojin wrote the introduction to this section, and he says, Nishiari seems to have had a good sense of humor and playfulness with a down-to-earth, non-dualistic approach, as when he talks about the well-known firewood and ash passage. Nishiari says, go where there is ash and ask, Right now, you have a very fluffy body, but you used to be called firewood, which was very solid and flammable when put into a fire. You were burned little by little and got yourself to where you are now. Do you think Ash will agree with this? It will surely reply, nonsense, I have never met anyone named firewood. Or... The principle of thoroughly experiencing one Dharma can be understood through the example of beans and tofu. Beans become tofu. From the tofu maker's point of view, beans are boiled and turned into tofu. It appears that beans are before and tofu after.

[29:58]

But this is a perspective from outside. If you say to tofu, your former body was a hard material called beans, which I boiled, ground, strained and hardened with nigiri, and now you have a soft body with a rectangular face, so different from your former body, then tofu would say, this is nonsense. Tofu can never meet beans again. Beans are beans. Tofu is tofu. It is not that this turns into that, but there is only one direction at a time. There is only one undivided activity at a time. So this is... This is an illustration of how we can see in this way in our daily lives. I had an experience of that today. I get a regular, a daily email from the Equal Justice Initiative that talks, that gives something that happened on that day in history having to do with racial injustice, actually, some generally, you know,

[31:06]

usually a lynching that happened on that day and a short story about it. And this morning it was about George Lee, Reverend George Lee, who was one of the early voting rights people, I think in 1955 or before that, trying to get out the vote in Mississippi, and he was murdered. And there was a link in there, which I don't usually click on, but I did, and it went to, and it talked about there was a memorial there And it was an image of the Equal Justice Initiative's sculpture garden with the Freedom Monument there, which Greta and I had visited last year or the year before when it was just opening. And so there was a picture of it, and it's like this huge wall, and there's plaques with... different, with all these people's names, all the victims of lynching that they have documentation of or they know happened.

[32:12]

And there's people standing in front of their wall with their hands, like touching it, like making that connection so people can go and find their ancestors there. They can look it up and they'll show you like where it is on the wall. And I had this, and I, because I've been reading this so much, I had this feeling, oh, so there's this, And the monument is celebrating freedom. It's like all of these people were lynched or killed. All of them were lynched. It's a memorial to lynch them. But it's called the Freedom Memorial because it's celebrating survival and it's celebrating going forward. And this didn't completely kill us, killed these people. But I suddenly saw that it's not just like these individual people day by day that I've been tracking over time.

[33:13]

And the civil rights movement is not like, there's no thing that's the civil rights movement. There's no thing that is racial justice or civil rights or whatever it is. There are individuals and it's all together that we make this, that we create this together. So it waxes and wanes over time, depending on causes and conditions, but there's no thing there. It's all made up of many parts. A hand is made up of fingers. This class is made up of many people. So it's how to see the dual and the non-dual and all that together Because when we see the interconnection, when we're living from interconnection, we behave differently. We think differently.

[34:15]

We see differently. It has an impact. It has an impact on our own freedom, and it has an impact on the freedom of others. So he says, Nishiyari Bokasan says, I will talk now about each separate ideogram of the words genjo koan. As for gen, it usually refers to an appearance that has been hidden, as in genzen, surface appearance. But that is not how it's meant here. Again, it's not related to hiding or appearing. In the realm of true Genjo, there is no hiding and there's no appearing.

[35:15]

So I'd like to break up, I'd like to have all of you break up into small groups. We'll do groups of four. And the prompt is just how are you understanding or feeling Genjo Koan, the one and the many, the living together of the one and the many. When you think of any place in your life where that shows up or any questions or something that you've read, it can be anything. This is just to get things moving. Like, how do you engage with this rather than try? It's not figuring it out. It's like, where's a resonance? Nishiari says, you have to get Genjo Koan in your hara. It is a koan. It's the koan of everyday life. How do we live this?

[36:19]

How do we manifest this? You can find another way that you can grapple with that. What does this mean for practice in my daily life? How do I understand practice? What's the heart of it for me? How would I like to be in the world? Where am I already manifesting that? Anything in there that that touches you. So, are we good to just jump into this, or do people need a little stretch? Yeah. I have a question. Yes. We all kind of sort of know what koan is, but I'm interested in the etymology. Since it's for kanji, could you remind us that the kanji for koan are? Oh, yeah. I didn't cover that. In some ways, It's almost not helpful, but I will. Okay.

[37:21]

Repeat the question. Yeah, sorry. The question was, what are the characters for Koan, Koan-an? Ko means impartiality and fairness. So difference, inequality. Large is not small. Long is not short. A plateau is high and flat and the plane is low and flat. All dharmas dwell in their dharma positions. Dharmas are things. So phenomena, you could say phenomena. All phenomena dwell in their phenomenal position. They do not hinder one another. Things as they are and their original nature is nirvana. So all the things in the universe are just thinging. They're phenomena. They're all happening. And even though they may bump into each other, they are not hindering one each other.

[38:25]

They just exist. We all exist together in some way. This is ko. And on... means to hold or bear the three qualities of Gen, Zhou, and Ko without losing them. I told you it wasn't going to help a whole lot. I mean, there are different explanations of this, so it's great to read the different commentaries and see how they do that. How many of you are completely confused at this point? Okay, great. I didn't hear the question. I said, how many of you are completely confused at this point? There is a bell, I understand. Excellent. Who understand, who has a sense that they can say something, something to speak to this?

[39:28]

Yes, Lisa. I have a vision of my life is at my ceiling. And my nervous system is connected to all the nervous systems around me. And every day it's getting stronger. Nice. It's been a wonderful week. The setting was terrific. Great. Yes. Anyone else? Chef, did you add your hand? Yeah. Oh, sorry. Did you hear online? Could you hear the comment? Probably not. Great. No, they could. They could. Excellent. Speak up and they can hear. At work, I've been doing a lot of coordinating, and I've been just kind of, like, a few too many tasks for me to do all of them. And so I've just been kind of, like, running around a bunch of buildings and, like, seeing that things are happening and, like, moving things along as I've been doing that, but not, like, taking ownership of any of them. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So you're, like, an interconnecting being that is attending to things.

[40:33]

Yeah. Great. Anyone else? I'm writing a novel, and this, like, say, specifically The Myriad, like, there was just kind of, like, there was a lot going on in the scene that I was writing, and it kind of brought up other things and just kind of sort of attaching to other scenes and other characters. It just, I was able to take notes and get, like, clarity, for lack of a better word, but it was just, like, The Myriad. It felt kind of like, ooh, okay. There's just a lot kind of going on. Uh-huh. And you got that online? Yeah. Not so much, okay. Karen is writing a novel, and she said that she was going through a period where there was a lot of different lines of characters and plots, and then it all started to come together and to be able to hold all of these things at once, similarly to Lisa and Jeff. Anyone else? Maddie? It really gets me thinking about the line lens correspondence between

[41:35]

the continuous and discrete regimes of counting and computation. So there's the mapping between like the continuous number line and the categorization of things. So in one way, we are all here in just this indistinguishable reality, right? But everything can be sort of categorized into this hierarchical cluster. So Maddie brought forth concepts that I recognize as being from mathematics and discrete numbering and continuous numbering. Yeah, Gayla. Well, Maddie's comment on math gives me courage to bring language into it. And I was thinking of sentence structure versus meaning, being temporal versus atemporal. So the sentence structure of the cat is black. takes place discreetly in time, but the meaning of the sentence is one.

[42:40]

It's one moment of understanding of the meaning of the sentence. I was thinking of that in terms of the one and the one. So in terms of language, sentence like the cat is black is temporal. You read from one end to the other, but the whole meaning of it is simultaneous, is immediate. Great. Does that give you some sense of things? Wonderful. Let's break up into small groups. Four. Four people each. And Mary, if you divide people. I got it. How long would you like? We'll do ten minutes. Let's do seven minutes. Seven minutes, just open discussion. But everybody should have a chance. Everybody, please say something. Category Roshi said, the first two folks are returning to silence. and you have to say something. So just take a risk and try it. So even those of you who might remember exactly what the translations, the various translations of Genjo Koan are, it kind of points you in a direction, but the pointers are not the thing.

[43:54]

So... as we go through the class, we might keep coming back to what is Genjo Koan? Like what's your understanding now of Genjo Koan? How are you making sense in your own heart, mind, body? So does anyone have anything from their conversations that they'd like to bring back to the group? Often the conversations in the group, I mean, in the small group are really lively and then you try to bring it forward and it's like nothing. But I just thought I'd check because sometimes there is something juicy. So I'll look online. Michael, hi. Hi. I remember, and I brought this up in the group, I remember that Dogen had had, can you hear me okay? Can you hear me now? Now we can, yes. So I remembered that Dogen had had experience in the Tendai school, and I thought that he'd had experience in the Hoian school as well.

[45:00]

And I'm remembering Ben Connolly's class from recently. And what kept coming up for me as you were talking was Ben Connolly's kind of distillation of it, where he said, the entire universe is contained within every single thing due to inseparable dependency. And I thought... I keep hearing that as you're talking about this, and I wonder, am I making a connection where there is none, or was Dogen thinking of the same thing as he was writing this? Well, we never know exactly for sure, because we don't know another person's mind exactly. Nonetheless, I think that this is the heart of the Buddha Dharma from the time of Shakyamuni Buddha. And... It just has different ways of being expressed and manifested different times, different places, different cultures, different individual human beings. Dogen had just been, I'm sorry, Buddha had just been practicing with the five ascetics.

[46:03]

So he starts off talking about the middle way between the first sermon and suffering, you know, because this is what's alive and this is what was alive for the people he was talking to. So this makes a lot of sense. Yeah, it's just, but... And each different way of expressing it can help us illuminate our own experience and our own practice. And that's why I think this is such an important teaching, the Genjo Koan, because it's like this is kind of, it's the empty center point, you know, because you can look at it from different angles. But you can also look at it from anything else from that angle. Great, thank you. Anyone else? Nope, okay. I wanted to share a little bit from Meeting the Myriad Things.

[47:10]

Now that we've gone through that, I'm going to read just a little more. Let's see. So I'll read from a different set of interpretations of Genjo Koan, and maybe it will come together for you a little more, now that we've had some examples, some experience. Gen is being neither concealed nor revealed. Zhou is not becoming through study. Ko is equalizing inequality. An is keeping one's lot. Koan, the old meaning, you know, the like koans that you practice with, like what is the sound of one hand clapping? The ko, it comes from like a public case in the Chinese legal language. where the mind of the judge should be to equalize inequality between people, to see everybody as the same.

[48:25]

But at the same time, on is keeping one's lot. So you're keeping your position. Everyone's keeping their own position, but you're also equalizing inequality. So holding those two things together. More broadly, Genn expresses the total function of any given moment. For example, if you are standing on the shore, the water, fish, current, rocks, and you is total expression with all beings. That is your total expression right there. This completely expressed, concerted, and coordinated activity is realization as practice and practice as realization. The continuous effort of water, fish, current, rocks, and self verifies the Dharma's total functioning as this moment's expression. You may not see it, but it is there.

[49:28]

Even if you see it, can you ever see all of it? Probably not, but this does not matter if you can respond appropriately to what is happening at that time. You may not see it, but it is there. So that's why we often talk about waking up. We wake up to what's already been there that we couldn't see because of our ignorance, confusion, delusion. That what we put standing, you know, what we have, our sense of separate self and all the things that come with being a separate self. That's the many, the side of duality where we are experiencing things on a daily basis. but that does not actually stop us from being completely interconnected in the world. We may not experience it that way most of the time, but we are. Yeah, we can have all kinds of experiences of ourselves or experience of others that others are not sharing in necessarily.

[50:34]

They say, oh, I feel so connected to you. I'm like, I'm off on some other planet right now thinking about something else. So... We all inhabit these realities, but we're always all still inhabiting this shared reality. As humans, we experience this immediate presencing as reality itself expressed through and as oneself, not separated from the activity and the isness of all beings. It is nothing more. than our present life's unfolding. This is the intersection of the particular and the universal. This is the koan of Genjo koan. Thus, the question or koan becomes, how do I manifest the activity of Genjo as Buddha's way? All sentient beings share the same qualities of impermanence, no-self, and suffering.

[51:41]

Regardless of each of our individual unique dharma positions, we all share the same qualities of impermanence, no-self, and suffering. From this perspective, no being is higher or better than others, all manifest inequality. Ko, therefore, addresses the relative or everyday aspects of our relationships based on universal qualities, and the An points to unique and particular qualities such as those of a person or situation. And yet, these states coexist. Either one may come forward depending on the need of the situation, but on a deeper level, they are always functioning equally. Whose words are you reading? This is Shinshu Roberts in her introduction. Great introduction. So I think that's what I have to share right now.

[52:46]

And we'll just keep coming back to this. Oh, I will say that, and you can definitely read ahead, we'll probably mostly be focusing on part one. But what you'll see is that each of the sections in Gencho Koan is a particular example or illustration. We came up with different ones. People brought forth, oh, I experienced it like this. Here's the one and the many. Here's how they're working well together. And then Dogen's bringing forth firewood and ash. Here's the book in time or in space. So we'll look at those. But hopefully, looking deeply at the characters for Genjo Koan and the sense of that will help us to unpack the rest of it. more clearly because it's different expressions of it and how that manifests specifically.

[53:47]

Okay, we'll do that.

[53:51]

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