David, and I wonder if you would introduce our speaker tonight. Thank you, Mary. I would be delighted to, so happy to welcome Reverend Shinshu Roberts from Ocean Gate Zen. And she's the author of Meeting the Married Things, which I think many of us have been reading during the practice period, and is also the author of Being Time and A Dear Friend. And thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Linda, avid Linda. And so, actually, Linda is instrumental for me writing the book. I want to, for myself, I want to change this back to gallery views so I can see everybody. Instrumental in me writing the book Uji, along with several other people who were part of a group at San Francisco Sun Center, and we studied Dogen together. So, here we are.

[01:15]

Gosh, 20 years later or something. I don't know. So, hey, you guys were great, great questions. Those of you who wrote them, I have like 17 pages of notes, which there's no way that I'm going to cover all this in the amount of time that we have. But I thought what I would do is I would talk until 8 o'clock. And then if you would, what you can do is write down questions you might have. And then at 8 o'clock, I can open it up and we can talk. OK, does that sound good? And so please. Yeah, don't please don't put it in the chat. Just go ahead. And when when we when I get done talking, we can just open it up and you can just raise your hand or say, hey, hey, here I'm here or whatever you want to do. So, okay. So I'm just going to go through. A lot of you didn't say who you were, so I'm just going to kind of do this anonymously, the questions. And also, some people wrote big, long questions.

[02:17]

So if you wrote a big, long question, I might have made it a big, shorter question. So hopefully you'll recognize the question that you asked. Okay, so the first one is, and I'm just reading this verbatim is, everybody can hear me, right? Yes, great. She said, I am new to Buddhist practice trying to catch up on basic teachings. In the Ganjo Koan, are there differences amongst awakening, actualizing Buddha nature, and acting appropriately to the situation within the interdependence of beings in the particular situation? So actually, this is Libby. I give you an A+. I completely agree with you that these are all the same thing. just different ways of, you know, kind of looking at it as sort of like a prism, looking at different things. Okay, and then this part, so I didn't understand this part, so I'm not going to ask you to explain it to me now, but maybe at the end or whatever, but she said, as far as I can see the interconnections of all past, present, and future states of all beings.

[03:25]

So I'm not quite sure exactly what the question is, but yes, everything is completely interconnected throughout time and space. So we tend to think of things as sequential time, being. And Dogen says time and being are the same thing. So it's kind of like form and emptiness are the same thing. Emptiness does not exist except as a concept outside the relationship of form. So yeah, being and time, from Dogen's point of view, are completely interconnected. And so that means that not only interconnected from a... A sequential point of view, but also from a non-dualistic point of view, which means that all past, present, and future states within the context of all being simultaneous arising and presencing are all happening together. So that's kind of mind-boggling. But I think it helps open up our minds in any given situation and be able to have a broader view of what's going on. So let's see.

[04:26]

Another question is... Please use the example of the quilt in the same way using a raukasu or okesa in acting function as a whole. So I thought this was a really interesting question. And I understand this comes from maybe from your sewing teacher based on what they said. So this is not exactly analogous to the reason I gave this example, but... My understanding about Okesa and Raksu was that originally they were made of cast-off and discarded fabric that no one wanted. And so you would go out and collect fabric and maybe cut out the pieces that were appropriate for using. And then they would be sewn together. So the idea was that you wouldn't be attached to the material or making it special. which I know I can fall prey to, you know, like I bought a linen okesa from Japan, and I have to say that that was not made out of, you know, discarded pieces of fabric.

[05:37]

So, but that, you know, the idea behind this is that we're not attached to what our raucoses and okesas are made of, nor using them as a kind of status symbol. So, So this is much like a quilt, right? A quilt is made up of various parts, and often the pieces of the quilt come from different places. And if you've been and saw that wonderful exhibit of the Gee's Bend quilts, you know that those quilts were made out of people's old jeans and dresses and all this kind of thing. So each one of those pieces has its own history. Each one of those pieces has its own life outside the context of the quilt that's being produced. But then as soon as the quilt comes together, it becomes a quilt. And at that point, it now has a particular function that those clothes didn't have or those pieces of fabric didn't have in the past. So this way that it becomes something, maybe we could say bigger.

[06:38]

I mean, obviously in the context of a quilt really is bigger, but also somehow bigger in the context. But all of this is bringing reality itself all together. Each one of those pieces represents or is. not represents, is a particular aspect of reality. And that aspect of reality is Buddha mind. You know, the pieces of fabric are the fabric of Buddha. And not just because we sewed them into a rakasu or an akesa, which we understand are Buddha's robe. We are Buddha, so it is Buddha's robe, but also Buddha's robe. And that this becomes, in our minds, perhaps something bigger than Buddha. the original pieces of fabric. And yet those pieces of fabric are never separate from the totality of the context of what we end up with is this thing called the Oquesa or the Rokosu. When I'm an example in the book of the quilt, I was talking about looking at the teachings in the first three lines from different aspects, one of them being like seeing the teachings as this is, you know, what is it to say

[07:50]

What is this to say enlightenment? What is it to say birth? What is this to say death? This way in which we understand different aspects of the teachings as separate pieces. And then the second line, Dogen says, you know, there is no birth and death. There's no delusion, no realization in this way in which then it becomes this one piece, this one quilt. So that's what I was talking about there. And so I thought, well, okay, the Rokasiu and Okesa, has to be related to, these particular pieces have to be related to, each joe has to be related to as, in and of itself, the joe that you're sewing. And yet, when it all comes together, even though you've labored over that one little piece, you know, and if you've sewn a rakasu, you think, oh, wow, I've finished the face, I'm done with rakasu. No, you're not done with the rakasu. Now there's the straps and the, you know, the... corners and all of this, right? Same thing for an okesa.

[08:50]

It's like you think, oh, I finished the big part of the okesa, and now I've got three lines to sew all the way around the perimeter of the okesa. So, you know, each one of those pieces we have to pay attention to, but ultimately they come together and become this one thing. And also, in the case of the okesa and the raksu, we're saying namuke and butsu as we're sewing. So there is this unifying piece. But In the case of a quilt, maybe we're thinking about the people we're building the quilt for, and we're thinking about that person or those people. And so that's a kind of namokie butsu of compassion and goodwill that we're sending to this person or persons for whom we are making this quilt. So, you know, the pieces are different, and yet simultaneously they're not different. You know, John Muir said, when we try to pick up... pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched. We find it hitched to everything else in the universe. So it's like that.

[09:52]

So that's my answer to that question about the rock, sue, and the quilt example. Okay, so the next question that I have here is, what is the function of the word when, the function of time in Dogen's teaching? And this is actually a really good question because When we read when are something about like temporality, something along the lines of time in Dogen. This is really important. It's not a throwaway word. So this function is if you look at the beginning of Genjo Koan. Well, first of all, in my notes here I have, all of our experience happens in the context of time. And time, of course, is temporal. It's impermanent. Time is interbeing and codependence, because without impermanence, we could not have interbeing and codependence. We could not have compassion.

[10:53]

We could not have wisdom. So this means in this context that your response happens in a particular moment, in a particular time and situation, which is why we have this axiom about there are no enlightened persons, only enlightened times, right? Because... because our enlightened response to the particularity of what's happening at that time. Because, of course, nothing that we're doing is outside the context of community. No matter whether, you know, even if we're sitting, you know, all by ourselves, there's still community happening. There's still all of the world's functioning going on in an abstract way, but also in a very visceral way around us. The birds, the trees... whatever it is around us that's going on that we're with. So Dogen says in the opening line, he says, when all dharmas are the Buddha Dharma. So the, let me, I mean, I read from, look at using Gendal Cohen from Wondell and Ambi, which is, I use Shohakogamora's translation in the book.

[12:05]

But, you know, Genjo Kohan starts out, when all things are the Buddha Dharma. So, there are so many different interpretations of these first three lines. It's like a Rorschach test or something. Somebody, I didn't answer this question, but somebody asked this question about Genjo Kohan in relationship to Shoa Kokomura, his, you know, realizing Genjo Kohan. I can't remember what it was that he did, but he... people make the most amazing connections between these first opening lines of Genjo Koan. But in the Soto Zen Text Translation Project, Carl Bielfield says that the word that's being translated here is, it just means when you study the Buddha Dharma. It's like, you know, we can come up with all these different aspects and things that we're making connections with. But I really like this because Genjo Koan was written for a beginner. Ganjo Kahn was written for a guy who, which I'll talk a little more about later, but who was, you know, starting out in practice, who wanted to know about practice.

[13:09]

So I don't think Dogen is fooling around here and kind of making all sorts of esoteric connections. Of course, the beauty with Dogen is that we can do that. But I think what Dogen's saying is saying, look, when you study the Buddha Dharma, so when is really important here. He says, when you're studying the Buddha Dharma, you have delusion and enlightenment. Practice, birth, death, Buddhists, and sentient beings. And that's true. When we first started studying the Dharma, we started asking these questions. Well, what is enlightenment? What is illusion? What does it mean? What in the world is a Buddha? What's the sentient beings? What's my relationship to being? People say, oh, when you sit Sazen, you are Buddha. But what does that mean? So there's all these ways that we kind of break down the practice and look at it that way. And then in the next line, he says, when all things are without, or when all things are no inherently existing. So now we have that context of when you're looking at your life or when you're looking at things from that perspective, this happens.

[14:11]

And then the next line is the Buddha way is originally beyond any foolish or lack. See, am I right here? Yes. And then etc. So this issue of time of situating the experience... And your enactment and practice within the context of when is very, very, very important. And the other thing is that our realized response or our delusional response or whatever it is that we're doing happens in the context of the present moment. It didn't happen in the past and we're not at the future yet. So it is how are you, what are you doing, how are you thinking, how are you responding at this moment? Okay, and then there was another question about Shusho, practice realization. Well, I could go on and on. I just gave a 40-minute lecture on practice realization at Ocean Gate. So I'm sorry. Maybe if we have time, I'll go into it. There is an appendix here in this book on practice realization.

[15:16]

So I encourage you, and I'll kind of go back to this in a little bit, but... If you really want to kind of know the nuts and bolts of why practice realization was translated as practice realization, and now the actually more correct translation is practice verification, which, for example, Shoal Kokomura is going back to that as his translation now instead of practice enlightenment. But if you look at the book, you can see why that is, or at least... how much the information that I was able to find out about it. Okay, so then someone asked this question that another really big question, which we could probably spend, you know, you guys could, we spend our lives answering this question, which is, talk about how we live our lives with meeting the myriad things. I mean, that's right, that's Gensha Cohen, right? Like, how do we live our lives?

[16:16]

That's the koan. How do we live our lives meeting the myriad things? How do we live our lives truly meeting this life with the people and the things and the experiences and everything? How in the world is it that we do this? And how do we follow the bodhisattva life, the practice? How do we follow the precepts? How do we cultivate the paramitas? How do we set zazen? How do we participate in sangha? Zuiko Redding said to me one time, she's died a couple years ago, and I was talking to Zuiko about Fukan Zazengi. And she said, you know, a great koan for me is, you know, in Fukan Zazengi, it says, it's the gate, something like it's a gate to repose and bliss. And she said, I keep asking myself, where's the repose and bliss? You know, what's the Dharma gate here? Like, how do I...

[17:17]

You know, it was like a koan for her. And I think about that, you know, about practice and reading Dogen. And he says, you know, well, this is repose and bliss. So what is repose and bliss? And how does it arise? And how does our practice bring that forward? And how do we deal with things when they're not, you know, when we don't feel like we are experiencing repose and bliss? And I... And how is it that we listen to our world? How do we listen to ourselves? How do we listen to others? So how do you give people a really big field, including yourself? And at the same time, you make this effort to really explore the nature of what it is to be skillful in a situation. So how are we kind and forgiving and compassionate with wisdom and patience and boundaries? So all of these things are like, I'm sure all of you who've been practicing, right? Whether we've been practicing for one day or, you know, 70 years, you would have maybe a different answer to this question than I have, right?

[18:24]

So this is like, for me, this is the koan of this practice. Sojin said to me one time, he said, you know... I had to work a lot with anger, and Sojin came to me, and he said, you know, well, what is your kind of, you know, what's the most important thing to you? And I said, well, to be compassionate, which is an awfully big answer. And I said that to him, and he said, okay, whatever. And then I thought, actually, the antidote to anger is patience. That's the antidote to anger in our Buddhist culture. So I've decided now that I'm practicing compassionate impatience. So that's my koan maybe right now about dealing with being impatient. So I think for each one of us, we have to have this particular koan that we're working with and this vow that speaks to us.

[19:26]

You know, Suzuki Roshi said, what is your inmost request? So each one of us is going to have something that has to be, it should be very particular. What is it that we need to work on? What is it that we do that helps us meet the myriad things? Okay, so this is a summary of the question. What's the relationship between Dogen's example of firewood and ash? and impermanence. So I feel like this person asking this question read the section on firewood and ash as indicating that there was some kind of, as they said, unchanging essential nature. So I wanted to talk about that. If you think that Dogen is saying that things have an essential unchanging nature, I think that you might

[20:32]

know that that's probably not what he's saying. So in the case of Firewood and Ash, he is talking about the previous line, which, by the way, Dogen did not write in paragraphs. The paragraphs that we read have either been, they've all been put in by translators. So some of the paragraphs are kind of codified by the Sotoshu. in their translation from the medieval Japanese into modern Japanese, or sometimes the translator will do their own paragraph breaks. But it's important to know, I think, that Dogen did not write in paragraphs. So for him, this is a complete flow from the beginning to the end. So, okay, so right before the firewood and ash business, he said, it is clear that all things have no fixed self. So... Now, when Dogen starts talking about firewood and ash, he's explaining to you how it is that using the metaphor of firewood and ash, he's explaining to us, well, what exactly is it that we think is a fixed and permanent self?

[21:45]

So what do we experience as a self? Because Dogen doesn't deny the fact that we have a particular self, an independent self. with likes and dislikes, etc. So, okay, so this gets into Dharma position, which he does use in that paragraph. And again, there is an appendix in the meeting and married things on Dharma position. And I'm going to tell you what... And this came out of my reading of Uji and reading scholars and things. I've kind of come up with this list of the... what constitutes a Dharma position. And a Dharma position, I would say, just globally, is any kind of situation, any... You know, a book would be a dharma position. This class, the totality of this class is a dharma position. You, each one of you as an individual is a dharma position.

[22:47]

The room you're in with you is a dharma position. The situation is a dharma position. So I'd say it's kind of like something that you can name a dharma. And then the position would be, you know, what kind of being time it occupies. then the Japanese is Juhoi, so abiding in a Dharma position, which comes from the Lotus Sutra. Okay, so here are the aspects, and this is what Dogen, he only does like a couple of these in Ganjo Koan, but he covers all of this in Uji. So the part that he's talking about here about firewood and ash is he talks about, first of all, we have a particular independent aspect to something, like... I'll just use my glass here. Okay, the glass is 100%, as Shoha Kokomo says, a glass, right? This is completely a glass. So this is its independent aspect.

[23:48]

It's not me, it's not a cup, it's not a clock, it's a glass. So that's the part that I think maybe the person with depression might be confusing as being like somehow some kind of eternal thing, that there was this... aspect that is particular, but it isn't permanent. And then there's the universal, non-dual, interconnected, causally related aspect. So we know this glass is a no inherently existing. It doesn't exist in some kind of eternal way. We know that for the glass to exist, it's part of a total interconnected process. That if we had the capacity, we could name or know or conceive of absolutely everything throughout time and space and through all of eternity in this glass right here. And then, so that's one aspect. Then another aspect is that things have no fixed identity or outcome.

[24:52]

A situation has no fixed identity or outcome, which means that things are flexible, they're impermanent, they're responsive. So now all of this is simultaneously happening within the context of of this moment, this class, this class, you as a person, the plant behind you, you know? And then continuous with this is passage. Things pass from one thing to another, from one being time to another, from one Dharma position to another, but they pass in these sort of non-sequential ways. And the example he gives in Uji is, he says, you know, how do you know if you have, he says, springtime is passing. How do we know it's spring? How do we know? How do you know in Berkeley that it's spring? Maybe if you know plants, you know, oh, that plant happens when it's spring. Or if you know birds or whatever, migrating birds. I'm not so up on that stuff. Although I do know when the mockingbird shows up that this is a particular time of year.

[25:54]

And right now the seagulls are all mating here and having babies here in Santa Cruz. But the thing about it is that... All of these things that are happening, they aren't necessarily all happening at exactly the same time. They're all interconnected with each other and all relating to each other. So how do you know when something begins and something ends? How do you know what that is? And I'll read a little koan to you that illustrates this. Do I have this? Yes. So we have this expression in Buddhism, when the donkey matter has not yet left, horse matter arrives. When the donkey matter has not yet left, the horse matter arrives. Okay, so this is about passing from one thing or one time being to another. So the koan is Huelang of Changqing, excuse my Chinese, studied with Lung Yu and asked him, what is the essential meaning of the Buddha Dharma?

[26:55]

Ling Yung said, when the donkey matter has not yet left, the horse matter arrives. So this essential nature has to do with not having some kind of fixed boundaries, having a kind of flexibility, having a willingness to realize that this whole interconnected process is going on and this way in which we are integrating ourselves with that. That's what I think this koan is pointing towards. So that's another aspect of it. How do things pass from one thing to another? Another one is eternal now. Now, that doesn't mean like it's permanent. I mean permanent and not unchanging. It means that right now, [...] right now. So in that way, it's eternal, right? It's now, [...] now. And so this eternalness... is just happening in this way.

[27:55]

And so we say it's an eternal now, but that doesn't mean it's unchanging. It doesn't mean that it's not interconnected. It doesn't mean that it's not codependent arising. It is all of those things. Otherwise, it couldn't be this, [...] this. All of those things have to be functioning. And then finally, the last aspect of this that I'm able to make a list about has to do with What is the locus of Shusho, practice realization or practice verification? Where does it happen? What being time does it happen in? And it can only happen in the present moment. It's now, [...] now. It can't happen some other time. So it has to be in the context of this interconnected myriad things, Ganjo Koan, things arising and functioning together. Okay, so that's my... That's my, what I have to say about this business at the very beginning, or in Gangel Kowann, when Dogen talks about, he talks about firewood and ash.

[29:04]

Let's see, let's see, let's see. He says... Firewood becomes ash. Ash cannot become firewood again. However, we should not view ashes after, and firewood is before. So that's that 100% firewood. That's that independent aspect of firewood. So then he says, we should know that firewood dwells in the Dharma position of firewood and has its own before and after. So firewood has its own life. It has a before and after. But he's saying you can't call firewood. When firewood is firewood, it's not ash. And when ash is ash, it's not firewood. Even though, causally conditioned, it was firewood, etc. So that's what Dogen's talking about here, but he isn't actually doing the full scope of what it means to talk about Dharma positions. He does that in Uji. Okay.

[30:12]

And the next question is, impermanence is difficult to conceive of disconnected to time, unrelated to the flow of time. Is Dogen here asking us to imagine, along with no self or no inherently existing self, something like no inherently existing time? So, I would say yes, if... From the doctrine of emptiness, there is no such thing as something inherently existing. Therefore, there must be no inherently existing time. Time is impermanence. It's temporal. And impermanence is process. Impermanence is complete inner being and codependent arising. So it means that everything is affected by everything else, and everything is process. So process is time, and being is process, and being is time. And so for Dogen, time and being are not separate.

[31:13]

So Dogen does not view time as a philosophical deconstruction of some kind of, I don't know how to even say this, some kind of thing, this phenomena called time. For him, time is this way in which we experience our lives from the context of this when. the context of being totally present for what's actually arising. So this is this process, and they're not separate from each other. So there is no inherently existing time and no inherently existing person or Dharma, which, from Dogan's perspective, are not different. So time is relational, and time has all these aspects of a Dharma position in it. So... I think of it as, and I use this example later, but we say form is emptiness, emptiness is form, form itself does not differ from emptiness, emptiness itself does not differ from form.

[32:20]

So even though Dogen would expand that, which he did, but the thing about that is that these things are completely interlocked together, and so consequently, in permanence and time, and no inherent existing time and no inherently existing self or dharmas are interlocked together and function together in this way. We do have conventional time, which Dogen would agree with. He agrees with sequential time and conventional time, and definitely it has its uses. As a matter of fact, we couldn't all come together and have this class if we weren't functioning with conventional time. But conventional time is also completely connected with the universe, right? With the sun, stars, planets, our own internal sense. So there's also this very visceral way in which that is functioning outside the context of a clock, let's say. Okay.

[33:23]

So somebody asked about the ocean metaphor as round, and they said, Ocean metaphor as round equals non-duality and square as relative section. Question, is this about not losing sight of myriad things and our attempts to focus on non-duality? Well, you know, in the book, yeah, Dogen wrote, okay, I'll get back to that, but for right now, sorry, I got kind of sidetracked a little bit there. Dogen wrote, the great ocean, however, is neither round, universal, nor square, relative. It has inexhaustible characteristics, which can also be translated as virtues. And so what he's saying is that this great ocean is not just universal or non-dual, and it's not just relative this or that.

[34:30]

So our understanding, we have to see beyond the labels and the traps of both of these states, right? Because I know for a while in my practice, I got totally trapped in trying to see everything from the position of non-duality. And also what goes along with that usually is we think that if we can perceive things from a non-dual point of view exclusively, that we're going to have this experience of oneness or satori. which is very entertaining. And so we think that we're going to like get this thing, right? If we can just, you know, figure out this business called non-duality and the universal and all oneness kind of stuff. And so, you know, I think that's what Dogen's pointing to is he's saying, no, don't get caught there. It's both things and it's beyond both things simultaneously. So he's saying, don't get caught with the labels. about these different states because they're simultaneously functioning. So the question to me anyway is which one is appropriate to pay attention to at any given situation?

[35:40]

So is it appropriate to pay attention at a particular time, let's say, to my agenda or to my needs or whatever? Or is it appropriate at some given time to pay attention to the totality of a situation that's arising? So if you think of that totality as this universal aspect of our relationship to other people, and of course to all dharmas, but in this case to other people, and we think about that relationship to the self, like what does the self require in this moment? And how can I bring those two things together in a way that's skillful so that I'm not dominating? on one side, which would be the kind of, we might say it's the relative side, and we're not dominating on the universal side, but I found a balance that actually fits the situation that's happening. So maybe that balance needs to be, I'm going to look at everything as the sameness of all of us. I need to look at the sameness that I have with this person I'm disagreeing with, so that I can see our commonality.

[36:49]

because that's the most important thing in that situation. Or there might be another time where I need to say, I need to see our differences. I need to recognize these differences. So it's like, it's not about one's better than the other. They're the same thing, simultaneously functioning. But which aspect is more important in any given point in time to be skillful, to engage in bodhisattva practice? So that's kind of how I relate to that question. And then... You know, in the example, Dogen says, you know, you get out and you realize that there are all these myriad things. And I'm pretty sure that's in Ganja Khan where he starts talking about, you know, for, I can't remember, one, you know, demons see pus and humans see water and fish see jewels. I can't remember exactly what sees what. But why is he saying that to us? Because he's saying we need to understand that there are different points of view and that how we see things like water, human beings see water, that fish don't see water, they see something else.

[37:56]

And so that we understand that. And I think that's part of what he's pointing to here. Okay, so I just want to generally talk about studying Dogen. Somebody brought this up. in a kind of oblique way, I think. And I think they were talking about a sense of like just kind of reading Dogen in this very intuitive way. So I think reading Dogen in a really intuitive way is not necessarily a bad thing to do, but let me tell you a little bit about why I think there's a bit false with this. For myself, I read commentaries and I read footnotes so that I understand what Dogen's meaning is. And I want to give an example of what is the problem with a kind of free-forming ideas about what Dogen's talking about. Because it certainly works for some things, but it doesn't work for everything that he writes. So in Japanese, there's a word called gei, which is translated as obstruction or to impede.

[38:59]

So it's G-E. And so when you read it in English, it's translated as obstruction or impeding. But what it means is... the Japanese word means something has definition. So you could see where, you know, it doesn't get translated that way because I guess that the literal translation is obstruction. But in the example is from, well, so the word gay, which is translated as obstruction or impeding, means that people, things have definitions. So a cup is a cup and a cup, is not an arrow. So, obviously, I picked those examples out of the air. A person is not a cat. So, the example from Uji is, he wrote, reaching, this is the translation, and this is from, I think, Wodawa Nabi, reaching is impeded or obstructed, and that word is gay in Japanese, by reaching and not impeded or obstruction by not reaching.

[40:05]

Not reaching is impeded are instructed by not reaching, and not impeded are instructed by reaching. Okay, did you all get that? So, the first time I read that, I made up a whole story about what it meant, which did not. Jien Ha was what Dogen was saying. So Dogen's saying, reaching is defined by reaching, and not defined by not reaching. Not reaching is defined by not reaching and not defined by reaching. Does that make sense? You know, and so the way to use this thing talking about cups and glasses, I said, for example, a cup is defined by a cup and not defined by a glass. A glass is defined by a glass and not defined by a cup. If we don't know what the word, what's being translated as an instruction, then we're going to make up a whole story. And I did.

[41:07]

which wasn't about this at all. Because what Dogen's saying here is that he's talking about awakening and realizing and saying it happens within the context of the particularity. So he's saying, you know, we understand the Buddha Dharma or awaken to the Buddha Dharma as this person, as you. And Dogen uses, talks about this a lot in Genja Kohan. He talks about perceptions. He talks about you know, waking up, seeing blossoms, hearing the pebble hitting the bamboo. He talks about it happening within the context of the self, not the small selfish self, but within the context of this is happening in this body and this mind, you know, not somebody else's. It's happening within the context of this person. So he's saying a person or a being must be defined as that being in order to be within the context of the myriad things to awaken, to the married things.

[42:07]

If you were not separate from the married things on a certain level, having an independent Dharma position, you'd be like a blob, right? If everything was oneness and had no definition, it would be like a blob. There would be no there there. So here's an example of why it's really important to have some notion about what it is that's being translated into the English. Okay, I have one minute. If I'm going to stick to my plan here. It's 8 o'clock. Okay, I'm just going to stop. Because I'm on page 4 and I have 12 pages. So I'm just going to stop. And I'm sorry I didn't get to the part about... Oh gosh, that part about when one side is illuminated and the other side is dark. But I will say that... illuminated and dark just means something like when something is revealed to us and something is obscured, so it's not about good and bad at all.

[43:16]

It has nothing to do with good and bad. It just has to do with if something's hidden, we don't see it. If something is revealed, we are aware of it, even though simultaneously the other thing that we're not aware of is still there, or the other things that we're not aware of don't disappear. But it said that we're concentrated or paying attention so much to one side that can you invite you back to hear the other eight pages of notes? Well, if I haven't bored you to tears by now, I suppose, yeah, that would be okay. It's up to Linda. But the thing about it is, okay, so questions, comments? Karen. Karen. Thank you so much, Shinshu. I have a question because I've been in some discussions about these two lines. Okay, what page are you on?

[44:17]

Well, I'm in your book, page 15. Okay. When the Dharma has not yet fully penetrated body and mind, one thinks one is already filled with it. When the Dharma fills body and mind, one thinks something is still lacking. Yeah. So this is how I understand this. If you think you've got it, you have it. Because how could we have gotten it completely? First of all, I haven't met anybody who I would call perpetually, 100%, 24 hours a day. They respond absolutely perfectly with the complete Bodhisattva mind. Do everything that's going on. And I know some famous teachers. I just haven't seen that happen. So he's saying, you know, if it's a kind of hubris, actually, to think that you've figured it all out, that you know everything about the Dharma, and that everything you're doing is absolutely 100% on the mark.

[45:23]

So he's saying, if you think you're in that place, well, think again. And then... isn't it your experience? It is mine anyway. The more I practice, the more I realize that there's more for me to work with. And also the fact that I'm living in the present moment. Things are constantly changing. Things are interacting. Every situation is new. How do I meet that situation with a fresh mind and an open heart? How do I do that? And so in that way, there's no end to it. It's like he says, a fish never reaches the end of The bird never reaches the end of the sky and the fish, you know, I can't remember exactly how that goes, but doesn't leave the water. So, and by the way, as I say in the book, he's talking about practice. He's not talking about that fish can't get out of water. He's talking about if once we leave, if this is our life, if this is our oxygen, if this is, you know, once, if we leave that, then we will die.

[46:25]

And so there's, anyway, yes, Karen, that's what I think it means. Thank you so much. Somebody put their little hand up over here. Where are you? You still have your hand up? Like your little icon hand? Did you take it down? Well, anyway, just unmute yourself and say something if you want to. I guess I put it up and then took it down because I can't find the place I wanted to comment on. but I really am caught by the term practice realization. You said it's practice verification. Yeah, so here, first of all, let me see if I can find this for you, because I did talk about this. Dogen, you know, maybe I don't need to find the quote. In the... I'm sure he says this elsewhere, but in the fascicle, a Buddha with the Buddha, you know, he says, don't worry about, don't worry about becoming enlightened.

[47:38]

Because really it's about practice. So verification is like proof. Obviously proof verification. I can't remember all the words that define this, but. How can you verify your practice? How can you say to yourself, oh, hey, you know, what, you know, as somebody said, what does it mean to say that Buddhists go on, I think, verifying Buddhists, you do not know that they are Buddhists or Buddhists go beyond realizing that they're Buddhists? Because it's not because, it's because Buddhists don't think about being Buddhists. Buddhists don't need to be verified that they are Buddhists. They just do the practice. They just meet each situation. So the part about verification is the Dharma verifies the Dharma. Verification verifies verification.

[48:41]

So all we need to worry about, which is also true if you even want to use the word enlightenment, we don't need to worry about being enlightened. Those things will happen of themselves as we put our emphasis and our focus on practice. And what is practice? Practice can be the formal practice you do at a Zendo, right? But practice is this way in which we try to put this all together and learn how to be skillful, put this all together and learn how to really meet our life in a way that's wholesome, that has wisdom, that is compassionate, that is... Active listening, as we say, right? The way that we really presence ourselves to what's happening at any given time. So that, to me, is what practice is. And even formal practice. I just thought about this very recently. When we do service, or we sit Sazam together, or any kind of formal practice that we're doing, of course in Soto Zen, it's unrelentingly relational in Soto Zen.

[49:46]

Like we're always doing things in a group. But when we do things in a group and when we do service, even if we're not, even if when we're doing service, that we're not really maybe wholeheartedly engaged in that process, like maybe we're thinking about something else while we're chanting or whatever, just the very fact that we are there together chanting is actually a mandala of Genjo Koan. It's actually the myriad things coming together. So no matter what your mind is doing, Your heart and body are actually, the beauty of this practice is that you're doing it anyway, regardless of what you think you're doing. And the fact that you're doing it, you put yourself there, is transformational. You will be transformed, you know, through that process of doing it. So, yeah, so this is just something I've been thinking about lately, about the nature of formal practice in the sense of ceremony, sitting zaza and together, that kind of thing.

[50:49]

Yeah, so, again, read the appendix about Shusho. I talk about verification and all of this stuff. But for me, it's like I don't even worry about that. All I'm worried about is what I'm up to and, you know, trying to be skillful. I don't worry about it all the time. You know, I hang out. I watch TV, do that kind of stuff. I don't, you know, angst about this. But sometimes I do as a teacher. I angst about, oh, no, you know. Basically, yeah, that's what I'm doing as a Buddhist practitioner. I'm not worried about getting enlightened anymore. I gave that up a long time. I had a five-year plan. It didn't work out, so now I'm just going to be here. A few more minutes. Any thoughts? I'd really like to hear you talk about... what you were going to say about whether we should read into the fact that Dogen wrote this for a layperson.

[51:54]

Okay. So, you know, Dogen went to China. He had his question about, you know, about practice. Supposedly on his way back, he was on the boat with this guy whose name is... Do you guys know what a colophon is? It's the end of a fascicle by Dogen, which often they're cut out of, like it's not in here. It's the end of the fascicle, and it tells you when it was written and things like that, which is often interesting. I think it's in this one. Where is the translation? Yeah, it says... This was written in mid-autumn of the first year of the Tenkuku era, 1233, and given to my lay disciple, Yokoshu, who lived in Shinzai, Yokoshu, and the fourth year of the Kensho, which is 1252.

[53:01]

So he worked on this fascicle. It seems he worked on it most of his life. Anyway, this guy, Yokoshu, was on the ship with Dogen. on the way back from China. I like, you know, I'm not the first person to think of this, but imagine Koshu and Dogen, you know, maybe at night, sitting on the deck of the ship, talking about the Dharma. And when he got back to Japan, the first thing he wrote, I believe, was Bendoa, and then he wrote Fukan Zazengi, and then he wrote Genjo Ko, then he wrote Makahara Haramitsu, and then he wrote, I think, Genjo Ko. But anyway, The very first things that Dogen wrote are basically kind of instructions on how to do stuff. He wrote Benda Wah, he says in the introduction, he wrote it because he wants people to, he feels like people are confused about Buddhism, and he wants to, you know, impart this, his understanding, and he says, I feel like this is a really heavy burden.

[54:04]

And then, you know, Maka Hanyo Haramitsu, he wrote... the first practice period that he did as a teacher, which makes sense to me that he would write something like that, you know, that you would give talks on that. Uh, Fukan Zazengi is instructions on how to sit Zazen. It's a rewrite of a Chinese text, uh, in his, his own way of thinking about it. Ganjo Koan is a primer on how to, how to engage in realized practice. So I think, you know, he wrote this, uh, for this person because he really wanted them to understand, uh, his kind of understanding of the process of how it is that we wake up. And if we could do everything that Dogen talks about in Genjo Koan, we would be woken. We would be woke. So there's this, so it's, somebody wrote, they thought, they wondered if it was a red herring, the fact that he wrote this for a lay person. No. I think he wanted, and he wants to support lay people.

[55:06]

Yeah, he wrote a lot of stuff for monks because he was in charge of a monastery most of his life, you know, as a teacher. But he also had students who were lay people, and he wanted them to wake up too. So he wrote Gantra Koan. And at this beginning period, I think, when he was really trying to clearly state what his understanding was of how to do this practice. And then it seems like that he... revisited it over the years. So does that answer your question? Yeah, that's great. Thank you. Rich, are you the guy who wrote that question? I might be. That's great. So, see, some of these things you're getting answers to. Whoever said they wanted the other seven pages or something, you're already getting the answers to them.

[56:10]

We have a question from Daniel. Yeah. Where are you, Daniel? Hello. Hi. Hi, hi. Hi. Uh... Well, I was... It was... It stood out to me, the word presencing that you use in the book made me think about that. And my question right now is about, like, is it another side concealing? Like, all the full extent of the ocean is also concealing right now. Yeah. My understanding of, in this particular case, Dogen's pointing out that he's using this example of the two Chikon and Riun awakening stories. And they awaken to this way of understanding their universal, if you will, relationship to the environment around them.

[57:26]

And as Dogen says about Chikon, when he heard the pebble hit the bamboo, he says he understood this was his friend. that he had this visceral feeling of companionship. And what was hidden was the sense of separateness. And even though our individuality, in a sense, was hidden, because what was being focused on was this sense of connection, loss of the relationship of subject-object, in that moment. But at the same time, subject and object still exists, but that was hidden at that moment, are not part of the equation or coming forward in that moment, but that what was coming forward in that moment was a unity rather than the independent aspect of the subject-object or the flower and the regal looking at the flowers or the bamboo and the pebble and the broom and the person.

[58:31]

sweeping and all that so so that's what we're talking about here or if we talk about then the next section right after that he says that part about um to study the buddha way is to study the self to study the self is to forget the self so in that way he's saying you know when you study the self in a particular way you're going to understand something about what it means to be no inherently existing self and And when we see that we are no inherently existing self, at that point, the self drops away in the sense of it's not that it doesn't exist. The self never stops existing. It drops away in the sense that what we're focusing on, what is revealed to us, is this unity. What's revealed to us is the no inherently existing self, or the universal aspect of the self, the interconnected self. We lose that sense of subject-object when we study the Buddha Dharma in that way. And we can see that if we really understand the nature of the self, right?

[59:36]

But if we're always caught in the self from a perspective of we never get outside the subject-object relationship, then we're not going to see the self is not different than everything else. It's no inherent, existing, codependent, arising, you know, compassion. What does compassion mean? It means passion with, right? So this sense of, in English, you know, and the sense of that universal isness with each other part. And so what's revealed at that moment is that side, but what we're not necessarily focused on or seeing at that side might be that individual aspect, but it doesn't stop happening. All those Dharma position things, they're all happening simultaneously, but we might just be focused on one part of that. And so everything else is obscured because we're not focusing on it. But the part that we are focusing on is revealed to us. Does that make sense? So that's what he's talking about. It is now 8.17, two minutes.

[60:40]

We were scheduled to go to 8.30. Is that okay? Yeah, if you guys want to do that. So maybe I should talk about... Well, let me talk about presencing because somebody asked about presencing. I did not make that word up. That's a word that scholars use. And some scholar whose name I ran across once and I've never been able to find again came up with this to talk about how we are or how Dogen talks about the nature of how we are present. So if we say to be present, that's a very static kind of word. But presencing has this, it becomes a verb. So I'm not great on grammar, but you add ing to something, it becomes a verb. And so presencing is like, what are you doing in zazen? Ideally in zazen, you're presencing yourself for the myriad things, meeting you, right? This way that you're completely present for reality itself as it is functioning.

[61:47]

You're not going to see all of that. So this goes back to the revealed and the hidden part. You're not going to see all that because you're still you sitting there. But there's this way in which you have dropped the self in the sense that if you're sitting there and you're thinking about, I could have said this, I should have done that. What am I going to buy tomorrow? What am I doing afterwards? Gosh, that person's making all that noise. What if they stop moving around? If we're doing all of that, that is a way in which we are completely self-referential. And we're not conscious usually. I don't know about you guys. If I start doing that, I'm out like a light. I'm not asleep, but I'm not in the room anymore. And so especially that's the danger of closing your eyes too. I don't know. If you close your eyes for me, I'm toast. So it's like you keep your eyes open, you stay present in the room. You are present, but what is happening is presencing. You are allowing myriad things to come forth and meet you.

[62:49]

So that's why I find presencing to be much more evocative than to say, you know, you should be present in a particular situation. So, yeah. So, let's see. There was a question that came up, and I think I can do this in 10 minutes. And where is that? Oh, yeah. So, let's see. Okay, so this part about unlike things and their reflections in the mirror and unlike the moon and its reflection in the water, when one side is illuminated, the other side is dark. Okay, so I found this to be a very difficult section. to figure out what it was about.

[63:52]

And I kind of understood what it was about, but trying to find my notes in here where I talked about this. Let's see. By the time I figure out where it is in my notes, it will be 830. Let me see if I can find it here. So there are a couple of different ways to talk about this.

[65:09]

So the translations of this sometimes are, I think, are really hard to kind of grasp because... Daogokomar translates this as... Okay, I think that it's... It's a little confusing, and there are variations in the translation that kind of compound the confusion. So what Dogen's describing here is he's describing the awakening experience of Riyun, who awakened on seeing the blossoming flowers in Shikan, who is awakened when he was sweeping the pebble and it flew up and hit the broom. But the part that here, it says right before, when Buddhists are truly Buddhists, they don't need to perceive they are Buddhists. So that might have to do with this light and dark thing, right? About obscurity and not obscurity, which is to say that when you perceive, they don't need to perceive.

[66:14]

In other words, Buddhas, when they are Buddhas, don't need to have that verification. They don't need to themselves see themselves as Buddhas. However, he said, they are enlightened Buddhas nevertheless, and they continue actualizing Buddha. So they continued this interconnected process. And then he says, and seeing color and hearing sound of the body and mind. Now he's giving us an example of what he's just been talking about. Although we perceive them intimately, so that would be that way in which our perception has kind of dropped the subject-object relationship, and we're really open to this coordinated, interconnected, interbeing, if you will, of the relationship. those around us, in this case, flowers or the fields and the pebble, and then is not like reflections in a mirror or the moon and water. When one side is illuminated, the other side is dark. So Okamura translates it, he says, he makes when one side is illuminated, the other side is dark as one sentence.

[67:25]

So it's like we're going along and so he's saying, you know... He says, mirror the moon in the water, period. When one side is illuminated, the other side is dark. The Soto Zen Text Project translation is, it is not like the reflection in the mirror, not like the water in the moon, colon, when one side is verified, the other side is obscured. So it's like you don't really know what that's... It seems like here in the Soto Zen Text Project, when one side is verified, the other side is obscured. He's talking about... the reflection and the mirror and the water and the moon. But in the other one, Shawaku says he's talking about when one side is illuminated, the other side is dark. He's talking about that experience that Ryun and Shikon had. So essentially, they end up coming to the same place. In the book, I talk about Hee-jen Kim's translation because Hee-jen Kim, I got through thrown

[68:26]

is not like the reflection in the mirror are the moon and water. So I was like going, well, okay, what is it like? You know, what's all this stuff referring to? But generally what it breaks down to be is it's saying that Even if you talk about the it's not like would be like, okay, what happens when you see a reflection in a mirror? You're aware of your reflection in the mirror and you're aware of the moon and the water. But this is also interpreted as you are not aware of the reflections in the mirror and not aware of the moon and the water. They're the same thing. I found this super confusing. And I don't know whether you guys... So I just decided on that I was going to pick the one with Heejin Kim because he acknowledged that they weren't like each other, which it seemed to me that that's what this part is talking about.

[69:37]

But no matter which side you go at it, whether you go at it as the moon and the reflection are separate, the water and the moon is separate, or you go the water and the moon is the same, what you end up with is still this idea that... What happened with Ryun and Chikon was that they were so engrossed in the experience that the experience of subject-object dropped away. And so one side was illuminated, which was that experience of no subject and object. And the other side that was obscured or dark is the side in which that was the independent aspect was functioning, which never stops functioning. Have I totally confused you? I mean, it's like I struggled over this trying to figure out what in the world this paragraph meant. And that seems to be the general consensus about whether you look at it from seeing the mirror and the reflection as the same thing, that this is what this person saw.

[70:46]

They didn't see a subject object when they looked in the mirror. Or whether we're talking about they continue to see the subject object. Both interpretations come back to this idea about talking about one side is illuminated and the other side is dark. And the reason they do that is because the next part of this is to study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be verified by all things. To be verified by all things is to let the body and mind of the self and the body and mind of others drop off, which would be that state of not differentiating between the two. There's a trace of realization that cannot be grasped. Somebody asked about this. The trace of realization, I think, can't be grasped because... How did I figure?

[71:47]

I'm getting tired. I don't want to talk about this because I'm getting tired and I can't remember exactly the logic of this. And it's 829. So. So is everybody totally confused about the mirror and all that stuff? But anyway, it was it was a big struggle for me. So I'll just tell you where I ended up, which is what's in the book. Thank you so much for joining us. This has been beautiful and encouraging and so amazing and so grateful for your teachings. And we hope that you will come back again. We'll talk. And we'll do the four bodhisattva vows to close with. And I don't know if you do exactly the same version that we do. So if you'll turn off your audio, I'll lead them. And then we'll end. Beings are numberless.

[72:48]

I vow to awaken with them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to become it. Thank you, everyone. Good night. If you'd like to unmute and say thank you or goodbye, please do. Thank you all very, very much. I really appreciate coming and talking to you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Good night, everybody. Good night, everybody.

[73:44]

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