And unsurpassed, penetrating Welcome to Berkley Zen Center. We're just about to start the second week fall practice period, aspects of practice, and the theme this time is the Genjo Koan. So all of the Saturday Dharma talks and classes and way-seeking mind talks

[01:07]

I'm happy to introduce to you today our speaker, Hannah Mera. Hannah began practice in the 90s in Chicago, and she also traveled to Green Gulch Farm for periods of . In 2000, she retired at the age of 60 from a career in applied sociology. and she began six years in the San Francisco Zen Center system there at City Center and Green Gulf of the Sahara. She was ordained as a priest in 2006, and since then she's moved twice to be close to her granddaughters. First in Santa Cruz, where she was active in the Santa Cruz Zen Center, you sew there and also practice some vipassana.

[02:10]

In December 2015 she moved here to Berkeley to be near other granddaughters and to practice here at Berkeley Zen Center. Her dharma name was given to her by her teacher Hozan and he gave her dharma transmission this summer. Her dharma name is ki jin se show resolute compassion clear illumination so thank you for agreeing to talk to what you have to say about the genjo koan so i wrote this talk out um writing to me comes easier than being up here talking I'm reading from my notes. In these moments, my mind can be as clear as I hoped it were when I was working on them.

[03:12]

Also, I use words, just as Dogen used words, although Dogens were poetic words rather than concrete words. To me, concrete words represent the complexity of real life. They are simply the best that I can do to explain Dōden's meaning. When a senior student of Katagiri Roshi's asked what to do about this predicament, the predicament of explaining inexpressible with words, Katagiri's response was, you have to say something. And so I will say something, relying on you to sense that all words can do is point to something way more complex nonverbal and profound. This talk is an exercise in understanding our Buddhist tradition, our practice. We are sharing it, I was studying for it, while also constantly reaching out for connection with what was happening in Israel, then in Gaza.

[04:23]

A subtext for all I'm about to unleash. Is our hearts heavy with all the terrible suffering? Our minds focused on how to stop it from continuing, from getting worse, how to help the survivors. Genjo Koan describes our thing. Even things we don't know are happening. This terrible war we know, and we are completely connected to it, There's much we don't know, and we're also connected to those things. Today we're going to explore Dogen's Genjo Koan that have been for me among the most mystifying of his writings. Even though Dogen uses examples, being on a boat and burning firewood, examples that are familiar to me in my fortunate life, and that we know are also in Dogen's life.

[05:25]

He took at least two lengthy boat journeys. He lived at a time when burning firewood was essential in winter. Things with which we are familiar, yet the passage he wrote is still difficult. These examples as Jogen intended, it makes clear our central Soto Zen concept of emptiness or boundlessness. that helps us to practice our way. And so we have chosen for this aspects of practice, period, to take on the challenge of working with them. To our tantos, Lori and Susan, to make me stop my busyness and do this. The first section, when you ride in a boat and watch the shore, you might assume that the shore is moving, but when you keep your eyes closely on the you can see that the boat moves.

[06:28]

Similarly, if you examine myriad things with a confused body and mind, you might suppose that your mind and nature are permanent. When you practice intimately and return to where you are, it will be clear that nothing at all has unchanging self. Many of us know this example well. We've been on a boat, and watched the shore move, then looked down at the water and seeing clearly that the boat we're on is moving, glanced back at the shore, understood that the shore is from our point of view stable. However, our core Buddhist understanding is that everything, everything, the shore too is completely interconnected, boundless, without boundary between one thing and another, never still. This is what we call emptiness, empty of own being, or more clearly stated, boundlessness.

[07:37]

Every moment, every micro, sub-micro moment throughout space and time. Physics tells us this. The Heart Sutra tells us this. Dogen tells us this. When you practice intimately and return to where you are, Dogen wrote, it will be clear that nothing at all has unchanging self. Our job is to practice where we are. Some of us have been fortunate to listen to and read Shohaku Okamura's words as he explains Dogen. His detailed and careful explanations have for a long time been very helpful to me. Regarding moving along in a boat and understanding everything else is also moving, Okamura explains how this operates in our everyday lives. We think, he wrote, that we stay pretty much the same and things around us change.

[08:42]

We work on figuring out the changes that we like and the ones we don't like. And then we act in a way to maximize our preferences and minimize or eliminate what we don't want to experience. Okamura points out the trouble this delusion of ours causes. For us to make life more comfortable and luxurious, human beings have invented many things. We have killed many living beings and we have destroyed a large part of the earth under the banner of the pursuit of happiness, prosperity, and progress. When we harm the earth, we are in fact harming and killing ourselves. This destruction results from an approach to life based on delusion. When we practice and become one with this vast network of causes and conditions, we see that we share the same life with all, and we learn to relate to the earth

[09:49]

and all living beings with care and compassion. Sazan is the practice in which we become intimate with this reality. Okamura quotes a passage from Dogen's Zenki. In a boat, our body and mind, self and environment are all essential parts of the boat. The whole great earth and the whole of empty space are essential parts of the boat. I as life, and life as I are the... Another example, coming to that. In a moment, Ryushin will ring the big bell. Let's quiet our minds a moment, settle into our... Feel our bodies present.

[10:52]

And we will share listening to the sound of our big bell. So Ryusha is going to ring the bell. The entire universe makes the sound. All these are expressions of reality. Settle again. When we settle where we are, open ourselves to reality. Again, we experience the bell making the sound.

[11:55]

our mind discerning the sound, the tolling outward to everywhere of the sound. This is non-thinking that Dogen referred to in his meditation instruction. So let's try one more time. all space, here, everywhere. These words of Dogen and Okamura explaining them open us to the spatial relationship of all life.

[13:03]

It is and everywhere. Next, Dogen wrote, Firewood becomes ash, and it does not become firewood again. According to Dogen, that unique stage of a thing's existence at any given moment. Yet do not suppose that the ash is future and the firewood past. You should understand that firewood abides in the phenomenal expression of firewood. That is the unique stage of a thing's existence, which fully includes past and future and is independent of past and future. Ash abides in the phenomenal expression of ash, which fully includes future and past.

[14:05]

Firewood does not become firewood again after it is ash. You do not return to birth after death. We know that firewood does not become ash again, but I do most usually think that ash is future and firewood past. Dogen uses these examples of usual ways that we think, and that his students at the time also thought, to bring us to an understanding of boundlessness, of the boundless reality of existence. Dogen's words, I'll continue. This being so, it is an established way in Buddha Dharma to deny that birth turns into death. Accordingly, birth is understood as no birth. It is an unmistakable teaching in Buddha's discourse that death does not turn into birth. Accordingly, death is understood as no death.

[15:09]

Birth is an expression complete this moment. Death is an expression complete this moment. They are like winter and spring. You do not call winter the beginning of spring, nor summer the end of spring. This, I think, is easier for us. Birth and death are such monumental happenings. And experiencing one, we don't think of the other. Although we do hold to the understanding that in order to die, one has to have been born. come before the other. So too with winter and spring. Leaves have fallen. Temperatures cold. Winter appears. Air turns warmer. Buds of leaves appear on trees. Spring. Dogen, however, was teaching us Buddhism.

[16:13]

not our mundane perceptions of matter. In the first section, he was teaching about the boundlessness of space. In the second, the boundlessness of time. Okamura wrote, this section of Anjokoan is one of the source writings that explains Dogen's idea that time and being are identified with each other. Dogen explains this in his spasical Being Time. Here is Okamura's explanation. Thank goodness for that. Dogen compares life and death to firewood and ash. Seen from our usual view, an acorn sprouts and grows gradually over a long period of time until a tree. When firewood is needed, the tree is cut down. split into pieces. And the pieces are stacked.

[17:16]

When the pieces are dry, we call them firewood. And when we burn the firewood, it becomes ash. We think of human life and death in the same way. I was a baby. I grew up for about 20 years. And then I stopped growing. I will live as an adult for some time. and then continue to get older and older until I find it. Remember, these are El Camaro's words. He continues, Commonly, we think of time as a stream that flows like a river from the beginningless past to the endless future. We believe that individuals are born and appear in the stream, later die and disappear from the stream. We think, The stream of life has been flowing before my birth, and it will continue to flow after my death. This is the way we usually think.

[18:20]

Of course we think this way. Yet this is not the truth of life and death. This is not the way our Buddhist tradition sees time, understands birth and death. In this section, Dogon is talking about the true nature, an actual experience of time, life. For Dogen, being is time, and time is being. Life is in this moment and is inextricably connected with all time and all space. This is boundlessness. This is the Heart Sutra. According to Dogen, as Okamura explains it, a tree, firewood, ash, and all things in existence have their own time or dharma position, and at each dharma position this being has its own past and future.

[19:24]

When a tree is in the dharma position of a tree, it has its own past as a former seed and its own future as firewood. When firewood is in the dharma position of firewood, It has its own past as a tree and its own future as ash. When ash is in the Dharma position of ash, it has its own past as firewood and its own future as something else. Nothing is simply linear. At each point, all is interconnected. Not so that each Dharma position has its own length of time. And here's where, to me, it gets very interesting. Okamura wrote, in reality, each stage or dharma position of living and dying can only be experienced in the present moment, and the present doesn't have any length.

[20:28]

A length of zero, that is, the present moment, is empty. The present moment is the only moment we experience because the past is already gone and the future has not yet come. There is always some gap between the actual experience of the present moment and our thoughts of the present moment and how we define it. present moment is ungraspable even though it is the only only the actual moment of existence yet we open the hand of thought in Zazen and we let go of our story and sit right here right now all things change all things are simply collections of the disparate elements of life in a position of time

[21:38]

Charlie Picorni, now a teacher at Brooklyn Zen Center of Tassajara when I arrived to live there in the spring of 2000. Yikes. Over 23 years ago. His teaching, I thought I was old then. Pretty funny. His teaching on Genjo Kohan, given in a talk much more recently, is helpful to me. Here's what stood out for me in his talk. Self happens in every moment. Our life instants arise and perish each moment. Avidharma scholars said a conditioned thing perishes as soon as it arises. Abhidharma scholars tried to figure out how many instants, you know, they were really into these details, overwhelmingly so, and came up with 75 instants in a second.

[22:57]

Pokorny said it's better to think of instants as ungraspable, intimate with our impermanence. Nen is a word that's prominent in the anime juku, a sutra we chant, recited faster and faster because we can hardly keep up. Nen is a moment or instant. It's helpful to me to use this very brief word, Nen, to think of the instance we can note when we're paying attention to instance. Men, men, men, one after another. A piece of firewood is lit. Fire catches and becomes flames.

[24:03]

This in all life is impermanent. A term I got from Picorny's talk. A small piece of the firewood receives and holds the flame, warms, burns, fed by oxygen, passes it on to the next piece. The firewood, inseparable from all life, dries, crackles, smokes, section by section, burns, stops burning, is warm for a while, cools all in moments of time. I hope these words give you a taste of reality. As Ryushin gave us the sound of the bell to think about space, I was thinking about examples akin to burning firewood, intimately, experience with you, time.

[25:08]

My favorite was lighting a sparkler right here in the Zendo, because I knew that would create such a fuss about danger and stuff. The second idea was to set up, like Hozan does, with the conclusion of our New Year's sub-proof container with a Presto log that after our closing chant and announcements, we could all go outside, light it, and watch very closely. The burning, the catching, the moving, the burning of the law during its time. A tad complicated. And so instead we have words and we also have our bell. Ryushin is going to pick up the striker. We, she, the striker have our own connections. And also to focus on with Dogen, this section of Ganjo Koan, this moment, time, Ryushin approaches the bell with the striker, moving through space, but also time.

[26:23]

Completely interconnected through time, a complex story if we attempted to tell it, only including what our and Ryushin's minds can imagine. There's the time of anticipation, And of movements toward ringing, she rings the bell. Can you all hear it online? Okay. We feel, imagine, the ways the sound of the bell moves out through time, reaching all time past, momentarily present, and all future, forever.

[27:25]

Pokorny, giving his talk at Grange Gulch, told us how he asked his teacher, Reb Anderson, about his experience of having little moments of presence in Zazen and trying longer periods of time. I'm thinking Pekorny was asking, how can I be better at Zazen, concentrate longer and longer? I've tried this. Have others tried it too? Trying to be really concentrated. Rev said, And this is very helpful to me. Bodhisattvas try to be present for shorter and shorter periods of time. We sit zazen, aware, men, men, men, short nens.

[28:34]

trying for concentration for longer and connected nens, I fail. How helpful it is to accept the short moment of time and then the next one. Moments that we have learned are nothing but the five aggregates, form, sensations, perception, mental formations, consciousness, nens. still and pay attention. That's all we have. Shohaku Okamura in his talks, in his writing, consistently credits his teacher Uchiyama Roshi. During the end of his teaching on the instance of firewood and ash, he writes, Uchiyama Roshi was approaching the end of his life. He was studying his death, studying death, and writing poetry. Here's one of those poems, which I never could have understood before studying this.

[29:42]

So let's see if we got it. Water isn't formed by being labeled into a bucket. Simply the water of the whole universe has been labeled into a bucket. The water does not disappear because it has been scattered over the ground. that the water of the whole universe has been emptied into the whole universe life is not born because a person is born the life of the whole universe has been labeled into the hardened idea called life does not disappear because a person dies simply the life of the whole universe has been poured out of this hardened idea of I back into the universe.

[30:44]

Can you read that again? Thank you. I think I should read it again. Who asked? Thank you, Laurie. Water isn't formed by being ladled into a bucket. Simply the water of has been labeled into a bucket. The water does not disappear because it has been scattered over the ground. It is only that the water of the whole universe has been emptied into the whole universe. Life is not born because a person is born. The life of the whole universe has been ladled into the hardened idea called I. Life does not disappear as a person dies.

[31:47]

Simply, the life of the whole universe has been poured out of this idea of I back into the universe. Would somebody please read that at my memorial service? Everybody present, including the abbot. This is our gift from Dogen, from Ujiyama. The gift of life as it is, or in Suzuki Roshi's words we love, things as it is. Amora writes, Dogen urges us to escape from the cave of our thinking and to meet and live out reality as it comes to us. We have men, then men, then men, each moment of speed, leading with speed, connected with all life across the time of forever, into the past and into the future, connected with all life across the space of everywhere,

[33:04]

I vow to receive this gift to pause for men. What about you? What do you think? Makes sense? Love to hear. and you out there. If you have any questions, just raise your hand and I'll bring them up. Hannah, I wondered what you think the difference between radical impermanence and impermanences? I think I'm going to get a little lazy with impermanence. So I think when we say radical impermanence, it sharpens us up to really pay attention.

[34:13]

And I think Charlie and his talk was sharpening us up by invoking the Havidharma and Rev, you know? So that's all. Maybe invoking total Interconnected boundlessness. I mean, that's radical. Thank you. Did you want to say anything? Nothing. Thank you. Thank you. Joe, can you all hear me? I find it really challenging the idea that I'm not born onto a stage and that I don't leave the stage when I die.

[35:18]

So that's a challenge. But then when I hear Uchiyama's poem, there's the universe before and the universe after. So is there a stage? Is the universe the stage? Really simple question for you. well the stage is a delusion right we have all these delusions we think we live in this little limited deal and that we can do whatever we want like okamura was suggesting oh i think i want to eat me i think that sometimes you know i think i want to build which means where are those trees that are going to be cut down for i mean i think i want to throw away some stuff in a careless way that it could get out into the world and hurt things i mean even burning the presto log would you know not be so good only do it once a year and not we're not using presto logs anymore oh what are we using uh wood

[36:32]

Precipologues are too toxic. Oh, good fruit. Well, at least. But wood, we know about wood. The whole description that Okamura gave us. Wood starting with an acorn. Even the scrap wood started with something. I mean, we do this. We have to do this to live, but we also need to, like... kick the notion that we're separate because I think a stage means to me we've got this limited life and no separation from everything past future way out there difference between a stage and the universe is that the stage is kind of an idea in our head and the universe is the universe.

[37:34]

Is that kind of what you're saying? That's very well said. So the last conversation brought me to just painful question. So, right, we can't, we're constantly consuming things, using things that were born, and sometimes we use them mindfully, sometimes we use them thoughtlessly. things that had been living one way or the other. To come back to the terrible conundrum of Israel and Gaza, we can say that

[38:55]

Our life is composed of taking life. But that's not okay. That's not a sufficient understanding. This consideration brings me back to that painful question. I wonder if you have something to help us. I'm hoping that in moments of Nen, Nen, Nen, we're not forgetting what we know is going on, and not forgetting that things are going on we don't know, and that we're not forgetting pretty often to be sending

[40:25]

I've been obsessed with those trucks loaded and only 20 trucks got in and the roads were bashed. So it was hard and for people and trucks and roads and people in tanks, sitting, waiting. families who love those people. And everyone in the world that we don't know where. So important with men to hear the cries of the world. And to notice everything about life that we can notice.

[41:44]

Have you been noticing the spider webs? What? Anyway. The spider webs. They're everywhere. And they're amazing. I mean, just to talk about another part of being here. Anything else? Everybody's got it, huh? We'll never be mystified by firewood becomes ash and does not become firewood again. But it's all. I really enjoyed your talk. It was wonderful. And yeah, I really enjoyed your driving. I just had to say it was wonderful. how you feel sometimes about talks, but it was well received. I have been having in the last few weeks of making a decision to fix my house up so that I may change where I live.

[42:56]

And in that process, I'm patching things up. So I have painters surrounded by painters taking Precious artwork or masks from South America or puppets from Thailand or whatever off the walls. And now I have blank walls. And I've been in this thing about time and things. Those things preserve a moment of time. a time for me. And I somehow held on to that time. And I am looking at the process of really solidifying time, which I was really good at surrounding myself by. They were wonderful things, but that time was a long time ago.

[43:58]

Now is now. And that whole process of in a certain way, and wondering if I'm gonna put them up again. Just wondering about my relationship to surrounding, to make my life feel stable and held in that space. All these other times of all these other ideas and things. It felt comfortable. But what about now? None of those things there. What do I do now? What is that? This is the very fortunate thing. The difficult thing about removing all those things from your walls. Because we have a chance to see that things are fluid.

[45:05]

Think about all those people who had to leave their homes, whose homes got wrecked on both sides of the Gaza border. It's kind of like it. Those things are safe, though. Your things are safe, and you can make a decision. It opens up for you. It opens up for us all. I mean, even when things are still on the wall and we look at them, there's some thoughts that come. with these old things. Thank you. Are we done? Did I escape finally? Peter. Thank you for your talkers. I just wanted to

[46:09]

I keep hearing people talk about the pain. And I'm wondering if you did it? The moment of bed, in bed, how do we become intimate with that moment? We're officially turned away from pain. I just wondered if you could talk about that. I don't think you probably didn't hear Peter, right? Oh. Not too well. Let me try, Peter. Some moments are painful moments, and yet we tend to turn away from pain. As an alternative, perhaps we could become intimate. It seems like the way through, so to speak, intimate with the qualities of that moment. The way through is to become intimate with the quality of that moment, even, of course, the painful moments.

[47:19]

It almost seems like bearing the unbearable. Bearing the unbearable. Peter's words. It made the pain easier. We can try. What do you think? I'll take that as an indication. Well. Thank you. It's hard. It's very hard. Laurie? Yeah, it was just, Peter, remind me of that Tibetan, of actually breathing in and other, you know, we don't know whether we can relieve anybody's pain or not, but the feeling of being willing to bear, breathe in pain and breathe out ease.

[48:43]

At a certain point, You can do when you can't do anything, when it feels like you can't do anything else. Laura's talking about the practice of Tonglen. When you breathe in the pain of suffering. I guess everything's and breathe out. Ease. When you're right by the fire, as sometimes we are in our life, the real, evident pain. It's about the only thing you can do. It's a very helpful practice. But we could be doing that. That would be another thing we could do with our nens, as the world is the way it is.

[49:45]

We can shout. We can weep and we can shout. Did y'all hear that? That's also a way of fully entering that moment. If I did that in my apartment so close to other apartments. Do it in your car. With the windows up. Thank you for being here. Maybe also, the fact that you mentioned Nen, Nen over and over, does bring up the image of Kūkanam Gyo, which is a text about compassion, about Kanaan, about finding a way to meet all those Nens, as far as I know.

[50:54]

And yeah, all I can say is even my worst sit, whatever that means, reminds me, what else can you do? Even your worst what? Even my worst sit, whatever that means, reminds me, what else can you do with all those ends? Yeah. He mentions that the inmajigu khan and jo is also about compassion. Okay. Be inside.

[51:58]

for the first time. Here are some announcements. Tomorrow, Berkeley Zen Center will host a Sangha Workday. If you would like to join, please contact Greg Denny. Greg Denny's email is in the chat and any other contacts I mentioned will also be here in person and would like to get a hold of any of these people, just let me know. Next Monday, Ellen Webb will give away Sikhi MindTalk on Zoom at 8 a.m. On Thursday, Berkeley Zen Center will hold the second in a series of classes on Dogen's Genja Kohan as part of the aspects of practice period. Next Saturday, Abbot Hozon will deliver the lecture. Also, on Monday evening, Monday evening, there's gonna be a vigil for compassion and stability during a time of war in the Middle East. This will happen after Zazen and there will be a time of silence.

[56:31]

And then we will chant a mantra as we walk to the Jizu Garden to make an offering. So please come for that if you are available. That's on Monday after evening Zazen at 6.30. Evening Zazen starts at 5.40 p.m. Some recurring reminders, a group has been meeting to consider ways for BCC to address racism. If you wish to participate, please contact Karen Sundheim. And on Wednesday night, a drop-in group meets from 7.10pm to 9pm. The group particularly welcomes newcomers to Zen practice. For more information, please contact Ikushin Jerry Oliva. Yes, Laura. There's so much going on that we forgot to add that next Saturday is our Sajiki ceremony as well, which is feeding the hungry ghosts.

[57:33]

It happens at the same time of the Saturday morning program. So if you come next Saturday, it's folded into that. I don't know what else to say about it. Where's your costumes? If you didn't hear it online, next week is Sajiki, where we celebrate feeding the hungry ghosts. And in combination with the Western holiday of Halloween, you're encouraged to wear a costume. Thank you, Lord. And for more information about any of our programs, bulletin board outside, please visit the website. If you have any questions about practice here at BCC, please talk to today's Zazen instructor, Susan Marvin, who just raised her hand. To make a donation and help support BCC, we have a donation box in the corner. Please visit the generosity tab on the website. If I could get two volunteers to help with cleaning up the teacups and the tea that we'll have afterwards, that would be greatly appreciated.

[58:40]

Cecilia, thank you. And Evan, thank you. All right. Those in the Zendo, As you're leaving, please maintain silence until you're off the Zendo porch, and then feel free to socialize with one another. Those of you online, if you would like, please feel free to unmute and to greet one another. Thank you. Good morning. Hi. Thank you, Joe. Good to see everyone. Thank you. And Hannah, thank you for your talk. I appreciate it. Yeah, thank you, Hannah. I don't know if you're still there. It was a good talk. Thanks, Joe. Thank you, Joe.

[59:31]

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