Good morning. Good morning. Can you hear me okay? Yes. Can you hear me okay out there? Great. So, we are in day four. of our rohatsu sishi, and it's wonderful to be here. Even though we have this abbreviated schedule, I think one thing that we've done that's effective is actually to have these two long blocks of zazen one in the morning, one in the afternoon, three periods in a row, which is actually, that's not so usual for us, but it's great.

[01:20]

It just allows us to go more deeply. And so I'm appreciating that. There's new people here today, and there looks like there's a couple new people out there in Zoom land. And just to remind you that Today, Ryushin, Andrea Thatcher and I are available to meet with you. People online, actually I'm not sure how you sign up at this point, but people in person can sign up on the balloon board and we'll meet with you in the afternoon. when I was sitting the last period here, just, I've been trying to practice, we've been, sorry, we've been studying Phucan Zazen, which is Dogen's universal recommendation of the principles of Zazen.

[02:29]

It's really a basic Zazen instruction that includes really the whole spiritual framework of zazen. So what is it that we're doing that is a way of understanding or actually practicing the nuts and bolts that are described in his instructions. And so I've been trying to practice that. And this morning, just opening my senses and my mind to whatever is arising. And about 9 o'clock, the two guys who've been working on the shed next door showed up.

[03:40]

We heard their voices. It seems like we heard radio. We heard the birds. I heard the jet planes blowing overhead. I heard some very interesting music. I'm not sure what it was, it didn't sound like it was the radio, maybe it was the Thai temple, but it's like it's very challenging to hear these things and not listen to them. It's challenging to let them flow through, but it's It's the effort I'd like to encourage you to make. And we're going to talk about that in the course of today.

[04:45]

We're going to talk about these three really principal teachings of Dōgens that come up in the first third of Fukunza Zengi. The idea, the unity of practice realization rather than the separation of practice with the goal of realization, but actually the manifestation of realization that is expressed by our practice. To me, that's what practice realization means. It means that, and Dogen often said this, that if we and all beings and all living things are part of the unfolding Buddha nature, then the practice that we do is not an attempt to realize that or to have some large experience, but actually the practice is an expression of that.

[05:59]

So there's practice realization and I'll come back to that in a little more detail. And the way we do practice realization is through Chikantaza, just sitting, if you will. We'll talk about that a bit more. And that practice realization is This expression that Dobin uses quite frequently throughout his work, we use it, it's actually the last words of our Seshin guidelines that Rob read is, drop body and mind. What does it mean to drop body and mind? It sounds like a big deal. And it sounds like something

[07:02]

that we really should all strive to do. And there may, I think that there's other ways to look at it, which I'll suggest to you. To return to where we were on Tuesday, we were at this passage in Ganja Khan, where he says, you should therefore cease from practice based on intellectual understanding, pursuing words and following after speech, and learn the backward step that turns your light inwardly to illuminate yourself. So I think there's some more to say about that.

[08:10]

Thinking about this light. My understanding is that the light that he's speaking of is the light of awareness. and attention. And this is an unusual quality that seems, in a sense, all living things have it. A plate of grass, a flower, A tree. They all have an awareness. They have an awareness of where the light is to reach towards it.

[09:19]

Because that gives them life. Return towards life. It's an awareness which may not be aware in the terms that we're used to thinking about it. But it reaches for the light in one direction. and they send down roots to reach for water and nutrients in the other direction. That is awareness. And all animals have awareness. Even the smallest insect has an awareness that turns it towards food and nutrients, and that turns it away from danger. And of course, animals have it, and we have it. One of the things that distinguishes us, I believe, well, it may also be a function that's available to other mammals and other animals, but what's unusual

[10:35]

in our situation is we have the ability to direct our attention. It's not just reflexive. It's not just hardwired into us. There are some things that are hardwired. But this awareness, we can direct it. We can shine that light in a variety of directions. What Dogen is suggesting here is to shine that light inwardly. There's a wonderful co-on that probably many of you are familiar with. It's Case 86 in the Bill Cliff Record. Master Yunman said, everyone has their own light.

[11:36]

But when you look for it, you can't see it. It's dark, dark. And he asked, what is that light? And then he answered himself, he said, the kitchen pantry, the entry gate, that light is Along with awareness, it's where we cook stuff up. It's where we enter every circumstance and every situation that we come to. And then he said, as a sort of capping line, it's better to have nothing than something good. It's better to have no thing. It's better to not to cling. to something and to point yourselves towards some desideratan, something good.

[12:51]

So, We can think of turning this light inward rather than outward. Often our attention goes outward, but the inward is a way of really disentangling ourself from this kind of ceaseless project of making things into objects. And this is what drop body, and this is one way to look at drop body and mind. To drop body and mind is to make these physical and mental perceptions transparent. To see whether partially or entirely that whatever we're perceiving is part of this

[14:04]

vast interconnected reality is oneness. So I wanted to, let's go back for a moment and just look at this word shikantaza. So shikantaza is Dogen's Japanese translation of the Chinese phrase, just sitting. But Shikan, what you encounter when you say Dogen is that there's often, there's a lot of wordplay. So Shikan is, in the Chinese, also has the meaning, can be pronounced, well, it's a homophone.

[15:13]

And so, what it can also mean, the same sounding words, actually is concentration and observation, which is what we know as the classic the classic Buddhist meditation instructions of Samatha and Vipassana. But Dovin meant something else. He was trying not to separate these things. And he was pointing to it as Shikantaza is exactly the manifestation of practice realization. It's, we sit here and we sit in the flow.

[16:15]

It's like we're, we've stepped into the middle of a river. A river of arising perceptions, river of feelings, river of emotions and We just are allowing that river to flow around us. Sometimes, inevitably, it catches us up, and we drift along with it for a while. And then we set our feet down, and we just also watch it. So this is one major stool. of meditation. There really are two basic approaches to meditation and they're characterized in the Zen school.

[17:18]

So I would say without any judgment or evaluation, there's meditation which is really essentially a concentration practice. And there's meditation, which is an open awareness. Those are really two essential approaches to meditation. Now, in Japanese Buddhism, each one of those approaches had a way of characterizing the other. We've come down to think of Well, the Soto Shu characterizes, or Soto Zen, the approach that calls for open awareness, characterizes the other approach as Kana Zen, which means studying to accomplish something.

[18:31]

And that's become sort of traditionally ascribed to the Rinzai school. And then the Rinzai school characterizes this open awareness school as Mokushu Zen, as silent illumination, but with, in a pejorative sense, like you're sitting there doing nothing. So these are just, these are polemics. In fact, in Dogen's time, and he talked about this, particularly as he grew older, he grew more critical. But in fact, at that point, things hadn't really crystallized, so it wasn't so much that he was criticizing the Rinzai school as a school, or they were creating the Soto school as a school.

[19:36]

There were people who, there were teachers who emphasized one approach and teachers who emphasized the other. And those could be found in either school, certainly going back to some dynasty. But without any characterization, without a critique of the other side, what I'd say is that these are both really important ways to conduct your practice. And there's elements of each that interpenetrate the other. And certainly today I know, when I went to, when I've been practicing with Shoga Harada, who's a pretty orthodox Rinzai teacher, he said, you already have your practice, you should do Shikantaza. And on the other side, quite a few years ago, Aiken Roshi kind of tempted me.

[20:50]

He said, oh, you have a propensity towards words and phrases. Wouldn't you like to go on practice? And I thought, yeah, that's a good idea. I tried it for a while, but my home is here. My home really is in this Shikantaza school. Shikantaza is just shining the light inward to see all that arises. So when you do that, we get to the next part of the Subhanza Sendi. The next lines are, that next line say, body and mind of themselves will drop away and your original face will be manifest.

[22:04]

If you want to attain suchness, you should practice suchness without delay. Body and mind will drop away. So, this body and mind dropping away, in Japanese, the words are shinjin dakso rakun. And that also, you could say that just describes the process of being absorbed in shikantaza. So the story of this, I'm sure that many of you know it, but I'll tell it again. This goes back to Dogen's experience at Mount Tienkai with his teacher, Rujing. One evening, Rujing was making his greetings round, and

[23:05]

There's a monk near Dogen who had fallen asleep. And Rudin shouted at that monk and said, to study Zen is to cast off body and mind. Why are you engaged in single-minded sleeping rather than single-minded zazen? And hearing this, Dogen had a great awakening experience. And what that did was it blew away all the clouds of doubt that he had about the relationship between meditation and enlightenment. They were resolved. He saw that this was one. And Shortly after, he went to Ruching's quarters and he burned incense, saying, I've come because body and mind are dropped away.

[24:13]

Ruching responded approvingly, saying, body and mind is cast off. Cast off body and mind. Dogen said, well, do not approve this transmission, understanding so easily. And, you know, can't you test me a bit further? And Nu Jing said sharply, cast off, casting off. Casting off body and mind. is actually just the beginning. But it's something, one of the difficulties with this characterization, this story, is that it frames dropping body-mind as something really big, you know, as like a big awakening.

[25:33]

So that puts us back into the problematic territory of, you know, whether our practice is aimed at some great awakening or not. And this is really a challenge for us. But I think as he goes on, and Dogen talks about dropping off body and mind a lot. And it's interesting because there's another, there's a whole, this is maybe somewhat peripheral, but there's a scholarly debate about what Shinjin Datsuraku means. And again, as in that, in other cases, it's a question of whether Dogen was

[26:34]

was hearing something correctly, or was communicating what he heard correctly, or was he doing what Dōgen so often does, this kind of creative twist on the sound of words. So Shinjin Datsuraku with the characters that Dōgen uses means dropping body and mind. But the sound, again in Chinese, of what Ruching supposedly said in the dialect that Ruching probably used, and we don't know, we don't know anything about this. This is also something we're completely making up, but the scholars like to argue about this, but that the sound of what Dogen construed as Shinjin Datsuraku could also mean drop the dust of the mind.

[27:46]

Which is, goes back to what we were speaking of on Tuesday about the dialogue, the poetry dialogue between and senior monk at his temple about, you know, is there dust? Do we wipe off the dust? But anyway, Dogen really takes it in this direction, drop-off body and mind. I'd like to read you something that Tanya Leighton, teacher, in our tradition in Chicago says. Dogen starts off by talking about body and mind dropped off. It's funny that he says body and mind dropped off is the beginning of our effort.

[28:49]

Dropping off body and mind is an important technical phrase for Dogen. Body and mind dropped away is also the name that Dogen uses for Zazen. For him, zazen is simply dropping off body and mind. So the practice of zazen, it's the practice of zazen that is dropping off body and mind. It is our way of, to me, it's our way of rendering everything that comes through our mind, which is everything. Everything that we see, everything that we hear, everything that we feel. To drop off body and mind means not to turn those into things, but actually to make them transparent.

[29:54]

As Jerry was talking about, yesterday, if I become angry, instead of construing that as something real, can I just see it as an energy? Can I see it as something, can I see through it? Can I see through the anger? to the fear. And can I see through the fear to the place of not knowing, to the place of openness. So to shine the light inward is to keep working backwards through these layers of perception that we so earnestly want to turn into something real.

[31:01]

So Taigen says, for Dogen, Zazen is simply dropping body and mind. It is also his name for Anuttara Samyak Sambodi, complete, unsurpassed, perfect enlightenment. In some sense, body and mind dropped off refers to the letting go of our ancient karmic attachment. attachment to this limited body and mind. We are conditioned to try to acquire objects to embellish, enhance, or improve this body and mind. So just dropping off body and mind is to abandon that effort of acquisitiveness and is a statement of the ultimate for Dogen. And then he comes to, we have another conundrum about dropping body and mind.

[32:15]

It seems to imply that we're supposed to go to a place of no thought, no feeling, no awareness, somehow go beyond awareness. And Tygon writes, body and mind may be dropped off, but that does not mean we have no awareness. Quite the opposite. Yes, when body and mind have dropped away, how do we discern their awareness? I'm sorry, how do we discern their absence? We discern it, I would say, by virtue of the light that we experience. The light that when we try to look at it is dark, but we recognize that that light of awareness, that's the only way that we can see the absence.

[33:29]

So the next sentence is, If you want to attain suchness, you should practice suchness without delay. Suchness is, in a sense, the other side of emptiness. It's, when we look at the page of emptiness, the other side of that page is suchness. And they imply each other. Suchness is just the fullness of reality that's free from our conceptualization. It's really, what it's free from is

[34:34]

our self-centered thoughts. It's just sitting here, hearing the birds, hearing the planes, hearing the electric screwdriver . It's pretty good how I cute that, isn't it? And Even though we have a conceptualization, there's something beyond that conceptualization. In fact, the conceptualization itself is beyond conceptualization. How does that work? How did I hear that and know that was an electric screwdriver? That is miraculous. But we have to slow down enough which is why we're in Sejin, to slow down enough to actually hear it instead of just not registering this orchestra that is always playing.

[35:50]

Enjoy that orchestra. So from this point on, But from this point on, Dogen comes to, he turns to the really nuts and bolts, Sazen instruction. And this is really familiar with us, but familiar to us, but it also is very rich. So he says, for Samzin, now, That's what the word that's used in, I forget what I put in there, whether Sanzen means essentially Zaza, but actually San, Sanzen is what we, in Rinzai school Sanzen is what is used for what we call Dokusan.

[37:02]

I think it's the same San. And that san means to study or investigate. So, in Carl Bielfeld's translation of Fugan Zazengi, he says, for the study of Zen. But for zazen is fine. For zazen, a quiet room is suitable. Eat and drink moderately. cast aside all involvement and cease all affairs. Do not think good and bad. Do not administer pros and cons. Cease all movements of the conscious mind. But I think what that means to me is to make the mind open, flexible, and receptive.

[38:03]

So in other words, We don't have to try to move our mind. We don't have to try to direct our mind towards a koan or towards a concentration. We allow our mind to be receptive, and therefore we're not gauging or measuring all of our thoughts and views. Have no designs on being a Buddha. So this is This refers to a very famous story, which you probably have heard, but I'll tell it again quickly. It's a koan. There's a story that takes place between Master Nangaku and Master Baso. Nangaku was a teacher. He came to visit Baso at his hut, and

[39:06]

He asked Basso, what have you been doing recently? And Basso replied, recently, I have been doing seated meditation exclusively. And Nagoko asked, what is the aim of your seated meditation? Basso says, the aim of my seated meditation is to become a Buddha. So. Nangaku turns around and he picks up a piece of roof tile that happened to be on the ground, and he begins rubbing it on a rock. Basu saw this and said, Reverend Monk, what are you doing? Nangaku replied, I am polishing a tile. What are you going to make by polishing a roof tile? Nangaku replied, I'm polishing it to make it a mirror.

[40:09]

Paso said, how can you possibly make a mirror by rubbing a thai? Nangaku said, how can you possibly make yourself into a Buddha by doing seated meditation? So that's the reference. The scene in meditation is not an instrumentality. It's not performative, it's just being. But then Dogen says, zazen has nothing to do with sitting or lying down. It's not about your posture, it's actually about how we hold our minds in this state of openness. We're working on it.

[41:15]

We get to work on it in these wonderful three-hour blocks of meditation that we have this week. And we just get to open our minds and be receptive and to make ourselves more malleable. So Dogen then goes into the details. And I'd like you to just be aware that the details that Dogen talks about is a very comfortable practice. It's not a practice of harshness and austerities. It says, at the site of your regular seating, spread out thick matting and place a cushion above it, so thick Zapatan. This has changed, I will say. In Japan, no Zapatans.

[42:18]

Actually, in the Zotan, no Zapatans. And inside, they really big thick Zapatans. But when I was at Tsuyoji, and I saw this at AAG and Tsoujiji too, Your zafu is sitting on top of, right on top of the tatami. And it's hard. Spread out thick matting and place a cushion above it. Sit either in the full lotus or half lotus position. And then it goes into detail. In the full lotus position, you place your right foot on your left thigh and your left foot on your right thigh. In the half lotus position, you simply press your left foot against your right thigh. You should have your robes and belt loosely bound and arranged in order. Then place your right hand on your left leg and your left palm facing upwards on your right palm, thumb tips touching.

[43:24]

This instruction is 700 years old. And it's still exactly what we're doing. It works, you know, whatever that means. Thus, sit upright in correct bodily posture, neither inclining to the left or to the right, neither leaning forward or backward. Be sure your ears are on a plane with your shoulders and your nose is in line with your navel. place your tongue against the front roof of your mouth with teeth and lips both shut. Your eyes should always remain open and you should breathe gently through your nose. It's deeply encouraging to me that this is

[44:29]

This is the instruction that we were given when we came here. It's a living tradition. And in fact, it goes back even hundreds of years before this, because if you look at the earliest Chinese versions of Zazengi, it's the same instruction. And it's what we do with some necessary variation. The necessary variation is that we have to sit in this alignment in keeping with the particularities of our body. And so, even there's a very extensive Soto Zen commentary on, contemporary Soto Zen commentary on Fulkan Zazengi and the scholar who's writing, scholar practitioner who's writing that says, well now sometimes we have to sit in chairs or we have to sit in penches.

[46:02]

Sometimes here we have to lie down, or we have to stand up. But this is why we say, what Dogen says, he starts at this instruction, saying, Sazen has nothing to do, nothing whatever to do with sitting or lying down. If you're going to sit down, here's a way that's worked for people. And we have to find what to do. The idea of it all will come to this tomorrow, I think. The essence of our zazen is the three elements of it that are all integral. There's our body, which is manifested. manifest in the posture that we use. There's our breath, which Dogen actually doesn't speak a lot about.

[47:08]

And I think we'll talk about that a little bit more, why the breath instruction is so simplified. And there's our mind, body, breath, and mind. These are the elements of our meditation practice. And it's supposed to be a comfortable way. It doesn't mean there are no difficulties, but we establish it through these three fundamental aspects, body, breath, and mind. And just to say, if you want to really see a beautiful integral, approach to these three things. I really encourage you to look at Sojen Roshi's 2020 Zazen instruction, which is on the PCC website.

[48:18]

It's succinct, it's beautiful, it's to the point, and you know, it was just an incredible example of really his late teaching in which things were really compressed and just really alive. So I strongly, if you haven't seen it, or if you haven't seen it lately, I strongly recommend that you read that because it's the integration of body, breath, and mind. So I'm going to stop here. We will continue tomorrow with this investigation. And if you have any thoughts, questions on what we've been talking about, what I've been talking about today, we have just a little time for discussion. So please, either in the room or online.

[49:23]

I'll look for their digital hands online. Mary? In the Soto tradition, do we have a tradition of Stalika, of Chikintaza being, I don't know if this is the right way to say it, a gateway to the Johns? A gateway to what? The Johns. Ah, the question was, in the Soto tradition, do we have... Shikantaza, does it open a gateway to the jhanas? I think that the answer is no. That we don't really, it's to me, the jhanas, as I understand them, so jhana means concentration.

[50:26]

And in fact, The word for Zen is derived Zen. In Chinese, it was known as Chan, which was the Chinese way of rendering the word jhana. But the jhanas have been somehow taken out of, taken from the early, the Pali suttas, And turned, so the jhanas are first spoken about in the description of the Buddha's enlightenment. He moves through this jhana and that jhana, and each jhana has a particular, has come to have a particular characterization of experience. And what evolved in the meditation approach in meditation approaches that come from early Buddhism was the creation of the jhanas as distinct meditation practices that you would do distinct kinds of meditation and to actualize this jhana and that jhana and that jhana.

[51:53]

And it's being taught today That's a methodology that's taught. My feeling from reading the story of the Buddhist awakening was, it wasn't that he was aiming for these particular jhanas, it's just like, these are the states of mind that arose. And the context for them actually precedes Buddhism. These are pre-Buddhist meditation, uh descriptions of of meditational states so we to make a long story short practice realization is it it's the whole it's it's it's all we need to loosely hold so thank you uh yeah present

[52:55]

Why? What comes to mind right away is different strokes for different folks. Some people may really need concentration because maybe their minds are all over the place. and they need to maintain it. Concentration is not absent from our practice. It's always there. There's always an important element of samadhi. It's not the focus. It's not samadhi so that you can break through to some other state of mind. And to be maybe somewhat tendentious, my feeling is that open awareness is an approach that allows us to attune ourselves to everything that's happening around us, to

[54:28]

Open awareness is a way of harmonizing the world. It's a way, if we have an open awareness, then we're open to everyone that's here. We're open to everything that's happening out there. And it's not that concentration is exclusive of that. But it's also true, you can be incredibly concentrated and go incredibly deep and be largely unaware of what's going on around you. So that's a possibility. But as I said, I'm sort of taking sides here, right? And I think ultimately when you look at, when you listen to the really deep teachers in all schools of Buddhism, They're talking about the oneness of reality and they have different paths to get there.

[55:40]

Yeah, so Preston is saying that maybe the more concentrated style is useful for a person who has a kind of busy or ruminating mind. Whereas an open awareness, I'm not sure... What did you say there? better if you're trying to tune into everything. Yeah. Then he says, he's asking if the more open solid is better if you're trying to tune into everything. I just, I can't make such a clear distinction. I've got a very busy mind, you know, and so some concentration is good for me, but still the fundamental practice that I

[57:06]

rely on is this open awareness. Mostly, I mean, I think that's what my teacher did. And that's what his teacher did. And that seems to, what it seems to have done, you've got to look at really, you also take a backward step, not just shine the light inwardly, but look at your life. And you can ask yourself, what's integrating my life? How's my life going? And I say that this practice saved my life. And it saves my life. Doing this practice has created a wholeness, a sense of wholeness.

[58:06]

appreciation that I can't really fully express. I can't say that wouldn't have happened if I'd had a Rinzai teacher either. I just say this is what, this is where I've, where I've planted my trust. So other than saying that practice is a concentration practice, would you say that practice is not only or not always? Yes, I'd say Zen, there's always an element, there has to be an element of concentration. But we're actually, the fundamental effort that we see, this is where Soch had put the efforts, you're actually, your concentration is on your body. I mean, he was really strongly rooting, rooting the element of effort in our posture. And, If your posture is aligned, then you're in alignment with the world.

[59:16]

And that's going to open up everything. So we can talk more about this. Dan? So we're going to use this phrase, perceptive somatic. And to me, Yeah, I think so. He said Dogen uses the term receptive samadhi. Yeah, that's the way I think about it. There's a conundrum that I like to play with, which is the instruction that we get is concentrate on everything. which is just like, it's like kind of one of those things like the bodhisattva vows. It's like, beings are numberless, I vow to save them all.

[60:19]

You know, it's like, oh, concentrate on everything, which means just really open your mind. Is there anyone out there? Time for maybe one or two more in a year. Ross. The other man said, we were talking about turning the light inward, and then the invents announced this, where is the light? It's in the temple gate and the kitchen pantry. So it's like, turning the light inward, we see the light up, so-called out there. And I'm wondering in our conversation, especially with Preston's comment, that in concentrating out there brings the light up. Inside. Yes. And so, as Doug was talking about, like in Tenzo Kyokun, working in the kitchen with a knife, for example, as you were saying the other day, the activity of enlightenment is, we enlighten the scene in the activity, or the light of the carrot chopping.

[61:25]

So, in a sense, no inside, no outside, but we talk about inside and outside, where we're concentrating. Yes. I don't know if, could you hear that at all? No. I can... Ross was talking about, you know, the column that I read from young men when he said, you know, what is this like, the kitchen pantry, the temple gate, and talking about that, how does that fit with shine the light inward? And I think that what Ross was proposing was essentially Essentially, which I fully agree with, there's no inside and outside. It's not that the kitchen pantry and the temple gate are outside. It's just if you have this open awareness, then everything is included.

[62:29]

Because everything that you perceive is always coming through the function of mind. which is, you know, a fundamental, that's a fundamental teaching of particularly of Mahayana Buddhism. So, yeah, I agree. It's like, at that point, the temple gate and the ventri are not, if you're shining your light inward, they're right there. So, yeah. If one is gardening, for instance, or planting bulbs, that's so-called out there, and something is illuminated inside us in the gardening process. Right. He said if you're planting bulbs that's so-called out there, but something is enlightening us in the gardening process, I think that what I would say is the bulbs

[63:38]

the activity of planting the bulbs, the activity of using the bathroom and dressing to go out and do that, all of that is just the total dynamic working of the entire universe. That's oneness. That's a really good place to end. So, thank you. We'll continue tomorrow. Beings are numberless.

[64:23]

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