Zen Master Dogen, in his Ginjo Koan, says, to carry the self forward in order to realize the 10,000 dharmas is delusion. That the 10,000 dharmas advance and realize the self is enlightenment. to carry the self forward and realize the 10,000 dharmas means to see things as objects. Dharma has various meanings. The word dharma, dharma with a capital D means the law or the truth or

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Buddha's teaching or things as they actually are. And D, a dharma with a small d, dharmas, the myriad dharmas, specifically refers to all of the elements of our physical and psychic being. but in a general sense refers to everything. All phenomena are dharmas in a very general sense. Objects. Everything is an object. Everything has a shape and form and color. So, to advance and try to find out what everything is, or to put ourselves forward in this world, seeing everything as an object is delusion.

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But to allow all things to advance means to close the gap between ourself and things. To not see things just as objects, but to allow everything to advance and actualize ourself Suzuki Roshi always talked about the difficulty of practice not being that it's hard to sit with our legs crossed. Sometimes we say, oh, practice is difficult because it's hard to sit with our legs crossed.

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Hurts. or it's hard to be enlightened. But that's not the difficulty of practice. Difficulty of practice is to have pure understanding, to keep our practice pure or non-dualistic. Dualistic understanding is to put ourselves forward in order to understand the 10,000 dharmas. Non-dualistic is to allow the 10,000 dharmas to advance and actualize ourselves, verify ourselves. One is to see everything as an object And the other is to see everything as ourself.

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For instance, when we talk about our actions, we say, I am doing this. I am picking up a glass of water. But actually, a glass of water is moving me. I am being moved by this glass of water. So, we usually, our usual tendency is to see things from one point of view. The point of view of myself. And we always get stuck in this point of view of myself. I pick up this glass of water.

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But actually, from the other side, I am being moved by this glass of water. And I am drinking water But actually, I am being drunk by water. I am drinking water. Water is drinking me. Sometimes, if we drink whiskey, we can say, I am drunk. That's pretty good, actually. You have to be a little cuckoo to be able to say that. I am drunk. That's maybe one of the few times we say so. But to look from the other side, to see from the other side, or

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to get out of our self, outside of our self. That's to have a real out-of-body experience. Not that you're floating outside looking down as an object, but to get out of ego, step outside of ego. and realize our real self, which is more than just the limitation that we impose from a certain point of view on the world. Dogen, again in Genjo Koan, says, to study the Buddha Dharma is to study the self. And to study the self is really to drop the self.

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And to drop the self is to be actualized by all dharmas. So, to pick up a cup of water, is to be picked up by a cup of water, to be moved by a cup of water. To step out on the floor is to be moved by the floor. There's an old saying, the bridge is flowing while the water is still. Usually, we think of water as moving under the bridge.

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That's one point of view. But seen from another point of view, water is standing still while the bridge moves. Sometimes, when we talk to each other, we think, I am talking to you, but actually I am being talked by you. When we speak to our children, sometimes they're very angry, and we take a certain point of view, a very dominating point of view, in order to make the children mind. but actually the children are influencing us very much. We are being moved by the object and the object is ourself.

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Dogen again in Genjo Koan says, looking at the shore from a boat, it looks like the shore is moving. Sometimes you get the feeling that the shore is moving. But if you look, more clearly and more inclusively, you see that it's really the boat that's moving. The shore looks like it's... Then you see, well, the shore is really standing still and the boat is moving. But actually, both the boat and the shore are moving. What is really moving? and what is really standing still, what's in place, and what's moving, and who's influencing who. There's the koan of the sixth patriarch, Eno,

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and coming on two monks who, on seeing a flag waving in the wind, one monk said to the other, is it the wind that's moving the flag or is it the flag that's moving the wind? Is the wind moving or is the flag moving? And Sixth Patriarch happened to be walking by and hearing them, He said, it's neither the flag or the wind that moves, but it's your mind that moves. This is a pretty good reply. The monks were very amazed. And one time there were there was an old nun who used to live on the road and there were 17 monks who were going to visit a very famous Zen master and they stopped at her place for tea and they were talking about this koan of the flag and the wind and the six patriarchs replied

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And they were discussing it, discussing it, and she finally put her foot down. She said, all you stupid monks, don't you know that it's neither the flag, nor the wind, nor the mind that's moving? It's neither the wind, nor the flag, or the mind that's moving. They were all greatly impressed with her. And they all became enlightened. And they didn't continue on to see the Zen Master. They all went back home. Neither the wind, nor the flag, nor the mind that's moving. Everything exists in complete stillness. So as we've been talking, our life is a relationship.

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Nothing really exists by itself. There's no such thing as self-existence for any particular thing. Everything exists because of something else. Everything takes its shape and its being because of something else. So our life, we tend to feel from this point, subjective point of view, that our life is our life and everything around us is kind of the scenery or stage of our life. But this stage is not something that we walk up onto and off of. It's a kind of play.

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We play it out. We play out our life on this stage. But the props are real. The props are ourself and create us. The wind creates the flag, and the flag shows us the wind. If you want to see the wind, you have to look at the trees, or you have to look at the leaves blowing around, or to see the grass move. But if you just look in the sky, empty sky, you don't see the wind, no matter how hard it's blowing. When you're in the house or in your car and you have the heater turned up, it seems like it's warm all over.

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But when you step out of the car in the morning, it's pretty cold. And then cold meets us and we meet cold. And cold is myself. There's no cold outside of my mind, this mind. It's a mind that moves, but yet something beyond mind, beyond all speech and thought. So, Dogen says, to let the 10,000 things advance and realize us is enlightenment.

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Just how on each moment We allow our life to be lived through life itself. We say, I am living life. I am living my life. But actually, life is being lived through us. But how do we let life be lived through us? When we want to live life too much, from our side, from this side, it's called ego. Ego means dividing the world into subject and object.

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and seeing ourself as a subject over against everything else as an object. In that way we just cannot understand why the world doesn't cooperate with us. We just can't understand why the world doesn't go our way. So Enlightenment is just being able to drop body and mind and allow ourself to be lived. To live life and to be lived by life. To advance, actually, the self and to allow the dharmas to advance and to be turned and turned. But in that perfect poise, there's no one who turns and nothing being turned.

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So if we have too much desire, we set up a close. Actually close ourself down. And if we think we have everything figured out, we close ourself down. So the way to practice, how we practice, is moment by moment to give up, to drop body and mind.

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and stand freshly in the universe without too much ego and the ability to respond right away to everything. It's like when a cat wants a mouse. Cat would just sit and wait in perfect composure. And when mouse comes out, or when a frog is sitting on a rock and a fly goes by.

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But the cat and the mouse, it looks like a cat has some, maybe cruel, because of the way they play with mice. But this is the relationship between cats and mice, which are pretty hard to stop. Cats and birds, animals, are like this. Human beings are like this too, but don't need to be. Enlightenment for an animal is a different level than enlightenment for a human being. Animals are very instinctive, yet their composure is wonderful.

[24:37]

If we have composure of a highly developed animal, that's wonderful, but Human beings, although animal, are also on another level. And human beings' enlightenment is on a completely different level than animals' enlightenment. So when human beings have enlightenment, they manifest compassion, because compassion is a natural expression of enlightenment. Nevertheless, when you think about it, most animals only take what they need.

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and are not greedy. So, because human beings are not as perfect as animals in their development, animals are a great example for us. Most animals have come to a certain kind of perfection. whereas human beings are still evolving. Everything around us, of the animal world and the plant world, are great examples to us, if we just pay attention. The whole world acts in an enlightened way, except the human world, which in the human world is divided between enlightenment and delusion.

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But we think of ourselves as being above the world. above the animals and the plant life and so forth. That's our potential. But we haven't actualized our potential as human beings. We don't realize our own completeness. It's very hard for us. And so we're very destructive. Animals just take what they need. Plants just take what they need. Human beings have great needs, more over and above their real needs. So we call this greediness and delusion. Based on not seeing who we really are and acting in accordance with enlightenment.

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I think ecology is a kind of wonderful concept for human beings because it gives us the feeling that we are the universe. But to actualize that in ourself, to actually express enlightened behavior in our everyday life is not so easy. We always have to be careful and mindful of what we're doing. So in very small ways, we should practice when we're eating, when we're walking, when we're relating to people and objects, to realize how we move and are being moved by everything, how we create and are being created at the same time.

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There's no fixed self. Who I am is what is happening on each moment. The problem that we have is in thinking that we know who we are, and acting out of that fixed idea of ourself. Of course there's some idea, we have some history, and we act in a certain way. But at the same time, we're always being created by our surroundings and by our interaction with whatever we meet. So,

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In our Zen training, what we see as formal practice is actually just focusing attention carefully and appreciatively on each action. It's so hard to lose that attention and just fall into acting out of ego. So when we bow to the Buddha, it's just bowing to ourself. When we eat out of our bowls, we're eating ourself. and being eaten by ourself, being formed by everything around us.

[32:45]

So to wake up, to be enlightened, is to actually express that moment by moment. Do you have a question? When you were talking about acknowledge that this happened, but almost always, when we are negative, we say, I've been had, or I've been used. And when something wonderful happens, then we say, not that it had us, but that we did it, that we want to always take credit. Yeah. One direction.

[33:53]

Yeah. To be used is a kind of blow to our ego. And to be able to be used, to be able to freely be used, is enlightened action. But sometimes, if you're very kind and very giving, people will take advantage of us. So, for someone who is very open and very kind, always give people awe, and they take you know, take and take. Sometimes I think we should allow ourselves to be taken. Good practice, actually. If someone cheats us out of a dollar... Last night, last night, Hoitsu Suzuki came in on his way to Tassajara, and he and Jacques Cho Kuang and

[35:00]

Kato-san and I were having dinner and in a Thai restaurant and we got the bill and and we added it just didn't seem right and we added up the bill and it wasn't right so we asked the waitress to come over and showed her and she went took the bill back and it came back it still wasn't right and I thought, here we are, you know, four monks arguing over, not arguing, but putting our attention on this money thing, you know, just trying to get the bill to come out right. And it was really quite laughable. And it never did come out right. So we just forget it, you know. But, something about just forgetting it.

[36:03]

But on the other hand, sometimes, you know, you want things to be just right. So, the question is, should you just forget it, or should you make it come out right? There's some reason for making it come out right. Somehow it should come out right. But on the other hand, if you spend too much time making it come out right, it's not it's too much. There's a certain point where it's too much and you just have to let it go. So at some point we just let it go. I think you have to be able to judge, you know, where the line is, where you want to make something really make the point and make something come out and where you can just let things go. And allow yourself to be compromised. Allow yourself to... It's your decision and there's some people who always demand accounting.

[37:11]

But you have to decide somewhere. And actually, the more you give, the more people will take. And you will feel that. You'll feel, God, I keep giving and this person just keeps taking. But, in the long run, you have to be able to suffer that. You have to be able to accept that if you're a person who gives a lot, that people will take. And that's just the way it is. And you have to allow that to happen. Otherwise, we start getting too accountable and too stingy. But, sometimes it's not good for people, for the other person to be taking all the time. It's not a good thing for them. They just become kind of more greedy and see a place where they can just keep feeding.

[38:18]

And at that point, you have to be able to say, no, stop. So, There is no one solution. Things are always coming from both sides. Somebody else had their hand up. Okay. I was interested. One point you mentioned about people who know it all seem to be holding themselves down. But I was just wondering, when I hear that you're talking about knowing the answers coming from certain philosophical points of view, like there's no thing in itself, and so forth, the whole philosophy of it is, aren't you, by presenting something as you know it all, closing yourself down? Yeah.

[39:20]

That's right. So philosophy is important. in its place, but it's not the thing in itself. So you can drop it. But it doesn't mean that it's not important. But it should not take first place. This is the second principle, so the second principle should be behind. About, you know, the bill. You're still counting the money, huh?

[40:25]

Somebody on the other end was doing their job, and it's your responsibility to wake them up, at least do what they're paid to do and what they've agreed to do. And you have made an attempt, and obviously you're dealing with a bit of a basket, Well, we could have pursued it to the end. Right. Right. We could have done that, but we were having very good rapport with the people. The feeling was good, and it wasn't worth it to disturb that in order to deal with the other thing.

[41:32]

It reminds me of one of my favorite cartoons. It's an undergrad picture with one woman looking wistfully up at the other woman, and the other woman is saying, what do you mean, Mary, are you silly? I'm your other aunt. Beautiful. Okay. Thank you.

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