I vow to taste the truth of the Lord's words. Morning. We have a little competition this morning from next door. But it's not so bad. Every once in a while. It's not on? Every once in a while, the princess of Thailand comes and they have a pink celebration. I don't know what it is this time. Maybe she's here. Maybe I turned it off. There we go. So now, Dogen says, when the truth does not fill our body and mind, we think that we have enough.

[01:24]

When truth fills our body and mind, we realize that something is missing. For example, when we view the four directions from a boat on the ocean, where no land is in sight, we see only a circle and nothing else. No other aspects are apparent. However, this ocean is neither round nor square, and its qualities are infinite in variety. It is like a palace. It is like a jewel. It just seems circular as far as our eyes can reach at the time. The 10,000 dharmas are likewise like this. Although ordinary life and enlightened life assume many aspects, we only recognize and understand through practice what the penetrating power of our vision can reach. In order to appreciate the 10,000 dharmas, we should know that although they may look round or square, The other qualities of oceans and mountains are infinite in variety.

[02:30]

Furthermore, other universes lie in all quarters. It is so not only around ourselves but also right here and in a single drop of water. Or drink of water. This is a drink of water. We all assume this is a drink of water drinking out of a cup. Somebody drinking out of a cup. But that's just one point of view. There are so many different things going on in the act of picking up a cup and drinking. that we're not even aware of and will never be aware of. Yet we single it out.

[03:34]

We discriminate and single out this activity and say, this is drinking from a cup. And it feels like it. and it's good, cool, but I don't know what it is. So, he says, when the truth does not fill our body and mind, we think that we have enough. may feel that we have enough. I think here he's referring to someone who feels that they're enlightened and that they really know everything.

[04:37]

Omniscient types. And that maybe they've come to the limit of their understanding. there's a story in the Lotus Sutra where Shakyamuni was giving a talk to 500 arhats and the arhats believed that they that their understanding was perfect and Buddha was telling them that he had brought them he'd given them a certain kind of understanding in order to bring them along but that that was a limited amount of understanding and that they really had to understand something more and

[05:54]

The 500 arhats were very indignant and they got up and left. And then he says, when the truth fills our body and mind, we realize that something is missing. We always know that there is whatever it is that we know or understand, there's always more to know and more to understand. We should always know this. So each one of us is in a certain position according to our practice, our maturity, our understanding and our knowledge. we should always understand that there's someone who knows more than we do and someone who knows less than we do and for the person who knows more we should learn something from them and the person who knows less we should help them so it's kind of like a ladder and each one of us is on a rung of the ladder and someone is up here someone else is down there

[07:21]

And in some sense, each one of us is a student. And in another sense, each one of us is a teacher, according to our limited ability. So we can teach what we know, and we should make some effort to learn what we don't know and to be open enough so that we know what we don't know or that we know that we don't know. There's a saying that even Shakyamuni Buddha is only halfway there. Nishiyari Bokusan, who wrote Keiteki, which is a commentary on Genjo Goan, said, it's a real problem to be an expert.

[08:52]

And I think that's where Suzuki Roshi got his phrase when he said, in the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind, there are very few. That's a well-known phrase from Suzuki Roshi, but I'm sure he got it from Anishinaabe here. So the more you study, the more you practice, and the more you study, and the deeper your understanding becomes, the more you realize the endlessness of what you don't know or don't grasp.

[09:58]

And this is actually the beginning of wisdom. Wisdom basically is to realize how much you don't know. There's a saying that not knowing is the highest. There is Actually, I kind of, well there's no limit to knowledge, but and especially in science, there are great leaps and bounds of understanding, but

[11:01]

even physicists and scientists, who are good ones, realize that the more they understand, the more there is to understand. But realizing that something is missing That's important. You know, the one wonderful thing about practice is that we can actually engage in the practice of reality without knowing anything. We don't have to understand it first. We can actually dive into the water and swim and play and practice in the dark.

[12:12]

And yet, we understand. Something understands. Even though intellectually we don't understand, some part of us understands very clearly what we're doing. Otherwise, we would never be able to do what we're doing. If you wait until you understand what you're doing, no one would be practicing. There's a book called The Tiger's Cave, which is commentary on the Heart Sutra, and Abbot Obora says, in the feeling of inadequacy of body and mind, the Dharma is fulfilled. I know also that the feeling that the Dharma has been fulfilled by body and mind, know also that in the feeling that the Dharma has been fulfilled by body and mind there is yet something lacking.

[13:26]

there's actually something fulfilling about our inadequacy. And this is really a very important point. Usually we feel that when we're inadequate or when we're not coming up to our ideal that there's something wrong. or that we feel depressed or dejected or something. But in practice, practicing wholeheartedly within our inadequacy is what brings forth realization. My teacher always used to say, the student that has the hardest time, that is the real student that has the hardest time, meaning the one who perseveres through their difficulty, will have the most benefit.

[14:56]

And this is, of course, the secret of, the non-secret, of Sashin, this difficult, painful episode that we question once we're in it. Just the very difficulty that we're having and the effort to continue and to see it through is the catalyst for realization. So we shouldn't, we should be careful not to judge our difficulty or make some judgment as to what's good and what's bad. A person says, I had such terrible zazen.

[16:08]

It was so painful and my mind was reeling and I couldn't concentrate. This kind of judgment of good and bad is simply discriminating mind. But that's also Buddha nature. That's also part of the mixed, part of the aggregate of practice. You know when you when you when we first begin to sit And especially our first session or more maybe first or second We try everything We go through every reasoning and and try every trick we can to make life comfortable and

[17:11]

But nothing works. Nothing works. And when you move, it's even worse. Until we finally just give up and realize that The difficulty is kind of the engine which is driving us to let go. But through that kind of striving, realization and light is permeating your whole body and mind.

[18:39]

Without that difficulty, nothing, realization would not arise. So we have to go through this process until we finally exhaust all of our resistance and all of our mental gyrations and all of our excuses and finally we can just sit letting everything go.

[19:47]

Then Dogen says, for example When we view the four directions from a boat on the ocean, where no land is in sight, we see only a circle and nothing else. This is from, Nishihara says this is from Dogen's experience of crossing the ocean, going to China. When he looked out in the ocean, he saw that it was just a circle. I think that We say that Christopher Columbus discovered that the world was round, and that's so, but I don't think he was the only person who realized that the world was round. However, this ocean is neither round nor square. and its qualities are infinite in variety.

[21:08]

This goes beyond our belief system that the world is round. This is our dogma, that the world is round. It is round, but it's not round, and it's not square. What? That's right. It's an oblate spheroid. It is like a palace. It is like a jewel. It seems circular as far as our eyes can reach at the time. It just depends on who's looking. This is called the four views of a body of water. from some sutra. I don't know which sutra, but fish see it as a palace. Celestial beings see it as a jeweled ornament.

[22:13]

Hungry ghosts see it as pus and blood. Humans see it as water. None of them is real or complete. We only see things from our limited capacity. The 10,000 dharmas are likewise like this. The 10,000 dharmas is all things. Everything is like this. We only see it as it interests us, according to our interest, according to our survival. Although ordinary life and enlightened life assume many aspects, that's the dusty life and the pure life.

[23:16]

Dusty life is the life, ordinary life in the world, in the dusts of the world. The world used to be much more dusty than it is now. The roads were dusty. I remember in the 50s when I was a taxi driver in San Francisco and I would pull up to the corner of Columbus and Broadway And the cab drivers were talking. And this old guy came up and he said, you know, it wasn't very long ago when this was just a mud street and the wagons and the horses were going by and splashing mud on everybody. And you wouldn't think that by going by there today. But he said, it wasn't very long ago, just a few years ago that that was happening.

[24:18]

The dusty life and the pure life, they're not two different things, but pure life is life which is free of dust, within dust. So although ordinary life, the dusty life, and the enlightened life, or the pure life, assume many aspects, we only recognize and understand through practice what the penetrating power of our vision can reach. In order to appreciate the 10,000 dharmas, in order to appreciate everything around us, we should know that although they may look round or square, The other qualities of oceans and mountains are infinite in variety. Furthermore, other universes lie in all quarters.

[25:27]

It is so not only around ourselves, but also right here and in a single drop of water. Other universes lie in all quarters. Somebody said to me recently, is it true that Dogen believed that there were Buddhas in other universes, in other worlds? I said, well, probably, whatever that means. You know, the Lotus Sutra and other sutras, Mahayana sutras, will talk about Buddhas in other universes, especially the Lotus Sutra, in other worlds and other universes. And sometimes when someone dies, a priest dies, then one of the Sometimes on the back of their stelae, or their ohai, ehai, which is one of those plaques which you put on the altar, it says, so-and-so is now teaching in another universe, or in another world.

[26:44]

Whether that's true or not, factually, you can't say that it's not true. But we know that other universes lie in other quarters. You know scientists think about what's on the other side of a black hole Anyway But anyway in the single before we had microscopes we didn't think so much about other worlds within a drop of water and But everyone knows that there are other worlds in a drop of water without a microscope, that there are infinite universes within a drop of water.

[27:58]

We just happen to see this world and this universe from a certain perspective and we say, isn't it immense? God, billions of light years away, you know, and we can... But that's only about this big, you know. It's just because of our perspective, right? If you look into a drop of water, there are billions of... the universe is billions of light years away going the other way. Anyway... Even though we don't fully understand, we can still practice. That's the wonderful thing. We can still practice in the realm of reality even though we don't understand it or don't see everything fully or only see things from a limited point of view. And the mind, body-mind is open

[29:07]

to understanding. Further on, Dogen says, even though we may have this limited body and mind, wherever we stand, we don't fail to cover the whole earth. So, it's like everything is right here. Everything we need, we have. And everything is included. The whole universe is included in this five foot... People are no longer so short. It's not five feet anymore. Five, six foot. Everything is included in this five foot seven or eight body and mind.

[30:17]

So we can investigate the universe by peeping through a tube. There was one Zen master who said, don't think that you're going to discover it by looking out and peeping through a little tube at the universe. what you need to understand is right under your feet. It's okay to look through a tube, you know, out there, but what you really need to understand is right underneath your feet. So, if you look at our world and how it's developing, people are wasting a lot of time looking out

[31:42]

when neglecting what's under their feet. It's fine to look out, but if we're neglecting what's under our feet, then it's not right. We're not taking care of We're not taking care of people. We're not really taking care of everybody. But things go in many directions at the same time. But the most important thing is for us to look and see what's under our feet.

[32:44]

Otherwise, we don't have a basis, and we're not balanced. So in a sense we're letting the earth go, we're kind of just using up the resources of the earth and at the same time going off into space and neglecting our home and failing to penetrate and understand what our life is about. And one part of the world is affluent and the other part is killing each other off.

[34:09]

So anyway, we have a lot more to learn. And I'm going to have to finish, stop here. Sishing is not over. And This afternoon we will have shosan, so please prepare a good question. Dogen's Genjo Koan, the more I study it, the more I see how it kind of goes together as one piece.

[36:10]

I think there's no end to studying it and I have only scratched the surface myself. So let's continue to study and practice.

[36:43]

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