As I've said before many times, Zen Master Dogen, unlike a lot of other Zen Masters, did a lot of writing. Most of the old teachers didn't write very much, but Dogen did a lot of writing. And on the one hand, there's his Shobogenzo, which is 95 to 100 fascicles, expressing his understanding of Dharma in various ways. And on the other hand, there's what's called Shingi. And the Shingi is the practical aspect of practice. Dogen, as we know, felt that enlightenment arises through practice.

[01:08]

So practice is the basis of enlightenment and enlightenment manifests through practice and so that's why we always put so much emphasis on practice. is not something we talk about so much, but is something that is integral with our practice. So if we talk about enlightenment too much, we'll think that what we're doing in our everyday life is not so important. But our practice manifests in our everyday life as our activity. So we put the emphasis on our activity and how we do something. So Dogen wrote various little fascicles on the practice which is called the Shingi and one area of the Shingi he was talking about

[02:27]

the officers in the monastery and he offers up little stories which emphasize or characterize the practice of the various officers in the monastery. These stories also can be We can think of these stories as also how to do lay practice. Although it's addressed to monks in their monastic life, it's also a key to how do we practice in our daily life as lay people. And so he has stories about the cook in the monastery and about the work leader and about the director and the treasurer and all the various officers.

[03:37]

And the one I want to talk about today is an example of someone practicing as the head gardener. In Soto Zen we say that Soto Zen is like, a teacher of Soto Zen is like a farmer raising crops. A teacher in Rinzai Zen is like a but Soto Zen was in many ways the former Zen in Japan, but also it was the Zen of the samurai, but Rinzai Zen was more of the aristocracy and the military

[04:51]

So Dogen says, the position of head gardener is most most toilsome, the kind of archaic way of saying things, is hard work. Actually I helped translate this, so most toilsome. The position of head gardener is hard work and should be filled by someone who has a and not by someone who doesn't have a heart for the way. You must work year-round in the garden, sowing and cultivating according to the season. By this work, you manifest your Buddha face, ancestor face, donkey feet, and horse feet. Like a farmer or a peasant, all day long you plow and hoe. You carry excrement and urine for fertilizing. Free from self-concern, you await the moment of ripening for harvest, being careful not to miss the right time.

[05:59]

When plowing the ground and sowing the seeds, you don't wear a combined robe or a okesa, which is a Buddhist robe, but a white underrobe and a work robe. However, at the time when the other monks gather to chant the Buddha's names or sutras, hear Dharma talks, or receive personal instruction, you join the community. You are not supposed to miss any of these activities. In the garden, every morning and evening, you offer incense, bow, chant the names of Buddhas, and make a dedication to the dragon spirit and the earth spirit without ever being negligent. The work leader provides you materials and workers as needed. You sleep in a cottage in the garden at night. Indeed, the position of gardener has always been served by those who have a heart for the way, including those who have reputation, Those who have small capacity or are ill-suited have not been put in this position. In the community of my late teacher Ru Jing, a monk called Pu from Shu, a western province, was appointed to this position for the first time when he was over 60 years old.

[07:10]

During the period of almost three years when he was a gardener, the positions in the community were Dispositions is not right. It should be disposition. The disposition of the community was stable. If we compare the abbots of many monasteries with Old Man Poo, their practice cannot come up to that of this head gardener. in a monastery you know you always try to put people in positions who have experience, good experience and can actually lead other people and teach other people because you know we tend to think

[08:12]

Well, anybody can cook, you know, lots of people can cook, but cooking is only one of the activities of the kitchen. Working in the kitchen is learning how you take care of your life, how you take care of everyone else's life and how you take care of the life of the kitchen, how you take care of the life of the pots and pans. how you take care of the life of the garbage, how you take care of the life of the floor, and how you interact with all of the objects and all the people around you. So in the monastery we always try to put someone who has some feeling for teaching as well as just being able to do the cooking. So the Tenzo in the monastery should be someone who has a sense of the Dharma, good sense of the Dharma.

[09:35]

So what's actually being transmitted is the teaching of Dharma through the practice of cooking. if a well-known French chef comes to Tassajara, we don't put him in the kitchen, although they do end up there, but ideally you don't put the French chef in the kitchen. And in a place like Eheji in a those positions are held by Roshis, not just by ordinary monks. So in every position of responsibility there's teaching involved and it's not necessarily teaching by rote or obvious teaching but it's teaching by

[10:43]

transmitting a harmonious mind, transmitting a kind mind, a harmonious mind, an efficient mind, a concentrated mind, and a careful mind, and a person in this position has to treat all of the with great care and great kindness. So it's a very important position especially in the kitchen because it's a very confined space and it's a great opportunity if the opportunity is missed then someone can be working in the kitchen for a year and not ever get anything, they can not really get any Dharma.

[11:52]

So then it just seems like work, so work in Buddhist context is different than work in the ordinary world. The work is the same but the So this goes also for the director who is in touch with everybody, all the students in some way, and has to manifest Buddha mind. But we can't always do that, so sometimes we put people in a position just to fulfill a position, but often putting a person in the position who doesn't have that much dharma experience, often people will come up to the position and so it's more training for that person than maybe than it is for the people that that person is working with, so that the people that that person is

[13:19]

the person in the position. It's a little harder that way, but anyway it goes both ways anyway. If you're a teacher and you're working with a number of people, although you're the teacher, you're also learning from all those people. If you're not, then you're not a good teacher. So it really goes both ways. Sometimes the students are the teacher and sometimes the teacher is the student, but at the same time the teacher is always the teacher and the student is always the student. So wherever you're working, that's your when you're in a confined situation the field of practice is more obvious but when you're in a wider situation where there are not so many boundaries then the field of practice is less defined and more difficult.

[14:37]

This is why the value of monastic training is that you're in a confined limited field, so it's very intense, practice is very intense and it doesn't escape, you know, energy doesn't escape through the holes and so your practice is always there in your face and the feedback is always there in your face. monastic practice but also the difficulty. So what is not obvious to us or what we don't pay attention to so much in our ordinary life is really brought up to us when we enter the monastery because

[15:40]

becomes apparent and people respond to you as you are day in and day out and there's no way that you can escape from that, so you're really faced with yourself and this is your cultivation, your field of cultivation. So in a lay practice you have much wider, so it's easier to lay back and not face necessarily yourself, but if you know how to practice then every situation is a practice situation and if you face practice in every situation. So I think that this description of the gardener is really a good description of lay practice.

[16:59]

So I'll tell you why. head gardener is hard work and should be filled by someone who has the heart for the way. Well if you have a heart for the way then wherever you are, whatever your situation is, that's your garden and that's your place of cultivation. So you simply need to recognize that. If you have a heart for the way We have our formal practice in the Zen Do and the Zen Do has an atmosphere of practice and when we enter the gate we can start letting go of all the trash, the rubbish, it's rubbish in our mind and let go of everything and simply enter the atmosphere of practice

[18:05]

then when we leave the Zen Do and go out into the world it's without borders, but you have to define your own field. It's important to define your own field of practice, so your family life is a your work life is a field of practice and maybe your study life is a field of practice. Whatever you do that's your zendo, wherever you are that's your zendo and how do you practice in that situation. So when you leave the zendo it's Here we have all the forms of practice. When you leave, all the forms you meet in your life, you have to recognize as forms of practice.

[19:16]

They're not set. They're continually coming up moment by moment. So he says, you must work year-round in the garden, sowing and cultivating according to the season. Well, that's our life. All year-round. We have to live our life all year-round. And various seasons, things change. Winter, summer, spring, fall. They're all different. And then we have to know how to change with the seasons. and how to respond to the changing seasons and the changing seasons of our life. Sometimes we are in a happy season, sometimes we're in a difficult season. By this work, you manifest your Buddha face, ancestor face, donkey feet and horse feet.

[20:26]

Buddha face is to understand that you yourself have the nature of Buddha and all the people that you associate with also have the nature of Buddha and to actually treat people as Buddha. If you are really truly practicing, you yourself are an ancestor. At some point someone will say, 500 years from now, there's the patriarch, the matriarch, donkey feet, horse feet. Someone asked Joshu, there's a famous bridge in Joshu's town and someone came, but it's not too obvious, someone came to and Joshu happened to be there at the time, someone said, where is this bridge of Joshu?

[21:48]

I think what he was doing, being a little He was addressing Joshu. He was saying, where is this bridge of Joshu? Giving him a little challenge. Joshu said, horses cross, donkeys cross. Which one are you? Like a farmer or a peasant, all day long you plow and hoe. Well, plowing and hoeing is what you do inside. All day long you plow, inner field and you hold the inner field. This is called self-cultivation. You carry excrement and urine for fertilizing. This is like you take the stuff that smells and you plow it under and this becomes compost for your garden.

[22:59]

We have lots of excrement that's still around, hanging around, so we take it and we plow it under, just keep plowing it under and this is what helps our garden to grow. this is like recognizing our egocentricity, recognizing our, I don't want to say faults, but I will, recognizing it and turning it under this energy which helps. It's like transformative energy transforming our difficulty into our delusion into enlightenment.

[24:04]

I remember at Tassajara In about 1968-69 in the men's dorm we had a big 55-gallon drum and we put it in the bathroom and this is where all the men peed in the 55-gallon drum and when it was full we put it on the garden That was our idealism at the time, but it's good for the garden. So then he says, free from self-concern you await the moment of ripening for harvest, being careful not to miss the right time. you simply do your work. We become very much self-concerned.

[25:12]

When we're not self-concerned we have some freedom to help others and to create a harmonious situation and to not hold ourselves back, not feel afraid that we're giving too much. but someone was asking me today actually about giving too much. It's interesting that the busiest, if you want to get something done you should ask a busy person. There are people who can manage innumerable activities and still stay calm and centered and efficient. And then some of us who have no responsibility other than ourself can never quite get it off the ground, mostly because of self-concern.

[26:28]

As soon as we let go of self-concern we can take on all kinds of without being inundated by them or pushed around by them. Being pushed around is a attitude. So to be able to harmonize with activity is to let go of self-centeredness and self-concern. simply give yourself over to the activity. Free from self-concern, you await the moment of ripening for harvest, being careful not to miss the right time. To be in time, be totally in time. To be totally in time is to forget time.

[27:35]

when you're a little bit outside, then you are concerned about time, but when you are totally one with your activity, time stops. If you're a painter and you're totally into the painting, you don't know what time it is, you don't know what time you started, you don't know what time you stopped, it's just like, oh, it's evening, and you didn't know that time was even not aware of time at all. And to not be behind time, not be ahead of yourself. Often we get ahead of ourselves. Some people are always dragging their feet and other people are always before one activity is finished, they're already into the next.

[28:38]

just to be in time, one moment at a time. If you can do that and let go of self-concern you can harmonize with your surroundings very easily and have lots of responsibilities without being pushed around by them. When plowing the ground sowing the seeds, you don't wear a combined robe or an okesa, but a white under robe. In other words, you wear clothing appropriate to the situation. However, at the time when other monks gather to chant the Buddha's names or sutras, hear Dharma talks or receive personal instructions, you join the community. You're not supposed to miss any of the garden every morning and evening you offer incense, bow, chant the names of Buddhas and make a dedication to the dragon spirit and the earth spirit.

[29:48]

Well we don't make a dedication to the dragon spirit or the earth spirit but in China there is a spirit for every thing and if you go to Chinatown certain places you can see these little they're not gods but they're spirits of the stream, spirits of the altar, spirits of the kitchen, the bathroom, you know all aspects of life and so this is also a Japanese practice as well in those days. Well you know in our lay practice as well as having your field of work, field of activity, you make space for when it's time for Zazen you come to Zazen, when it's time to chant you chant, when it's time to bow you bow.

[30:59]

So you have to have some order in your you have to have some settled life in order to practice so that you can go back and forth between your field of activity and your Zazen practice and whatever goes along with Zazen practice. This is how you balance the life and it's zendo, be able to practice zendo back and forth, day in and day out. Of course, if you're a lay person with a lot of responsibilities, you may not be able to do that every day, and people don't, but you design a practice schedule for yourself so that you can come and go regularly.

[32:04]

That way you really have a complete practice. So he says, indeed the position of gardener has always been served by those who have a heart for the way, including those who have a reputation. So those who have small capacity are ill-suited and have not been put in this position. In the community of my late teacher Ru Jing, a monk called Pu from Shu, a western province, was appointed to this position for the first time when he was over 60 years old. during the period of almost three years when he was a gardener, the disposition of the community was stable. In other words, one really strong practitioner can stabilize the whole community or add to the stabilization of the whole community. Sometimes people think there's the community and here's me and the community is run by them

[33:07]

but that's not correct because as soon as you put yourself into, as soon as you enter the gate you're part of the community. It's not like something exists out there and I'm here. Just your presence influences the whole community. Just by having a steady sincere practice permeates the community and you may not recognize that, but it's true. Your fundamental gift to the community is your presence and your sincere practice and when you do that you and the So cultivating practice is cultivating your mind.

[34:24]

I remember Suzuki Renshi when he was sick at Page Street and up in his room and listening to people sweeping at the street, listening to the students sweeping the street, he said for him to hear because the students were sweeping their mind. So he also said that just taking care of the ground is the work of the Zen student. the garden, the most important thing is taking care of the ground. If you take care of the ground, then everything will grow quite well. Of course, you have to take care of the plants as well, and if you know, if you've had a lot of experience in gardening, you realize that the most interesting thing is not so

[35:41]

putting in, turning it over, putting in supplements, making it loamy and free and open so that buddha nature can percolate up. So the product of course is the vegetables and the well-tended garden, the fruit of a well-tended garden. So taking care of the ground is the most important thing and taking care of the ground is Zazen. From Zazen and it's the foundation or the ground from which a harmonious life can flourish.

[36:54]

So living an enlightened life comes from taking care of the ground, taking care of the practice If you think, well this is practice and this is something else, that's not practice. For a Zen student it cannot be two things. So if you think this is practice Or, how is this practice? That's a good question. How do I practice in this situation? What is practice in this situation? That's the question that always has to be there. What is practice in this situation?

[38:03]

But if you really have strong practice, strong daily practice, then you don't have to think so much about it. you just do Zazen and go about your ordinary life and when there's no difference between the Zendo life and ordinary life then you have mature practice. Do you have any questions? There's this one saying, I can't remember what the question was, but something like donkey business unfinished, horse business comes in. Yeah, well yeah, horse leaves, donkey enters. Oh, so the other way around, okay.

[39:09]

Or it could be the other way around, yeah. One thing follows another. Oh, that's all that means? I think so. One event follows another. One is entering, one is leaving, another one appears. I'm new here, I don't understand the analogy of courses. One leaves while the other appears. We don't understand exactly either. So, Jin, I work in a place that it seems like there's a lot of people that line up more than they can chew with responsibilities and duties and everything.

[40:10]

And you spoke about willing to give. Sometimes it seems that people can be self-centered by thinking they can do too much. In reality they don't do anything very well and overwhelm themselves instead of living more of a simple life. Yeah, well we become greedy because there's so much that this is the problem that we have in our society. Some societies have the problem of not enough. We have the problem of too much. So this is the realm of too much and that's our curse, so to speak, and hard to control. So that's one aspect is taking on too much as greed, the other is letting go of ourselves so we can actually do things well, so we can actually take responsibility, but we should know our limitations.

[41:30]

That's part of giving up self-centeredness is to know our limitations out of greed or for ourself. So taking on a lot of things can be self... hanging on to self rather than letting go. Right. David? Back to donkeys and horses. What's that again? Oh yeah. Well, it could be. I have a feeling it's not that complicated. It's not so complicated. But it could be. Could be. I was thinking about horses and donkeys.

[42:52]

Actually, it came up recently in another koan, one of the women answers. But it seems to me that horses are superior to donkeys. Horses are, and if they're in a train, So I think the question about the bridge is a question about Zhou Xu's quality as a Zen master and teacher, and a bridge is something that allows people to go across from one side to the other in terms of He knows that this refers to him and he's saying, yeah, I take horses' feet and donkeys' feet, and I'll even take donkeys' feet, like you.

[44:11]

I also take donkeys, like you. That's what I was trying to express when I said that. We talked a little bit about Rinzai, and I've been thinking in reading over about this, but the Rinzai ideal seems to be stopping the thoughts, cutting off the mind stream of thoughts. And how do we differ from that? Well, to say cut off, you know, is a kind of extreme way of saying something. You know, we say to stop thinking, you know, we say that too, right? Stop the thinking mind. But to stop the thinking mind doesn't mean to stop thoughts. It means to let go of attachment to thoughts.

[45:17]

How does that relate to our story about the Dharma taking care of his life? China and Japan are agrarian societies and so there's a lot of analogy to taking care of gardens. India, the monks were not supposed to do no digging in the ground, you know, nothing like that, simply getting alms to live on and no money or anything. But when Zen went to China, the Chinese people said all these young men are going into the monastery, they're not doing their filial piety and they're not taking care of the agriculture. So the Zen monks developed

[46:25]

So cultivating the fields became an area of practice. And when you work in the field, you just work. That's called stopping thought. To just work. When you're plowing the field, you just plow the field.

[46:55]

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