I vow to taste the juice of Agatha's words. Good morning. See, the rain seems to have passed, at least for a time. It's really beautiful out. And the Dharma rain continues to fall in here. until we all get soaked. So I'd like to continue with the last section of Bodhisattva Shishobo today. Yesterday, and I intend to leave more time for comments and discussion at the end today, Yesterday, I shared some background on possibly why Dogen may have undertaken to write this in the midst of some conflict or some sectarian warfare in Kyoto.

[01:22]

We don't know exactly, but I feel like that was the motivation. It occurred to me last night that the question arises, why do I resonate with this text and why am I studying it and teaching it? And I think one often teaches what one needs to understand. For a number of reasons, I need to do these practices. perhaps because I have a large ox of ego to tame and it's difficult and slow going.

[02:40]

Even though this is supposedly the sudden school, sudden seems to take a long time to arrive. So I feel like these practices have been offered to me and they resonate with me because I need to do them. I have to speak about self-centeredness because I'm still very much afflicted with it. I worry that even just saying that makes it worse and I also worry that it's contagious in some way.

[03:43]

So I sort of offer this by way of, partly by way of confession and partly by way of of explanation and really thinking about last night, well, why do I find this so resonant? I think because these practices are both hard for me to do and I see the need to cultivate them. and to cultivate them in the spirit of the gratitude that I have for this practice, this wider practice here at BZC and in Suzuki Roshi's family, which I feel, as I imagine a number of you might feel, has saved my life.

[04:51]

And so I would like to be able to do it effectively, even if I don't fully understand what I'm talking about. So this is maybe related to what Suzuki Roshi meant when he said that giving a talk is making a mistake on purpose. Sometimes we talk about what we don't fully understand or haven't fully realized and perhaps haven't fully brought forth. And the speaking of it may or may not do so. But I think that if we're practicing strongly and reflecting on our lives, intently, sometimes even the very things that we might teach about soak in.

[06:05]

At least that's my hope. So identity action is really, to me, it's the mechanism of this whole, of these bodhisattva actions. And I've translated as identity action. Sometimes it's translated as identity of purpose or sharing the same aim or cooperation. But what Dogen writes is identity action means to me not different. It is neither different from the self nor different from others. So I thought I'd tell you a few stories to illustrate this. One, I can't track down, but I remember it. I remember hearing it, or something like this. Somebody was sitting sashin with my, and you may, somebody, if you know the more accurate version, or even if it's about somebody else, let me know after this.

[07:15]

I remember it as being about Maezumi Roshi and someone was sitting sesshin with him for the first time and inadvertently knocked their chopsticks off of the tan where they were eating oreoki. And Maezumi Roshi's immediate response was to knock his chopsticks off the tan. To put that person at ease, to be an identity with that person. The other story, Laurie reminded me of this a couple days ago. It's about Lehmann Pong and his daughter. It's this wonderful Tong Dynasty family, Lehmann Pong and his wife and his daughter. So the Lehmann was once selling bamboo baskets Coming down off of a bridge, he stumbled and fell.

[08:20]

When his daughter, Ling Chao, saw this, she ran to her father's side and threw herself down. What are you doing, cried the layman. I saw Papa fall to the ground, so I'm helping, replied Ling Chao. His remark was, luckily no one was looking. It's a really great story. I'm helping. What? Someone said something. The third story is actually quite grim. And I beg your indulgence. And I also just want to forewarn you that there's language in here that I would prefer not to use but it's embedded in the story and I can't really see how to tell the story correctly without using the language involved.

[09:26]

In June of 1964, three civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Mickey Schwerner were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in Neshoba County, Mississippi. And after that murder, at some point, I think that actually one of the perpetrators was just finally convicted of that crime. But after the murder, a Klan member, Horace Burnett, gave a confession to the FBI and described the whole scene. And Burnett described one of the conspirators, Alton Wayne Roberts, pulling Michael Schwerner out of the car, out of the civil rights workers' car where they had waylaid it on a country road. And he put a gun to Schwerner's head and he said,

[10:34]

Are you that nigger lover?" Schwerner replied, Sir, I know just how you feel. And shortly after he and the two others were killed and they were buried underneath an earthen dam, Now, the civil rights workers who went to Mississippi in that time were extensively trained in practice of nonviolence. They did role play. They were very well trained in the principles and the practice of it, which I feel is very much, that kind of role play is very much in line with It's just an adaptation of the Bodhisattvas for embracing actions.

[11:38]

And I feel that intuitively, because he understood identity action, Mickey Schwerner could say, Sir, I know just how you feel. I don't know what he meant by that exactly. whether he felt Wayne Roberts' fear, whether he felt his hatred and returned it, it's hard to say. And it's also true that that response did not save his life. But I think that the karma of those words has been unfolding for 40 years. Just like the karma of the Buddha's words continue to unfold in this room, now the karma of those words are unfolding in this room.

[12:47]

They affected, evidently they affected this guy, Horace Burnett, very, very deeply, which is why, I think, probably why he made a confession. And I suspect that that information had something to do with the long delayed prosecution that just happened. Maybe, maybe not. So we're still, we have to explore this. And I think that this is very much in the realm of identity action. So Dogen writes, identity action means to be not different. It is neither different from the self nor others. For example, it is like the way that in the human world, the Tathagata identifies himself with human beings. Because he identifies himself in the human world, we know that he must be the same in other worlds.

[13:50]

When we know identity action, self, others, self and others are one suchness. And then Dogen quotes this old Chinese poem. The poem is called the Three He alludes to this poem, it's called The Three Comrades, and he says, harps, poems, and wine, or lute, poems, and wine, make friends with human beings, make friends with heavenly beings, and make friends with spirits. Human beings make friends with harps, poems, and wine. There is a principle that harps, poems, and wine make friends with harps, poems, and wine, that human beings make friends with human beings, that heavenly beings make friends with heavenly beings, that the spirits make friends with spirits. This is how we study identity action. Let me just read you the poem, the actual poem. Who are the three comrades?

[14:53]

Lute stopped playing. Wine is raised up. When wine is finished, a song is sung. The three comrades lead one another, going round and round endlessly." It's really beautiful. I think the essence of this is what What Sojin Roshi means when he says, don't treat anything like an object. Don't treat anything like an object, I think means everything is part of us. Lute, wine, songs, spirit, us, are all one reality. They're not separate from each other. And when we really act from that place,

[15:58]

our world is completely different. And we all act from this place in lots of moments. The problem is the moments when we don't. I think about the relationship that me and my friends have to our musical instruments. I don't smoke dope anymore, but some of them do. But even when pretty out there, their relationship to their instruments is so close that when they stop playing, before they do anything else, they set that instrument very carefully in its case and close it so that it's safe regardless of what's happening in the environment.

[17:04]

And these instruments take on a life that is intimately connected to ours. They take on some of our character. We take on some of their character and identity. And it's not as if, in another way of looking at things, which is also an important perspective, is that if you play music, you can get that music out of any instrument. It doesn't matter how good it is or whether you've ever seen it before. which is wonderful. That's about relationship to the music itself. But still, when you have an instrument that you have played for a very long time, you become melded. You're in identity with each other. You're co-creating each other. And this is a really, what I found is that different instruments, even though they're remarkably the same, or they may look identical from

[18:14]

to one who doesn't know the distinction say, the instrument brings out different music in your hands, just as the company of people that we're in, that we're in identity with, brings out a different flavor to our practice, a different character to our community. When we're out of identity, there's also this interesting phenomenon. When we do treat something like an object, which means as not part of ourselves, thoughtlessly or carelessly or whatever, or just even heedlessly, then

[19:19]

It's like a door in the universe is open to some kind of opportunistic misfortune. Different things, not all of them pleasant, can happen when you treat something like an object. I think that's the unfolding of karma. So Dogen writes, action means form, dignity, and attitude. After letting others identify with ourself, There may be a principle of letting ourself identify with others. Relationships between self and others vary infinitely depending on the time and the condition.

[20:31]

So this stuff is always in flux. This is, I think, very much, it's a Buddhist view of what Dogen might call I think because it's zinky, total dynamic working, that all of the things in the universe are constantly flowing, changing, interacting with each other. And then he goes to a series of really interesting metaphors. He says, quoting, again, a classic Chinese, from classic Chinese literature, the ocean does not refuse water, therefore it is able to achieve its vastness. Mountains do not refuse earth, therefore they are able to become lofty.

[21:33]

Wise rulers do not weary of people, therefore they have a large number of retainers. We should know that for the ocean, not to refuse the water is identity action. We should also know that the virtue of water that does not refuse the ocean is also fulfilled. This is why water is able to come together to form the ocean and earth is able to pile up to form mountains. So these things have, in a sense, they have this inseparably dependent nature. You don't have water. You don't have an ocean without water. And where you have water, you have an ocean or you have a lake or a pond, whatever. And the same thing is true with Earth, where it's piled up, you have a mountain. Where it's spread out, you have a field.

[22:36]

You don't have any of these things without this total dynamic working, without these things being in identity, forming each other. We should know that for the ocean, not to refuse water is identity action. We should further know that the virtue of water that does not refuse the ocean is also fulfilled. This is one reason why water is able to come together to form the ocean and earth is able to pile up to form mountains. We should intimately know that because the ocean does not refuse to be the ocean, it can be the ocean and achieve greatness. And because the mountains do not refuse to be a mountains, they can be the mountains and achieve loftiness. Things have an intrinsic nature.

[23:42]

They lean one direction or another, just as we do. There are qualities that we have. There are perhaps positions that we have to fill or destinies that we have to attain. But these are fully dependent upon all of the elements interacting. And it's also true that when we see these elements it's very important not to reject any of them. I think that's the most difficult thing about the notion of identity action. This is where we fall out of identity, usually in our relationships, even in relationship to ourself, is seeing something

[24:49]

something in someone, seeing something in situations, seeing something around us that we don't like, and we try to, we'll try to get rid of it, or we'll try to change it, and that act puts us out of the kind of identity that Dogen is talking about, that it causes us suffering. Our suffering, fundamentally, is because we want things to be other than the way they are. We want people to be other than the way they are. And we tend to be both surprised and upset when they don't conform to our standards.

[25:57]

So the essence of this practice is a kind of radical acceptance. It doesn't mean putting up with abuse. It doesn't mean not telling the truth about things that might need explanation or improvement, but it does mean to me that if I'm caught on wanting to see something or someone be different, then I'm treating them like an object rather than being an identity with them. This is a very difficult practice. the implication of this identity action is in a sense it's not to abandon anyone, not to abandon anything, but to take it into one's heart as a matter of

[27:14]

understanding as a matter of belief or faith in our practice. So Dogen then goes and uses, he opens up this extended metaphor based on Confucian ideas. And once again in this setting he goes back to talking about society. I think both as a metaphor and also as itself. So he says, because wise rulers do not weary of their people, they attract a large number of people. A large number of people means a nation. A wise ruler may mean an emperor. Emperors do not weary of their people. They do not weary of their people, but this does not mean that they do not give reward and punishment. Even though they give necessary rewards and punishment, they have no hatred toward their people. In ancient times, when people were gentle and honest, there were no rewards or punishments in the country.

[28:22]

The rewards and punishments of those days were different from those of today. This refers to a sutra. I won't go into it. But even these days, there must be some people who seek the way with no expectation of reward. This is beyond the thought of ignorant people. Because wise rulers are brilliant, they do not weary of their people. Although people unfailingly have the desire to form a nation and to find a wise ruler, few of them fully understand the reason why a wise ruler is a wise ruler. Therefore, they are simply glad not to be disliked by the wise ruler. But they never recognize that they themselves do not weary of the wise ruler. In another translation, they do not recognize that they themselves are the support for this wise ruler. And I think that you could also turn this kind of on its head and one could get into a political discussion and consider

[29:33]

How is it that we have the rulers that we have? Perhaps our rulers are not so wise, and maybe because we aren't, and we get what we support. But it's also, he's using this, he is talking about society, and Confucius was very much talking about society, but these are also, this is also a way of talking about oneself, that our bodies, our own lives, you know, the mind is our ruler, And then we have bones and sinews and muscles and organs that support us. And it's all working together. None of them would work apart from each other.

[30:37]

There would be no mind without all of these other bodily functions. There would be no bodily functions without mind. So they're completely interdependent. as are all of the other, as the Sixth Ancestor said, all of the other beings of our mind. There's not just this one person, Alan or whoever, that's sitting on top of my shoulders. running the show in this body, there's many beings and they exist in many parts of my body, and they're all kind of cooperating, working together to keep this working. And where they're fighting each other, then we have sickness, whether it's a physical sickness or a mental sickness. So, thus the principle of identity action exists both in the wise ruler and the ignorant people.

[31:41]

This is why identity action is the practice in the vow of a Bodhisattva. Simply and truly, we should face all beings with a gentle expression. So, Dogen, like Confucius, was an idealist who at this point, and I think at all points, was sort of unafraid to roll up his sleeves. Confucius wrote that when the world, when the perfect order prevails, the world is like a home shared by all. And as I said yesterday, soon after he wrote Xushobo, Dogen departed for Echizen province and founded Eheji, and he he carved out this monastery in the forest, and 750 years later, the monks are still practicing there, as he put it, blending like milk and water.

[32:50]

And I think that's the aim of our practice here. And that should be, I think, the aim of how we live our lives in identity with with all of those around us. And I do recognize that it's not easy, but like any other vow, when we fall off that vow, it's like we get back on the horse and try to ride. That's why these are practices. They are both practices that are already realized, and practices that we have constantly to cultivate. So I think I'll stop there, and there still is a little time for discussion. And there's a section where he's talking about improvisational actors and how apparently one of the rules of improv is that you can never negate an action initiated by one of the other improvisers.

[34:21]

accepting and going with it. And so, I just ran across that example before your talk, but to me it's another, it's a different area of life, but it's a similar practice. And the reason, I guess if they don't do it, it's not funny, it just sort of falls apart. If somebody doesn't accept an action that one of the other improv members initiates. Right, I imagine that the improv falls apart, it's also, it's not going to foster good relations between the improvisers either. One would think. Yeah, I heard him on the radio. He was really interesting. I'll have to read that book. Oh, I would actually, yeah. Elizabeth. I was thinking a lot of Temple Grandin. I mentioned her name yesterday.

[35:35]

She's a very interesting person, very complicated. She comes from a part of the country, a very frontiers woman. So that's why the economy that she works with has to do with animals and she doesn't do In fact, she's, it's funny how you're talking about plain speech or beneficent speech, but she's here and she says about vegetarians. But she's got this great balance to her. And she means a lot to me. She's also a pretty Christian fundamentalist. That doesn't surprise me, yeah. But she's also privileged, she has money. And with her genetic expression, this longer continuum of the type of autism that she has, as a child she suffered a lot of huge humiliation, socially, and a lot of pain.

[36:56]

And one of the things she does that means a lot to me is how she works so hard creating safe environments for children who have that experience. And I really appreciate that. And I think her sense of identity action comes a lot with the instrument that she helped to evolve. I think she calls it the squeeze box. And just an idea to her, an idea, this abstract theory thing of somehow she needs to be touched and she can't do this social thing. And so as I enter the zendo, and I sit on my squeeze box, or I call it a zafu, for these 40 minutes.

[37:57]

And sometimes I feel real squeezed. I was in my first three-day session, and oh, you know, I'm just so cut open in many ways. She does that with her squeeze box. And it's just important for me to hear her name here, to have heard it yesterday. Part of what I'm doing is I'm on the Disability Committee at Green Gulch. disability culture is what I want to contribute to it. I think a lot about Temple Graham and other people who define, that's the other thing, she's really defined the phenomenological experience of what she's going through in a way that nobody else has. And I say that because we like to use disability as a metaphor. You'd like to use other people's bodies, and we think we know what they're going through, and we use them as metaphors for when we fail or when we think it's our non-disabled experience.

[39:16]

And Buddhist literature is right with things like blindness. I was blind, and I want to just go through this quickly. Please, because I want to give other people a chance to comment. Yeah, yeah. Because I can't hear it many, many, many times. And that's basically my point, is that it's not the phenomenological experience that you may think it is. Which isn't? When we say, I was blind to that. I think I understand what you're saying. We tried to, in the blind community, we said, why do we have to use this metaphor?

[40:21]

What is the metaphor? And they came up with, oh, I heard this old Buddhist story. or fighting, or, you know the story better than I do, is the flag moving? Yeah. That was the substitute that, in the disability studies community, they came up with. Substitute for what? Moving mind. Uh-huh, okay, yeah. Not everybody can see the same thing, or see the same thing. So it's very ironic for me to be in the disability community here, us use metaphors on monks and Buddhist priests, and for me to be in the same door and us use metaphor for a disabled body. Well, thank you. I mean, I think this is going to be a continuing exploration, and it's good for us to have continuing clarification about it.

[41:23]

So I hope you'll you'll keep doing that. I think it's welcome to do that here. Sue? Earlier in your talk, and thank you for it, it's very moving to hear what you say, you talked about being in a sudden school of enlightenment. Do you consider that Why would I consider it a call for omnipotence? I mean, why would... I don't even believe in the sudden school. You know, as to omnipotence, that doesn't even make it into the scope of my thinking.

[42:32]

And, you know, I don't think of the Buddha that way either. But we have to do the best we can. Thank you. Catherine. It feels very helpful to me always when teaching and when a teacher is working with a human concept, our human limitations, to acknowledge sharing in those limitations. And one of the most important things that Zen practice has given me is deliberation into acknowledging limitations without apology. That deep acceptance of what is and that embracing of yourself as you are with compassion allows growth in a way that the old defensive, oh I can't even acknowledge the error, I'm so horrified by it.

[43:48]

That felt like real progress to me. So I don't know what the apology feels, it didn't feel like an apology. that I'm working with this too? I think that's what it meant to me. It's not that I don't have things to be sorry for. I really feel that I do. Some of us have been talking lately about the notion of karma. Rather than to focus on the effect, to focus on the next cause, So there is the practice of confession and repentance in a way so that you can kind of get clear and not be caught by that, I think, and so that then you can continue in a way creating more wholesome causes which are of benefit to everyone.

[44:50]

So that's kind of what, that's the way I've been thinking about it. Maybe these two and then we have to end. Before I moved here, I lived in a shared house, and one of the people I lived with was a Buddhist nun. Her name was Shonan, and she's blind. And one night, we were in the kitchen, and we turned on too many appliances at once, and the fuse went out, and the fuse box was outside. And I said, I'm not going to go out there in the middle of the night and fix the fuse box, I can't see. And she said, oh, no problem, and she went out and fixed it. Stan? I wonder if you can comment on how social change happens with identity action. It seems that if we're identifying with the other person, I don't know where the dynamic for change comes.

[45:56]

But I partly do. I mean, it feels right somewhere. I mean, I notice, I know that Schwerner when he said, I understand your... I know just how you feel. He set in motion a vast thing, including maybe his own murder, but also the Civil Rights Act and a lot of other things that came out of that. So we may not see the results of any of our identity action. So that's one thought. That's possible, yeah. I think I'm going to let Ken respond before I do. I know you.

[47:02]

Well, no, it's just I don't want you to have the last word, which will be a contradiction. No, kind of related to that same story you were talking about. In Uncle Thomas Cabin, there's a nice passage where these slaves are escaping from the South, and so they're Underground Railroad. So, they're in the Quaker's house, but the Quaker, the father and the brothers, are out there with their shotguns, and the slave catchers come in there, and they take a few shots. In any way, it finally comes up to the point where one of the slave catchers, you know, they're right like this, and is without his gun.

[48:12]

And the Quaker father points his shotgun at the slave catcher and says, friend, you aren't needed here. So I kind of think that's like a metaphor for like, I'll kill you if I have to, but this is just a statement of you're a friend. Right. Nick's moves up to you. Right. You know, no hard feelings, none of that, you know, but here's how the situation is. Take it from there. Right. So it's like you're not backing down. Yeah. You know, it's kind of a fine point. You said in one of the Dogen things there, there was, you were mentioning different qualities and one of them was something like self-respect along with compassion. I think that you have to find that point where you're not being wishy-washy, but you're also not caught up.

[49:23]

You may have to take a stand that is powerful, is forceful, And you take that stand, in this sense, I'll bet, given the Quaker philosophy, which is not exactly Buddhism, but he would take that stand knowing that there would be repercussions either way. And he was willing to take that stand. He was willing to accept whatever karma was going to ensue. If he killed the guy, that would be bad. There would be something very difficult that flowed from that, but he was willing in that moment to accept that karmic responsibility, which would fall on him primarily, but might fall on the escaped slaves as well. So I think this is right, and as to how social change happens, as the years go by, I'm more and more mystified.

[50:31]

but I believe it proceeds from integrity, whatever that means. And risking, you know, this other Zen phrase, one continuous mistake, being willing to take that risk. So we should really end. Memes are numberless.

[51:05]

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