Why don't you sit for a few minutes? Welcome, everybody.

[02:25]

So people can hear us online. OK, great. So this is our first class. Getting to a koan. And what our understanding is, again, to go on. So let me ask you, I see a number of you that were at the session. In fact, everyone here. Not quite. And I don't know about online. The screen's a little far away from us, but I trust some of you were and said you were not. So how many of you had a chance to read? One, oh my goodness, one through five. Okay, we're good. You can hear a reading of it. Just kidding.

[03:32]

So tonight, I want to, what we're gonna do, Jerry and I plan this out, is we're just gonna give our understanding of each section And then we're going to ask the questions. Come on in again. Questions, and then we'll also give you some prompts that'll help stimulate what the schedule problem is all about. So what I wanted to do is just Briefly review the sections one and two, Jerry touched on three first, and then we'll go into three, four, five.

[04:33]

So the flow is a little better. Excuse me. talking about in terms of the sections oh okay i think that was stan was that mostly for the teachers rather than the people having a section oh susan um i don't think you have to worry about that okay well uh all right so what i'll do is okay and then you're talking about you're talking about the sections of the genja yes yes okay and somehow you've divided it up Yeah, it was divided up for us in terms of how we would teach it. Okay, got it. So, as Jerry talked about on Saturday, explained in the first two sections, that, well, I think it's, for me, it's the first, I think it's four sentences, so really the crux of the Gencho cult.

[05:39]

The rest is commentary. So then it goes on and on with the commentary. And Sojin, I wanted to tell you about this tape that I read and I really recommend it. It's online, ECC's website. And he gave this May 20th, 2010. And it really elicits these first three sections. So if you had a chance, it is worth listening to. And so, Dogen Zenji, this is his most important work. Of the 96 passages he read, he felt this was the most important. And you'll see all through this koan that he's taken from, you know, koans from our ancestors. It's really about us, our life, and how we're going to live our life.

[06:45]

And also I want to say, this koan is really your interpretation. We're going to give our interpretation, but it's you to discover what is your koan. How does this demonstrate in your life? And it's really about where is your life right now? Where do you stand right now, this moment? What's important right here, right now? See clearly or readily. What am I deluded about? What stories am I telling myself? It includes the activities, all the activities of our life. And what it means is different for everyone, as I just said. but he was our pinjo koan. And so as Sochin says, and I like these words that he said, the best way is to not try to figure it out.

[07:52]

So it's really not a head thing. It's really trying to get him to open Zenji's mind. So it does require us being flexible and open and being creative as we meet. every moment in our life. So let's go into the first section. I'll read the sentence again. As all things are Buddha Dharma, there is delusion and realization, practice, birth and death, and there are Buddhists and sentient beings. And what this is talking about is the world of... the world we're mostly early, probably. And this is, mostly we see ourselves as separate. We think that we are real.

[08:54]

This is a, not that we're not real, but we are just an individual stand. And we see everything as separate. This gut is separate. It's made by someone and now it has its own essence. And all of life is seen that way. So we call that duality or the relative world. So it's the warm-up. And there's no connection with anything else. As I say, what you see is its own essence. So that's form. And then the second sentence of Doka Zenji's is, the Buddha way is basically leaping clear of the many of the one. Thus, there are birth and death, evolution and realization, sentient beings and Buddhas. I'm going to stop there. I'm sorry. You know what? I did think it wrong. Did I say the third one?

[09:54]

That's the second. Okay, the second. I'm sorry. As the mirrored things are without an abiding self, there is no delusion, no realization, no Buddha, no sentient beings, No birth and death. So this is the world of absolute. We call it absolute or emptiness. So here we see everything connected. And we're not separate. We realize we're connected with everything and everyone. And everything is connected. It's like Indra's net. Everything is connected. And it's that interbeingness that Thich Nhat Hanh talks about. So that's, we've gone through form, emptiness, and now the third thing is this Buddhist way is basically making clear of the many of the one.

[11:06]

Thus, there are birth and death, delusion and realization, sentient beings, and Buddha. So now you see both form and this is the world I think we mostly live in. Kind of surf from one thing to the other. Sometimes we might be in that world of form, that separate self operating as an individual. And other times we really see our interconnectedness. It was that analogy about the ocean waves. The ocean is the emptiness. It goes on forever. And the waves are individual. Each wave is us. Surfing the water up and down. So the second part of that, so those are the three things. What some writers, commentators say are the most important, but I like to add this fourth book because I think this is sort of

[12:13]

the crux of the whole thing. And that is... Yet in attachment, blossoms fall, and in aversion, weeds spread. That's our life. That's reality. We have our attachments. So many disappointments. It brings up all those emotions when we attach to something. And things don't go our way. All the emotions. Anger. It's not what we wanted. It's not what we expected. And yet. And yet. And yet we spread.

[13:18]

So there, you know, we're trying to, all the things we don't like, we try to turn away. And that's our lives. We've got that rising and falling. And this is what we are working on. This is what our practice is. I like some of these different translations, too. For example, Suzuki Goshi. We have life and death, ignorance and enlightenment. People are Buddhists. However, flowers fall with our attachment, and waves grow with no attachment. And Hakuna, he says, simply, simply. Amid our longing.

[14:23]

And weeds spring up. Amid our antipathy. That is one. Sums it up. What's the second part you said? Weeds. Well, Hollywood says, and weeds spring up. Amid our antipathy. Others say aversion. Aversion. We'd spread in our aversion. So it's that turning away. We're either going forward or turning away. That's our reality. And that's why we're here. When we wake up and see this, we can loosen our grip. So the question for me is, how do we deal with these issues? and aversions. How would we deal with these attachments?

[15:28]

I'm going to do a colon that summarizes this too. This was Dongshan, case 98. One day, when Dongshan was washing their bowls, they saw two crores fighting over a frog. The monk asked, Why does it always have to be like that? And Okshan replied, it's only for your benefit, honored one. So the question is, how can we use these attachments and aversions to benefit us? maybe one like six to eight inches from here now

[16:37]

how we get from the second, the second sentence. Yeah, that we're leaping clear, this idea of leaping clear, which is the, which is the heart of Bogan's teaching. It's yes, we all know the heart to drop from resenting this, and this is war, this war. And even for resenting this, and this is war. The token pushes it further. Empty disk is empty. Floor is warm. Everything is everything. So there's no separation. There's not an intellectual thing about looking at the definitions that we're all swimming in a sea of phenomenon coming and going in terms of this leaping clear is making leaping clear of making any distinction including calling something emptiness, calling something delusion, calling something enlightenment.

[18:13]

All of these things are terms that we use to try to concretize things. And don't do that. When the minute you put your foot down, the minute you open your mouth and say the word, you've already made something of it. So this ocean metaphor that Carol talked about is swimming in this waves and fish and plants and whatever, and they're coming and going every moment. And the minute, if we try to put words on it, we get caught. Sojin reminds us over and over again throughout this is So when we practice, when we sip sazen, when we allow all of these things to just arise and be with us, we come and go and see them.

[19:18]

It's inevitable, he says. He says the three poisons of brain, hate, and delusion are always present. So that we have to practice continuously, moment to moment, and make choices about how we respond to what comes up. Oh, here's desire again. Oh, here's a virgin. Here's grasping. So our practice is actually the practice of moment to moment, as Carol talked about, seeing these key things come in the world and recognizing that it's unusual or shouldn't happen. It's nothing that should or shouldn't happen. It just happens. So there's no shoulds. There's no correct response. There's a response. And there's our response. And our working with these things.

[20:19]

And not trying to put them in some box and understand them and then put it away. We're not thinking that we're going to get to some special state where this is not going to happen. Um, so I wanted to say, because I don't want to... So I wanted to say something about the last line of flower falling. Okomora says, in keeping with the explanation of non-duality... Illusion and enlightenment are not fixed things. They exist only in the world of relationship. So flowers and weeds both develop from seeds or spreading roots. Are fed by water, sunlight, nutrition from the earth. They grow, they bloom. They dry out, they die. Neither is inherently good or bad.

[21:24]

It just is. So the judgment comes from our own minds. Nishieri says, at the time of delusion, flowers are flowers. At the time of enlightenment, weeds are weeds. And then he says, now this is fun. Why do flowers fall when we love them? And attachments to the flowers are beautiful. Then they fall and we suffer. How do weeds spread? They spread from feelings of aversion. So falling and blooming are a result of love and hate. Originally, there's no blooming and falling. Living things are as they are, how it is. So the cycle arouses feelings and concepts in us that we label and judge. For those who do not fall into duality of love and hate, there's no blooming and falling. Everything is like this.

[22:28]

So what we call blooming and falling are based on our ordinary views. So Chiama includes a poem about weeds. Not about weeds, yes, about weeds. He includes a child's poem about a schoolyard. How small it is laying on a school ground. How big it is weeding the school ground. So it's the same school ground and one person in one circumstance, you name it one way, and the next circumstance with another point of view from another angle. It's like taking a picture of something from different angles. Depending upon the angle, depending upon your own conditioning, depending upon what's happening to you at that moment, you can talk, you can think that something is lovely to be And that same thing could be anointing and irksome at another time.

[23:35]

The very same day, the very same place, the very sound of the same experience. So I had my own experience of weeds in the last couple of years. I have a front flower bed. And I was very careful always over the years before the pandemic to plant just those flowers in the right place. It was supposed to grow. They said they are, this is a flower. It grows here, it grows in shade, it grows with dark sun, it grows water, it grows whatever. And I was very careful to do that. I kind of had a nice garden. And then came all the time for winter drought. That didn't work anymore. And I noticed, not this summer, but last summer, all of a sudden, new sprouts were growing. Different plants were growing.

[24:37]

And they were alive. And they would bloom, and most of them were really lovely. And so now I kind of, so I got the idea of, okay, I'm not gonna do anything because this year, they're gonna come up and we're gonna be saying these wonderful wildflowers. grow in my garden. No! This year. So now new flowers are growing in the garden and it's like that right and I have a picture of correct garden or beautiful garden and sometimes the wildflowers come they're wonderful and other times they're not and that's all my opinion. Oh the other thing I was going to mention about this about our opinions and our way we see things differently. There was a wonderful documentary at the Museum of Modern Art Center about time. I don't know if anybody saw it.

[25:39]

It was 24 hours of time, a minute. So they went around, I think there were a thousand minutes or something like that. They gathered these minutes And they showed you the minutes. And I was very interested in this. And I had my watch. And it was really amazing. Each moment felt differently. The experience of each moment. So if you were in a hurry, and there was a lot of traffic, and you were racing to get somewhere, it took forever. If you were just You know, if you were just gonna, you know, it was just an empty street and you're happily looking at the flowers and whatever, it was a very pleasant minute that you were happy with. So this idea that we can experience 60 seconds and we each can experience a different 60 seconds.

[26:45]

I just found that was really interesting about opinion and judgments and classifying things. What is a minute? You don't know what a minute is. It's what I can perceive. So we wanted to hear from you. We had some prompts, which you can use or not, that we sent out. Yeah, if you have any. Anybody has a particular question? or we sent out these prompts just to give you an idea of you know what sort of questions there are they're one of those questions diane you'll you'll call anyone any there's anyone because we're too far away we can't call so what do people feel about this leaping clear what's that experience leaping clear

[27:47]

Going beyond dichotomy. Going beyond opinions. Going beyond enlightenment. How do we do that? Sue Oh has her hand up. Thank you. Hi, there are 21 people on the screen online. How many people are in the Zendo? Okay, we have a good turnout. The question is, thank you for refreshing that for me, that question, the prompt. I had some time to think about it when you just presented it. I actually wasn't paying attention or really focusing on it, and then I was.

[28:54]

And then I heard the question. It's great to drop away, leaping beyond or dropping away. I don't think you can do it. It's not personal. And I'm grateful when it happens. So it's an accident. Yeah. I'll call these accidents, right? Right. Accident-prone. Yes. Thank you, Sue. And Ron Nestor's got his hand up. I would say open mind. Having a mind is just open. What do you think? Definitely. I think there are aha moments. There are what moments?

[29:55]

Aha moments. What's the example? I heard a lecture about a koan and I'm really confused about it and I've been worried and I've been pondering it and pondering it and then one day I just sit down in Zazen and the whole question drops away and I somehow get it. And I couldn't necessarily explain it. I might point at it. I might say it seemed like everything dropped away. I had a falling feeling in my body or I could explain that or I could explain my mind was really busy pondering and the effort of pondering and relaxed. Does that happen often? It happens. Yeah.

[30:57]

I think everybody's process is probably different. If something's bothering me, I keep trying to push it away, push it away. Then if I stop and decide to really look at that, what is it that's bothering me? And more often it really points back to me. that I don't like, maybe not have anything to do with the other person. It's really my own, what I want, how I wanted things to be. Or at least I can loosen the brush. That speaks to the second prompt, which was, can you think of an example in your own life where you're caught in a situation where you were activated and felt desire or aversion. Can you see where there are options?

[31:59]

Well, I find that happening sexually all the time. Somebody is a beautiful woman. I see a beautiful woman and I think sex. I don't say anything about it. And I just let it go. Obviously, I'm not going to. go up and you start doing something well you might not okay what about a place where um you know there's some strong activation feeling of playing a real feeling of aversion i don't want to be there i don't want that an argument with a close friend the other day. And part way through the argument, I just noticed that I was, like, I knew that it would probably be disastrous for the argument, but I was just like, I don't want to be here having this argument at the moment.

[33:10]

And that was a pretty, a pretty activated space. And then you, that reaction, you had about a, you know, A skillful thing, actually, because if you are in a situation where it's very tense between you and someone else and there's all sorts of complicated feelings, it may not be that at that moment it's fully appropriate. You need to step back, take a walk. So if you step back the way you did, it gives you options. You don't lose your friend. You have it unloaded on your friend. If it's a good friend, probably the next time you have another chance to see the person, you might be able to actually deal with it. With my brother, we were traveling, and she started out so innocent. He said, well, what do you eat? What do you sometimes have for dinner? He was telling me to shake. I said, no protein? I said, no, I said, what's in it?

[34:13]

They described it mostly because I said, no protein, you need protein. That started a big... No. He had a point of view. And I just had to say, well, I have my point of view. I just see it differently. But it was really... We were on a trip, so I decided to just let it go. But I noticed I had residue. I was hurt. So the next day, I decided, okay, I have to tell. And he knew right away. So it took a little time. but it slipped away. And then those things, you know, they stay. I see someone has their hand up. Heather Serrantes has her hand up. Hello. You were asking about examples of aversion, and I am living with a great deal of aversion right now.

[35:17]

Level position. at my job and another director left the organization and I'm filling in for that person as well. So I'm doing two senior level positions at the same time and there's not a lot of give in has to be done. And so on an almost daily basis, I find myself churning and churning about the ability to stay up to speed and do the actual work, but also the mental loop of I'm expected to deliver. And when I get going like that, I've been grateful for the moments when I can step back and say, the story about my irritation

[36:19]

the energy to actually deliver because that's not changing so if i want to use my energy wisely getting some distance from the narrative of i wish things were different than they then actually frees me up quite a bit so i'm wrestling with this daily and trying to sort of snap the elastic band on my wrist to snap out of it. Yes. But you saw some clarity, right in your way. And sometimes the clarity lasts for 10 seconds and sometimes it lasts for a couple hours, but even 10 seconds is a relief. Yeah, great story, thank you. Rich? it's frightening in a way to me at least like it's it almost seems like a radical equanimity to sort of deal with weeds and flowers to see them equally and i don't know sometimes if i want to like there's an exhilaration from seeing a beautiful flower and knowing that it's temporary and that's like life of hurt in a way there's something about seeing weeds

[37:46]

contrast and give context to a beautiful flower coming out. So, sometimes I think I don't want, you know, sometimes I don't want, I don't know if I want this freedom. Talking about when he says we want, that's, that's how we're used to living our life like that. You know, we're surrounded by the world of desire. And everybody's trying to sell us something and say, this is better than that, and asking us to make these comparisons and differences. And yet, you can totally, you can see beyond the falling of the flower. In other words, the idea is to appreciate the flower totally, but knowing, you know, underneath, you know it's gonna not be there. You're gonna buy this expensive thing of flowers. You put them in your... And you know, within a certain number of days, the water gets murky, they start to leave, start to dry, you know, it's gonna happen, it's inevitable.

[38:48]

So that's the difference. You love, I mean, it's not that you shouldn't buy beautiful flowers, it's just that you can't get angry with the beautiful flowers. That's the difference, the relationship with the flower, to allow the flower to be the flower. These are a little more tricky. Aversions? Yeah. Are they? I don't know. It varies. But I want to. Yeah. Someone here too. Okay. And then. And Zach. After Taryn. Can people online hear the questions? Can you hear us in the questions? Yeah. Yes. Okay. Yes. I've told this story to a couple of people in here, but one of my favorite examples of this like being activated and getting caught in desire and aversion was two years ago I moved to Berkeley to Richmond and I commuted to San Francisco.

[39:52]

So I had been commuting from North Berkeley and then I started commuting from Richmond. And the first day that I did the commute from Richmond, I got on the BART train. The course of the 40 minute BART ride, I went from being like, this commute's really long. Oh my gosh, I'm on the train for so long. I'm not going to be able to do this. I'm going to have to quit my job or I'm going to have to move. And by the time I got up on the other side in San Francisco. I was on the verge of tears, like ready to figure out quitting my job or like going on Zillow and being like, I'm going to do. And I came out, got into the sunshine, and then remembered that my commute had increased and moved by five minutes. I was so deep in it that I'm contemplating this radical life change. And so, well, that doesn't still happen. struggle with my commute and with living further away from Berkeley because I have a lot of community here. And what I was thinking about was this question of like, how can we use it to benefit us? I'm trying to shift some of my thinking with it where I still mentally go into complaining about it and being like, it'd be so much more convenient if I lived across the street right there.

[40:59]

Or there would be something else I'm complaining about. So like, I'm just thinking about like, this is, it gives me a thing to practice with. So during my 15 minute drive here, that's apparently so intolerable. I can deal with that over and over and over again. And there would be something else if I lived. Yeah. Jim, and then take the person off. Yeah, we've got, okay. I was thinking that In attachment, we create the blossoms, right? We choose what we're attached to in some way, right? And in the same way, we create the weeds. And I was reminded of a story a friend told me many, many years ago. He lived out in Concord or Walnut Creek, actually, and he came into Berkeley with some children, his fiance's children, and the kids were horrified by the way Berkeley looked. mishmash they're ugly they don't match nothing matches and my feeling about cookie cutter suburbs is that they're they're kind of weed like you know all these boxy houses springing up but maybe jumping clearer than many of them want is to take a bigger picture and see if you know maybe something that looks like a weed isn't a flower or vice versa

[42:28]

Or appreciate. Yeah. And appreciate the intricacy of the little flower, you know, the weed. Maybe the weed, the shape or the weed work. Well, you got in touch, too, with your own biases. Yeah, I have them. Your own biases. This is good. And Zach Sherman. Oh, your last Zach. Hi. Zachary. Me? Can you hear me? I think Jim might have answered my question. I wanted to ask what a weed is and what a flower is. Because it seems like one can quickly become the other. And the texture of them is probably more interesting than just the label. What we call a weed. Well, maybe you should substitute something that you love. Maybe a dish that we...

[43:29]

I don't love it all the time. Like it's so temporal and contextual. The corn in the garden is falling out. And the squash is getting covered in mold. So it's a weed now. And also, what is this something you maybe hate and substitute that if... I guess what I'm confused about, though, is it seems... Well, maybe not confused about, but what I would like to delve into further is that all... That, like, desire and aversion is arising... It isn't fixed either, I think. And... Yeah, I don't know. I don't really know what my question was, but I kind of wanted someone to answer it.

[44:32]

Well, you know, this is all about your own made-up world, you know? When you look at your own made-up world, you recognize how often it is that you have created, you know, trouble for yourself. I mean, the thing about weeds that one of the authors pointed out was, you know, we don't like certain weeds and yet Farmers in certain areas use those weeds to feed, so they love the weeds. They don't really probably call them weeds, they call them plants that nourish and bring nitrogen into the soil. So there you have a really good example of, if we have a green lawn and it has to be just sowed, then that weed is something we don't want. But that doesn't mean that wheat is bad. That just means that we don't want it. It's our preference. So it's different. That's where you're discovering your kindle column.

[45:34]

Everybody's going to have it differently. Let's take poison oak. We're pretty clear, right? Except that for a lot of living beings, poison oak is a really great habitat, a very... healthy, helpful plant. And it can be beautiful, but mostly we're averse to it. So I was thinking out in the wild, or even if you're driving on the freeway, when you have a distance from, you're at a distance from weeds, you can't tell the difference between weeds and flowers. And the weeds are on the hillside, so it doesn't erode. And then more locally like the weeds in the compost pile help the compost pile to transform into wonderful compost.

[46:41]

So I think it was somebody online that was talking about getting distance from what our versions are because probably true with anything, is that if we can, and that's what we do in Zazen, is get some distance from things. And, you know, the other one of my favorites is just a question mark. Is this really, is this really bad? This is my opinion. Did you have something? Dean Bradley online. I just want to. which is, for me, a very helpful question. It's the whole question, well, what does it mean to leap beyond for one of the men? And for me, that has to do with, can I see something without my ideas about it? And I just accept it. Can I see whatever it is, or this incident, or this person, just from what it is, separate from, of course, I'm going to have reactions.

[47:49]

and I like and dislike things. But when those are strong, I try and step back from them and just see what's there. Like looking at your . It's really only five minutes. It's really helpful. Beyond my opinions. Dee, do you have a question? Yes, thank you. So Carol, I'm gonna... ask you about something you said. You know, we're talking about weeds and flowers, and this is the weed and the flower, but a more life experience. And you had said something about when you were with your brother, and he said something about having a milkshake, and you were like, oh, Noah, you should have protein. That's not protein. And I'm wondering... Because that seemed like it may have been a weed for you. And I'm wondering if you looked at it that way, because I know you said that you would have felt hurt.

[48:57]

And I'm wondering if as him saying something he liked, but to you it was a weed. But to him, maybe it was a flower. Well, I think it was really all about our points of view. He thought his point of view was right, and I did too. And being a practitioner, I sat back and said, well, we just have different points of view. Because I could see it was escalating into some anger. And so then he went into, well, that's science. I'm writing a science, and so I know I'm right. So I thought, oh, OK. I said, well, Mr. Plain, I'm going to put your point of view. But isn't that sort of what we do when, you know, we're out gardening and someone says, well, pull that up. That's a weed. And, you know, maybe I like to see the yellow oxal flowers, even though.

[49:59]

But so isn't that the same thing as that sort of. Like being a weed and it comes down to. I think Jerry said something about accepting. You know, I think this plant is a weed and someone else thinks it's a flower. Isn't that sort of the experiential part is like the situation you were in, that you thought one way and he thought another, that you saw it as a milkshake, as a flower? Yeah. Yeah, and I think it's, you know, I think we both need to recognize, well, we just see things differently. And it's okay. And did you feel like you made that place as opposed to him being wrong?

[51:04]

Because, you know, what right-minded, healthy person is going to have milkshake for dinner as opposed to that just being... He just sees it differently. Did it actually? Because I could see something like that. If you felt strongly about healthy eating, that it would be difficult to adjust to someone saying, no, this is the way. So I'm just curious about that. Actually, the whole thing didn't become important. What became a relationship? I'm really curious. And I don't have my point on you, but I saw what was really valuable was not breaking our relationship, but to create some harmony. I was able to tell that. So that sounds like if someone, myself or someone, is caught in that

[52:13]

But this is vexing me that sometimes maybe it comes down to what's most important is me not suffering about these two things. You know, this is a flower. No, it's not a flower. It's a weed. It sounds like rather than... Sometimes it just comes down to... It sounds like it comes down to... maybe recognizing something else that is more important. And that might be the sensation of not arguing about it, the sensation of thinking, of recognizing something else is more important, or even not having the suffering from this weed flower thing to just sort of, instead of saying, okay, the weeds and flowers the same, is to just say, There's no value in this because all it's doing is causing suffering.

[53:16]

Yes. Right. I feel like using the word beyond doesn't work for me because it implies some sort of separation between you and your preferences and your aversion. What works better for me is asking, is my life only about my preferences and aversions? And I feel like that is one of the things I learned from Zazen is like, oh, my life isn't just about me meeting my preferences all the time. Like here and taking it all in is much more what my life is about. And that What Zachary and Rich both said made me feel like each of those things is somehow both a moment, like a preference is both a moment.

[54:19]

Preference is a moment, but a life is a sort of totality. And they kind of include one another. Yes, but that actually is what beyond is. In other words, the beyond is the beyond of the duality. beyond of this is right, this is right, this is that. It's beyond that to include all of it. So you're expanding your awareness and you're expanding your acceptance, mind of acceptance of whatever it is. That's going beyond the normal duality of opinions and preferences. So you're not getting rid of it. You're still enjoying your preferences. That's right. You're enjoying them until you're not. We have to stop on this one, otherwise we won't go to any of the others. So, um, section four, you know, and, you know, what we talked about, those, those, um, sections are the meat of the end of the end of the end.

[55:24]

So we start to move out towards taking subsets, uh, taking separate points and rotating around the same the same concepts over and over again. So the fourth section, to carry our self or the self forward and illuminate myriad things is delusion. That myriad things come forth and illuminate the self is awakening. That's one translation. Another one is conveying oneself, carrying out practice enlightenment is delusion. All things coming and carrying out enlightenment through self-realization, through the self is realization. Say that one again, please. All things coming and carrying out practice enlightenment, through the self is realization. So,

[56:28]

Sojin, in his talks, always talks about carrying the self forward egocentricity or self-centeredness. The delusion is to see ourself only a separate subject surrounded by an objective world we experience as other, oblivious of the basic oneness which is shared by all. So carrying the self forward means Putting the self forward, me as an individual. It's an I. It's about me, what I think, what I am, what I want. And I see everything through that lens. It says, within consciousness, reality is distorted. And we don't see things as they are. That is delusion. A true practice is not the self, but all beings.

[57:33]

To practice is to awaken to the self that is connected to all beings. 5,000 dharmas. And as the first section of all dharmas are Buddha Dharma, we are never separate. We're part of everything. In Zazen, we let go of our thoughts, let go of our consciousness. We actualize the self that is connected to all dharmas. separate self so when we when we practice we open to the totality of coming and going the universal arising and ceasing of things in the world in ourselves we open to that when we do that we can drop body and mind and we can drop the self but if we but if we have if we said and if we If we get attached to our view, our mind, what we think, our stories, the stories that our consciousness make, conditioning, our conditioned reactions, we can't get past the conditioned reactions and the stories we tell ourselves and our own egocentric, I like this, I don't want that, that I, that self-centeredness, it, Sojin felt was the crux.

[58:58]

And this section really challenges us to look at that. How can I not, how can I see something that's outside my mind? I can't believe my mind. Not your understanding, it's my understanding. True practice is not the self, but all beings. And to practice with the idea of an interconnectedness coming from a rising that has always happened. That is reality, not I did this, you did that. That's separated. That's my mind creating objects out there, subjects out there, and I'm objectifying them. So that's really what problem, the essence of it.

[60:01]

So when we allow things to arise and cease, that is myriad beings bringing forth the dogma. All we have to do is be present and see it. You can't ignore it because everything has good in nature. Everything is no separate self. Everything is arising and ceasing because it causes issues. Everything. So nothing, we have nothing to grab onto. That's also what happens when we keep clear. Nothing to hold onto. Nothing. So that. Did you wanna say something for Carol? Well, I'm gonna put it in my own words, which might sound a little bit the same the way I see it. So again, the sentence, to carry yourself forward, And experience myriad things is delusion. That's us, the little me wanting, you know, in charge of my life.

[61:09]

And I want to make things happen. And it's all based on my distorted ideas. It's so, you know, my limited mind is so limited. And I'm doing it through my willpower, my effort. It requires a lot of energy, effort, trying to run our life as an individual. And so in that way, we're carrying forward ideas. It's just continuing that cycle. And it's full of delusions. We really pierce through and look at your ideas, our thoughts. So much is based on our own beliefs. Things that we learned as children, we just did that. And that's what we're preparing for in our life. And so we create these jars.

[62:12]

We create them through our senses. Sight, smell, taste, touch. This is where all of our actions are coming from. So it's good to look at what are those things that are driving these relationships. So that second sentence of this, that myriad and experience themselves is awakening. I was just looking at some of the other. The way Suzuki Roshi says is that things advance and understand themselves, that is enlightenment. It is Buddhists who understand ignorance.

[63:14]

So we're always self-centered. It's very hard to get. Maybe we have a moment of not being self-centered. But now, we recognize it. We can recognize we're deluded. And we can even maybe laugh about it. Oh, there I go again. That story of mine or that delusion I have. We might be able to loosen our grip a little bit on our control of our life and the way we think we see things. And let things, you know, unfold. That's what she almost says. holding the hand of thought, letting some of those old thoughts go away. And then, you know, it allows us to have some insights into our own baggage that we carry. And we all have our baggage. And it's good to look at that baggage to see what we don't really need anymore, what have we been carrying for our whole life.

[64:21]

And it's really not serving us anymore. But of course, it's an attachment. We've always looked. But this is an opportunity when we see those delusions to start to look at it and perhaps let it go. And our vision, you know, can really widen our clarity. That's what happens when we start looking at these things. Oh, you didn't see it that way. Even in spite of our delusions, because we're always going to be delivered. Let's see if anybody has any questions about that, and then we'll give you some prompts of your questions. Oh, Judy. Yeah. I remember Dr. Mora Roshi was once talking about Ujjayama Roshi's teaching of opening the hand of thought, and he emphasized that that's not a willful action.

[65:34]

So, for instance, in zazen, welcoming thoughts, not inviting them to tea, that that too, it's not a willful choice. It's just naturally what happens in Zazen. I don't remember any of that because I is the whole universe, whatever that might be. And so this is a really important point because otherwise there could be this understanding that we're willing things to happen, including letting go. And I remember when I heard that, that was a real opening. So I find that I return to that when I, the quality of grasping or pushing away, it somehow makes it more body practice

[66:48]

than a conceptual idea of what I am calling aversion, for instance. So I wonder how, if you will, not getting caught in the idea or the weeds of conceptualizing what is, for instance, aversion or in the physicality of opening. I think this is where that could happen. The effort's not there. Things are arising, maybe think, thoughts. Something does shift. The grip on things maybe shifts. It can happen in our daily life, too. It's letting go, isn't it?

[67:51]

It's a letting go. Sometimes when we're holding so tight, we have no choice but to just let go. My experience is not an either or. We have to train our minds. We have to have some awareness of ourselves and our proclivities and our preferences. We have to train our... We train our minds to be aware of our aversions and our desires. But when we sit Sazen, we're not doing that. But we're otherwise, Sazen creates a field of awareness for openness and responsiveness. We still have to bring our awareness. I feel like they go hand in hand. And actually, Chiyama talks about it in his life story as conveying oneself forward, putting oneself forward, or making an effort to be something.

[68:54]

He talks about doing something with a gaming idea. So if we do something, kind of practicing with a gaming idea, so I must let go. I must open my hand with the idea that I will be enlightened when I do that. When the minute the ego gets in there and says in order to really understand, I must do this to get ahead in Zen practice, he talks about his gaming idea and how he had to let go of the gaming idea. So it's not, so that's the, it's another kind of attachment or identification with the idea. giving it more meaning than just opening my hand of thought. It's adding that extra. I'm opening my hand of thought. Isn't that great?

[69:55]

We've got several online. We'll start with Dean. Let's start with Mary, and then Dean, and then Rich. Thank you. When I read this, I wonder how it tells me how to get through my day. So I think about it in terms of how does this instruction translate into the nitty-gritty of how we live through a 24-hour period. And so I say to Carrie and experience the myriad things, I'm thinking that is me deciding, you know, how I'm going to, how much news I'm going to take in today and how much I'm going to drive or how many people I see or how I relate to the people I see or what I feel about all of that.

[71:03]

If I allow the myriad things to arise, what does that mean? How do I experience the myriad things arising when we are in our life to so much of what's happening, so much more than Dogen ever imagined we could imagine about what's happening in the world, like what's happening in Gaza and what happened at the hospital? How do I let those myriad things... How do I let them arise in my day as opposed to my saying how I want to feel about that? I mean, it feels to me like that's, isn't, am I reading that wrong? Isn't that the question here is how do we decide how we position ourselves versus how do we experience everything else?

[72:06]

It's really the nature of how we relate to things that he's talking about, not the number of things. It's whether we convey ourselves as a person with all sorts of ideas and judgments and definitions, setting me as a person so that I'm the center of the universe then. I do my day. I'm the star of the show. But it's not that. That's the first part, right? So tell me, what's the second part? That's my question. That's the kind of world of phenomena and illusion, right? But if I just meet everything, if I'm aware, instead of my mind racing about what I'm going to do and what's right and what's wrong and what I should listen to, it's kind of encountering and actually being curious about what we're encountering moment to moment and letting that just be. And I guess what I'm suggesting is that in the context and the life that we're living, what we encounter is pretty big and dramatic.

[73:19]

It's easy to let it be. Well, it's our choice, too. In other words, we can go on social media or not. How does our choice then not become about me and how I do my day? See what I mean? I... How do I live with the pain that is just presented on a daily basis? Yeah, I think this is where your practice comes in. You take things in. You do feel it. Yeah. And we, you know, as Buddhists, we chant. We do things that we feel... We act out in the world the way that we want to. We don't turn away. So you can't... Maybe you have to decide what you can take in, how much, before you... I mean, I... Because it really is facing everything.

[74:25]

It is about it. But facing it, or not, with... Or imagining that I have control over it. Yeah, so facing it, you know, remembering we're all connected. So tapping into that absolute aspect, that impermanence, that we're all connected and in this together. Right, right. It touches us because it touches everyone. So these are difficult times. Thank you. There was a few more people already. We only have 10 minutes. There was a queue of people. There was like Dean and then Rich. No, Dean was next. Let's have Dean, Rich, and then, but we want to get to the last one, Pam.

[75:30]

We only have 10 minutes. So maybe, is that okay? Yeah. Dee, and then Rich? I recently, this is what it sounds like, I read something, and it says, when there isn't samadhi, the self is not forgotten. In other words, it's not that there is no self, but rather that when there is samadhi, the self is forgotten. Then the self is forgotten in that the sense that samadhi is an unselfish state of consciousness. It's unlike self-conscious, reflective consciousness. And it reminded me, that reminded me, I think it was Judy, that instead of getting caught in the weeds or the flowers, there's this other thing. And that's what I was talking about. That's what I was trying to talk about. There's this other thing to just go with the other thing. Don't go with, let go of the weeds, let go of the flowers, just go with the samadhi.

[76:30]

Just go with the freedom. So that's as short as I can keep it. Thanks, bye. I was at a conference this past weekend, and there were all these people that I didn't know, and I was fully engaged in talking to them, meeting them, presenting myself. But I felt like it was only after the fact that I was exhausted. It was only after the fact that I saw that I was able to sort of meet each moment and each person and be wholehearted in those interactions. That's not like the usual case for me. There's often times where I do have to think about. Yeah, I do have to, in the moment, be like, I'm working with this precept right now. I certainly invite my thoughts to tea and zazen and I often do.

[77:34]

And so sometimes it is a sort of cutting of that. It's not always this of sitting, you know, sitting. I often have to return to my breath. I always have to return to my breath. I always often have to cut off delusions and fantasies and all of these things that are happening. So, you know, sometimes it comes in and goes. But again, there is a conscious using a thorn to remove a thorn, right? There's also a nature of how you relate. So if the way you relate is by having a thing in front of you and having opinions about the thing in front of you and getting caught in your mental activity behind merely listening paying attention to what's in front of you. Then you're carrying, when you're carrying all that baggage when we meet somebody, that's self.

[78:41]

But when we just meet people, as you did, unselfconsciously, open to who they are, to who that is, what that is, what is that, what is that, who is that, the questions, not opinions, then we don't give calls. in our own mind. We're opening to more than our own grasping mind or our conceptual mind. We're just letting it happen in a way. But that doesn't mean we're not going to go back and forth. Of course we do. Of course we do. We go into, oh yeah, I don't like that. That stuff happens all the time. But it's reminding ourselves that we want to not miss a really wonderful moment of awakening that we could have had by locking ourselves up in some story we were telling ourselves. So I think that's where it really is juggling free, is where, you know, again, like leaping past our ordinary responses, our conditioned responses to an opening.

[79:56]

A few minutes, so we'll move on to the last item, session. Okay, section five. So, section five. Those who have great realization are rudis. Those who are greatly deluded about realization are sentient beings. Further, there are those who continue realizing beyond realization who are in delusion throughout delusion. So my thoughts about that, well, as I said, we're always in delusion. Now, whether we're a sentient being or a Buddha, but we recognize it. We know this. And by widening We can hold both delusion and enlightenment.

[81:07]

It's like form and emptiness. We hold them both. We're holding both delusion in our form and enlightenment in our absolute. So in our vows, we say we're going to save all beings. Now we know that's a delusion. We can't do that, and yet we know it's impossible, and yet we do it. We do it day after day. And because we're putting that effort forward, because that's our practice, we want to support them. So even in our delusions, we keep going. And that second sentence of those who are enlightened about enlightenment and those who are ignorant of ignorance. That's the Tsukidoshis.

[82:10]

But the way I see that is this happens really before that dualistic thinking begins. It's kind of that unborn mind, the unborn that Hozan was talking about a couple of weeks ago. Before there's any discrimination, any thoughts, our beliefs, all those judgments, there is that realizing . So just kind of in summary, there's really no end to our enlightenment. It just goes on and on. And there's no end to our wisdom. Because the more we practice, this just deepens. we follow the precepts in our way. And it's through caring for everybody on our planet, every person and every planet.

[83:23]

Uchi only talks about living out the real life. What is the real life? What is the real life? I just wanted to share some of what Sojin shared in a 1999 talk that I felt was helpful. He said, in our zazen, we let go of our egocentric self, one with the total interpenetrating reality that is the universe or absolute reality. To realize that there is no fundamental separation between myself as a subject and the 10,000 interdependent dharmas. The whole universe is in existence. To see ourselves in whatever it is we meet is enlightenment.

[84:25]

It is said that the fool sees himself while the sage sees utter as self. Sojin says, is there another way of looking at these two sentences? It turns all dharmas. When dharmas advance, and then dharmas advance, the dharmas turn into self. That sounds like a gibberish, right? When there is another way of looking at these sentences, it's that the self does advance. advances as well so we're so so there's a an interaction with our understanding of the dharmas and are also ourselves so there's a there's a dance going on our our separate self our ego self and our dharmic self and the dharma so this is a

[85:29]

kind of a dance that we do. And that shapes our life and sometimes it tips one way and we get caught in ourselves and it tips another way and we get lost in the world of emptiness. And the idea is that we hold it all. We hold it both. to do the dance. One comes forward. We come forward, back and forth, constantly. So there is no one place. It's not like those who are, you know, certain people are going to be Buddhas, and then the other people are never going to get to be Buddhas. We are all Buddhas and not Buddhas. That's the non-duality. I always think about people as each of us has the capacity to be the most wonderful person and each of us has the capacity to be the most horrible person from moment to moment that's what we know that's that's what it can be so how do you deal with that not knowing and that changing concept

[86:49]

I'm just going to end this week. Just continue to think about what is your schedule going on? What is important in your life? Do you want to do the four vows? I think we should. Yes. The demons are numberless. I am to awaken with them. Delisions are It's totally clear.

[87:51]

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