Good morning. Can you hear me okay in here? Can you hear me okay out there? Good. Thank you. Well, this stormy morning is the sixth day of our Rohatsu Sishin. It's nice to have all of you in Asendo and also to see all of you out there.

[01:02]

It was really wonderful to hear the sound of the rain. I feel like it's been quite a while since I sat Zazen with that rain sounding on the roof and on the windows. It's such a It's just a wonderful sound, a wonderful encompassing sound. Over the course of this week, we've been studying Fukan Zazenbi, Dogen's Universal Instructions for Zazen. And we're going to press on with that, but also I'm going to address some other questions and review a little bit because Some of you have not been here, particularly the people online. So I want to begin by actually reading from .

[02:07]

Are there people who need a copy of the text who don't have it here? Is there anyone who needs one? I've got more copies. Everyone has one. Okay. So, if you have a read along, oh, I don't know if the. Do you have it in the. Online host files? Yes, I do. If anyone's having problem accessing it, let me know just chat me and I'll share it. Can you can you put it up? I could share it. Yeah. But then it will block the screen. No, share it on the screen. I mean, we're just going to read this for a few minutes. They can do without seeing me and I can do without seeing them for a moment. Okay. Oh, good.

[03:37]

Okay. Great. So just read along to yourself. The way is basically perfect and all pervading. How could it be contingent upon practice and realization? The Dharma vehicle is free and untrammeled. What need is there for concentrated effort? Indeed, the whole body is far beyond the world's dust. Who could believe in a means to brush it clean? It is never apart from one, right where one is. What is the use of going off here and there to practice? And yet, if there is the slightest discrepancy, The way is as distant as heaven from earth. If the least like or dislike arises, the mind is lost in confusion. Suppose one gains pride of understanding, it inflicts one's own enlightenment, lynching the wisdom that runs through all things, attaining the way and clarifying the mind, raising an aspiration to escalate the very sky.

[04:48]

One is making the initial partial excursions about the frontiers, but is still somewhat deficient in the vital way of total emancipation. Need I mention Buddha, who is possessed of inborn knowledge. The influence of his six years of upright sitting is noticeable still. Or Bodhidharma's transmission of the mind seal. The fame of his nine years of wall sitting is celebrated to this day. Since this was the case with the saints of old, how can we today dispense with negotiation of the way? You should therefore cease from practice based on intellectual understanding, pursuing words and following after speech, and learn the backward step that turns your light inwardly to illuminate yourself. Body and mind of themselves will drop away and your original face will be manifest.

[05:50]

If you want to attain suchness, you should practice suchness without delay. For sanzen, a quiet room is suitable. Eat and drink moderately. Cast aside all involvements and cease all affairs. Do not think good or bad. Do not administer pros and cons. Cease all the movements of the conscious mind. the gauging of all thoughts and views. Have no designs on becoming a Buddha. Zazen has nothing whatever to do with sitting or lying down. At the sight of your regular sitting, spread out thick matting and place a cushion above it. Sit either in the full lotus or half lotus position. In the full lotus position, you first place your right foot on your left thigh and your left foot on your right thigh. In the half lotus, you simply press your left foot against your right thigh. You should have your robes and belt loosely bound and arranged in order.

[06:56]

Then place your right hand on your left leg and your left palm facing upwards on your right palm, thumb tips touching. Thus, sit upright in correct bodily posture, neither inclining to the left nor to the right. neither leaning forward nor backward. Be sure your ears are on a plane with your shoulders and your nose in line with your navel. Place your tongue against the front roof of your mouth, your teeth and lips both shut. Your eyes should always remain open and you should breathe gently through your nose. Once you've adjusted your posture, take a deep breath, inhale and exhale. Rock your body right and left and settle into a steady, immobile sitting position. Think of not thinking. How do you think of not thinking? Non-thinking. This in itself is the essential part of Zazen.

[08:00]

The Zazen I speak of is not learning meditation. It is simply the Dharma gate of repose and bliss, the practice realization of totally culminated enlightenment. It is the manifestation of ultimate reality. Traps and snares can never reach it. Once its heart is grasped, you are like the dragon when he gains the water, like the tiger when she enters the mountain. For you must know that just there, in Zazen, the right Dharma is manifesting itself, and that from the first, dullness and distraction are struck aside. When you arise from sitting, move slowly and quietly, calmly and deliberately. Do not rise suddenly or abruptly. In surveying the past, we find that the transcendence of both unenlightenment and enlightenment, and dying while either sitting or standing, have all depended entirely on the strength of zazen.

[09:05]

In addition, The bringing about of enlightenment by the opportunity provided by a finger, a banner, a needle, or a mallet, and the effecting of realization with the aid of a hosu, a fist, a staff, or a shout, cannot be fully understood by discriminative thinking. Indeed, it cannot fully be known by the practicing or realizing of supernatural powers, either. It must be deportment beyond hearing and seeing. Is it not a principle that is prior to knowledge and perceptions? This being the case, intelligence or lack of it does not matter. Between the dull and the sharp-witted, there's no distinction. If you concentrate your efforts single-mindedly, that in itself is negotiating the way. Practice realization is naturally undefiled.

[10:09]

Going forward in practice is a matter of everydayness. In general, this world and other worlds as well, both in India and China, equally hold the Buddha seal, and overall prevails the character of this school, which is simply devotion to sitting, total engagement in immobile sitting, Although it is said that there are as many minds as there are persons, still they all negotiate the way entirely solely in Sazen. Why leave behind the seat that exists in your home and go aimlessly off to the dusty realms of other lands? If you make one mistake, you go astray from the way directly before you. You have gained the pivotal opportunity of human form. Do not use your time in vain. You are maintaining the essential working of the Buddha way.

[11:11]

Who would take wasteful delight in the spark from the flintstone? Besides, form and substance are like the dew on the grass. Destiny, like the dart of lightning, empty in an instant, vanished in a flash. Please, honored followers of Zen, Long accustomed to groping for the elephant, do not be suspicious of the true dragon. Devote your energies to a way that directly indicates the absolute. Revere the person of complete attainment who is beyond all agency. Gain accord with the enlightenment of the Buddhas. Succeed to the legitimate lineage of the ancestor's samadhi. Constantly perform in such a manner. and you are assured of being a person such as they, your treasure store will open up itself and you will use it at will. So every time I read this, as I said the first day, different lines leap out at me fresh.

[12:59]

So I wanted to go back and address some things that have come up in talking with people over the last couple of days. And I can understand that there may be some uncertainty about what I have been teaching, and for that matter, about what Dogen is trying to get across. So we are working through several layers of language, translation, distance, time. So we're moving from Chinese to an older form of Japanese to a more modern form of Japanese to English. And we are crossing from cultures that we can not quite grasp because they're historical and they're different from ours.

[14:08]

and separated by an ocean and by 800 years. So the terms that we are using, some of them, zazen, shikantaza, concentration, et cetera, mean different things to each of us. There's difficulty with words whenever we use them. And Dogen is really incredibly skillful and very careful about his words. I don't think he uses any words thoughtlessly. Nonetheless, we are not in his mind, and so we don't know precisely what it is that he means. We do our best. scholars and practitioners alike have really sometimes very different interpretations of these words.

[15:16]

And they can argue very fiercely about what they, what they so-called originally meant to the authors. It's just like, you know, the legal arguments that take place about the United States Constitution. What is the original meaning? And, you know, we don't know. We just do our best to find each person who's interpreting here, not just a report, is doing his or her best to practice in accord with their understanding and simultaneously to take in input from what others are saying or teaching. But as in any written work, ultimately, the meaning has to be decided by the reader or the listener.

[16:29]

And so the question in all this that we come out of this week with is, what do Dogen's words mean to you? What does Shikantasa mean? What does practice realization mean? What does dropping body and mind mean? What is Jijuyu Zamae? We have to decide, and each of us has to decide that for ourselves. then try out your understanding in your practice and in your life and use it accordingly. All I'm offering you is my opinion. As Bernie Glassman said, quoting the dude, well like

[17:31]

Actually, the dude said, like, that's just your opinion, man. Bernie liked to say, that's just my opinion. And often he talked about, even when it came down to the most basic elements of Buddhism, he talked about the Four Noble Opinions. So, the thing is to try it out in practice. So the ambiguity of practice is that it can't be reduced to a single thing, or a process, or a series of processes, or to an abstraction like an idea or concept. Ultimately, the practice is unthinkable. And yet, we're doing it. Here we are, day six, and we have Even if we don't know exactly what we're doing, which is often the case, it's the case for me, we plunge in.

[18:44]

We've been invited by our teachers and all the ancestors to just plunge in. So thinking about this, I want to come back to, speaking of plunging in, I want to come back to a metaphor that I used twice. I used it on Thursday, and I used a different take on it on Friday, speaking of streams and rivers. And I think this is a useful, it's a useful way to think about the fact that we can always see things from a different angle. So on Thursday, I think I spoke about immersing ourselves in the river to the point where there's no separation, where we're just floating or we're swimming, but we are merging as part of the river, as part of the flow itself.

[19:59]

And that's one metaphor. for our practice. And on Friday, I spoke of sitting by a stream. And I think that unskillfully I used the word watching. And I don't really mean watching. Like the frog sitting on the rock is not watching for the fly. So, my sense if we look again at this term, Jijuyuzamai, receptive samadhi or self-fulfilling samadhi, that what this means in terms of my understanding of our practice is that our senses and our mind themselves, itself,

[21:05]

is receptive. So rather than watching, our eyes, the activity of our eyes is just seeing, not looking. It's just hearing, not listening. And in the context of the mind, it's, I think Uchiyama Roshi talked about the mind is, is an organ, like a gland that secretes thoughts. So the thoughts just come out and we see them with our mind's eye, but we're not actively thinking them. So this flow of thoughts, this flow of perceptions, this is my understanding of unthinking. thoughts and perceptions come and go.

[22:07]

Now, there's a lot of question about what do we do with our mind? What do we do with our body? What do we do with our breath? It's interesting because I was, as this came up, I was looking through Zen Mind Beginner's Mind and then doing some other searches on Suzuki Roshi and You know, seemingly in contrast to what we've been taught, at one place Suzuki Roshi said, my master Kishizawa Roshi used to say that we had to have a vow or an aim to accomplish. So that sounds like gaining idea. The aim we may have may not be perfect in its strict sense, but even so it is necessary for us to have it.

[23:12]

I think that rather than aim, there's vow, which is underneath everything, which is really different than aim. The ultimate vow that we have is to awaken. with all beings. But it's not necessarily that we do something to awaken them. Maybe we do, maybe we don't. But the process of our practice creates the potentiality for us to wake up together with all that we are part of. So we have to direct our minds to some degree. And again, to look at Suzuki Roshi, he doesn't, there's not a concentration chapter in Ten Mind Beginners Mind.

[24:27]

But he does say, when we practice zazen, our mind always follows our breathing. When your mind is pure and calm enough to follow this movement, there is nothing, no I, no world, no mind, nor body, just a swinging door. So we observe this swinging door of breath. But what I think I said yesterday, we observe it. The quality of that awareness is light. And to some degree, what I see it as, it's interesting, light as in, it's light as in not weighing much. But it's also light as in, it has a luminance. And it's also light, like the quality of a very sheer, thin fabric that we can see through it.

[25:36]

And so on this awareness, not hard focus on our breath, on our awareness of posture, we allow our other perceptions to settle and to flow. We allow them to arise, we notice them, we let them go. So, again, this is not a concentration practice, but there's always an element of concentration. Concentration is an element of the Eightfold Path. It's an element of the factors of enlightenment. It exists in all kinds of Buddhist

[26:39]

systems, dharma systems. But what it means to us, you know, in, so in Fukanza Zengy, you know, we have, we have these different practices. In Fukanza Zengy here, we read, when you arise from sitting, move slowly and quietly, calmly and deliberately. Well, that's what we do. But, If you are practicing at Sogenji, in your inside tradition, when the bell rings, you jump up, you know, and, you know, you just, you jump up. And when, when Kenyan happens, you're virtually running. This is another practice. You know, so we do this. You know, Dogen would certainly strenuously argue that that this is what he's putting forward is the true practice.

[27:57]

I have no doubt that it is true practice. I also think there's a world of practices and maybe this is somewhat heretical of me. But these practices, the practices we do have to also suit our mind and body. Some people may need something strenuous. And we do this practice actually because this is what we were given. You know, if I were, a monk in Hirata Roshi's tradition, that's what I would do. But we are in Suzuki Roshi tradition, and Sojin's tradition, and Dogen's tradition, and what was handed to us is very precious.

[29:03]

So if we make changes, we try to change it really carefully with an awareness of what we've been given and with a sense of great gratitude for it. So, yeah, I just wanted to respond to some of those questions. You can hold them in mind and you can come back with more. You may have more questions, but I feel it's incumbent on me to go a little further in the text so that we can actually finish it. So I'll take a few more minutes and read another section or two of the text. Is that okay? And tomorrow we're going to do a review.

[30:09]

So we got to this section, spoke of it yesterday. The Zazen I speak of is not learning meditation. So it's not a step-by-step instruction. It's not learning meditation so that you can attain enlightenment. It is simply the Dharma gate of repose and bliss. And I hope it's, and the next phrase is, the practice realization of totally culminated enlightenment. Again, come back to this term practice realization that the inseparability, the fact that we are here, sitting in this sejin, is the expression of the fact that we have a glimpse of our inborn enlightenment. And I hope that you're experiencing, at least when you sit down, just this sense, a sense of repose and bliss, at least until your knees start to hurt, you know, and then we get up.

[31:34]

And then hopefully, it's always been surprising to me. It's like, well, it really hurts, you know, and you get up and you get in. And at least as you sit down, it's like, ah. It's like resuming that state of repose and bliss. Once its heart is grasped, you are like the dragon when he gains the water, but the tiger when she enters the mountain. For you must know that just there in Zazen, the right Dharma is manifesting itself. and that from the first, dullness and distraction are set aside, are struck aside. So that dullness and distraction are struck aside is the character of Chikantaza is just a very simple alertness, a readiness.

[32:41]

a readiness to respond without the necessity of responding or doing anything. But that's, rather than not drifting and dreaming, not dull or sleepy, but alertness. So, Ben Dogen says, When you rise from sitting, ooh, slowly and quietly, calmly and deliberately, do not rise suddenly or abruptly. We spoke of that in a moment. In surveying the past, we find the transcendence of both unenlightenment and enlightenment, and dying while either sitting or standing, have all depended entirely on the strength of zazen. So according to the Zen histories, a number of the ancestors, including Bodhidharma and the fourth, fifth and sixth ancestor, died in the posture of Zazen.

[33:52]

And the third patriarch died, evidently standing under a large tree. Some of these there in In China, there are mummies of Zen masters called flesh body. Basically, you can see still the supposedly the mummified sixth ancestor. Maybe have any of you seen it? Did you see it? Some of you went to Six Ancestors Temple, right? Was the mummy there? I know that it was injured, it was kind of semi-destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, but I thought that they had restored. Anyway, I have a photograph of it.

[34:56]

And, you know, he's in Zazen posture. And often, in other stories, the bodies of great teachers were, they died in zazen, and they basically, they dug a vertical hole and placed the bodies in them. So, made that happen to you. So, in the tissues, the bringing about of enlightenment by the opportunity provided by a finger, a banner, a needle, or a mallet, and the effecting of realization with the aid of a hosu, that's a whisk you've seen use, a fist, a staff or a shout, cannot be fully understood by discriminative thinking. Indeed, it cannot be fully known by the practicing of supernatural powers either.

[36:01]

It must be deportment beyond hearing and seeing. Is it not a principle that is prior to knowledge and perception. So these are illusions and there's story in each of them to the ways that Zen masters might use to bring their students to enlightenment, to enact this dynamic that we talk about. We talk about the metaphor of the the birth of a chick, of pecking and tapping. So the chick that was about to be born is pecking from the inside of the egg, and the hen is tapping, or maybe it's tapping from the inside of the egg, and the hen is pecking from the outside. So all of these means are means of pecking.

[37:02]

The master is not causing. enlightenment. Just he or she is responding to what they perceive as the moment of just helping a little so that the student can wake up. So There's a lot of stories, I'm hesitant to go through all of them because it would take a long time if that's okay. But all of these have a particular story and all of them are serving the same purpose of just helping, not causing. So finally,

[38:03]

I'll stop with this next passage. This being the case, intelligence or lack of it does not matter. Between the dull and the sharp witted, there is no distinction. Whoever we are, the working of our mind is inconceivable. Whether we are defined as intelligent or not, it's just such a false distinction. I've always felt that. Yes, there are marks of certain kinds of intelligence, but I believe that every being has this incredibly remarkable intelligence that maybe specialized or focused in ways that other people may not even see.

[39:08]

And we honor that. It's intelligence or lack of it between, I would say, the so-called dull and the so-called sharp-witted, there is no distinction. And then it's interesting because we were speaking about concentration, and we're thinking about non-thinking, which is kind of an open awareness where the concentration is very broad. And then Dogen says, if you concentrate your efforts single-mindedly, that in itself is negotiating the way. There's a complexity to what he's presenting. We have to do something. We have to do something.

[40:11]

We have to say something. At the same time, we recognize that behind, within anything that we do or say or think, there is inconceivable activity that we cannot, it's really, this is where that term, think the unthinkable applies to me, that we're not capable. There's no way to think about how is it that I just, right now, opening my mouth and words are coming out. That's unthinkable. It's wonderful. And every one of us can do that. Or if you have no voice, you can dance. You can do something else.

[41:14]

Whatever, just taking a step is inconceivable. And that is non-thinking. Certainly, sitting down here in the rain, and in the cool air is also unthinkable. So I'm going to stop there. And tomorrow we'll actually be able to complete this, which is very satisfying. So if you have any thoughts or questions, either you can send out here now or out there in Zoomland. In Zoomland, please, I can't see everybody who's actually there, so raise your digital hand, and I can call on you. And here, you can raise your capital hand.

[42:18]

Mira. Yeah, going back to the first paragraph, I had a question. Sure. It says the whole body is that blind. The whole body is beyond the world's justice. So my question was about the phrase, the whole body. Do you see that line? The whole body is beyond the world's dust. Yes. So the world's dust, I understand that part. But the whole body, does that mean like Buddha in ancient? That's how I would think. That's how I would think. I don't think he's, I think the referent there is the way. It's not the physical body. The way is Buddha nature. The Buddha nature, which is, you know, as Dogen famously, Dogen famously retranslated one character in the Nirvana Sutra, which said,

[43:28]

In the Mayana depth, it says, all beings have Buddha nature. And he made a slight shift. He said, all beings are Buddha nature. So each of us, everything is a manifestation of the whole. And you could say, Any part of it also represents the entirety. So the whole body, I think, is Buddha nature. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, Robert. Robert, can you speak up, please? I'm going to restate the questions because they can't hear it here. So, but you can speak up. He made a reference to one of the ancients talking about, I don't remember the phrase theology, but it was going into the circle from which light emanates.

[44:43]

Do you know that? Yes, he's saying several days ago I made a reference to one of the ancients speaking of going into the circle through which the light emanates. And let's see, I may not have brought that with me. It was a vocation, and it appears not, but what's the question? The question is, I find myself practicing with that, with paying attention to paying attention. And I wonder, I mean, it seems like that's a very different practice from perceptive samadhi, but I wonder, that I find myself sort of alternating between them. But it seems, it's a very striking practice.

[45:45]

So you, Rob was saying he, based on that vocation, which I will find tomorrow, You find yourself paying attention to paying attention. Don't overthink it. It doesn't feel like it's thinking. Okay. It feels like absorption. Right, so that's an absorption which is also beyond thinking. Just don't get caught there. That activity can be like a tunnel. You can get drawn into it. So just be careful of that. When you notice yourself doing it, just return to the posture in your back.

[46:49]

It all returns to that ground. But that's fine. Thank you. There's two hands. There's a couple of hands in here. And also there's two hands out there. Peter? Yes, thank you, Hosanna. I was thinking a bit about what you were talking about at the beginning of your talk about trying to recharacterize the activity you named as washing while sitting by a stream or something like that. And I thought it might be useful to think of it as buried witness, as a kind of active principle of inviting your own awareness to continually manifest. It's sort of, it's not active, it's not passive, it's not, it's just whatever's happening. Right. So Peter is saying, could we think of that activity as

[47:54]

the mental activity as we were sitting by a stream as bearing witness. I think that's... I'm not sure that that's the activity of zazen. I think that's the activity of our self when we go out the door to the... the realities of our world, we need to bear witness. And to me it's a very rich term because to bear witness also for me implies to endure the witness, to endure what we're seeing, and also to bear it, to carry it, and share it with others. But that's the way I see the word. Yeah.

[48:56]

Thank you. Stephanie. Good morning, Kazan. Good morning. We'd like you to say more about your personal experience of the light. She would like me to say more about my personal experience of the light. Well. Sometimes it's overwhelming. Yesterday afternoon, when I came in after Dokkasan, there had been a cloudy, somewhat overcast morning or evening, afternoon rather. And all of a sudden, when I came in, the light was streaming through these south windows, the sun as it was setting, and it was falling at a crisp angle across the altar, illuminating the Buddhists.

[50:12]

And I found it momentarily overwhelming. And beyond anything I could put into words. So that's just... That's not an intellectual explanation of how I find a light. That's just what I experienced. And that's as close as I can get. For me, that answered my question. Great. Thank you. I saw some answers there. I can't see. Preston, is it Vince? Yeah, Preston. I'm up on the word enlightenment and so I guess my three related questions are what is enlightenment and when is it helpful to conceptualize it and when is it not helpful?

[51:21]

So Preston is asking about, he's feeling a little hung up on the word enlightenment and wants to know when is it useful to conceptualize it, and when not, lighten up. It's just, it's just, you know, when you meet, well, we've all had the experience of Sojin and Suzuki Roshi we hear, You know, they laughed a lot. And I find myself laughing more as I get older. And all of the awake people that I've met, there was a quality of lightness about them.

[52:23]

And the light of that lightness shined through. So don't worry about enlightenment. Just let it happen. Vince, I think Vince is going to be the last. This is more of a comment rather than a question. Somebody brought up the whole body. Yeah. Just brought up my mind. There's the poem at the beginning of the Wind Bell book. It's the Wind Bell poem itself, which I believe is something about the whole body is about hanging in space. Yeah. Whichever way the wind blows, whatever. And always, when I read that, I thought of the whole body as the whole body like the big self, but also the whole body of the small self.

[53:31]

physical body also. It's all of one piece. It's all hanging in space, receptive, like a mouth. That's just about that. Thank you. So he's talking, he's quoting from a poem like, I think Dogen cites it in I'm forgetting what fascicle, does anyone know? Mountains and rivers. Mountains and rivers, okay. The whole body is a wind bell hanging in empty space with an open mouth, something like that. And just what comes to mind is this image of the whole mouth, of the whole

[54:32]

body, this open mouth, the open mouth can eat, eats everything. It can take in everything. It can swallow the universe. Also, it can sing. It can speak. It has very flexible capabilities. And that's how I, that's how I interpret that. But yeah, I think that's, I think what you're quoting is the same whole body that what Mira was asking about. Again, it's Buddha nature as potentiality, as total dynamic working. So. I think that's where we will end for today.

[55:33]

Please enjoy yourself and stay as dry as you can and enjoy the weather. Thanks, y'all.

[55:54]

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