First, I want to apologize for misleading you yesterday. When I started to read the Ginjo Koan, I read the first three sentences, and the page... I'll show you here. I just have this little piece of paper, and the page folds like this. And it folded so perfectly that when I read down here, I went on to here. And as soon as I got on to here, I knew there was something wrong, because suddenly it changed, and I could feel that there was a gap between. I can feel that when I'm reading, and you're responding, I feel this response. And when you're not responding, I feel that even though you're not saying anything, I feel the lack of response.

[01:04]

And I felt that and I felt, why am I reading this? It's something, you know, but I thought I should stop because I don't feel the response and it felt dead to me. But I continued on to where I wanted to, to the fourth part instead of the second part. Anyway, I knew that there was something wrong, but I didn't know what it was, and I didn't see the connection between, of what I'd done until a little bit later, you know, when I started to talk about the fourth sentence, I realized that I hadn't read it. So anyway, I apologize for and for being a little bit stupid and not realizing what I'd done. Please forgive me. Before I go on again, I want to talk a little bit more about the meaning of this word koan, in genjo koan.

[02:15]

There's one, the Fifth Abbot of Eheji, I can't remember his name, but he interpreted it something like, the ko means to make things level, or make things even. And the an is to take a position or to maybe stand on your ground. So ko, making things level, doesn't mean to smooth everything out. you know, but rather to go with things the way they are.

[03:22]

To level your mind rather than to level the problem. Rather than leveling the problem, to make your mind level. And on is like Being stable, finding stability in the place where you are. So meeting a situation, no matter what its shape or contour is, and finding your stability within that situation. That's more the meaning of koan within genjo koan. Of course, koan means public case, you know, that kind of koan. This kind of koan is more genjo koan, to find your way in everyday activity among the mountains,

[04:42]

and rivers of daily life and finding your place in the universe, moment to moment, with stability in reality and truth. which reminds me of a story from the Surangama Sutra, one of my favorite stories. I used this story at Tassajara last year. There are 25 bodhisattvas in the Surangama Sutra who tell the story of how they entered non-differentiated understanding, the non-dual Dharma door. And each one tells a particular incident that happened where they had their realization.

[05:52]

And this bodhisattva, whose name was something like leveler of the rough places, said that when he was living in the time of Vipassana Buddha, one of the seven Buddhas before Buddha, he was a very compassionate person and his task in life was to make level all the rough places. So where there was a rough road somewhere, he would go out with his pick and shovel make it level for people. And he would go to great extremes to do this. And one day he met Vipassana Buddha. And he told the Buddha how he lived his life.

[06:57]

And the Buddha said, well, instead of leveling all these roads, Why don't you just make your mind level? Why don't you just level your own mind? It a little bit reminds me of the story of shoe leather. Why pave all the roads when you can just put the shoe leather on... Why pave the roads with shoe leather when you can just put shoe leather on the bottom of your own shoes? The koan, ko, has to do with that kind of leveling. Why not just make your mind level? Instead of trying to adjust everything to your own, to fit into your convenience.

[08:08]

Why not just adjust your mind? Which actually leads me to the next part of this ginga poem. The next part of this koan is to carry the self forward and realize the 10,000 dharmas is delusion. That the 10,000 dharmas advance and realize the self is enlightenment. It is Buddhas who enlighten delusion. It is creatures who are deluded in enlightenment. So this statement, the 10,000 dharmas advance and realize the self is enlightenment. It is Buddhas who enlighten delusion. To carry the self forward and realize the 10,000 dharmas is delusion. That the 10,000 dharmas advance and realize the self is enlightenment.

[09:15]

What do you think that means? Does that mean that you shouldn't be active? No. So, what does it mean then, as far as being active? How can we be active? How can we not be active? Well, you know, if you say, just being passive, sounds like just being passive, then what about being active?

[10:20]

I don't know about being passive. Being activity. Being activity. Not having an idea of self on top of the activity. Oh. Can you say more about that? Carrying yourself forward, it's like you're in this activity, but then you have also this kind of grandiose idea about the activity you're doing. And then realizing the 10,000 dharmas is like having all these ideas about phenomena.

[11:27]

But that it's based on maybe dualistic understanding or self-centered understanding. Go ahead. Yeah, a while back you gave a talk and said something about how we create a point of view. take a stand there, you know, and take action from that point of view. And I think that's what that means, that sort of thing, that, you know, I may see things and I say, okay, this is how it is and so I create it and then I start doing things to it and I see, you know, this is what I do with reality. I create reality. And the other side of it is just growth and just letting reality be and somehow letting myself be it and in a way take it in. It's also active, but it's not acting on it, it's more acting with it or acting in it.

[12:32]

Should we not take a point of view? But not create it. You could also say the cornbread is making me.

[13:56]

that the 10,000 dharmas advance and realize the Self. May I? Quite a while ago you said something that I thought much about while driving, that if you drive along and you just notice everything that's going around you, that you were boss of the road, You control the road by being aware of exactly how everything is going around you. And by knowing how to insert yourself. Because when you make a move, then everyone else has to do something. Just a minute. You're driving down the road. If somebody else does something, then you take your place around that. And if you do something, everybody else has to take their place around that. So when you know exactly what your moves are, then everybody's moving around you.

[15:40]

And if you're a very compassionate driver, then you make the road a very compassionate place to be. And if you're not a compassionate driver, everybody has to adjust to your intrusions. But either way, you have to be prevent. So at that moment, that moment in time, what is yourself?

[16:42]

Oh, I was thinking about what you said about driving compassionately, because about, I guess it was a couple weeks ago when we were at Greenbelt, when I came back, I was feeling more compassionate, I thought, and I was trying to drive and be aware of other people. And I saw a bicyclist, so I slowed down, and everybody started honking at me. Right. And then the bicyclist went by, because I guess I'd done something that he hadn't expected, and he started yelling at me. Why do you go to driving school? It just went on and on. And I was really... I couldn't figure it out. Why everybody was getting so mad at me. Do you know now? Well, I wasn't in their rhythm. You were thinking about him, being kind to him, but you weren't thinking about being kind to the person behind you. And... That causes a problem. I'm an observer of the road, a student of the road, so I study these things.

[18:18]

I've been studying them for years, ever since I was a taxi driver. You know, the compassionate people that stop for the bicyclists, you know, or somebody, you know, but the rule of the road is you keep going, you know, and let these people wait. By controlling the road, by, you know, by really paying attention to the rules and making these people wait, even though you'd like to let them go across because they look nice or helpless or something, you're actually helping to control the road. And if you stop, the people behind you, well, you're interrupting their flow, and they're gonna get angry at you. Then the bicyclists maybe get angry at you because he was actually waiting for you to go by, and you made him go across the road. No, he was alongside me, but they didn't. Right, but that kind of thing, you know.

[19:20]

So, sometimes we may feel compassionate, It's deeper than that. Compassion has more to do with following the law of things or letting things go the way they should go. Appropriate behavior. So the 10,000 to advance is kind of to intrude our ego. Or to find, look for confirmation outside. We do need confirmation. But to advance has also the feeling of separation.

[20:24]

I advance into the world of objects. I advance into a world of 10,000 things. So there's I and the 10,000 things. That's delusion, to see yourself as separate. And to allow the 10,000 things to confirm me has the feeling of there is no me other than the 10,000 things. outside of Alan's situation on the road. The situation creates me, just like baking the bread. I am baking the bread, but the bread is creating me at the same time. My sense of being alive has to do with my activity with the bread, interaction with the bread, which is all one big being.

[21:26]

But, on the other hand, enlightenment and delusion are really two sides of the coin. And, in fact, we do advance and confirm things, move things in delusion. That's one side of our life. And in fact, we do allow things to confirm us, which is enlightenment, which is the other side. But the two sides are not two sides, they're one side. It's maybe a circle, or maybe a kind of circle, it's not a circle. You can't leave out delusion. We express ourselves as delusion, and enlightenment expresses itself as delusion, and delusion expresses itself as enlightenment.

[22:41]

Whenever we try to get onto one side, we create a problem, and The reason why we say don't look for enlightenment, don't seek enlightenment, even though you can't help seeking enlightenment. That's big koan. You can't help seeking enlightenment, but if you seek it, you're going away from it. We say, Nirvana is within samsara, right? And when we say nirvana, we have to find nirvana within samsara, that means that we're looking for nirvana. You know, that statement. So you could also say, samsara is only found within nirvana. And then you're looking for samsara.

[23:54]

But we're looking for nirvana because we feel that we're in samsara. We feel the changing face of life. That's called samsara. Samsara doesn't necessarily mean suffering. It means the changing face of life or phenomena as it appears and disappears. And suffering is something else, a quality that we attach to that. But the quality that you attach to it can also be bliss or nirvana. So, you know, You choose your activity and you pay your price.

[25:00]

But anyway, they can't be divided. So when Dogen is talking about delusion and enlightenment, and throughout Genjo Koan he's talking about delusion and enlightenment all the time. And he's talking about the oneness of duality, and the duality of oneness. The dual aspect of one thing, and the singular aspect of the two. Back and forth, and looking at it from various points of view, various ways. And if we cling to one side. If we try to cling to the nirvana side, then it falls like a flower. And if we get dissatisfied with the samsara side, we just cause ourselves a lot of problems.

[26:19]

Weeds grow. So, where are we? Where are we, moment to moment? Birth and death is like this. He also says. Birth and death is also like this. Are we dead or alive? Your descriptions of SARS sound very optimistic. What I'm wondering is that in the human realm, presumably we can because samsara is equated with suffering.

[27:31]

The only way we can be released from the wheel of samsara is to completely merge with it. If... When you try to... I don't know if you're familiar with those, when I was a kid we used to have these little Chinese toys that you put on your fingers. They're little baskets, basket weave. And you put one finger in each side and they were loose. But as soon as you started to pull your fingers out, they would tighten up, you know. And of course as the basket stretched, you know, it got narrower. and you couldn't pull your fingers out. The only way you could pull your fingers out was to go back in, was to completely get in, completely go into it.

[28:36]

But as soon as you tried to escape from it, it would tie you up. And I remember one time when I first started practicing at Sokoji, Sokoji, I went down to China, It was during sashim, as a matter of fact. And I was beginning to realize, you know, that the more I tried to escape from my position, the more it hurt. And I thought of those Chinese things, you know. So I went down to Chinatown. I had this big rebel issue. I went down to Chinatown and I bought a big handful of them. And I came back and I laid one in everybody's seat. And I'm trying to explain it to him, and he didn't get it.

[29:41]

And I always felt down, really disappointed. He'd say, oh, it was a great idea, great analogy. But he didn't seem to get it. Anyway. If you try to escape from samsara, you know, it's like those little Chinese baskets. It just binds you more. We'll talk about that more when we get into delusion. Yes? I have a column, I think, that I've been trying to work on, so maybe you could help me with it. I keep seeing this image of like a mirror and dust falling on it. And I think before I began practicing, it wasn't dust, maybe it was concrete. But now it's dust, so I feel like, you know, I'm... It's getting lighter.

[30:45]

It's getting lighter. Getting more space in between the particles. But then I began thinking, well, how can I avoid the dust? How can I avoid the dust? How can I be away from the dust? And realizing that that's just more of the same Right. It's the feeling like how to just let the death settle, but is there a time when the mirror is just completely clear? Well, have you been reading the Platform Sutra by any chance? No. I suggested that you read the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, which there's a poem about that in there. But I will say this about it, that, you know, you can't get away from the dust. Right.

[31:45]

You just have to drown in dust. But at the same time, In order to see the face of the mirror, we have to keep wiping it. So, dust falls, and we wipe it. And then dust falls, and we wipe it. So, neither one is good or bad. Dust is not bad, and wiping is not bad. And if you want to see the mirror, you have to dust it. The dust wiping school of Zen was considered very lowly.

[32:47]

And the wisdom school of Zen, which said even dust doesn't exist, really. the accepted side. But actually, both sides are correct. There is no such thing as dust. But even though there is no such thing as dust, we have to wipe it away anyway. Even though there are no sentient beings, sentient beings do not exist, we still have to save them. that you can fool yourself into thinking that there are no sentient beings. Which is true. You can fool yourself into believing the truth. But that's one side of the truth. The other side of the truth is that these non-existent sentient beings all have to be saved.

[33:54]

Because here they are. Here we are. I was trying to think maybe I should be the dust and I sneezed. It's a hot chew. That's your answer? Well, I have a question about this matter of becoming comfortable and fitting the contours of a place like Samsara. Because I feel that these days with Sashin going on, and I'm having pain in my back, and I can't do Sashin, and it's a real bummer. And it's really samsara, and I'm stuck, definitely, you know, and if I fight it, I'll be worse than fingers in a Chinese basket. But it's not comfortable. And I really don't want to become comfortable with it.

[35:00]

But the other day, someone told me about a bumper sticker that he saw. This person asked me if there are Zen bumper stickers, because it said, shit happens. It said what? Shit happens. Shit happens. So I've been thinking about that, and you know, these days, at least that bumper sticker is my koan. Yeah, good. But I don't like it. So what about this, you know, being in samsara and what that teacher said about the meaning of the ahamkara, taking the shape, you know, taking the shape of the situation. Yeah, that's what I would say too. If you're not taking the shape, then you wonder.

[36:03]

So maybe you're not taking the shape yet. You know, maybe you're not really resigned. Oh, I'm not? Well, of course. Then nothing I can say will help. Can you inspire me? Here I am. Taking the shape that I'm in. This is what our Zazen is about. Just assuming, taking the shape that you're in. You should know that from Zazen. You sit very well. Oh, I know it. or whatever, and so you take that shape, for that moment you are daydream, or you are anger, or whatever comes along, and you are the dust, or the pain, or whatever, and it remains anger, it remains feeling bad, it remains daydream, it remains whatever, it doesn't change, you just stay with it, but you have a choice, you can,

[37:25]

Use your mindfulness and go back to the rest of your posture. I mean, it's all your posture, including the daytime. And go back to whatever you're back where you're short. So there is a choice there. And it always bothers me, you know, that there is a choice. Now, you could say, well, the choice is part of the 10,000 things. And so on down the line. But I don't quite know as to what that is. Well, we always have a choice. And we're always making it. You know, from moment to moment, we're making our choice to continue or to change. But as far as things coming up, if we don't act them out, but let them be there, anger depends on how strong our desire is, our effort is. you know, say anger comes up, but anger is, you know, you said the anger just stays there for a while, but anger is only sustained from moment to moment.

[38:39]

It looks like it's sustained over a long period of time, you know, it could be. You know, I was angry for 10 minutes, but from moment to moment we keep sustaining the anger, even though it looks like one long piece of anger. is really only momentary, and the next momentary moment is another sustaining moment of anger. So any one of those... momentum, of course, may obscure our reason. But as soon as we have our reason, we can let it go. Do you try to let it go, I mean, or do you just accept, like have a lamp, a room? That's the question. We let it go by returning to the subject, returning to our duty, returning to our activity. But you may say, well, even though I'm trying to return to my activity, I can't, because this is so strong.

[39:41]

It's the right thing to do. That's the right thing to do. If you can do it, come back. because the anger you feel, even though you may feel justified in feeling it, has nothing to do with what you're doing. It has something to do with something that arose in the past or some idea about the future. But it really has nothing to do with what you're doing right now. If I'm sitting Zazen, I could get angry because of the pain in my legs. That would have something to do with what's happening now. But if I get angry because my wife you know, didn't wash the dishes. That's something that happened in the past. It has nothing to do with right now. So, I'm dealing with something that has nothing to do with right now. That's very refined, right? I mean, you know, our life doesn't go that way. We have lots of stuff down here, right? Or down wherever it is in our unconscious or subconscious.

[40:49]

wants to come up and so forth. If something wants to come up, you let it come up. We don't really repress something that wants to come up. But we remember that what we're doing now is this. And the most important thing in our life at this moment is this. So this takes precedence over any kind of feeling or thought that we may have. Because this is what we decided to do. This is our intention. So you have to make some choice. Shall I go with this? Shall I go out and stick a knife in that son of a bitch, you know? Shall I just get up off my cushion and go do that? That would be an extreme. response to some feeling that you had, which could happen, but we don't.

[41:50]

We say, no, this is the most important thing, just sitting. So that's the strong focus for activity. And then we bring our attention back to that and let these things go. And they just keep coming up one after another, whatever it is. There's barely a moment when there's not something in your mind. It has nothing to do with this. When anger, especially something charged like that comes up, that it is related to the present in a certain way, in a certain way it's very useful. And that if you can accept the energy and drop the content, then something really very strong has happened to your sitting. Right, that's right. If you can drop the image, or what do you call it? The content. The content, and use the energy. Right. You know, you can be very angry, and then you just drop the content and just put that energy into zazen.

[42:58]

That's right. That's a useful way, actually. It's true. I remember doing that. It's very useful. Why? You put this energy into here, you know, and I'm not repressing or anything like that. Just related to that, when we went to Ringoch on the, for our session, on the board was something that was very useful to me, that suffering without bitterness is compassion. Right, I remember that. A lot of people talk to me about that. Yeah, and it's very, it's the same for me. It's a very good statement. I'm not suffering without bitterness. We're five minutes into our service. Okay. We still have five minutes, right? No, it's... Oh, five minutes. It's past. I mean, it's almost time.

[44:01]

You see, we're going to get through this very slowly. I'm going to ask a tomorrow. Okay. Yes, I do want to answer your question, but we'll do it tomorrow, first thing.

[44:14]

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