I'm forgetting where there is. Did I send you the Ehei Kosu Hotsugama? Yes. Did I send it by email? Well, you have it here. If you have it out there, please retrieve it. And let's, let's read it. people in the room read it out loud, and people on Zoom, you should be all muted so you can read it out loud as well. This is a piece that was providence is not exactly clear, but it's known as Dogen's vow of practice. We vow with all beings You can read.

[01:01]

We vow with all beings from this life on through countless lives to hear the true Dharma, thus that upon hearing it, no doubt will arise in us, nor will we lack in faith, that upon reading it, we shall renounce worldly affairs and maintain the Buddha Dharma, and that in doing so, the great earth and all living beings together attain the Buddha way. Although our past evil karma has greatly accumulated, indeed being a cause and condition of acceptance in practicing the way, may all Buddhas and ancestors who've attained the Buddha way be compassionate to us and free us from karmic effects, allowing us to practice the way without hindrance. May they share with us their compassion, which fills the boundless universe with the virtue of their enlightenment and teachings.

[02:07]

Buddhists and ancestors of old were as we. We in the future shall be Buddhists and ancestors. Revering Buddhists and ancestors, we are one Buddha and one ancestor. Awakening Bodhi mind, we are one Bodhi mind. as they extend their compassion to us freely and without a limit, we are able to attain Buddhahood and let go of the attainment. Therefore, the child master Lumya said, those who in past lives were not enlightened will now be enlightened. In this life, save the body which is the fruit of many lives. Before Buddhas were enlightened, They were the same as we. Enlightened people of today are exactly as those of old. Quietly explore the farthest reaches of these causes and conditions, as this practice is the exact transmission of a verified Buddha.

[03:15]

Confessing and repenting this way, one never fails to receive profound help from all Buddhas and ancestors. By revealing and disclosing our lack of faith and practice before the Buddha, we melt away the root of transgressions by the power of our confession and repentance. This is the pure and simple color of true practice, of the true mind of faith, of the true body of faith. So I thought it would be good to start with this teaching and we can come back to it. But it sort of opens our mind and opens our heart. And it's deeply encouraging to think that Buddhas and ancestors of old were as we, and we in the future shall be Buddhas and ancestors.

[04:23]

And this section, also the line, in this life, save the body, which is the food of many lives. We are awakened through the activities of the body, which includes the mind. And then in this last section, By revealing and disclosing our lack of faith and practice before the Buddha, we melt away the root of transgressions by the power of our confession and repentance. So actually this weekend, on Saturday, we are going to, I think, begin again our monthly practice of the full moon ceremony, the bodhisattva ceremony. And that is a practice that begins with the practice of confession and repentance, and then avowal, taking the refuges, the bodhisattva vows and the precepts.

[05:42]

And when we do our confession and repentance, We own, in the case of the ceremony on Saturday, in shorthand, we own our shortcomings. We own our lapses and our... However, we may have not been able to uphold the precepts. And this is part of... the key practice of Dogen. And so we'll come back to it. So tonight, as I often say, this practice of Zen is formulated on making a mistake on purpose. And today we're making a really big mistake by trying to

[06:46]

tackle, speak about Eihei Dogen in one class of an hour and a half. This is not possible. So, Dogen lived from 1200 to 1253 in Japan. And tonight we'll look a little, scrape the surface of what we know of as Dharma. what we know of his life, what we take to be some of his core teachings, and their influence on our own teachers in our own practice. So to get to Dogen over this fourth week of the class, we've come a great distance temporally, nearly 400 years. 400 years after our last ancestor, Dengshan, and maybe close to 600 from Bodhidharma.

[07:56]

And great distance culturally from Tang Dynasty China to Kamakura-era Japan, and what was then a daunting geographical distance just to cross from China to Japan and to carry the practice across that Gulf. And also, what we come to with Dogen, the last two classes, Dogen and then Suzuki Roshi, we're dealing with more clearly historical figures. and figures who left more of a decided record than Bodhidharma, Wineng, and Dungshan. So Dogen left behind a vast body of writing and records, and those records and those writings have, some of them are really hard to understand, some of them

[09:12]

as he developed as a teacher contradict each other and we're not going to resolve all this it's just going to be part of the of the picture that we that we take on so let me name a few of these principal principal works and then principal teachings of Dogen, and then talk a little about his life. And then we'll look at some sections, particularly from Genjokan, which is one of his key works. So I should probably send this out to you, but I'll have to do it after the class. The key works that we have by Dogen himself First of all, there's several recensions of the Shobha Genzo, Treasury of the True Dharma I. And now we have at least four and a forthcoming fifth full translation.

[10:29]

We have Kaas Tanahashi's translation of the whole Shobha Genzo, which people in this Sangha have also worked on some of those translations. Sojin did, and I did, and some others in Zen Center, and a couple from Berkeley as well, co-translated with Kaz. We have the Nishijima and Cross translation, which is really good, and perhaps a little more literal. There's Nishiyama and Stevens, and there's an online one you'll find, Well, I sent the link. You can see, I only sent the link for Moon and the Dewdrop, but there's a link for Hubert Nieman's entire Chilbergenzo translation. And what I would say is that when I study Chilbergenzo, or when I study anything, if there are several translations available to me, I'll try to read them all.

[11:38]

Because every one of them, gets something, has a slightly different approach, reveals something that is interesting and useful. So I encourage you to, you know, certainly at least get one of these. I will say, you know, this is the, we are the cult of Dogen, right? This is... We're studying Dōgen, we talk about him all the time, have his picture hanging up front. And we see him as the source of our Sōtō, our contemporary Sōtō Zen tradition. And we'll talk more about how that came to be as we go along tonight. So you have Shōgōgen so, You also have another massive volume called the Eihei Kouroku, Dogen's Extensive Record, which is a big book, so sometimes we call it Dogen's Expensive Record.

[12:56]

And it is, these are short public talks that he gave to his monastic students over a long period of time. And they're really wonderful. Some of them are really to the point, some of them are very enigmatic, some of them are short, but it's kind of gives you another angle at the teachings of the Shobo Genzo, which are often very philosophical. and can be quite dense. There's the Shinji Shovagenzo, which is a koan collection, I think it's 301 koans that Dogen collected and used in his teachings, and he drew from, to illustrate points

[14:05]

in Shobhagenzo and in others of his works. And sometimes you read his works and what you see is that some of them are just one koan after another. And so the Shinji Shobhagenzo is a source that he put together, that he drew from, to use, to kind of weave into and his philosophical writings. And there's a translation of that by Kastanahashi and excellent commentary by John Dyda O'Luri. That's in print. We have the Shobogenzo's Zuimanki, which were talks that were collected by Dogen's first disciple, Koan Eijo, very early, when he, shortly after he had returned to Japan from China, you know, leading up to the foundation of his first monastery in 1233.

[15:24]

And Eijo recorded these and there's a volume of them collected that's called Record of Things Heard, and it's translated by Thomas Cleary. Let's see, there's also the Aehei Shingi, translated by Taigen Leighton, and that's when Dogen established the monastery at Aeheiji, I think after that was established in 1246, So it's the later part of his life. He documented the standards and the ways of operating of all the temple officers. And so it covers, this includes instructions for the cook, for the treasurer, for the zendo manager, for the guest manager.

[16:29]

And it's really, how to do the job, but also the spirit with which you do the job. And it's very detailed. And finally, there is a text that is chanted very regularly in the Soto school called Shushogi. And Shushogi is a short text that is kind of the compressed, it's like the Reader's Digest condensed version of Dogen's teachings. And it was assembled by Ouchi Seiran in 1890 and was distributed widely. And this was at a time when Dogen's work was not really widely available.

[17:32]

even to Soto communities. And it's worth looking at. The interesting thing about, one of the interesting things about Shishogi, it's very beautiful, but the piece that's missing from it is, there's no mention of Zazen, which is very unusual, because that was really one of the, you know, one of the keystones of his practice. So that's a kind of an overview of some of his key works. Let me stop there. Any questions about these or about what they are, their availability? Yeah. By the way, speakers in this room, please speak up so that people can hear and I'll check with you guys.

[18:33]

online if you could hear. Go ahead. Let me just offer, there's also a free online translation of the Zuimaki by Shoaku Okamura that the Sotoshu, you can find it on their website. Did you hear that? There's a free online, could you hear that by the way? Yes. It's a free online translation of Zuimaki that's done by Sotoshu, which means by the Soto Zen Translation Project, which was operating out of Stanford. They are actually, that's the next year. The whole Shobogenzo is going to be published coming out of that translation project, which has been going on for 20 years. And I'm really looking forward to that. It's done by really first-rate scholar practitioners. And for those of you who are so inclined. These texts will have full scholarly apparatus, so you can look up a lot of stuff.

[19:43]

Whatever questions occur in the language that you want to know about, a lot of that will be there in the notes. Carol? Are some of the works that you've mentioned a part of the show? No, they are distinct works, but they have, some of them are called Shobo Genzo this or, you know, but they're distinct works that have a, you know, a separate, a life of separate volumes. So when you look at the whole, you know, let's say Kaz Tanahashi or Hubert Niehrman's whole Shobo Genzo, that's just what we call these the fascicles, the philosophical writings. It wouldn't be the Kalan collection. It wouldn't be Zui Monkey, et cetera. Well, what would it be? What is the Shobugenso?

[20:45]

What is the Shobugenso? What does it include? The Shobugenso is a collection of essays. And there are three recensions that were published at different times. There's a 75 fascicle version, there's a 100 fascicle version, and there's a 12 fascicle version. And I think that most of the ones that are published now are the 100 fascicle version, so that we have to complete. So things like key works like Bende-wa, or Gakuto Yojinshu, or Zazenshin, Zen, Choji. All those fascicles that we read are part of the Shobogenza. Thank you. Does that make sense, everyone? Yes.

[21:47]

Good. So some of the teachings Well, let me let me talk about his life a bit. So Dogen was born in Kyoto, which was then the imperial capital. And it had been the imperial capital, I'm sorry, the capital had moved to Kamakura. But the aristocracy was still very much rooted in Kyoto. And He was born into a, probably born into an aristocratic factor family. None of this is actually confirmed, but it seems that his father was an influential minister in the imperial court. And his mother was probably the daughter of another high official in the court.

[22:54]

His father died when Dogen was three. And his mother died when Dogen was eight. And the legend is that at his mother's funeral, as a young boy, he stood there and he watched the smoke arising from the incense and winding its way up into the upper reaches of the temple. And this sparked his way-seeking mind. So when he was 13, his caretakers allowed him to become a novice practitioner at Mount Hie. Mount Hie was and is the center of the Tendai school of Buddhism.

[23:58]

which was transplanted from the Tiantai school in China to Japan. And that's one of the Lotus Sutra schools. And it was the most prominent, it was the most wealthy, and the most powerful, and they had the biggest temples. And almost all of the Zen tradition in Japan has its roots in Tendai Buddhism and then branched out from there. So he was ordained at a young age, at about 14 or 15, and then he studied the sutras and did all the practice and studied with the teachers who were there. and he found himself confronted by a compelling question.

[25:00]

Both exoteric and esoteric teachings explain that a person, in essence, has the true Dharma nature and is originally a body of Buddha nature. If so, why do all Buddhas in the past, present and future arouse the wish for and seek enlightenment. So another way to frame this question is, if we understand that all beings are already Buddha, why do we need to practice? So Dogen could not find a good answer from his teachers at Mount Hiei. And one of them said, you should go see this Zen teacher, because they're better at these kind of imponderable questions than we are.

[26:05]

And they sent them to Asai, who also was a Tendai monk, but he had traveled to China. And in China, Asai encountered the Rinzai or the Linji tradition of Zen. And he brought that back to Japan and established a practice place in Kyoto. So he did that, Esai came back in 1191, so he was already well established by the time Dogen Mehim, which was probably about 1217, 1218, something like that. But one of the threads that runs through Dogen's life in this history was confrontation with the Tendai school, which is very powerful.

[27:10]

So the pressure from the Tendai orthodoxy who were opposed to the kind of singular teachings of Rinzai Zen, they forced Esai to present Zen as just one of the four practices of Tendai, which included, along with meditation, Mahayana study of Mahayana precepts, the practice of esoteric rituals, and devotional practices. So in 1214, Dogen went to study with Esai in Kyoto at Kenenji. And Esai died shortly after that, and Dogen continued his study with Esai's main disciple, Myozen.

[28:11]

And he received Dharma transmission in the Rinzai tradition in 1221. But he wasn't satisfied with what he was encountering yet. And so in 1223, accompanied by Myo Zen, Dogen went to China. So there's a quotation here. When I was a child, I aroused the wish for enlightenment, pursued the way with various masters in our country, and learned a little about the meaning of cause and effect. However, I did not understand the true source of name and form. Later, I entered Zen master Esai's room and for the first time heard the Rinzai teaching. Then I accompanied priest Miozen and went to Song, China, Song Dynasty, China. Through a voyage of countless miles, entrusting my transient body to the billowing waves, I finally reached the great song.

[29:22]

One thing also I should say about Dogen is that even in translation, he's such a beautiful writer. You know, his prose just sings. It's really beautiful. And so he studied major monasteries in China and was disappointed by the teachers what he encountered in the Rinzai teachers of their use of illogical phrases you know koans and unusual behavior as the only expression of Zen teaching and ignoring the scriptures so after two years Dogen was thinking about going back to Japan and then he heard about Rujing, who was the teacher at Mount Tiantong, and he went to meet him.

[30:31]

Rujing was then 62 years old. And Dogen reflected on his meeting with Rujing in 1225. I first offered incense and bowed formally to my late master, old Buddha Tiantong, Rujing. in his abbot's room on the first day, fifth month of the first year of the Baoching of Great Song. He also saw me for the first time. Upon this occasion, he transmitted Dharma, finger to finger, face to face, and said to me, the Dharma gate of face to face transmission from Buddha to Buddha, ancestor to ancestor, is realized now. So that was kind of a provisional Dharma transmission. It just, what Dogen is saying as he recollects this is that we really saw each other. And Rujin gave Dogen permission to come to his rooms for instruction anytime of the day or night, whether he was informal or in his formal robes.

[31:46]

And this is I'll say this is something that I feel that we, we had the opportunity to share with our lay teacher, Sojin, that we could knock on his door at any time. And he would turn his attention to us and respond. This was the kind of intimate relationship we were fortunate to have with him and it you know, the model, I think, is the relationship that Dogen and Rujing had. So soon after they got to Mount Tiantong, Byozen died. And he was buried in China. And Dogen continued to practice. Rujing's message was,

[32:49]

about dropping body and mind, which doesn't mean fainting. It means not being caught by your thoughts, not being caught by the conditions of your body, but finding a way to function easily and naturally in the midst of that. And he taught Ito Chikantaza, which is a single-minded seated meditation, where one does not try to answer questions or attain realization. This is our method. This is what was passed to us by Dogen, to Suzuki Roshi, down to the generations, and to us. And so, by 1227, Dogen felt like he had completed his necessary life's work, and he returned to Japan.

[34:02]

He went back to the monastery where he had been with Myozen and Esai, Kenenji, and that's where the first thing that he wrote was Fukanza Zengi, which we studied during a couple months ago, called the Broad Recommendation of Zazen. It's a Zazen instruction. And this was Dogen's vow, was to teach this practice primarily. And The Tendai community, because this was nominally still a Tendai monastery, continue in its efforts to suppress this single practice.

[35:05]

Now, one of the things that's also important to think of historically in this Kamakura era, so you had this idea that was in circulation in Japanese Buddhism of three ages. You had the age of the living dharma, you had the age of the declining dharma, and then you had the age of the disappearing dharma, which is known in Japanese as mappo. And one of the things that happened at this time, kind of in synchronicity, you had movements in the face of the framing of this era as the era of Mapo, where one couldn't be enlightened, you had these popular and simplified practices that were made available to people.

[36:18]

And they were made available to not just to monks, but to lay people. So at the same time, same time as Dogen, you had the rise of the Japanese Pure Land schools, the Shin Buddhism, Jodo Shinshu, with sort of pivotal figures of Honin and Shinran, who had large followings and movements that developed. you also had the rise of Nichiren Buddhism. And Nichiren was also a historical figure. And that was also a Lotus Sutra school where salvation... So in Pure Land Buddhism, the practice, or they didn't even want to call it practice, was...

[37:23]

calling on Amida Buddha, Namo Amida Butsu, Namo Amida Butsu. You just, the repetition, you would let this rest on your breath and rest in your mind and fill yourself with the spirit of Amida Buddha who resided in the Western paradise and offered salvation. In Nichiren Buddhism, the practice was chanting the name of the Lotus Sutra, Nammyoho Renge Kyo. And we have this, we can see this today in Nichiren Shoshu and Soka Gakkai. These are contemporary movements which have persisted. And that's also there. Both of these schools were seen as in Japanese Buddhism as other power schools.

[38:25]

In other words, they were calling on, they were quite similar in their devotional quality to, say, Christianity, calling on powers that were beyond what was residing in your body. At the same time, you also had the rise of Dogen's approach to Buddhism, which also was stripped down. It was largely stripped down. The central practice was Saza, which was a very simple, straightforward practice. And that was also a, all of these were kind of ways of making the practice more accessible to people. widely. So Dogen writes, I came back to Japan with the hope of spreading the teaching and saving sentient beings a heavy burden, with the hope of spreading the teaching and saving sentient beings as a heavy burden on my shoulders.

[39:50]

However, I will put aside the intention or having the teaching prevail everywhere until the occasion of a rising tide. I think of wandering about like a cloud or a water weed, studying the wind of the ancient sages. So he didn't land any place quite yet. But within a few years, both he began to write And he had been driven out of Keninji by the Tendai authorities. And outside of Kyoto, he started a small practice center in Fukukusa, which is called Kanandori Temple. And that was his first monastery. So that was in 1233. They practiced, they built a traditional Zen temple, as he had seen in China, and they practiced there for 10 years.

[41:01]

Let me stop there for a moment. You may have questions or thoughts, so let's just open up for a moment. Anything out there? Anything in here? Joel. You're muted. Okay. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. Yeah. Very early on, you said something like Zen practice is making a mistake on purpose. And I would, I'd love you to expand on that. I love that sort of thing, but what does that mean exactly? Is this new to you guys? How about out there? Have you heard this before?

[42:03]

Some of you have. So this is, you know, one of these kind of one of these snarky ways of referring to ourselves. But I think To me, what it means, making a mistake on purpose, it's consonant with this line that you find in Genjo Koan, which we'll talk about a little. There's a line that says, when Dharma fills your body and mind, you realize that something is missing. That's... that's been a very powerful teaching for me. That something is missing means when Dharma fills your body and mind, you know, one thing that's missing is your full understanding of the tradition, your full understanding of what's happening this moment, you can't grasp everything.

[43:20]

from some perspectives, that's a mistake. If you can't grasp everything, then how can you do anything? Does that make sense? So making a mistake on purpose, we do, what it means to me is we go forward with an activity, kind of with the best of intentions and with the with the deepest hope and with taking into account what it is that we think are the causes and conditions, but we can't know what the impact is going to be. And so we try something and maybe it's a mistake. And then we have to reflect on that and make a correction and do something else. But we can never know anything with some absolute certainty.

[44:23]

So to me, that lack of certainty, which is actually the reality of impermanence, is how it is that we are bound to make a mistake on purpose. Yeah, Kabir. As you were talking about this mistake, I kind of see how we so we kind of plunge into normal we just go in and right and that i think the plunging in is also could be like a mistake because you're just going in all in right so and you just don't know what side you're going to come out of but i think that the plunging in to me it's it is kind of a mistake it's gumhole in a way sometimes it'll be a big mistake this is this is probably a relevant story but uh When I went to Israel with Bernie Glassman in, I think, 1999, we went to the Dead Sea.

[45:30]

Has anyone ever been to the Dead Sea? Anyone out there? It's very, very, very salty. And, you know, it's like you go in, your entire body puckers up and you don't want to have any of this in your mouth. You certainly don't want to have it in your eyes. And our drivers with some amusement told us that, well, the week before, they had driven Sylvester Stallone to the Dead Sea. And he, you know, as a bathing suit, he got out of the car and he ran out of the car and he ran out on the beach and he dove in head first. And then they had to call an ambulance to take him to the hospital. So yeah, so it's like, yeah, that's plunging in. You don't know what you're going to get. I don't think this is a relevant teaching unless you're going to go to the dead seat.

[46:36]

Yeah. Okay. No, you can mute. Any other? Any questions or thoughts out there and here? Yeah, Hannah. I'm just curious about these more accessible features. How much of the population was then involved? Well, I think one of the things that's, the thing is that the Buddhist institutions you had Tendai school, Shingon school, you had these, the Hosu school, they were completely aristocratic. They were for monks who were drawn from and catering to the aristocracy. And what these, certainly the Pure Land school, Nichiren schools, and at the beginning, the Zen school were

[47:46]

a lot of it was for lay people. They depended upon, they did depend upon aristocratic sponsors, but the practices were for everybody. And, you know, in Dogen's case, you go through his writings, you see that actually included, that included lay women as well, which was, that was also radical. Is that the answer? Anyone else? So in 1243, you had this sort of things came to a head with the Tendai school and can only imagine what it was like for Dogen and his community. They were well established. They had a place that they loved.

[48:49]

And it's at that time that one of my favorite fascicles of Dogan was written, Bodhisattva Shishobo, Bodhisattva's Four Embracing Dharmas. And in that, he talks about ways to harmonize with your society and with people around. And it seems to me that that fascicle was was delivered exactly at the time when they must have been planning when they must have been the object of a lot of hostility and possible violence because like these these large schools had armed monks who would attack and burn burn down rival temples you know it wasn't nice guy stuff And so in 1243, what Dogen was doing, he was packing up their temple and he accepted a piece of land in what was then Echizen province.

[50:05]

And that was a place of really, really cold winters on the Japan sea and very far, but really in the wilderness. And it was not easy to travel. It was very distant in a mountainous area. And he moved his whole community there. It was a sizable community. He began at a small temple there and then built a lecture hall for what was called Daibutsu Monastery. Big Buddha Monastery, that was finished in 1244. And in 1246, he renamed it Aheji, which is Temple of Peace. And that's when he conducted, that's when he created these monastic regulations, which I mentioned to you as Aheji, and

[51:16]

continued writing the fascicles of Shobha Genzo. By 1253, he was very ill with tuberculosis. And he appointed his disciple Ejo as the next abbot of the monastery and gave him a robe that he had sewn with his own hands. And he went to Kyoto to seek a cure. And he wrote this poem when he arrived there. In autumn, even though I may see it again, how can I sleep with the moon this evening? In autumn, even though I may see it again, how can I sleep with the moon this evening?

[52:28]

And on the 28th of that month, he died. So, just to outline it again, you have these periods of Dogen's life as a teacher. From 1227 to 1231, he was at Keninji in Kyoto, which had been Myozen and Esai's temple. And that's when he met his first disciple, Koen Eijo. And he was beginning to become known in Buddhist circles in Japan. From 1231, 1232, He stayed at a small temple that was called Anyohin, that was on the outskirts of Kyoto. And that, from 1233 to 1243, he was at the temple that was originally Kanandori, and then it was also called Koshoji.

[53:45]

And that temple was still there, I believe. Some people from here have been there. And that lasted for 10 years. And then you have the last period, 1243 to 1253, when he moved to Etchisad province and started and founded what was going to become AHG. So, again, Let me stop and just see if you have any questions about his life or about his history or about the proliferation of his teaching. So I've heard that his teachings were lost for a very long time. Yes. They mean so much to us. It's hard to understand how they got lost. Shall I say something about that? Yes, please. through my notes, I did have notes on this, so.

[55:14]

Yeah, okay. So, his work was not read for many years. Really, it was kind of lost between 1400 and 1800. And at that point, well, actually, Shobo Ginzo, One version of the show was published in the 18th century, and it was used by, it was a reformer named Manzan, who was pointing towards Dobin's work, and he was using it also to restore and rectify the Soto school, which was in some disarray. And several people, Menzan and also Manzan, Zuiho, spent years studying the Shobo Ginza.

[56:18]

And it took a long time for that work to be available in contemporary Japanese, contemporary at that time, and for it to be distributed and studied in the Soto school. And so Nogen was gradually recognized by scholars of Japanese literature for his prose writing. And these things became more available and scholars, Japanese Buddhist scholars were studying it probably from the beginning of the 19th century. And then it was slowly translated into English. There was not a translation of any, really of any of Dogen's writings until 1958 when Reho Matsunaga

[57:37]

published a book called The Soto Approach to Zen. And then you had, you had an accelerating pace of translation. And just to say one of the key people is Kaz Tanahashi, who lives about a mile from here, who was married to Linda Hess. And this The first major collection of Dogen that Kaz put together, Moon and a Dewdrop, was published in 1985 and the copy's getting a little ratty, but you know I have, this is the copy that I bought at the book release party at Blanco Books and it's signed by I had really only been here for a few months and

[59:05]

I'm not going to go into, it's a very sweet inscription from Sojin, and then some words from Kaas. So the whole explosion of Dogen studies has really happened within, certainly within the last 40 years, which is relatively short time. Other questions? And out there? Ah, yes. Phil. You're muted. Okay. At the beginning of the lecture, you mentioned that I think it was in reference to a translation of the Shobo Genzo. And I'm not sure that's the reason I'm asking the question is that you mentioned that there was no mention of Zazen. Yeah.

[60:06]

And... I find that beyond strange. You mentioned that it was strange. But something of a translation of Dogen that doesn't take into account Zazen, it seems like you would immediately dismiss anything to be said about it. I mean, why would you even study it or allow it? That's a really good question. So that is this text called Shushogi. And it was compiled in 1890 by a Soto Zen monk or teacher And it was disseminated widely to the lay community And I think, you know, it was edited together It was like an assemblage of different quotations made into some coherent whole.

[61:13]

But, you know, the feeling was zazen was for monks, not for lay people. This is what I think we can appreciate about what's happened here. There was always some In Japan, you would have at temples, at local temples, you might have every now and then what was called the zazenkai, where people were shown how to sit zazen. But in many ways, and we experienced this when I was in Japan, particularly in local temples, sitting zazen was like one of those traditional arts. like flower arranging, you know, or, you know, any traditional Japanese cultural form.

[62:19]

And so people would go to the temple and they'd have instruction to have a siddhsaza. And it was part of, in a sense, part of learning how to be Japanese in a sort of, in a deep spiritual expressive sense. But it wasn't about spiritual practice. And I think what was unique, we'll hear more about this next week when we look at Suzuki Roshi, the people, the teachers who came here, Suzuki Roshi, Maizumi Roshi, Tagiri, Kobanchino, Okamura, the Japanese teachers who came here, really believed in Zazen. And that's what they communicated to us. And they thought, this is a fresh field in which to sow the seeds.

[63:20]

And so they were, they created practice places for lay people. The practice that we have, Berkeley Zen Center, you know, when it started, it was completely unique It was modeled on San Francisco Zen Center, which was not a monastery, and people couldn't live there initially. But then it became a monastic, sort of monastic style practice. But here in Berkeley, we've always had people come and go, people who are working, people who have families. And at the same time, we offered a very vigorous practice schedule that you could count on it, you could count on it six days a week. And lay people came and supported the practice.

[64:23]

And this was Sojin's vision, which I think was quite in alignment with Suzuki Roshi's vision and with that of some of the other teachers. And one of the interesting things is that there's a kind of feedback loop where the practices that we're doing, the way we practice, the way we make it available to lay people is affecting to some degree what's happening in Japan. So Shishogi, I think is kind of dated, but it's also very beautiful. So I'll try to find it and send it out to you guys so you can see it. Not really. I'm talking about the efficacy of Zazen. I'm talking about someone who's trying to understand and is a discourse on Shobu Ginzo and somehow not including or talking about or discussing Zazen.

[65:30]

It seems incongruent. Yeah, it seems like he missed the point, right? Right, right. But I think... What he was trying to do was, I think, communicate the philosophical beauty of Dogen without kind of the physical. And, you know, we wouldn't do that, but this is something that we have. And it's, you know, it's become part of the Toto tradition, but you may notice we haven't studied it. Right. Soji never gave it to us. I mean, I've studied it on my own, but he wasn't that interested in it. But if you ask somebody in Japan what they know of Dogen, Shushoki probably is very common. It's a very commonly understood work. Okay, thank you.

[66:33]

Yeah. I think it's still part of the literature, isn't it? I don't know on the regular energy. I'd have to look. Yeah. Yeah, Hannah. But the monks at AEG were sitting zazen, right? Oh, absolutely. And then these were his talks, these beautiful philosophical works. Right. He was giving, I mean, for the AEH koroku, they were sitting zazen as they were receiving these talks. Yeah. I mean, in a sense, Zazen was kind of the given. I had a teacher, a poetry teacher who said, I don't think this is actually true, that you can tell that the Koran is authentic because there's no camels in it. You know, I think there are camels in it, but you can tell that, you know, Zazen was so much the fabric of the practice that

[67:34]

perhaps it went without saying. So, I want to just touch on what I think are some major, major points of practice that we get from Dogen and maybe reference them in Genjo Koan. I really want to also point you, maybe I'll send this out as well, if you don't have a copy of Genjo Koan, which was a writing that Dogen did in 1233, and then he revised late in his life. to some degree, not extensively. But almost everything that I'm pointing to as key teachings, you can find in Genji Okan.

[68:43]

And it's very beautiful and compressed. If we had time, we'd read it all now. But I think here are some principle teachings. One is that All beings are Buddha nature. This was, this is in the first line of Genjokan. It says, as all things are Buddha Dharma, there is delusion, realization, practice and birth and death. As all things are Buddha Dharma, So, Buddha Dharma, Buddha Nature. This is a twist that Dogen did taken from the Nirvana Sutra. Nirvana Sutra says essentially all beings have Buddha Nature.

[69:49]

Dogen switched a character in that expression to say that all beings are Buddha Nature. And there's a difference there. I think what he was getting at is to say all beings have Buddha nature, you run the risk of thinking of Buddha nature as a thing, as an object, as kind of like as your soul or as some essence that you have that you contain. To say all beings are Buddha nature is to point you towards the fact that Buddha nature contains us.

[70:58]

We don't contain Buddha nature. So Buddha nature is the pervasive reality of the universe. And all of our particularity, and not just ours as people, but all things, including inanimate things as we spoke of last week when we were talking of Dungshan, all things are the particular manifestation of Buddha nature. So that's, That's a starting point. He talked about also, this is a fundamental point of Soto Zen is practice realization, practice enlightenment, practice emancipation.

[72:00]

And what that means is usually when we think of Buddhism, when we come to Buddhism, we think about it from almost any school. We think of the goal of enlightenment, the goal of liberation. And that comes from the earliest times. So to say practice realization is to turn our practice on its head. So rather than saying we practice to become enlightened, what Dogen is saying is we practice because we already are enlightened. And our practice is the expression of our awakened nature. Does that make sense?

[73:01]

But what it's pointing to is that we already are Buddha, and yet to manifest that Buddha nature, we have to do something. So this gets back to Dogen's primary question, you know, if all beings are Buddha, why do we have to practice? And I think for me, what I understand is that enlightenment is an activity. That's what that's what dovin is pointing towards. It's not often we think of enlightenment as a state of being or state of mind. But what dovin is pointing us to is that it's an activity. And this this goes to the

[74:03]

Beautiful, the last section of Genjokan, which I'll read to you. I love this actually. This may be familiar to some of you. Zen master Bao Che of Mount Mayu was fanning himself. A monk approached and said, Master, the nature of the wind is permanent, and there is no place that it does not reach. Why then do you fan yourself? In other words, or Master, all beings are enlightened, and that reaches everywhere. So why do you fan yourself? Why do you practice? And Boucher said, Although you understand that the nature of the wind is permanent, you do not understand the meaning of its reaching everywhere.

[75:08]

And the monk said, what is the meaning of its reaching everywhere? The master just kept fanning himself. The monk bowed deeply. in order to manifest our enlightenment, in order to express our enlightenment, which is what you're doing with this notion of practice realization, you have to do something. And that doing, one way that I think of it is, we are aligning ourselves with with the universe, we're aligning ourselves with being. So when the monk is fanning, even though there's wind that we kiss everywhere, he's aligning himself with the wind. Whether it's foolish activity or not, he's putting himself in that space, enjoying the wind.

[76:16]

There's another story that I love from the record of Lehmann Pang, was a Tang dynasty. Lee person, he had a family. The Pong family was very famous. It was the old man and his wife and then young daughter. And one day, Lee Min Pong was walking along and he tripped on something in the path and he fell down. And his daughter saw this, saw her father fall down. And she threw herself on the ground. And he said, what are you doing? And she said, father, I'm helping. So that's alignment. There's a story of, I heard of Maizumi Roshi, twice in a meal, a monk,

[77:25]

A practitioner accidentally knocked his spoon onto the floor for Mori Yogi. And a moment later, Maizumi Roshi knocked his spoon onto the floor. So practice realization is aligning ourselves with the forces of the world. And then there's the primacy of Zazen, which is also the key teaching of Dogen. And, you know, what he says in Phukhan Zazangi is, the Zazen I speak of is not learning meditation. It's not simply meditation, it's not simply an activity. It's simply the Dharma gate of repose and bliss.

[78:28]

Now, Some of you may wonder, when do we get to this repose and bliss? But you will. And you do. If your eyes are open, if your mind is open, you recognize when in Sazana we are just at ease. And that is what's being offered. the quiet, the peace, in the midst of the storm of life, even though it may be raging inside us and outside us, there's something still. And that is what Dogen was pointing to as Zazen. And that Zazen, that stillness, is not just about cross-legged sitting. It's about It can be manifest in any activity that we do, in any action.

[79:37]

There can be stillness at the heart of it, even at the heart of what is always in motion. So, we only have a few minutes left. Next week we will talk about Suzuki Roshi, but just, again, are there any questions or thoughts or comments before we, in the minutes that remain to us? Anyone out there? You guys have been quiet. As I said, oh. I have one. Okay. Kabir and then Kimpo.

[80:39]

Something just popped in my head when you were talking about that stillness of... Speak loudly. When you were talking about the stillness of Zazen, the calm, I had a vision of the eye of the storm, right in the middle of it, where everything is just going in right there. That's the most still point. And I think... in the midst of everyday life, just Zazen kind of provides that landscape. Did you hear that? Yes. So there's the thinking of sitting in Zazen as sitting at the eye of the storm. And I think that's good. I think that's a good, that's a useful image. And also recognizing that there is a place of refuge. even though we actually have to go out in the storm as well.

[81:41]

But we know that that's there. Kimpo? I guess I just wonder about when you say that Dogen said that there was no goal of enlightenment. I feel like from things I've read from Dogen, that seems like a really contemporary view. of what he was saying. And I wonder about like, you know, when you read Dogen, sort of in connection with like, the Tenko Roku, like the history of Soto Zen talking about the aspiration for enlightenment and the fact of enlightenment. I just feel like it's very easy in contemporary settings to say, oh, Dogen said there was no goal of enlightenment and, and, and kind of discount things he said, which may be not contradicting that, but just a whole picture needs to be brought out.

[82:57]

I think if you're going to say that. Yes. Did you hear that? Um, I think there's a distinction between setting a goal. Setting a goal is not the same as saying there's no awakening or no enlightenment. I think he was clear about that. What he was saying, and this is why his prime question is alive, that in order to understand that all beings are Buddha, that may be the fact. But if you don't realize it, it's not accessible to you. And so he's talking about realization. But what he's saying is that the realization of it is the practice, is every aspect of the practice.

[83:59]

Which is, there's a, in Japanese, in Soto, I guess, Perhaps modern day Soto, it may come, there may be a historical route, but certainly going back as far as Sawaki Kodo in the 20th century. The term is Mushitoku, which means, which we translate, Suzuki was translated as no gaining idea. So this is a conundrum. And just as we have a conundrum in the Bodhisattva vows, like sentient beings are numberless, I vow to save them all. That seems like a gaining idea. It also seems like an impossible conundrum. We have to have, what brings us here is the thought of enlightenment.

[85:04]

And Dogen is saying over and over again, we have to raise the thought of enlightenment. And then what he says, the thought of enlightenment is, one way he addresses it, is seeing into the nature of impermanence. Now, whether that's a goal or not, we could probably discuss forever. But to see into it, to see into To see into the nature of impermanence means to look at the way things really are. And so often we don't look at the way things really are, we get stuck in the way we think they are. So that's a start of a response to you, if that's okay. I think we have to end and we'll end with the four vows. Thank you all and we'll see you next week for another.

[86:04]

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