I vow to taste the truth of those who touch others' words. Good evening, everyone. Nice to see you all. And I'd like this class to be informal and give and take. Especially, this is not an easy task for me. So let's kind of work on it as we go along. Let's just say our names first. I'm Bob Grisham. I'm interested in introducing myself. I was introduced to Zen practice by Jyotish Rinpoche and Sakya Rinpoche back in 1971 or so.

[01:12]

And I studied with Mori Rinpoche in Tokyo in the early 70s, where I became very disillusioned with Zen practice. And then just basically sat by myself for maybe 10 minutes or so. And then in the, somewhere in the 1980s, I started sitting here. Maybe a few years since. Beyond that, what you see is what you get. which has to do with our fascination. Whatever appears is reflected, is the essential part of the eternal, which also means whatever appears, appears.

[02:25]

That's why when we chant, the unsurpassed might be a perfect dharma chant. It's an interesting chant. As we say, it's rarely bent, but that's not true. We need it all the time. The dharma is everywhere, always. a cup of tea, a piece of cake, a woman, a smile on a friend's face, and a friend. So the problem is not that the darkness is not there. The problem becomes one of meaning. And this is the equivalent of our You could say that the Dharma moves up from the earth to our bodies.

[03:53]

The question is where do you look for the Dharma? So this facsimile, Ophelia, is really a Sazen construction. I mean, it's a rather odd form, but a Sazen construction nonetheless. And since it's a Sazen construction, and I hope this will become clear as we go on, but since it's a Sazen construction, It's instruction on how to cook, and clean, and love, and deal with interpersonal problems, and find ourselves, and lose ourselves. I wanted to say a few words about reading Dogon, and how one goes about reading this kind of stuff.

[05:04]

Kostokin does not write in the usual manner that we usually read in the newspaper or book in the school. He uses words not just for their meaning but for conveys, for embodying the spirit of what he's trying to convey. So at times, he might say one thing, and the words might indicate one thing, and really, he means something else. Not exactly something else. If you get stuck in the meaning of the words and try and understand this from a purely analytical point of view, you'll get very confused.

[06:17]

I can assure you of that because I've been through this fast forward in a very confused state many times. And still, sometimes I'm very confused. But the way to read Dogon in general is just reading. And sort of, maybe a better word is tasting. Read it through, and if you don't understand it, that's okay. You might get a little feel for something, or you might get the sense, well, gee, I don't understand that, but there's something interesting there. And then, you know, some other time, read it again. And read it again. It's like our practice in that, as you go through it again and again, you sort of absorb it. And it sort of starts to go here in a way which doesn't depend just on dispersive logic. I guess you could summarize my suggestions in three words by saying,

[07:30]

The joy of the way to read them, it's your joy if you appreciate it rather than puzzle it out. Unless you're someone like myself who somehow manages to excessively get himself into places where he likes to puzzle things out. So the fast quote is, quote, eternal life. And we talked about our luminous mirror wisdom. So the mirror is a very important symbol in Buddhist practice. And in fact, several of the ancestors Their names actually contain mirror wisdom.

[08:38]

So, Daikon Eno. Daikon Eno means Great Mirror. Tanshi Sosan means Mirror Wisdom. So there's something about the mirror, which is important to know. so that it appears in many different places in my practice. I first read this fascicle, oh, I don't know, maybe close to 15 years ago, and something about it just kind of grabbed me. I really, really liked it. And I read it shortly before I did Jukka, And then when I did yukata a few weeks later, the name that melded me was Meiko Onsen, which means clear mirror.

[09:43]

I said, oh, this is pretty neat. And it seemed that there was some connection between the mirror and my practice. And perhaps I should mention, Amal, one of the things that I do with this network is a psychotherapist. And there's a literature in psychotherapy about mirroring. The idea is that a therapist is a mirror. You mirror back, you reflect back. But you don't have to be a psychotherapist to know that if you're listening to somebody, when you reflect back, There seems to be an awful lot of you in it. And if you eliminate yourself, and someone says to you, boy, I've really been feeling unsettled lately, and you say, oh, you've really been feeling unsettled lately, it's kind of cliche.

[10:52]

It's just kind of irony that. So usually we try and rephrase it, right? So if you're really worried about something, you put it in your own words to reflect that. There's something about mirroring which needs to be true to the source, but also needs to transform it and translate it. in therapy? No. Echoing is an interesting question. I'd say an echo is not a mirror.

[11:52]

Repeating. A mirroring is showing someone who they are. I think it'd be done through a wiper, I think. Uh-huh. Yeah, it's like if you go and you have jokes on the ground, very often you're cast back on the fabric. No, really. direction. I don't know, maybe you've had different experiences. Isn't that sort of fantasy? If you were, I mean, the impartial observer.

[13:05]

The observer always changes something. It's your fantasy to say, or fantasy of a cubrist for you to say, I can reflect something back without it being me. In fact, you can't reflect someone back without it being you. But, who is that to you? And what are you reflecting? And that's what this festival is about. Which is why it speaks a lot to how we interact with each other on a personal basis. And how we react to ourselves as well. I think it's very much a role of the Catholic community and the group and the relationship that we have as a country and as a whole party.

[14:14]

I think it's very much a role for us. It's probably a completely different question. I wish to urge you, I wish to urge you to consider helping your language to be understood. And there's more to do with that than it has to do with what I'm making of it. I don't know. I don't know what I'm making of it. I don't know what I'm making of it. That's quite right. That's right. It's responsivity. I don't want to go too far into this right now. Actually, in the latest Windmill, there's a couple of articles on psychotherapy and Zen practice.

[15:24]

I have an article in there which talks about mirroring in Zen and psychotherapy. So for those of you who are interested in it, read that. Actually, an expanded version of that is going to be appearing in a book on Buddhism and on psychotherapy. I don't know why. I'm not entirely, I mean, I'm just a chap. I want to focus more on what Dogen was teaching us. He didn't have to worry about psychotherapy, for better and for worse. But I do, the point that I was trying to get to, though, is Mirroring always involves some element of translation through a medium too small. It reflects what is, but the form changes somewhat.

[16:28]

Even a clear mirror. That's actually the crucial aspect of here. What we're going to see is the fascicle is talking about at times it goes from the form as emptiness aside, I guess, at times it goes from the emptiness as form aside, and all the other aspects of the five frames. But we live in a world of form, which is ultimately But in terms of translation, one way of reading Dogon is to read him in separate translations. And I strongly recommend this.

[17:33]

What I've distributed to folks is a translation that I put together by looking at two different translations and kind of mixing and matching and filtering. coming up with what you have. I do have the two translations in my own available for anybody who's interested to make copies. Sometimes one translation is hard to understand, sometimes the other. Sometimes you just need both to get a sense of the possibilities. So, the classical starts out. That which all the Buddhas and ancestors transmit to each other is the eternal mirror. The eternal mirror and the Buddhas are one body.

[18:37]

They have the same view and the same face, the same image and the same path. They share the same state and realize the same experience. The seer and the seen, the reflector and the reflected are one. The practice and enlightenment are one. Everyone can become the eternal mirror and can perceive the eternal mirror. It is the truth in all things. The foreigner appears, the foreigner is reflecting 108,000 of them. The Chinaman appears, the Chinaman is reflected for a moment and for 10,000 years. All things are actualized at all times. The past is actualized, the present is actualized, buddhas are actualized, ancestors are actualized. It's actually the whole passage in the first paragraph.

[19:38]

So we're going to unfold it over the course of the next few weeks. But if... That which all the Buddhas and ancestors transmit to each other is the eternal mirror. If the Buddhas and the eternal mirror are one body with the same view and same face, If they share the same state and the same experience, Buddha as an ancestor of the eternal world, what's transmitted? Everything's the same. Everything's just explained once. And yet we're talking about Buddha and ancestors. We're talking about the eternal earth in person. There's a split. and there's you.

[20:45]

And this is the nature of our life, how to deal with the fact that we're all separate, and the fact that we're all one body. If you live your life according to the idea that you are this body, bounded by your skin, and only live by that view, you're going to get physical disease. Because the tea that you drink, well, was that inside your body, outside your body, are you the tea, is the tea you, I mean, where, what happens to the boundaries? If you're totally self-contained, you can't eat, you can't breathe, can't be open to the words that you're hearing at this moment. On the other hand, if you live your life only by the view of, well, we're all one body here, you know, reach fingers under great, a finger under great hand,

[22:07]

Well, she crowds me. How can I react? Yeah. Abuse survivors spend a lot of time in their shoes. So every time I hear this, there's a little separation between the two. quote at the back of Chief Monk's verse, you know, our body is another tree, et cetera, and I just keep, what keeps screaming in my head is the verse that comes in response, which is, there is no earth, there is no tree, and there is no dust.

[23:28]

I'm trying to understand that. We'll get to that a little later tonight, I hope. But one of the problems, as I approach this fast forward, is there's so much in here. You can spend a lot of time. Sure. I don't understand the question. I understand for a second that we're all going to the doctor. I mean, we're all going to be fine. But at this point, if you show me the stuff you take, you could be spending your time. Well, if you're totally, if you don't see your interdependence with everything else, you can have this illusion that you can get by, that you can exist without others, or without the objective world.

[24:38]

So we think, I'm walking. You take a walk, you go, oh, I'm enjoying my walk. Well, your walking is an expression of the earth. No earth, no walking, right? So as your body is touching the ground right now, are you separate from it? You could. I don't think I see the concept of being a problem. I think the second part was a problem. Let me use maybe a simpler example. I tend to think that I have eyes. Now, if I take these off, I don't know who you are.

[25:41]

I can't see. I literally don't know who you are. So I think, oh well, I have eyes, and I have glasses, and they're two separate things. And they are. On the other hand, when I'm this dependent on my glasses, and on my contacts, do I really have eyes without these? I'm blind without these. I mean, these are a pretty integral part of me. And I better take care of them. Well, not at this moment. That's right.

[26:48]

Part of Buddhist practice is treating everything as our self. How I treat this paper tells you something about me. It's not a fallacy. It's just incomplete. It's true. It's just incomplete. Perhaps vocabulary for you might be better not I and my glasses are one. When there's a separation like that, I have a relationship.

[27:51]

There's a relationship between this, my eyes, and this, my glasses. I don't know how to say this. I'm having a struggle here. The idea that we're all one, I can see where there are a lot of problems. Anytime there's a conflict, that creates a problem. But the idea that I'm a separate being, I don't see how, what creates the problem. If you only stay there? If you just stay there? I don't see where the, what, what was the actual issue? The fact that we're having this conversation? No, it's so hard. I don't, alright. Because you're having a conversation without us? Yes, we're having a conversation, but still, I am hearing you. I am impersonating an actress. I don't know the sound of my voice at this moment. Is it inside you or outside me?

[28:54]

I don't know. That's true. That's interesting. I don't know why I have to do that. I don't know why I have to do that. So with the level two approach, it was only in the literature that there was a use for it. And with the level three approach, I said, it's key. It's trying to separate me from this idea of man. It actually becomes unsatisfactory. And I suspect the fact that there's a two goes into all of this. There's a possibility that there's a two. It is an ongoing issue.

[30:19]

And let's go a little further in the past because it does get played out in many different ways in the past. But for right now, the key points in this paragraph I want to just underline. Practice and enlightenment are one. Separation and oneness form a necessary unity, which is, they go together. And the eternal mirror is the truth in all things. That our practice is about bringing out the truth. Now, this is a very unpassionable view these days. these days with relativistic physics and culture where everyone has their own point of view and is fine, and this is true.

[31:39]

But there also is the truth. That's right. That's right. You can only approach the truth from a particular point of view, but the truth has nothing to do with point of view. Through a point of view. That's right. This fast-forward I said is a Zazen expression. Past is actualized, the present is actualized. Buddhas are actualized. Ancestors are actualized. Zazen is actualizing your true self, moment by moment. How do you do that?

[32:42]

That's the big problem with Zazen. And the amusing thing about that problem is that you're always doing it, even while you can't figure out how you're doing it. So the fascicle starts by telling us a story. It tells about Kai Shatung, and he's got one of these lovely myths of being born, and he's pure and like polished jade, and he's born with this round mirror, which tells you everything that shows the past, the future. It's a TV. The first TV. But you could look in this and you could understand things. You could understand the past. You could understand the present. Active, passive. Just great. And then he becomes a monk and poof!

[33:51]

There it goes. There it disappears. I love this. This is just wonderful. That's right. But what do you make of that? And the mirror disappears because, to me, it's like the chief monk's purse versus whoever, you know, the janitor's purse, the janitor's purse, I forget the name, is that, at that moment, all that time the mirror was something separate, outside.

[34:55]

And then it becomes a monk. It's like that. It's a nice ideal view of becoming a monk. The monks that I've known Don't say it's like that. Well, I didn't want to believe that. I just thought in terms of the story. In terms of the story. Well, it's certainly a possible interpretation. I tend to think of it in slightly different terms, which is, once you're becoming a monk, it's the same thing as taking a precept.

[36:00]

And once you take the precepts, the real work starts. I mean, it's easy to say, I vow not to kill. What do you do when someone invades your house and is about to kidnap your kid? It's easy to say, you know, flim it. I was also thinking of the horror movie, the story. You know, before the, before, before you take a piece off, you can probably just chip this piece off, you know, protect yourself, so there's no problem. That's right. But after that, you know, it's like discrimination and non-discrimination alive together. Yeah.

[37:05]

Maybe there's a way of reconciling the two of these. Once you become the mirror, you're the mirror for all things all the time, which means in the concrete here and now of Well, there are cookies being passed around, and I really want that big one, but she's going to get it before me. How do you practice with that? When that arises, you know, we don't want to do the mustard cookie. But when that arises, what does one do with it?

[38:11]

I don't know. I have no idea. Maybe I'll crap. She needs this. She needs to go on forbearance more than I do. Thank you so much. Well, I think one very important point here is that the mirror is not static.

[39:32]

We tend to think of a mirror as this kind of passive thing in which things kind of walk with it. But in our human lives, the mirror is expressed by the choices we make and the actions we make. And in this fascicle, there are several places where people interact with each other, and they're not always gentle. Kind of insulting, if you think, too. Everything is gentle. That's right. So how can a stone be a mirror? There's other writing. There are other writers saying, stones can treat mountains and waters, preach the darkness.

[40:36]

Preach the darkness. Not off and on. Constantly. So, making your way in the world is a miracle. When you go into the center and you open the door, and maybe it creaks, how far you open it, whether you bang it, but you latch it carefully, is mirroring the door, is expressing the door. You become a vehicle for the door's expression. And the door becomes a vehicle for your expression of your practice at that moment. And one of the amazing things about this is, this is happening every moment, with everything you do.

[41:45]

And because it's always being expressed, because stones and trees and the door of the Zen Dojo and your baby's bottle are all mirrors of expression. Every moment's an awakening. Dogen talks about this as the clear, clear state. Everything is exactly what it is. being exactly what it is.

[43:08]

It's nothing other than that. It's clear. It's complete. Which is confusing the form is. Of course. Every form is an expression. This is a certain kind of expression. So another way of saying it is, you can call it mirroring, you can call it singing. This is singing in its shape. You are singing yourself, long-term. Walt Whitman's Song of Myself. Constantly singing. Pretty amazing music here right now.

[44:15]

I mean, if you just look around you, every one of you is expressing yourself completely. And you can see it. She's all here. Now, she may not feel like it. So, because everything appears as itself, it's clear, but what is which is how we get to this first koan. Kaya Shastra is walking along, and Sogyananda stands before him and says, what's in your hands? There's a kind of slightly different translation of this.

[45:16]

You should hear this as, what is being expressed in your hands? Another translation is, That which you have in your hands is expressing what? What are you expressing, Swami? As you express yourself, what is it you're expressing? And Kaishal says, the great round mirror of the Grace has no flaws or barriers within or without you and I to see it. The I of our mind is the say. Well, he's kind of dodging questions. He's going to one of his. OK. This is a hazard. The only place I've heard the word pie is to these little pieces of clay.

[46:27]

It's a Japanese one. OK. So here we are. We're having this meeting between Kayashata and Sogen. We chant their names every morning, almost every morning. And Kayashata has answered. The great round mirror of the Buddha has no flaws or blurs within or without. You and I can see it. The eye of our mind is the same. Now, one of the things which I think sometimes happens in Buddhism is we get this image of clarity and no flaws or blurs within or without. Oh wow, I want that.

[47:54]

That sounds good because I feel so blurry. I can't figure out whether to take this class or that class, or to get closer to this person, or separate from them, or to sit-sauce in or not sit-sauce in. Wouldn't it be nice to have everything clear? And so here's quite a shot of sort of going, oh yeah, it's clear, clear, clear. And Duggan comes back and says, yeah, here's this great round mirror, and it's not wisdom, and it's not reason, and it's not essence, and it's not form. He says, Buddhists do not possess wisdom alone, and wisdom alone cannot be called Buddha. We should study this. To clarify, wisdom alone will not eliminate the Buddhist way. Sometimes we talk about foolish wisdom.

[49:08]

Our lives are very foolish. But there are choices in what kind of foolishness you're going to do. You saw I was pretty foolish. I remember I was at a conference in Las Vegas once with a friend and we passed through the casinos and I said to my friend, wow, the people here, the thing which gets to me is none of them looks like they're happy at all. And my friend turned to me and said, well, Bob, if you walked into a Zendo in the middle of session, you wouldn't think people would look very happy. So yes, the practice of foolishness. The key thing is not to mistake, not to think you're being wise.

[50:20]

wise. As Dogen says, even if we feel that the great round mirror of the Buddhas is already living with us, okay, I've got it, I've had Kensho, I've had transmission, I've taken the precepts, It's a fact, we can't touch the great round mirror. We can't touch it in this life, we can't touch it in another life. It's not a jewel mirror, it's not a copper mirror, it's not a mirror of flesh, it's not a mirror of marrow. So if you're so wise, if I'm so wise, why can't I touch the mirror? And Govind asks, so when Prayasatya says, the great round mirror of the Buddha has no flaws or blurs with it or without you and I can see it, the eye of our mind is the same.

[51:48]

Is that the mirror speaking? Or is that some punk kid mouthing off? And he goes on to say, Basically, whoever it is who preaches it, they haven't learned it from anyone else. They haven't learned it or achieved it by following the sutras. He holds up the round mirror and preaches like this because from his childhood, it was his custom simply to face the mirror with total wisdom. So here, previous paragraph, Dogon is saying, Wisdom, it's not Buddhism. Wisdom alone is not Buddhism. And here you see, all it takes is just to face the mirror with total wisdom.

[52:52]

Where does that lead me? Say more. Just because wisdom alone is not enough to help you, it doesn't mean that... I mean, I understand where you're coming from. And then, when you say wisdom, people use the word wisdom, and this is a mirror into wisdom. I'm tempted to say, when we face the mirror of wisdom, what does the mirror show?

[54:00]

OK. Dogen basically says, the great round mirror, he doesn't say it explicitly. He says it's the virtue of all the windows. It's an interesting word, virtue. And we tend to be conditioned in an idealistic way to think of virtue as good as opposed to bad, sort of moralistic. But virtue here is more like innocence or purity or selflessness.

[55:29]

Yes. [...] Pure compassion, actually. That's why it's the great brown mirror. At this point in the classical dogma is very much in the absolute reference point. Saying that this mirror has no blurs on the inside or the outside, neither describes an inside that depends on an outside, nor an outside blurred by an inside. Here he's saying, we were talking before about how things are interdependent, and here he's going past interdependence. What is an inside that doesn't depend on an outside?

[56:31]

It's absolute inside, where inside and outside disappear. When you're doing zazen, are you inside yourself or outside yourself? Are you in the zendo? Aha, is there a zendo? Well, we spend a lot of time cleaning it. which actually wasn't quite meaning to do this, but we're almost up to where to invest the light. That's right. That's right. Things manifest themselves through themselves. The absolute. This is form is emptiness, it's the emptiness part of it that's being emphasized here. What does it mean for mind and mind to be alive?

[57:35]

We're talking about two individuals who can see the same, the eyes of our mind can see the same. When we talk with each other, so maybe I don't understand your question or comment, or you don't understand what I'm saying, right? Our misunderstanding is based on the fact that our minds are the same. We can communicate, we can miscommunicate and misunderstand each other because on some level beyond understanding yes-no, we're connected. we share a certain experience. You know, if I were to talk to someone, some being from another planet, and I talked about eyes, and they didn't have eyes, what's that?

[58:51]

But our basic, our humanness, we share our humanness. We share our being. You and Joshua are the same. The enlightenment experience is the same. It's not that the Enlightenment experience is the same, although that's true, it's that you are that Enlightenment experience. You're made of the same stuff. You know, we're basically all made of exploded stars.

[59:55]

That's where we come from. It's just a fact, which is part of science these days. What does it mean for mine and mine to be alike, all the ancestors and this ancestor? So, I'm sorry, I got your name wrong. What does it mean for mine and mine to be alike, all the ancestors and this ancestor? Because when you asked your question, You are this ancestor. What does it mean for eyes to be like the eye of the truth taking form by way of the eye itself? There's a koan where Huichao asks the teacher, what is Buddha? And the teacher replies, you are Huichao.

[61:05]

Things take their course through themselves. And so in that state, There's this emptiness. In Bodhi, there's essentially no tree. The clear mirror rests on no stand. Originally, not one thing exists, so we're combustible. Most of you think now, the original poem written by the chief monk, which basically says, Our mind is a clear mirror, and so we are constantly calling. Now, Daikon Ero, in describing that story, he's the one who tells the story, you know, when he gets transmission, the chief monk doesn't. That does not mean that the chief monk is wrong.

[62:09]

Well, so is Daikon Ero. All expressions are always limited. But polishing the mind is important. In a way, the second koan relates to that. A monk asked to send Master Nun, Dr. HR. Right now, we're still in the world with no dust. In the rest of the fast-forward, we're going to get into the dust. Why it's in the dust?

[63:19]

In emptiness, there's no ultimate mark for defining characters. So, if you say, I'm Marian. Okay, so what are you? Well, I do this, and I experience that, and this, and this. Well, what if you hadn't experienced that? Would you still be Marian? Well, I'd be Marian, but I'd be a different Marian. Well, so who's the Marian who's at the core of it all? And, I guess back to your first question, can you find Peggy, or Bob, or Marion, at the porridge at all, separate from all these vixens?

[64:36]

So, we call it dust, but you could call it a mirror. The idea here, when it's talking about where can dust align, is delusion. something obscures the mirror. Now, the fact is, if dust gathers in a mirror, it's still a mirror. It's just dust in a mirror. But the mirror ... the mirror is not the same as ... Let's say you do something really bad, really awful, you incur terrible karma, and you feel guilty, and regretful, and remorseful, and bad, bad, bad.

[66:10]

Because your true being is empty, you know, unstable. Now, you've also done something really bad, and you need to deal with that. But... That's right. That's right. Your true being is unstable. Right. There's no fixed self. But to say that it's empty does not mean that it doesn't exist. Or that it doesn't... I mean, we think of emptiness as a void, as an absence of something which is to give it qualities, right? Don't get mistaken by that.

[67:29]

To say that there's no fixed style, no, it's just simple good stuff. I did. Yeah. This contains the lifeblood. Yeah. All things in the clear, clear state are the clear mirror itself. When the mirror is clear, everything is clear. This is the part which says, I'm Peggy. It doesn't take anything else. You can be stripped naked and thrown into a concentration camp, and killed, and just to be Peggy.

[68:43]

Your ash will be taken care of. Well, it's fun according to the notion that some things are always as it is.

[69:52]

Yes, I think I can put it. Yeah. Well, You can say they never died, but that's the same as saying they never lived. From one point of view, that's true. From another point of view, they're dead, dead, dead. If you invite them to a party, they're not going to come. Actually, this relates to this particular poem here.

[71:00]

So this monk asks Zen Master Nangdaku Eijo, I actually love it when things sort of happen to fit somehow. And this is what happens with Dogen, you know? I mean, somehow we're talking about what happens when you die, and here we are. Now, how that works, I have no idea. It's a mystery, but it seems to. If we cast the mirror into a Buddha image, where will its light go? And Nangaka replies, your face before you became a monk, where have those features gone? That's like saying, I watched your original face before you were born. And the monk asks, well, Ask the transformation, why does it not shine like a mirror? Actually cast the mirror into an image. Why does it shine like a mirror? The Master says, even though it's not shining like a mirror, its unchanging nature cannot convene others one bit.

[72:02]

It looks like one thing turns into something else. It looks like life turns into death. It looks like daily work turns into Zazen. But from this point of view of the Absolute, nothing turns into anything else. Everything is complete each moment. There's no before or after. And eternity isn't a matter of a lot of time. It's a matter of the completeness of this moment. So, showing your original face before you were born, I guess another way, if you haven't ever seen it faced this way, maybe someone else has, you might as well ask, please show me your final face after you've died.

[73:11]

No, I haven't heard it either. I haven't read the book. I haven't read the book. You haven't written the book. Oh, I haven't written the book. Another way of approaching this is to say, Why are you asking me about life and death? You're here right now. What are you going to do with it? You know the story about the person who decides to tease Buddha and he takes a bird and he holds it in his hand and he says, alive or dead. And of course the Buddha says, dead, opened up his hands, and Buddha said to Laya, smash him.

[74:12]

And Buddha just gets up, and he walks to the doorway, and he puts one foot over the threshold, and he says, interact. Well, are you interacting? It's a good question for our lives. Is anyone moving? Is he holding back? Are you fully engaged? What this says is when you're fully engaged, everything vanishes and everything appears. It's complete actualization, which is why practice and enlightenment are one. So when the monk says, well, if we cast the mirror into the Buddha's image, where will this light go?

[75:25]

And this is the exact philosophical question that Buddha might have answered by saying, why are you asking me about this? I'm just talking about release from suffering. And so the teacher just asked him the same question back. You know, your face before you were born, your face now, what's happened to it? And the monk says, well, why isn't it shining? Which is basically saying, why aren't I enlightened? And very nicely, the priest basically says, don't worry about it being enlightened. You can't do it anymore. Dogen says, the masters question your face before you became a monk. Where have those features gone? Holds up a mirror to reflect the monk's face.

[76:28]

The mirror reflects the mirror, which is your true face this moment. And Nangaku says, You stop right around here. Even though it's not shining like a mirror, it's not deluding others one bit. It means there's no reflection, no deception. The ocean's drying can never disclose the seabed. Delusion cannot turn into enlightenment. When this ocean evaporates, there's no seabed anymore. There's dry land. It needs the ocean if you see it. Similarly, yes? I don't know. That's my question. Similarly, you cannot turn into anything other than what you are.

[77:36]

which is constantly changing, fortunately. Learn in practice, from delusion and enlightenment are the same, in a hundred thousand myriads of shining mirror reflections, just this moment of delusion is illuminated and clear with no obstructions. my first session here, I had been feeling pretty good and then I sat down in session and I felt terrible. I started, not so much physical pain as I just started feeling sad and happy and tears were rolling down my cheeks and I had no idea why. I had absolutely no idea why. And it came time for Shosan, the ceremony where the questions go back and forth.

[78:40]

And I got up there and I said to Mel, I've been sitting here and I've been in physical pain and emotional pain and I don't understand it and I'm crying and what is this? And Mel answered with one word, you're gone. I really appreciated that answer for about a moment, then I got really annoyed. So this moment of delusion is remarkable. Thank you. The next section of the classical level goes much deeper. It talks more about division, and it's more from the aspect of the forge, when the mirror breaks into the original state.

[79:49]

In other words, our usual state. So we'll talk about that more next time. How long are we on time? Are we going together? Do we need a minute? It's nine o'clock. Thanks very much. Do you want to do it again? One more chance? One, three, one, two, three rounds. Let's just do one. Beings are numberless.

[80:20]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ