So most of you know, but many of you are probably wondering who I am and why I'm sitting here. We are in the middle of our practice period right now, which we do every year, usually in the spring. It's six weeks of, in various ways, more intensive practice for the people who choose to participate. And one feature of practice period every year is that Sojin chooses a person to be what we call a shuso, or head student, example student. And I was very honored and lucky to be asked to do that this year. And my name is Greg Denny, if anybody doesn't know. So I want to first say a little bit about that, what it means to be sitting up here to me, what I've been thinking about what it means. We often talk about how everybody is our teacher and everything is our teacher.

[01:10]

And I've been thinking about that a bit. and thinking about it not so much in terms of attainment or comparison of attainment, but that when I, hopefully, that when I listen to someone and they're teaching me, they're teaching me who they are in that moment, completely. And by extension, I'm learning and being taught who I am at that moment. You know, and when we, right before the talk, we had this chant, I think to put us in kind of a particular frame of mind of receptivity, of listening closely. to listen and accept, how does it go?

[02:16]

Let's see. To see and listen, to remember and accept. So I wonder if this might be, if we should listen and accept to everyone and everything in this way. And that, not to be taught something that we don't know or to be gained something or because who we're listening to or what we're listening to has something that we don't, but just to be there and to meet the other person. We're studying the Genjo Koan in this practice period, and Sojin gives the head student a koan each year for them to study, and mine is the Gedjo Koan, and particularly several lines, so I'm going to be referring to that.

[03:23]

I was thinking about this listening to each other and hearing who somebody is exactly at that moment that, you know, it'd be nice if everybody could be head student. And that maybe we could have, or it would be nice to have other people sit up here or other things. We could have, one week we could have the Sanaki's young son Alexander sit up here. And we should listen to him exactly the way that we listen to Sojin. And we could have Sojin's dog up here maybe once, Chula. Yeah, that's right. We could have a frog and a flower, a rock, because non-sentient beings preach the Dharma.

[04:27]

So we're told. So the four lines in the Genjo Koan which Sojin gave me are the central lines, the ones that maybe many of us already have memorized and think about quite a bit. And I'll just read them. And I'll read the translation from the Kaz Tanahashi book rather than the one that we're doing in class. To study the way, to study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind, as well as the bodies and minds of others, drop away. No trace of enlightenment remains, and this no trace continues endlessly. So I'm going to try to talk about this in the best way that I can. I started to talk about it a bit in the talk that some of you came to a couple weeks ago on a Monday morning.

[05:32]

And I focused on these lines in the context of exploring self and other and the idea of not one, not two. And I'll probably talk about that some more. I thought I'd read you three translations of the title, Genjo Koen, because they're different, and each one says something a little bit different. This book, Kaz's book, says, translated, Genjo Koen is actualizing the fundamental point. And the text we're reading in class translates it as the way of everyday life. Another translation, which I kind of like and I might refer to later, is the realized universe.

[06:36]

So I thought I could start by coming up with my own expression of those four lines. And I might have already used this expression a bit in my last talk, but I'll say it again. In this body-mind, there is nothing but our life, absolutely nothing but our life. Our true self is nothing but our life, all of our life and everything it contains. And life doesn't happen to us. It doesn't happen to ourself or ourselves. Our life is what ourself is. And maybe that sounds highfalutin, but it's very, I mean it in the most down-to-earth,

[07:44]

commonsensical way. We found ourselves in this body-mind, in this bag of flesh, and here we are. And I have not known anything but this, my life, my experience. I like the word experience, maybe. There's nothing that I can point to that is not my life and not my experience, and that is all that I am. It's very simple, but I don't think that really has sunk in until pretty recent in my life. So this line I especially like, the middle line, it seems, or the second line.

[08:49]

To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind, as well as the bodies and minds of others, drop away. I think in these four lines, Dogen is trying to describe kind of both The method of our, it's like a step thing. The method of our practice, but more the experience of our practice. What does it feel like when we wake up? What does it feel like when we wake up to the present moment? Which of course we need to do over and over and over. And those four lines kind of have been coming to describe how it feels to me in some way.

[09:51]

When I practice, when I exert the effort of our practice to wake up, there's nothing but the myriad things. And there's nothing but my life. There's nothing but this field of my experience. And that field includes everything, including versions of myself. When body-mind drops away, it's like subject drops away, and everything is object. Everything is myriad objects. We got in a discussion in class the other day about the mirror. What's the meaning of the mirror? And why does Dogen have this line, which I'll read to you? Unlike things and their reflections in the mirror, and unlike the moon and its reflection in the water, when one side is illuminated, the other side is dark.

[11:03]

This, to me, very beautifully describes that Moment or that not that moment that that experience of the subject dropping away when everything becomes object There is no mirror There is no I you know sometimes I've heard The term used the watcher Right that's kind of like the mirror the subject But I think As soon as we call it the watcher, as soon as we see it as a mirror, it becomes an object. And you can kind of do that recursively forever. And then your body and mind drop away. And the body and mind of everybody else drops away. When I was thinking about this this week, I remembered a passage from Emerson.

[12:14]

And I haven't read Emerson in a long, long time. So I tried to find it, and I did. And it really sounds quite similar. Standing on the bare ground, my head bathed by the air and uplifted into an infinite space, all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball. I am nothing. I see all. The currents of the universal being circulates through me. I am part or parcel of God. The image of the transparent eyeball, it's really good. It's really... feels close to what Dogen is talking about. So I'll go a little further about this field of myriad objects. It doesn't, the saying just myriad objects I think doesn't quite get there.

[13:23]

Maybe this is where Dogen goes in the next sentence about body and mind dropping away. Because the objects aren't discrete. They're completely interdependent and connected. This is an experience that we can have two. The experience of no separation. of co-creation, of completely undivided activity and experience. So when we wake to the myriad objects, for me, it's really waking to an intricate fabric of relationship of things. It's waking up to relationship. The more I practice, the more it feels like that.

[14:25]

Rather than just myriad objects, it feels like myself in the field of my life is in the field of relationship. And that's with people, with you all, with things. I can feel it right now. It went into the tease that I've been having with people. Someone said, but still, what about the self? What about the subject? It's one of the objects, actually.

[15:27]

I mean our ego self, and I don't mean just our neurotic ego self, I mean the ego self that gives our experience a kind of container or continuity. It's one of the objects. And of course there's other selves too, our neurotic self and our all the selves that emerge. I want to say more about that in a second. I think when body and mind drop away, I think I do have, and we have this experience of everything in the field of our life, everything that is transmitted to us through the five skandhas, right?

[16:51]

Nothing is transmitted to us outside of the five skandhas. It's all that we have. This is just another way of saying our life is ourself. We have the experience that it's all connected. There's no separation. And I think this is the realized universe of the title of Genjo Koan. But I think we also intuit that in fact, that no separation, that fabric of interdependence is even bigger than that. Although we can only see what's in our field at any once. We are the universe. We are expressions or bumps on the universe.

[17:54]

And in fact, in every one of us is a bump that in our experience is the universe experiencing itself. It's all we are. And this, I think, sounds like what Dogen is talking about with the moon and the dew drop. that we are all dewdrops reflecting the universe. But the dewdrops are the universe too. Leslie, can you tell me when it's like ten till? So I want to move on to talking a little bit about effort, the effort of awakening and having this experience of no separation, of realizing the universe.

[19:11]

Many of you know that Dogen, his sort of formative koan was, well, if we are completely not separate, or we're already enlightened, why do we have to practice? So why do we have to exert an effort to realize this no separation, to realize the universe, to drop body and mind? Or actually, what is the effort? And who does the effort, right? You know, if there's no subject, who does the effort? I don't really know, but I think it's kind of a paradox. I think it's the ego self. Huh?

[20:15]

I think so. I don't know. I'd be interested what people think of that. Because we're sitting on the cushion, We're exerting this effort. We're training ourselves to take that object, to use that object, the ego self, to turn. Which means that nobody else can do it for us. We have to do it ourselves. And I think this is kind of what the koan at the end of the Genjo Koan is about. About the fan, and I'll read that to you. Mayu, Zen Master Boash, was fanning himself.

[21:16]

A monk approached and said, Master, the nature of wind is permanent, and there is no place it does not reach. Why then do you fan yourself? Mayu replied, although you understand that the nature of wind is permanent, you do not understand the meaning of its reaching everywhere. What is the meaning of its reaching everywhere, asked the monk. My Yu just kept fanning himself. The monk bowed deeply. There's this kind of paradox which I struggle with and I tried to talk about last time a bit. You know, the realized universe that we experience when we drop body and mind It is completely our own. In it, there is no separation.

[22:17]

There's no separation now. But each one of us has our own realized universe. And each one of us has our own fan. Or we have to move our own fan. So, and Dogen talks a lot about enlightenment and delusion. Maybe I'll talk a little bit about that. And again, Joe Glein. Each one of us has our own, completely our own enlightenment and delusion. And we're both completely, we can be, we're deluded all the time for sure. And when we exert this effort to wake up to our delusions, I guess that's enlightenment. When we wake up to things as it is. But things as it is is completely unique every moment.

[23:22]

And it's completely personal. And my things as it is right now are completely different than my things as it is right now. A few weeks ago on a Monday morning, we were talking about enlightened people versus enlightened action, and that was a good discussion, that there were no enlightened people, there was only enlightened action. I think that's right. But enlightened action, I mean, I don't know if we can judge it. Every moment is different, and every moment is different for every person. And I think I'll read another passage because Dogen says it much better than I do. When Dharma does not fill your whole body and mind, you may assume it is already sufficient.

[24:25]

When Dharma fills your body and mind, you understand that something is missing. For example, when you sail out in a boat to the middle of an ocean where no land is in sight and view the four directions, the ocean looks circular. It does not look any other way. But the ocean is neither round nor square. Its features are infinite in variety. It's like a palace. It's like a jewel. It only looks circular as far as you can see at that time. All things are like this. Though there are many features in the dusty world, in the world beyond conditions, you see and understand only what your eye of practice can reach. We can only wake up to our life at every moment. That's all we can wake up to. And I don't think we can judge other people's enlightened activity either.

[25:35]

I don't know if we can judge our own. We can just wake up or try. There's Marie, my wife and I, we went to Japan. Many of you probably already know about this garden. It's maybe the most famous rock garden in the world at Ryonji Temple. And it's very austere. And I think there are 15 rocks, somebody can correct me if I'm wrong, arranged. And from no vantage point can you see every rock. There's an expression of this paragraph that Dogen wrote. How much time?

[26:36]

Let's see if I forgot anything. I have a whole other bullet point here. Yeah, I'll just say one more thing and I'll try to leave it open-ended. I mean, I haven't even gotten to activity. And this is a question that comes up a lot. It's come up in teas and it's come up in conversations. There's the effort of waking up. There's the effort of our zazen.

[27:37]

But what about beyond that? How do we live our lives? How does our practice, how does waking up at every moment help us live our lives? How does it help us make decisions? And I don't know. I know that it's easy to want to find a formula. But I think the proposition of our practice, the proposition or the idea of wisdom, maybe, is that if we really work hard in this effort to wake up, and we draw body and mind moment to moment, that our experience teaches us in ways that we don't necessarily understand, and that we have to learn to trust ourselves

[28:43]

to operate from a different place. And this is very hard to do, because we want to know what the answer is. We want to think that, or I want to think, that wisdom is preset, preexisting, but it's not. And the best that it is, is whatever arises to our waking up to our own delusion, to our things as it is at every moment in time. And maybe knowing this, we can be a little more gentle with ourselves and gentle with others, generous You know, we're all trying to do the best that we can.

[29:45]

And any of us can sit up here. And we should listen to everybody the same way, the way we listen to Sojin. OK. It's for us. And I'm wondering, at what point do we stop trying to gather all the perspectives and see all 15 rocks and just trust our experience and go with that?

[30:52]

I think that's all we can do all the time. I don't think we can try to see what's not there. We can only see what's available to be seen. And even in the most spacious moments of our dropping body and mind to our myriad objects, we're full of delusion. And some of those delusions are ripe for letting go, and some of them aren't. So maybe if you mean that seeing all 15 rocks is trying to see everything there is to see at that moment, to accept our life as it is, then I think we have to do it continuously.

[31:55]

Yes, Linda. Why do you think we're so scared to just experience what is in everyone? That's a good question. I think because it's painful. I think that we live our lives, we grow up, and maybe this has a lot to do, says a lot about our society and culture. not dealing with pain when it happens. And then we come to practice, and we have all this pain inside of us. And we start sitting, and it comes in full force. And we say, that's not what I thought this was going to be. That's what I think. Yes, in the back. You talked about all we know is our own life and our own experience of dropping body and mind.

[33:06]

And yet, to me, it seems that you mentioned Emerson describing his experience and how that was similar to the experience Jobim was describing and similar to your experience. And it feels to me that there is a place where we are expanded and we are all one. And that is a place when the people describe in the same way. So in some way we tap into something that's universal and beyond ourselves at some point. And so that it's not just Yes, I agree. It's like not one, not two. And I think both things are truer at once. And I think we can have that sense, that intuition that we are simply the universe.

[34:15]

So I agree with you. Although I don't know. I don't know. Okay, Dean. You wrote down your question? Yes. Okay. Well, when we let go of body and mind, I don't know that it's that we actually see everything, but more so that it kind of doesn't matter. that we don't see all 15 rocks. As opposed to that when we let go of body and mind, we really see everything and understand everything. But it just doesn't matter that we don't see it all or don't understand it all. Isn't that what? Sure. It matters, though, that we see what we see. Right. But that's not everything. No, it's not everything. Yes, Susan. transparent eyeball because I've been having a little bit of trouble when we have that chant that says she herself is an organ of vision.

[35:27]

I guess I pictured a huge eyeball. I don't have clashes where things kind of settle and I'm not sure I can formulate this question, but I'll try. I think I'm starting to understand or grop the difference between something on its reflection in the mirror and when there is no mirror. But I don't, for the life of me, understand if there is no mirror or there's no subject-object, there's just what is. How one side is illuminated and the other side is dark. because that means there's two sides. Two sides is different than subject-object, but I'm still kind of lost in there.

[36:37]

Yeah, me too. Yeah, when you get rid of one side, what happens to the other, huh? It can make your head explode, thinking about this stuff. Maybe that's the point. Yeah. It makes me think of this scene in a movie. Lori? It seems like there's still a big difference between knowing that there's 15 rocks even though you're only seeing seven, and thinking you're seeing seven, because that's all there are. And it seems like that's what we can really help each other with. Not that if I finally talk to everybody, I finally see the whole picture, but each time I see another rock, I realize, oh, there's a lot more rocks out there.

[37:39]

And also with the circle of water, it's not so much that you ever see everything, but just we constantly, how do we position ourselves so that we're constantly being right-minded? Right. That there's more. Well, yeah, not only that, the rocks are constantly moving around and changing shape and they're adding more rocks and, you know. Yeah. Yes, Ashley. My question is kind of limited, which is, I guess about what it means to see. In terms of If there are in some objective reality sense 15 rocks, but what you see is seven rocks like I Feel like part of what we're taught is that being fully aware of everything that's there somehow being fully aware of what exists Beyond your sense perceptions or beyond your scholars or so like what does it mean to see or to know?

[38:44]

What is? Does it mean to only believe that what is is what's in your direct field of experience that comes in through, I guess, through your skunks? Or is there a kind of knowing and a kind of apprehension of what is that involves knowing and apprehending what is beyond your field of muteness? Does that make sense? Uh-huh. Well, I think we can only do the best that we can, right? We keep trying to see. We keep trying to be aware. That's the best we can do. What we're seeing, if you want to try to figure out whether Are you going to finish my sentence for me? I don't think you should try to think about there being 15 rocks, okay?

[39:54]

Just deal with the rocks that are there. When you're seeing. Yes? That's basically what I... I was going to say, the analogy breaks down, because we know there are 15 rocks, somebody said. 15 rocks in this garden in Kyoto, and we don't know how many rocks there are in the universe. We know what we can see at any one time, and as you and Laurie both said, the more open we are, the more we realize that there's more out there that we can't see. And that's it. We don't know. Are there more hands up? We're running over, yes? Yes, but these are my questions. Well, just one more then.

[40:57]

I don't want to be a glutton here. Go ahead. Well, I was thinking about when one side is illuminated, the other side is dark. We talked, said that phrase, in class I had a very emotional response to it because that day I had just had the experience with one of the children I work with of, you know, this great brightness coming forward in our interaction. And then the next moment he was telling me about something really horrible that was happening. So it was almost like because we permitted the brightness to come forth, the darkness came forth as well. Yeah, they depend on each other, right? You can't have one without the other. How many sides does the ball have? I said, how many sides does the ball have? I didn't expect you to answer that. That's good.

[41:58]

This guy can answer. He's a quantum mechanic physicist. to bring up about all these things is that a lot of times in physics when we have a problem, things don't seem to be consistent. There's two sides, but I see something more than that. We always throw in another dimension. So Mel just threw in another dimension. It's a good trick. OK, we get it. Stop it. Beings are numberless.

[42:46]

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