I vow to taste the truth of the Tathāgata's words. Good morning. I didn't think that I'd ever take anything off today. For those of you who just came, there's no heat in the Zundo today. You may have noticed, but at least the sun is shining. About 20 of us are sitting all day. It started at five this morning. What I wanted to talk about is what we always talk about, or the words that we always talk about, practice and realization. We don't usually talk about realization, but I wanna talk about practice realization. The text that I've been studying for some time is the Fukan Zazengi.

[01:10]

It's the Dogon's introduction or instructions for Zazen. And the Fukan Zazengi is pretty simple relative to Dogon's other works, and it's only two pages long. And why I've been on it so long is that I decided that I wanted to really understand the words, not just have a kind of a, oh, semi-comfortable idea about what was being said. But I really wanted to understand the words and not take anything for granted. Because the words that are in the Fukuanzengi are words that we've heard a lot, and principles ways of practicing that we've heard a lot. But I wanted to think, I really want to understand as well as I can each word, and then where I can't understand it, then I'll just move on.

[02:13]

So I got to the first sentence. The first sentence is, the way is basically perfect and all-pervasive, how could it be contingent upon practice and realization? And another translation by, that's the translation by Masao Abe that we use, but the other translation that, just seen by Shohako Okamura is the way is basically perfect and pervasive or something like that. How could it distinguish practice and realization? The two different, actually fairly different meanings, but for now the important question is, why is he putting these two words together? Why is he saying, practice realization? And, you know, I'm fairly used to the word practice, because if there's any word that's been used in this zendo,

[03:25]

over the last 25 or 30 years, or 40 years, it's practice. If you did an analysis of Sojin's talks by the frequency of words, practice would be at the top. But realization You know, I have a kind of vague idea about that, but I realize, I don't really know what they're talking about when they use the word realization. Kind of impute something, but I don't really understand. And practice, I have a more visceral sense of realization, I don't. And practice realization, putting them right together, what's that? So if you've done any reading of Dogon, you know that a very strong characteristic of his teaching is that practice and realization are not separate.

[04:33]

That you don't practice and then you have some realization. Or you don't practice A and then B, have an understanding. That the two are intertwined, which is a different way of looking at it than we usually look at. So I want to come back to that in a minute, but first of all just to not take for granted that we all understand what practice is, that we all understand what realization is. I think any group, any any organization that has a certain language or vocabulary, and all groups do, when you use a word over and over and over again, you tend to be complacent about what it means, and not really consider what it means and not bring life into that word.

[05:40]

So the word practice is like that for us, could be for us. I think if you try to figure out what's practice and what's not practice, I would say practice involves effort. Without effort, I don't think you could call something practice. So in zazen it may seem like, actually mostly to me it does seem like effort, but it may seem to you like it's not effort, or you may have some experience where you just sit and there's a feeling of no effort. But I would suggest that there always is some effort going on in zazen.

[06:47]

It just may not be gross effort, but simply to sit upright requires effort. When Sojin talks about his practice of zazen, he says, I'm always giving myself zazen instruction. That's effort. But what kind of effort is the question? And what kind of practice is the question? However, the practice requires effort. And of course not just Zen practice, but any kind of practice. Any kind of skill, art, or activity which you would call a practice involves some effort and some focus as well. I would say, you know, you could sort of go...focus is important.

[07:59]

You could just sort of go crazy and throw yourself around, you know, have a tantrum or a fit. That wouldn't be practice unless you were intending to...there was some intention within it. I'm not recommending it. And so realization is more difficult. So the best I can think with realization is that there's maybe a small realization and big realization. Or as Dogen in one of his sentences says, specific and general realization. So a small realization is happening to us all the time. Just something strikes us as being true or evident.

[09:00]

And it doesn't have to be realization necessarily in a Buddhist sense. But since we're talking about Buddhism, let's talk about it in the Buddhist sense. Just something is obvious. Mindfulness involves kind of small realization. I was standing in the kitchen with my landlord last week and I'm always at odds with him because he's very stingy and it's very irritating. When we need something, he is just very stingy about providing what's needed to fix a problem. He was talking and actually the conversation was fine, but as he was talking I was realizing that I really didn't like him. And I really felt badly, you know, because anger is not my thing.

[10:07]

Actually, greed is my thing. I'm a greed type, not an angry type, generally speaking. But I realized I really didn't like him, and I felt really badly about it. So first of all, just realizing that I felt angry. I wasn't so much angry, I just didn't like him. Which is mindfulness. Mindfulness of, in that case, a mental state, or actually a feeling as well. Mindfulness of a feeling, which is negative, and also a mental state, which is judgmental, which is, I just don't like the way this person is. So a realization which is mindfulness, that this is what's happening. So that's what I would call a small realization. And with the practice of mindfulness and valuing the present moment, in that sense, in the smaller sense of realization, we're constantly realizing.

[11:19]

Larger sense, I can't say. Maybe you have some experience of a large realization. You can read about it. You can have some maybe dramatic experience occasionally. Generally, if you read about people's satori experiences, all of a sudden, generally speaking, they see that everything is one. This is like the classic realization experience, profound, big realization experience. Everything is one, and it's not an idea. It's not something that you're thinking about. It's like you can feel it like hot water or cold water. It just is. But I don't have that experience. So I think, at least in that kind of realization experience, I think it's important to understand that it's a direct experience.

[12:29]

That kind of realization is direct. It's not an idea. And then later, if the people want to convey it, it becomes an idea. So in this situation where I'm in this kitchen with Landort, on one hand, there's practice, which is that I'm interested in being mindful. I'm interested in being aware of what's happening in my mind and in my body. And so to actually recognize the fact that, you know, I don't like how he's behaving, that's mindfulness. But then, then I think what I left out is that realization is more a very acute sense of this is my ego,

[13:30]

My ego isn't getting what it wants. That was the other part of it that I didn't mention. The realization was, it's not just that, oh, I'm disturbed, or I'm angry, or I'm irritated. The next step is realizing that how narrow that is. I could feel directly how absolutely narrow of a way of thinking and feeling that that was. It wasn't an idea or a thought. It was just like, this is really constricted. This is really like a little kid that can't get the candy that they want. It didn't make me less angry or less irritated, but made the situation much bigger. So, you know, Dogen, one of his favorite

[14:50]

quotes or stories. He's full of, I mean, he was only 53 when he died, and he just has these thousands of stories that he remembered or read about of conversations of teachers. Really interesting, just a vast collection. But one of his favorite stories was with Nangaku, who was a disciple of the Sixth Ancestor. This is in 700. And Nangaku comes to meet the sixth ancestor, Huining, and Huining says, where do you come from? And Nangaku says, from such and such mountain. And Huining says, well, who is it that thus comes? In other words, who are you? What are you? Who is it that thus comes? And Nangaku says, to say anything would be a mistake. In other words, it can't be expressed dualistically in words.

[16:04]

And then Huineng says, well, then is it contingent upon practice and realization? And Nangaku says, it's not that there is no practice or realization, it's just that they're not to be defiled. And then Huineng says something like, we see eye to eye, or very good, we see eye to eye, yes. So that's the story that Dogen opens up the Fukan Zazengi with. I mean, this is Dogen's first sentence in his whole career, because the Fukan Zazengi was the first thing that he wrote. So his first sentence that he writes that he actually puts out for general consumption is, the way is basically perfect and pervasive. How could it be contingent upon practice and realization?

[17:08]

The conversation between Huineng and Nangaku. So then the question is, well, what does it mean to defile practice and realization? And defile means to spoil or to make kind of muddy or make less pure. So what does that mean to defile practice and realization? How do you defile it? My sense of what that means is that it means that if you think that I am practicing and I am realizing, that's defiling practice and realization in the way that Nangako was looking at it, and Huining were looking at it.

[18:12]

Nangako didn't want to say, he didn't want to say who thus comes because he didn't want to separate He didn't want to create a separation. He didn't want to create some separate entity. Oh yeah, that's over there, that's what's coming. That's who you are right here, over here. So at the same time, he didn't want to deny or ignore the phenomena of practice and realization. So defiling it would be And you may have a different interpretation. This is the best I can understand, so you may see differently. But to defile it, to think that there's an entity that's sort of an inherent entity here that's practicing and an inherent entity that's realizing is to

[19:18]

have a contorted view of what we're doing. And that's why we keep reciting the Heart Sutra every day, because the Heart Sutra is talking about emptiness, and the emptiness of an own being. So if you think that there's an own being, uh some sort of permanent soul type character who is practicing and some permanent soul type character who's realizing uh that's what nangaku calls defiling You know, usually, and however, but this is really normal for us to think like that. So, you know, I think we have to acknowledge that we start out thinking like, I think there's like three things, maybe there's more, but three things are, one is there's me, and then me practicing, and then me getting a result from practicing.

[20:25]

That's how we, if you really look at it and you're honest, and you really look into your maybe more subtle ways of thinking, or maybe not so subtle, that's how we see it. I am gonna practice, number two, and I'm gonna get something, number three. And I would be amazed if anybody in this room had never felt like that or never saw it like that. So this is all about the non-duality of practice realization. But, you know, the question is, how do we actually understand this?

[21:28]

Because you can read about it, and Dogen's such a great way of describing this kind of phenomena. It feels very profound. However, what really matters is how we actually understand it ourselves, in our own mundane, clumsy way. And so it's not so much that you have to have some correct understanding. I mean, the main point isn't having a correct understanding. The main point is to look into yourself, to take the inspiration of these teachers and investigate. not so much to try to be just like them or to see it just like they do, but use their example as a way of sort of opening up our own minds. And when our opening up our own minds may not look as perfect and profound, but that's the only way to do it.

[22:34]

There's a, so the non-duality of practice and the non-duality of realization is really what they're aiming at. Although it's pretty hard to aim at non-duality. There's a story with Joshu about practice, non-duality of practice. a magistrate, a government official, goes to Joshu and says, do you practice or not? And Joshu says, if I were to practice, it would create great difficulty. And the magistrate says, well, if you don't practice, who should? And Joshu says, somebody like you should practice, somebody like you practices."

[23:46]

And the magistrate says, well, why is that? And then Joshi says, well, if you didn't practice, how could you have served the emperor as well as you have all these years? And if you didn't practice when you were cold, homeless, hungry, penniless, somehow you got out of that, somehow you went on and persevered. Without practice, how could you have done that? and then the uh the magistrate sort of has great tears of gratitude so thank you very much thank you very much so this is one of those kind of enigmatic stories which is tricky uh but when josh so the the way i read it is um when joshu says uh for me to practice would be with great difficulty. What he's saying is, I don't want to, same thing as Nangaku was saying, I don't want to separate myself from practice. I'm not, you know, it's not like practice, here's me and here's practice.

[24:50]

I do not want to make a separation. And as a matter of fact, you know, if you read Joshu, Joshu was practice. It wasn't Joshu practicing. Joshu just is practice. So, um, he didn't want to separate, make a separation. On the other hand, he wanted the magistrate to see that the magistrate's own life, magistrate's looking for practice, again, as something that's kind of, well, partly conceptual, but a kind of ideal, an ideal idea. And Dhanjoju is saying, it's in your own life as you actually are living it. Your own life as you've actually lived it is practice. If you just could recognize that, you could enjoy your own practice. So he's kind of saying two different things. And even in the second case, he's saying, don't look for practice outside of your own life, outside of your own experience.

[25:57]

as an idea. Or really take your own life effort, have great respect for your own life effort. And then there's a story by Dogen's teacher, Isai, about realization, the non-duality of realization, which is also short and a little enigmatic. There's some question about whether Dogen actually knew him personally, doesn't really matter. But the story goes that, Dogen asks Esai, what is Buddha? Or what is enlightenment?

[27:00]

And Esai says, cats and oxen know it, but Buddhas don't know it. Meaning that animals, or animal types, which is us. Animal types think they know what enlightenment is, or know what Buddha is. They have some idea of it. But Buddhas don't have an idea. They don't think, I know something. They don't separate themselves. So, you know, the challenge with all this is how to practice and realize and put effort into this and not get caught by self-aggrandizement, which also includes being caught by self-hatred, you know, to,

[28:14]

to take ourselves too seriously either way, or to take our idea of ourselves too seriously either way. Either we're really great or we're really bad. On the other hand, obviously we have to acknowledge that we do see ourselves as ... tend to see ourselves as the center of the universe on some level, no matter how subtle. And also the question is, does practice in itself, is this just purely satisfying?

[29:25]

Is practice without some desired result later? You know, some hope later that something is gonna be better, that later that we're gonna be wiser, we're gonna be more peaceful, or we're gonna be more insightful. You know, if you really look at your own attitude, Would this practice as it is just be self-sufficient? Would you be satisfied? Or is your engagement in practice and realization contingent upon some subtle hope that later things will be better? And not to feel like one's bad or one's good, just to look at that. Is that true or not true? You know, the Four Noble Truths are all about relieving suffering.

[30:32]

So obviously there's a goal in mind, which is the relief of suffering. And if we practice the Eightfold Path, things will get better later, you would think. So how can you be content and satisfied with the present at the same time as acknowledging that things could be good later, could be better later? It's not so much that there needs to be an answer to that, it's more seeing that, seeing that process in ourselves and the way that we think and feel. that wakes us up. Fundamentally, I would say that Zen practice is really about openness.

[31:50]

It's about being open. rather than, maybe if there's anything to attain, it's openness. That's not all there is, but that's, it seems to me that's the most, that's the fundamental point, is in the most profound sense, to be open-minded. and having some confidence that being open-minded, that reality is self-evident enough. We don't need to have some fancy interpretation. If we're only open enough to see it, see things as they are, So, you know, as we talk about practice, as we talk about realization and, you know, try to understand what we're doing, the main thing is just openness.

[33:09]

and to see where our assumptions are, where are the deep ingrained assumptions, conditioned assumptions that we tend to make without even realizing it, because we're so used to making these assumptions about who we are, who other people are. And if we stop making, or if we start to unwind some of those assumptions, we can feel lost, like we don't have our bearings. And that's part of practice, is to be able to feel lost and have confidence to continue. I talk longer than I thought. I'm sorry. I have a few minutes for questions or comments.

[34:16]

Yes? You described the way that many of us approach practice with, I practice and that will lead me to something. With a more accurate perception, would you have words describe what that would be? What it would lead to? What's a more accurate way of seeing that? An expression. Well, I want to say more accurate, because it's accurate that that's the way we think. But you could see practice as an expression, an expression of your realization. I don't wanna get too fancy. Expression of your realization, actually, of what you are.

[35:19]

And you realize that you're limited. And you express the realization of being limited by practicing. One limitation is we have a wandering mind. So realizing that, we put some effort into concentrating. I work with people who are much younger than I am, and their hormones are much more, they're different. And they're just like flying, they're just going crazy all day, you know, just like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so my role is to be the sort of severe, concentrated, older person. But I believe in it. It's a good role. You know, I try to not take it too seriously, but there's a real, you know, it actually is, it's true, you know, that I can see that they're unhappy because they can't settle.

[36:21]

Bob. That's what Dogen said later. Yeah. Yeah. I really like that idea. Right. It doesn't matter what you think. Right. You're defiled every time. Right. Like you can think that the sky is purple or orange, but the sky's not going to care. It'll just go on being the sky. That's right. Yeah, that's an example of how Dogen sort of takes it another step.

[37:26]

Yeah. Laurie? I've been thinking about it, trying to use an example of my own listening to your talk. And so what I thought that came up is, well, so one thing I practice, or I make an effort to try to be more present with my kids. And you sort of say that maybe in Zendo I'm practicing being present. I'm trying to be present, that I'm not realizing that to the degree that I have realized it, and then, you know, so it's like the time is actually the exact same time.

[38:28]

But you're, because you're using that time as a practice time. Right, so I'm making an effort to be present with them, and however much I'm realizing it, it's happening right then, not like some other time. But did you always think like that? Yeah. Do you ever, do you think about, you don't think about investing in your kid's beneficial future, psychological development somehow by doing, doing, doing something or, you know.

[39:35]

It's pretty, it's pretty out on the outer edges of what I'm thinking about right now. It's more like just this, this is the way to be. Now, yeah. I was identifying with the magistrate and the way I heard you say it, when he got all teary and said, oh, thank you, I maybe was understanding what he was experiencing differently and what... Who's the other guy? Who's the teacher? Joshu. Joshu? Yeah. Not just letting him know that his whole life was his practice. Because I've had a pattern of practicing and then my life gets better.

[40:39]

And then earlier in my life, I somehow thought, oh, it'll stay better forever. And my practice sort of wound down. Then I got in trouble again. And then I practiced again and then my life got better. I'm not sure how many times that happened, but... When he said, how could you have served the Emperor so well, if you hadn't been practicing, I said, yeah, I do my job better and better. I wanted, maybe the last 10 years, my practice has been more to try to shift away from that idea that my practice is making my life better and I can serve the emperor well.

[41:51]

Samurai practice. Samurai practice? That's scary, what do you mean? If you really are concentrated at one and let go of your ego, you'll be able to slay your enemy. Yeah. It's a male version of what you're talking about. No, I found even really recently that I'm So anyway, just a more subtle appreciation of not separating practice and improvement result. That's kind of one of my most long-term projects. But you have to still recognize, I mean, it's okay to have that problem.

[43:04]

I think the point I want to make is that you can see that, yes, I have this what we call a problem. I have a gaining mind. I want to gain something. I want to get something. And yet they tell me that that's not right. Suzuki Roshi says, oh, you shouldn't have a gaining mind. So I shouldn't have a gaining mind. And I'm bad. And I wish that I didn't have a gaining mind. But it's not so much that we're supposed to be one. We want to be one way or we want to be another way. It's like to look into where is the gaining mind coming from? And nobody can answer that except yourself. Somebody can have all these words, but each one of us has to look into how is that working. That's more important than whether we're doing it or not, or if it's good or it's bad. You know, we really have to reveal it somehow.

[44:14]

The last one. I was a little bothered by Joshu and the magistrate too, because I thought it sounded as if Joshu was in fact separating himself from the magistrate and kind of putting the magistrate down. For me to practice would be difficult, but for the likes of you, which didn't seem awfully compassionate. Well, but the magistrate broke down in tears of gratitude. There was some compassion. There was something that he felt. Well, the magistrate felt that, I think. Yeah, I can see that. is just that there's so much richness in that whole interaction that, you know, you had to have been there. Okay, we should stop.

[45:23]

Thank you.

[45:24]

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