I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good morning. Since we exist always and only in this present moment Why do we have to try so hard to be present? If the path is always right under our feet, how do we get so lost? if we're completely interdependent and interconnected with everything in the world why do we feel so alone?

[01:06]

I was thinking about these questions I've been thinking about these questions and a phrase popped into my mind that I read in the I Ching, the Chinese kind of fortune-telling book. I think it's actually pronounced I Ching, but I Ching or I Ching. One time I read, you let your magic turtle go and now you look at me with the corners of your mouth drooping. We just let our magic turtle go. We always just keep letting our magic turtle go. It's the person that's driving us nuts that's actually expounding the truth of interdependence. It's the place where we veered off of the path that's telling us where to get back on

[02:21]

It's that thing that we think, if only I didn't have this or only if I did have this I could be present. That's it right there. Now So what can we do? Can we just say, okay, next time I'm not going to let my magic turtle go no matter what? We can say that and we can try to get at it with our thinking mind, with our conscious mind, but actually you can't quite do it because it's too fast. It happens too fast. So That's why Zazen was invented. Zazen teaches your body something, how to do something, and your body teaches your mind whatever that is, which we can't really know, but it's something like how not to let your magic turtle go.

[03:44]

The thing is, we're hardwired to let our magic turtle go. It's just the way our minds work. And that's the great thing to me that the Buddha discovered was some way to kind of get at the hardwiring. some way to practice something where you're sowing the seeds of a different way of responding at a deeper level than your conscious mind. I wanted to do a little demonstration about this hard wiring and I hope this is going to work. I'm afraid it might not. What's it say? Okay. What's it say?

[04:57]

Good. Very good. I wonder, did you want to see? Sorry, Mel. Um, and as you'll notice, I'm sure you saw this out of the corner of your eye, the H and the A are the same exact letter. That's how great our minds are. They are so fast. You look, you see this, but you see it in the pattern of this thing that's very, very familiar, and you know it's an H. It's really fast, really fast. And that's how we work neurologically. We are so fast at interpreting what we're seeing. We don't even see that we're interpreting. We see an H and we see an A. That's what we see. And this isn't a problem actually.

[06:00]

This is not a problem. This is the way our minds work and there's no problem with the way our minds work. As long as we kind of wake up to how they work and are aware of how they work. I wanted to mention a couple points of posture. when we're sitting, no matter how our legs are, whether we're in a chair or Cesar or cross-legged, the most restful position of our back is to have our spine in the neutral curve. And because of, I think this is probably true of everybody, but especially us, because of the way we usually sit in chairs, we're used to flattening out our lower back, not keeping the natural curve there.

[07:11]

So we need to, put a little bit of energy and awareness into that part. And what I like to do is kind of use my pelvis. So like roll my pelvis forward just a little. And you may not, if your back is already in neutral, you may not be moving at all. But the idea, like a little push pin of energy that pushes your pubic bone down into the seat. Just stake yourself there. And then with that staking yourself there, you can let everything else go gradually. And then there's another little push pin of energy. So wherever your mudra is, it can be touching your thighs or not, but the actual little push pin of energy is going, your little fingers touching your

[08:14]

abdomen, not leaning down. So just keep that little pushpin there. So, some of us here at Berkeley Zen Center have been studying a text called the Fukanza Zengi written by Master Ehei Dogen, the Japanese Zen master, ancestor. Fukanza Zengi might mean universal encouragement for the ceremony of Zazen or for the principles of Zazen.

[09:16]

or the way of Zazen. And I think that for those of us who are trying to think about how to present this, one of the questions is how, I mean, I think what Dogen was trying to do in this essay was to somehow encourage us to sit Zazen without giving us a gaining idea, which is really hard, really hard. How can we tell ourselves to do something without saying, because it's going to have this outcome? And then watching to see if we're getting the outcome or not. It's tricky. It's really tricky. Like I already did it, right? I already blasphemed completely by saying that this was going to help you not let your magic turtle go. It's really, you can't hardly get around it, it's hard.

[10:18]

And another thing about this text, we had a class on Thursday night, Ross, there he is. beautifully revealed an aspect of this text which is that it's embedded with all these tons of little Zen stories. Almost every sentence can have like four different Zen stories that are being referred to there. And while he was talking I got two kind of almost contradictory images came to me about Dogen Zenji and the way he wrote this essay and one of them was that he carefully crafted this like piece of jewelry with these gems that he placed one by one in the perfect spot for them. And he made this piece of jewelry that could hold all these different jewels and it works.

[11:29]

And the other image I had was just kind of that he had this treasure box and he just kind of opened it and just threw them out there because just from this sense of total abundance, it's just like they're just spilling all over because there's so many great stories and they just spilled into it. And a couple of my, one of my favorite passages in this essay comes near the end where Dogen says, Please, honored followers of Zen, long accustomed to groping for the elephant, do not be suspicious of the true dragon." And in that sentence are two stories, two folktales. One is the pretty famous one. I'd be surprised if anybody hasn't heard it about the nine or eight blind men.

[12:32]

It's an Indian folktale, I think. And I'm not sure how Buddhist its origins are. It's such a Buddhist story that it's kind of hard to believe that it's not of Buddhist origin, but it might be older than that. So anyway, there's the eight blind men, and they each touch a different part of the elephant, and then they start bickering. No, it's like a fan. No, it's like a rope. No, it's like a wall. And each one has a different piece, and then they just start bickering about who's got the true one. And it's kind of distancing to talk about blind men, but we're actually all the blind men. This is what we do. We all do this. This is what we're hardwired to do. We take a piece and it really seems like we're seeing the whole thing. It really seems like that. And that's just the way we are. We're hardwired. So we are long accustomed to groping for the elephant.

[13:35]

The part about the true dragon is from, I think, a Chinese story, and I couldn't find any other reference for it except in relation to this text, so I don't know. I mean, on a quick search on Google I couldn't find anything. But the story goes that there's a guy in China who's just a big dragon aficionado. He loves dragons. He's got scrolls of dragons. He's got statues of dragons. He's set up his house like a dragon's lair. I mean, he's just totally into dragons. And so a real dragon hears about this and thinks, oh, he would like, he would be able to appreciate me and he would really like it if I dropped in on him. And so he does. And of course, naturally, the guy is completely and utterly freaked out and draws his sword to defend himself against the dragon. And Dogen says, don't be like that.

[14:41]

Don't be suspicious of the true dragon. And Suzuki Roshi gave a talk about this story. And it's reprinted in the spring 1991 wind bell. I want to read you a kind of, I did a little, my own condensed, abridged Reader's Digest version of it. In China, there was a man named Seiko. He loved dragons. All his scrolls were dragons and he designed his house like a dragon house. He had many figures of dragons. And a real dragon heard about it and thought, if I appear in his house, he will be very pleased. One day the real dragon appeared and Seiko was very much scared of it and drew his sword. The real dragon said, oh my, and hurriedly escaped from the room. Most of us are practicing our way like a blind man or like Seiko. That is why we have to start our practice over and over. You think you're practicing real zazen, but it may not be so.

[15:45]

Over and over we have to start our zazen because we're always liable to practice zazen like the blind man, blind man or like Seiko. Each one of us practices zazen in his own way with his own understanding. That is right. And we continue that kind of practice thinking, this is right practice. So even though we're sitting here in the zendo, we're involved in our own practice. In other words, carefully carving our own dragon, which is not real. And this is not wrong. This is all right, but we should know that there is a true dragon, which has no form or color, which is called nothingness or emptiness, and which includes Koan practice and Shikantaza and various Hinayana ways of practice and pre-Buddhistic practice. This is the practice transmitted from Buddha to us. You come and practice zazen in this zendo where there should be a true dragon. But the instant you think, this is true dragon, that is a mistake.

[16:49]

Knowing this, when you come to this zendo, you should practice zazen with people, forgetting all about your carving or your painting. Practice zazen in this zendo with your friends, completely involved in the atmosphere we have here. Practice our way according to my instructions. People who do not know what is real emptiness or true dragon may think I'm forcing this way on you. You may say, Sokoji is Soto Zen temple. I practice the Rinzai way. But that is not true. We're practicing the way transmitted from Buddha to us. We are the Buddha's disciples. We practice Zazen with the Buddha and with the patriarchs. We are actually practicing Dogen's way day by day. But for us, there is no time to figure out what he meant completely. Even though we human beings continue His way forever, we will not be able to say, this is His way. The only thing we can say is, this is the way which has no end and no beginning, and from this way we cannot escape.

[17:51]

So I think that Dogen Zenji and Suzuki Roshi are talking about the true dragon in a sense as our formal meditation practice. And we can also, to me, I think that I can think of it in terms of kind of like our carving, our self is our little carving. and our life is like the true dragon. We're always liable to I mean we're hardwired to keep crafting this self this idea of self and it's always going to veer from the truth. And I think one thing that the story also talks to me about is how there's kind of a dialogue, like in the story, the dragon comes to the person who is doing this deluded activity of carving.

[19:32]

So it's like for us, to me, when we come to our practice and we come to the Zen Do, yes, we're carving, but we're also saying, we're inviting the true dragon at the same time. And that's the dialogue. It's like you come to the Zen Dojo, it's your way of saying, I want to join the Dharma that's unfolding right now. And of course, you've always been completely joined to the Dharma that's unfolding right now, and you can never not be. But when we make that act, where we say, I want to do that, and then we get a response in our life. when I first moved here to the Berkeley Zen Center, I had my own little personal dragon. I know you guys have heard about this too, but you know, that's the thing about the self, it's so boring. But anyway, the only one I can tell you about. So my little version was that people couldn't really help each other, but that was okay because you could get to where you didn't need anything from anybody.

[20:42]

And so, I came here and I proceeded to do two things. I left my whole so-called support system, which of course I had paid no attention to their existing because I didn't think there was one and I didn't think you needed one. And I came here, I moved here, and I quickly did two things I'd never done before. I got married and I had a baby. And as most of us know, these are easy things to do that you don't really need any help to do. Not! So, you know, there was a period where my life just didn't work. It really didn't work. I couldn't do it. I couldn't do what I set up. I built this little, you know, structure and I couldn't live in it. And fortunately, luckily, I had also kind of built in this thing where, you know, I wasn't able to sit that much.

[21:49]

But I did come to the Zendo and I had the kind of schedule, I was kind of immersed in the rhythm of the schedule and also surrounded by people who expected me to hang in there with what I was doing. And that is a really, that's a powerful force. And so I gradually, just by staying with it, the way I think about it is the real true part of me that needed help met with the real true part of the world that can provide help and completely bypassing this, you know, made up dragon that I had going here. But I think what I wanted to say was our life doesn't have to work all the time. We're going to paint ourselves into these corners. It's just inevitable and it's really okay. It's just, can you turn? Can you turn towards it? How can you do that?

[22:51]

How can you get at that hard wiring? A few months ago, my husband, Alan, who's away, I'm sorry to talk about him while he's away. I'm not trying to say anything bad about him. Actually, that was one of the hardest things about this period was that I hadn't thought through, which was if any of my suffering that I was going through was related to him, who was I gonna go to talk to about it? Because all the people, there weren't that many senior people here then, there weren't that many practice leaders, and they were all people he already had these complicated relationships with. So, I mean, I just, I couldn't figure out how to do that. I just hadn't pictured that. So it was hard. Anyway, so a few months ago, Alan, came to me and told me something that it's sort of like there was something I'd been worrying about, something that I was worried that he was doing that was a mistake.

[23:54]

And he sort of said something that reminded me of that, and I blurted out this criticism. it wasn't skillfully done. And, you know, those of you who know Alan, you know, he's very articulate and he just very calmly and clearly told me how completely wrong I was, how completely inappropriate it was of me to be bringing this up to him, and how completely unskillfully I had done it. And, you know, calmly, but as we all know, when he's, when Alan says something he's, somehow he forms his words, his thoughts in his words, it just comes out really strong. And so I left that encounter completely convinced that I was completely wrong and that I shouldn't have brought it up and that I had done it very unskillfully. And then the next day, he comes to me with this whole thing about how he'd worked with my criticism and what he thought, what he was going to do about it to take care of it and how he never said, you know, you're right or anything like that.

[25:02]

But still, it was really clear that he had taken it in. He'd thought about it thoughtfully and taken it in. So, you know, it's okay if you can't, if you get, if the true dragon comes today and you can't face it, that's okay, maybe you can tomorrow, it's really okay. If you can't do it today, try to do it tomorrow. I kept thinking, one thought I had this morning was, Well, what about if I'm walking and I'm crunching on the gravel over there and suddenly I get a whole new idea for the talk? Would that be the true dragon and would I be able to switch, you know? Fortunately, that didn't happen. But I've been thinking about this line in this bluegrass song, when your dream train jumps the track. When your dream train jumps the track, just ask yourself who'd done it.

[26:08]

Anyway, I think that The dream train of our self is just always going to veer off the track of reality. It's just always going to do that. And so, let's stop beating ourselves up for it and see how quick we can jump back on the track. So, that's all I had to say. Do you feel a gaining idea coming on? I hope not. Lois and then Adu. On my street there's a dragon mobile. I saw it the other day. I saw a guy riding his bicycle in the direction I was walking and he was grinning from ear to ear. I kind of looked back over his shoulder and I didn't see anything at first, but then I approached and I saw this marvelous car that somebody had. Is it the gray one with like the, what do you call it, scales?

[27:12]

Scales. Yeah, I've seen that. I didn't realize it was a dragon. I thought it was a fish. Once again. The second thing I wanted to say was It's marvelous, dragons and elephants and turtles. I mean, your talk is so vibrant and wonderful and enlivening. I wanted to thank you for it. Thank you. And the last thing is, when you spoke before at the beginning about getting, well, you said at the end too, about getting back on track or doing Zazen and remembering. Again, I was brought into mind, brought to mind, the idea of the duality in how it was said. And I don't know if that's true, but it seems to me that rather than getting on and off, it's more that's the way it is. And when we penetrate that, whether we're concentrating or not, that feels closer to home for me.

[28:21]

It's not, oh, we're doing it wrong. I mean, I know it's so difficult to say, even saying this. Now you're seeing how hard it is, right? Yeah, it's hard when you... It doesn't feel to me, the more I'm listening, as being wrong or remembering or doing it right or anything like that. It feels contiguous. Everything feels contained in the same thing, and it's more the penetration, just like you used the word of Pushpin, you know, this penetrating with the sword or the pen or whatever, through to it, rather than changing. Or, now, today, I'll do it right. This is wrong. So, it was something that you said that made me feel... Yeah, well, I guess I just haven't penetrated. I mean, I definitely have that experience. I veered, you know. I veered, I better get back on.

[29:23]

But I think you're right in the ultimate sense, yeah. Just to depict it in literary form is to relegate it to defilement. Adu? I think there's a dragon's swallow behind you. That's right. I wouldn't have known, but someone pointed that out to me before. I'm sort of literal-minded. The other thing I wanted to say was, Well, I want to know if you have anything to say about this. When you flashed the the, I saw a T. Oh, that's a funny H-E, the. And then when you flashed the cat, I thought, oh, C-H-T, and then you were saying cat, and I thought, that's not an A. You know, and I think mine, yeah, mine is not, if you see it in this book, I read it, it really, it looks more like, somehow it works. I thought mine, I felt that way too, that the, this one doesn't quite look as much like Cat as this looks like the, but it's the way that I did it, I think.

[30:26]

I mean, it's the imperfect, but you get the idea of it. The fact that you did that. I'm not sure it is. It might be a good excuse for some of your enlightenment. Thank you. Marion. To complete those turtle stories, in the Chinese monastery on special days, they let the turtles go. I thought that that, yeah, it's a little bit of a flaw for us as Buddhists. The idea that you shouldn't let something go, you can't, I didn't want to take that too, I didn't want to run that one into the ground because really, it wasn't going to work. I wasn't going to make it the whole way. I forget your name, sorry. You said that the body tells the mind what to do.

[31:29]

I thought it was the mind that tells the mind what to do. Well, we do think that the mind, I mean, you know, in sort of karmic terms, the mind leads and the body follows or something, so that's true. I think what I was trying to say is, for me, with our practice, it's there's something that we're learning to do that's beyond our conscious mind. So how are we learning how to do that? One way to talk about it is that the body's doing it and kind of pulling the mind along in a way. Actually Suzuki Roshi refers to this story that I think, I can't remember where it comes, but when the cart doesn't go, which do you whip, the cart or the horse?

[32:37]

And in this sense, the horse or the ox, the horse is like the mind and the cart is like the body. And he says, there is a way to whip the cart. That's our formal practice. So, does that make sense? No. More Zazen. Adam? I wanted to say that Yeah, you did your bows. I noticed, or I got the impression that you're very, very grounded. That your feet, I don't think you bent your toes. Usually, there's some way of flexing your toes so you get up, but there was a way that you kept your foot flat on the ground. I don't know if you're conscious of that, but And I was just very impressed by your presence from the very beginning of your talk.

[33:47]

Thank you. I mean, I think for me, I don't feel so grounded. I'm very nervous. This is not comfortable for me. And so, I mean, I'm having to find some way of rooting myself in the sort of energy that that could be anxiety if I'm not careful. So thank you, that's very nice. I didn't feel particularly that way, but again, it's not all, I'm not seeing the whole picture, that's for sure. Thank you. Any more questions? Anne? When you were talking about the, well first, thank you for a really delightful talk. When you were talking about the unawakened men and the elephant, what went through my mind was the part that the priest recites during the precepts, the one that one verse, one something is the ten thousand things,

[35:02]

I can't remember, I can't hear the words. One phrase, one verse is the ten thousand things, the hundred grasses. Right. One dharma, one realization. Yes. So how does that go? Well, it's like Blake's, you know, to see the world and embrace it and be a person of whatever it was. But this is also one of the strongest teachings that we have is that, I mean, their error was in thinking that what they saw was the whole. But the way that the whole is through, each individual thing, because everything is connected to everything, seeing beyond the single thing to how it opens up the whole. And it's sort of the flip side, I guess, that's the awakening. He actually brings that up in the talk if you want to read it, he goes into the Ichi-nyo, the one act samadhi, where you do one thing and it's everything.

[36:10]

And that's how to transcend the particular, the true dragon. What I thought when I heard that, the true dragon is the true self, and the true self the self that's connected to the whole. And not to be afraid of that connection and think that we're going to lose ourselves because, one, the connection doesn't last very long and you're back in the small self before you know it, but just not to be afraid. Not to be afraid is really good. Ross, did I do this again? I didn't call on you. Sorry. And you're even on the upper ton this time. Thank you for your talk and your image of Dogen creating a necklace with all these jewels and they're all sort of placed in a particular way to convey the Dharma in a very orderly way and this other image of the box and having that whole abundance of teaching.

[37:24]

It actually reminded me of way, and my own sort of trap of being very kind of mesmerized by that collected, very clear, explicit way of expressing oneself in the teaching. And then the other way, which is, doesn't have that same kind of clear feeling, but it's still true and bonafide and inspiring. And do you, like you've met many teachers over the years in practice, and it's like a style thing, do you have a way in which we can really appreciate that more smorgasbord way versus that sort of clear, explicit, succinct way of teaching? Yeah, well it seemed to me it's about how do we listen to each other so that each person can find their way of Because, I mean, I would like to, I mean, a lot of, you know, I mean, I've been around very articulate people, and I didn't really know until I opened my mouth that it wasn't gonna come out that way.

[38:36]

But it just is different for me. And I mean, and I don't feel like I'm incredibly inarticulate, but I mean, I know what you're talking about. It's just, it's a different, there's these leaps and things. It just is a different thing. And I think that I have to learn how to bring that my way out, you know, so I think we have to find ways to encourage each other, not, you know, that there's not just one way of, so I agree, yeah. necklace versus this other one which requires a lot of patience and effort to kind of see what the teaching is. Yeah, well a lot of it again, part of what you're bringing up is that there's an idea of how it should be and then it's not matching up and then you're struggling with that little play, so.

[39:43]

Ed and then John. I was really struck by your comment about And for me, that's what I feel, that somehow my body is learning something through my practice. But I don't really know what it's learning. So that mystifies me. But I know that it's being effective. And I'm sort of wondering what you meant by that in terms of practice affecting your body, what does your body learn? To not move. It's really hard to say anything about it, but I think that's what I think it is.

[40:46]

What do you think it is? It feels like it's penetrating. it feels very deep, more than not moving, it feels like it's penetrating through a core that feels mysterious. Yeah, and so is it that it's each cell or is it that it's somewhere else? To me, it's kind of like each cell stops moving, and then your brain can't. Your brain, that's just more neurological activity. It's a physical, it's an event that's happening in the material world, and it goes along with the cells in your body. But it's pretty mysterious, I think it's really mysterious. I'm sorry, I can't say anything better than that about it.

[41:52]

John? Yeah, there's actually a follow-up to what Ross was talking about, and what pops into my head is the thing about the train jumping off the track, and it's just like, why get it back on the track? Maybe you just have to follow it down wherever it's going, and that whole kind of fixed notion about how it should be. Because I mean, again and again, But that's the dream train, the preconceived notion. To me, what I mean is, when you see there's a discrepancy between what's happening and what you think should be happening, which are you going to go with? Whatever it is. But yeah, I mean, I think Lois is right. It's a very dualistic image. But what can I say? I did my best, folks. Are we done, Paul?

[42:55]

OK. Thank you, everybody.

[42:57]

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