Well, good evening, everyone. Thank you for coming out for this cheerfully entitled class on birth and death. I know there's some competition on television today. I think there's a Blakers game, Warriors game, rather. And there's also the finale of the Big Bang Theory. Which one are you going to go to? Big bang, yeah. Anyway, we're going to begin our study of these two fascicles of Dogan that have been, well, these are the first things that I studied of Dogan back in the early 1980s.

[01:02]

And I think they were in circulation because the first translations that you get of Dogon that were of any quality were in the Eastern Buddhist. And they were translations by Masao Abe and Norman Waddell. And they paired these two. And so I read them pretty early on and Sojin lectured on them and I had an opportunity to study to a I forget, maybe it was a week or a five-day workshop at Green Gulch with Kategiri Roshi on these two, and it was a wonderful immersion in these two fascicles. The two fascicles are Shoji, which we'll get to in some detail tonight and tomorrow and next week, and then Zenki, which is total dynamic working.

[02:10]

and they both really touch on some of the same issues. Life and death, birth and death, the non-duality of them, and the particularity of them. And so, that's what we'll begin talking about tonight. Does everybody have a copy of the text? Did everyone get one from Heiko? Or you have one? Good. What I'd like to do to begin with, because it's only one page, I'd like to read this out loud. So, yeah. So I chose the two translations that I gave in the handout, whereby one is by Kaz Kanahashi and Arnie Kotler.

[03:22]

And the other was by Hubert Niermann from Shasta Abbey. And there's a number of others. There's a Nishijima translation. And there's one by Reho Masanaga. And they're all good. And there's the Abbey Waddell. The translation that Kazanani did is really similar to Abbe Waddell in content, and I think it's a little more fluid in language. And Nirman, if you have read that, I will say Nirman The Hubert Niermann translation from Shasta Abbey, the whole Shobo Genso is available online, either to read online or to download, and I will say it's very interesting.

[04:24]

His language is very interesting. It's a little more colloquial than other translations, but it's also a little more free than I'm inclined to go with. So I always, I mean, in looking at this, I read all the translations and I sort of compare them, particularly where there are places in which I may not have a good understanding of the language. I wish that I knew the Japanese. And there seems to be, there's some very long, good commentaries on Zenki, the second fascicle we'll study. a lot of commentary by Shohaku Okamura. And there's also a good commentary by Cohen Franz, who is a youngish guy who lives in Nova Scotia.

[05:30]

And he is a Soto teacher. But he references Shohaku Okamura. So those are good commentaries. And also, if you dig around, you will find two very good lectures by Sojin Roshi that were transcribed from talks that he gave, I think in 2008 in Chapel Hill. Again, they're both on Zenki, not on Shoji, but they both overlap. So that's a long answer to your short question. So what I'd like to do I want to read this, why don't you follow along and I will read this and just let the words sink in. Yeah, I'm doing shoji first. Yeah. And it's kind of an abstract choice.

[06:32]

They both deal with the particular and very broad questions. I thought I would start with birth and death and then move to total dynamic working. Which translation? This is the Kastanashi. Because a Buddha is in birth and death, there is no birth and death. It is also said because a Buddha is not in birth and death, a Buddha is not deluded by birth and death. These statements are the essence of the words of the two Zen masters, Jashan and Dingshan. You should certainly not neglect them because they are the words of those who attain the way. Those who want to be free from birth and death should understand the meaning of these words. If you reach for a Buddha outside birth and death, it is like trying to go to the southern country of Yue with our spear heading towards the north, or like trying to see the Big Dipper while you are facing south.

[07:38]

You will cause yourself to remain all the more in birth and death and lose the way of emancipation. Just understand that birth and death is itself nirvana. There is nothing such as birth and death to be avoided. There is nothing such as nirvana to be sought. Only when you realize this are you free from birth and death. It's a mistake to suppose that birth turns into death. Birth is a phase that is an entire period of itself, with its own past and future. For this reason, in Buddhadharma, birth is understood as no birth. Death is a phase that is an entire period of itself, with its own past and future. For this reason, death is understood as no death. In birth there is nothing but birth, and in death there is nothing but death.

[08:39]

Accordingly, when birth comes, face and actualize birth, and when death comes, face and actualize death. Do not avoid them or desire them. This birth and death is the life of Buddha. If you try to exclude it, you will lose the life of Buddha. And if you cling to it, trying to remain in it, you will also lose the life of Buddha. And what remains will be the mere form of Buddha. Only when you don't dislike birth and death or long for them, do you enter Buddha's mind. However, Do not analyze or speak about it. Just set aside your body and mind, forget about them, and throw them into the house of Buddha. Then all is done by Buddha. When you follow this, you are free from birth and death and become a Buddha without effort or calculation.

[09:44]

Who then continues to think? There's a simple way to become Buddha. When you refrain from unwholesome actions, are not attached to birth and death, and are compassionate towards all sentient beings, respectful to seniors, and kind to juniors, not excluding or desiring anything, with no designing thoughts or worries, you'll be called a Buddha. Do not seek anything else. So what's the point of this fascicle, actually of both these fascicles? I think whether we admit it or not, we are driven by the question of birth or life, death and nirvana.

[10:47]

For Dogen, the story is told that his first intimations of impermanence were at the age of seven when he was standing over his mother's coffin at her funeral and he saw the smoke drifting up from the incense that had been offered and that raised a piercing question for him. If we move forward, there's a leak. Do we have a towel? Oh yeah. Thank you. We move forward in time, I think about the story that I heard about Anne Aitken, Aitken Roshi's, Robert Aitken's wife, who was also a very strong Zen student.

[12:12]

She was also a student of Koen Yamada, who was Aitken Roshi's teacher. And he asked her one day, What do you think about death? And Ann said, why, it's like a bus that stops before you. When the time comes, you just get on the bus and go. Very powerful, just a powerful instruction, which evidently She was fortunate enough to actually be able to pass away that way. She had a heart attack and she died gracefully, easily, not clinging to her life. So Shoji consists of two characters. Sho means birth or life.

[13:16]

And Ji means death. So Sometimes we translate this fascicle as birth and death, or life and death. Sojin is very, he has a comment in one of his lectures, he strongly prefers, and I agree with him, that I like the translation of birth rather than life. what he says is that birth and death are two facets of the whole, the whole being life. And also what I noticed is that the way Dr. Abe translates this is birth dash and dash death.

[14:24]

So it's not birth and death in a binary sense, it's birth and death as one essential proposition. Does that make sense? So we can think of this in, I think what's being presented here is birth and death from several different perspectives and we will go into it in detail, but you can think of birth and death as one reality and at the same time as completely distinct. One teacher gives the example of a hand. that has five fingers.

[15:27]

They are completely distinct and yet they comprise this whole entity that we call a hand. Or if we think about it as photographs, uh, you can think about two photographs of, of ourselves. One taken when we are 12 or 15 years old and the other taken yesterday. They are one person in a sense and yet those people never meet. They can never occupy the same space at one time. So you can see birth slash death as an unfolding process that has an apparent continuity.

[16:30]

And it's like a movie, like a film that's made up of distinct images frame by frame. And each one of those images is a distinct and unique Dharma moment. So those are the two broad perspectives that we'll go more into detail about. Yes. One is the way of continuity or flow, a continuous flow, birth and death. And the other is distinctness, discontinuity, momentariness, what Dogen is talking about later when he says, birth is a moment with its own past and future, death is a moment with its own past and future.

[17:37]

And this is what is unique about Dogen is he does this in almost everything as we study him. He's constantly putting forward this not one, not two perspective that doesn't allow you to land on one side. But in the flow of life, We view these moments as immensely significant. You know, the birth of a child is, I don't know, it's one of the great joys of existence. It's something that we seem universally to celebrate. and the death of a loved one or even of someone to whom we are unrelated can be a source of grief, anxiety or fear, can be a source of emotional dislocation.

[18:56]

And I was thinking about it, dislocation is a pretty good word, it's a useful word because When the person is no longer what we call alive, we really don't know where he or she may be. We don't know where they're located. And much of the, I think much of the project that we call religion It's often this effort to answer that question, you know, what is a person's location after death? And that's even true to some extent in Buddhism and there are all kinds of different answers in these different Buddhist schools, right?

[20:02]

There are schools that speak more extensively of rebirth, of some continuity of energy that is flowing from one life to another life and there are elaborate theories about that, how it continues, what its relationship is to karma. There certainly are aspects of the Tibetan tradition that seem to point to something that we would consider reincarnation. they have identified teachers who are the rebirth of other teachers in the past and see that as an actual spiritual continuation. I think as in our school, certainly what Sojin teaches and what Suzuki Roshi spoke of and I hear in pretty common parlance in Soto schools is an emphasis on moment by moment rebirth.

[21:25]

So with each exhalation, we are experiencing a kind of death and with each inhalation we're coming back to life. And our mind also, we can see the momentary arising and falling away of our thoughts and feelings of circumstances and we pay pretty close attention to that. And we notice that also in this birth and death, at least the way I think about it, I mean I've often spoken of this in the Platform Sutra, Sixth Ancestor speaks of, he has his own version of the Bodhisattva Vows which we'll do it at the end of, we'll do the version we do at the end of this class.

[22:33]

His first vow where we would say sentient beings are numberless, I vow to awaken with them or I vow to save them. He says sentient beings of my mind are numberless. I vow to awaken with them. And what I extrapolate from that is that in my mind, there are all of these various sentient beings. And they can be roughly categorized in the kind of the buddhist cosmology of realms of the human realm, the divine, the animal, the hell realm, the hungry ghosts, and the fighting demons. Those are provisionally six realms, but really they're infinite number of realms.

[23:36]

You know, we have to include the frightened child, you know, the, the person who is awakening to his or her old age and infirmity, the person who gets angry when somebody flips them off on the highway, I think that's like a common sentient being that we have in our minds. And all of these sentient beings have, they have a lifespan of varying duration. Sometimes they last just a few instants. Sometimes they hang on for a long time. They come to life and then they settle back down and they're planted somewhere in our storehouse consciousness so that unless we've actually transformed that, the next time there's a stimulus, it'll come back to life.

[24:47]

But it has a lifespan. It's born and it passes away. What they talk about in this fascicle and also in Zenki is also the proposition in the third paragraph says, just understand that birth and death is itself nirvana. So nirvana is paired with samsara. Samsara means something like to flow on, to continue. And in early Buddhism, that's seen as painful.

[25:48]

That the very fact of continuation is Part of that fact of impermanence and continuing and being in the cycle of rebirth is kind of at the core of our human suffering. And we continue to transmigrate through the realms that I mentioned, whether it's in a rebirth that takes place over a number of lifetimes or even if it's a rebirth that takes place in a moment. And we continue on because we're longing for something or because we're longing to avoid something. So either we're turning towards and reaching out or we're turning away and pushing off. And the nirvana that's posited usually is the reality where transmigration and rebirth cease.

[27:03]

Whether this is what Dogen is talking about we'll get to. I think that's an interesting question. So let me pause there and see if you have any thoughts or questions. Here you go. The question about the guy on the highway getting angry because someone flipped him a bird. Continuing on in that lifetime, he suffers or she suffers. momentarily being upset by somebody doing that to them and letting it go, not necessarily the same suffering, perhaps a death that occurs and that life served its moment. The idea that these momentary births and deaths can happen this way. So when you were describing the ancient principle, ancient ideas of India that people didn't want to live on, It's not any different than us wanting to stop being mad that somebody flipped us off, or to let go of the person who's angry at his ex-wife, or to let go of these lives that no longer live, but we drag along with us.

[28:18]

Yeah, I mean, it's a matter of degree and perspective. and scale, perhaps, but they're all part of the same process of either clinging or pushing away. Other thoughts or questions? So let's go sort of paragraph by paragraph here. So the first paragraph presents two propositions. Proposition one is, because a Buddha is in birth and death, there is no birth and death. I'll make sure I'm reading the right translation here.

[29:27]

Yeah, and the second proposition is, it's also said, because a Buddha is not in birth and death, a Buddha is not deluded by birth and death. So let me read you a couple of other translations. This is Nirman, who says, because there is a Buddha within living and dying, life and death do not exist. And in response to following was said, because the Buddha did not exist within life and death, he was not infatuated with living and dying. And then the third translation is Abe and Waddell, Since there is a Buddha within birth and death, there is no birth and death. Since there is no Buddha within birth and death, you are not deluded by birth and death.

[30:31]

Okay. So before I lay out some proposition about this, does anyone have a sense of what these two sentences mean? It seems like they're making birth and birth, it's kind of saying that it doesn't exist in a way. That's how I, especially the last line, or the line where he says, It almost feels like he's negating or saying, or maybe saying, it doesn't exist. Okay. Someone else? Laurie? if I see the...

[31:50]

I guess that's the second thing. I'm not caught. Because I'm not caught by my problem. I'm not caught in the delusion of my problem. I'm not caught by my problem. They seem to be two slightly different angles. Andrea? And because we don't think of Buddha as being within that static idea of life or death, we don't get caught by it.

[34:02]

I just wanted to ask or wonder if, because we're using the word Buddha, We understand that he or she is only living in this moment, so birth and death aren't relevant. It's only that moment. So that whatever's going on, the Buddha is involved with that. Birth and death could be the activity of birth and death, but it's going to be one or the other at the time. Well, you know, my copy of the Eastern Buddhist that I made, that I Xeroxed years and years ago, uh it has uh sojin's notes scribbled into it and uh where it says buddha he's got it, he was writing in pencil, it was so frustrating.

[35:05]

He has written over that Buddha nature, which I think is very clarifying. If you think of, if there's Buddha nature in birth and death. So, was there any other, Ron? Okay, well that's, yeah. What's your name? Paul. I remember it's something, I think Sojin said during a talk a few months ago, he was relating some anecdotes, somebody asked, somebody, what happens to Buddha nature when you die?

[36:08]

And the answer, what happens? Nothing happens to it. But I think that that's important, that it's sort of inherent to Buddha nature, that it's not really something changeable. leave out your last word. It's not really something. And I think that that's the implication of the second proposition. So let me read you the note. It's interesting. It says, remember, these are the essence of the words of two Zen masters, Jashang and Dingshan. Let's see if I can find it here. Jashan, Kasan Zene, and Dingshan, the full dialogue is found in the Xingte Chuangtulu, it's one of the records of transmission of the lamp.

[37:09]

While walking together, Jashan and Dingshan were talking. Dingshan said, no Buddha within birth and death is in itself no birth and death. Jashan said, Buddha within birth and death means no illusion about birth and death. Basically, pretty much the same, right? So they went up the mountain to see the master Dame. And Jashan said, we're unable to decide which of our views is closer to the truth. Dhame answered, you should go away and come again tomorrow. The next day, they climbed up the mountain again, and they put the same question to him. Dhame said, the one who is close does not ask. The one who is close does not ask. The one who asks is not close.

[38:14]

So, Dr. Abhi's comment, Dr. Abhi is really good. Dr. Abhi's commentary said, while both Jashan and Dingshan refer to the idea that samsara is nirvana, Nirvana is samsara. The former, which would be Jashan, speaks of liberation from birth and death, emphasizing that Buddha is not apart from birth and death, right? So Jashan is saying there is a Buddha within birth and death. You got that? The latter, indicates the same liberation more clearly, emphasizing that birth and death is absolutely birth and death without respect to Buddha or anything else. In the above episode, Dame says that one is close and one is far, but Dogen judges them as equal.

[39:29]

emphasizing the non-duality of samsara and nirvana, and especially to show that not hating samsara and not desiring nirvana is the attainment of Buddha. Break time. So take a five-minute break. The question, you want to ask it again?

[44:31]

I just said, but it seems like there's some relative in the absolute within this, that even that first paragraph. I think that there is actually, as I was thinking about it a moment, I think that the that the first proposition is the absolute is representing the absolute in the sense that Buddha nature contains everything. It's, you know, it's like what happens after the Big Bang. And then the second proposition is about the particularity of each moment, the particularity of birth, the particularity of death, of the perspective of that perception of discontinuity. Does that make sense?

[45:33]

Linda, yes. Yeah, so Laurie and I were just observing It's just that old song, form and emptiness, emptiness and form. I said it was the old song we sing, form and emptiness, emptiness and form. So yeah, I mean really, we're always seeing creative or moment-by-moment imagery to say Form is emptiness. Emptiness is form. Form is form. Emptiness is emptiness. And it reminds me of another Zen story, which is what I really want to bring up. You know the Gyaku-Jo and the fox? Yeah. So the question that he's asked that causes him to turn into a fox, let's see if we can remember it correctly, he's asked,

[46:38]

Buddha free from cause and effect. No, it's an enlightened being. An enlightened being free from cause and effect. And he says, yes. Right. Which is not the correct answer. Evidently, you know, but we don't know that actually. It depends on how you like being a fox. In unfolding, it was correct. I mean, let's just let's not get too silly. I'm not the one to say that. But anyway. So, because the way, the reason I say it's... But do you know what the answer is, though? But the answer is, he gets a correction. But do you know what that is? What is it? Can you quote it? Yeah, I think so. I think the correction is an enlightened person does not disregard cause and effect. Yes. So... It does not completely an affirmation So, in fact, if you transpose that dialogue to this statement, he's only half wrong, Hak Yakujo.

[47:51]

An enlightened person is free from cause and effect, and an enlightened person doesn't disregard cause and effect. In other words, you've got to have form, you've got to have the emptiness, and which Okay, should I stop? You can stop. I want to read, but I want to refer, so what's going on here also, you could look at it through the lens of Buddhist philosophy, through the lens of Nagarjuna, who was the founder of the Madhyamaka school, one of the main philosophical schools of Buddhism. And Nagarjuna was just drawing from earlier Indian philosophy, but he had four propositions, which he was known for. So, all things, dharmas, exist. That's the affirmation of being or it's also the negation of non-being.

[48:59]

That's the proposition of birth. Second proposition, all things do not exist, which is the affirmation of non-being and it's the negation of being, which is death. Second proposition. All things both exist and do not exist, which is both the affirmation and negation of birth and death. And the fourth proposition, all things neither exist nor do not exist, which is neither affirmation nor negation, neither birth nor death. I think that the implication of this in terms of Buddhist philosophy, the context for it is like, is that All of these propositions rest on the ground of emptiness, which is that the propositions themselves are impermanent, constantly changing,

[50:08]

which is what we'll get to in Zenki in total dynamic working and constantly in motion and they're impossible to pin down. So that's a context for looking at this notion of birth and death that Dogen is presenting. So I want to read on to the next paragraph. Those who want to be free from birth and death should understand the meaning of those words. If you search for a Buddha outside birth and death, it will be like trying to go to the southern country of UA with our spear heading towards the north. That's a pretty clear metaphor, right? Actually, eventually you'll get there. if unless you believe in the flat earth, in which case you will fall off into the void.

[51:10]

Or it's like trying to see the Big Dipper when you are facing south. You will cause yourself to remain all the more in birth and death and lose the way of liberation, of emancipation. If you're looking for Buddha outside of birth and death, if you're looking for Buddha outside of your life, you're never going to find him or her. And that's true. That's one of the perceptives, but it's also true that Buddha is, when it says Buddha is not in birth and death, allows each moment of our life to be distinct. There is a moment of birth.

[52:18]

There is a moment of death. Each has its own before and after. Which what I'm saying? Well, actually, he says it in one, two, three, four, five. No. Five. Oh yeah, 5th Araf. I was miscounting. That's right. Yeah. It's a mistake to think, to suppose that birth turns into death. Birth is a phase that is an entire period of itself, with its own past and future.

[53:24]

For this reason, in Buddha Dharma, birth is understood as no birth. Death is a phase that is an entire period of itself, with its own past and future. For this reason, death is understood as no death. because I believe that the context is that all of this can be seen. It's a matter of shifting contexts. I think it's by implication. I don't know. What does anybody else think? Somebody other than John. Excuse me. Yeah. Go ahead. Coming up, we have the boat metaphor, and those things involved in the life of the boat are included.

[54:26]

Boat metaphor is not in this passage, is it? It's somewhere in the second one. Maybe it's in the second one, yeah, yeah, okay. And so that discrete moment contains the boat, the water, the steer, the sail, the wind. And then there's nothing outside of that. In the next moment, the boat is in flames. There's only the boat in flames. That's not necessarily death, that's just the boat in flames. I think this is where he's going with discreet moments containing no only their own existence. So let me read you another verse which comes from another quite related fascicle of Dogen's Shinjin Gakudo, which is really terrific. I don't know if people have read that. Shinjin Gakudo means learning the way through body and mind.

[55:27]

And there's a poem in it which says, life fully manifests its function and death fully manifests its function as well. All within the limits of great unbounded space. For they are both the moment by moment manifestations of a sincere heart. Which is, that's beautiful. But does that speak to what you're asking? No. Okay, I'm not... Does someone understand what Ron is asking? Because I don't think I'm understanding it. You say that you can disregard, you can ignore the nature of disregarded, not counted, not included, because each moment is a discrete moment. Okay, I get that point, but I don't see where Dogen actually says something. Well, let me read you the first three lines of this poem again.

[56:51]

To me, this is crystal clear. Life fully manifests its function, and death fully manifests its function as well. Those are discrete moments, all within the limits of great unbounded space. within the limits of the limitless space. Right, great, unbounded space, right. That's, you know, in Cos and Joan Halifax's translation of the Heart Sutra, what they use for the translation, the word that they translate, we usually translate as emptiness, is boundlessness. And that's very useful. To me, that's also, I think, that's one perspective. But I don't want to get into an argument about that. Yes, that's where I was going. It's like, what I want to know is what relevance does this have for you?

[57:57]

How is this alive to you or not? What we've been talking about. And also, how has it inspired you in your life? Well, I will say I've been fortunate or unfortunate to have moments where it was not clear to me whether I was going to live or die. And in those moments, the moments themselves, I found them there was not any fear in them. And I don't say that with any sense of aggrandizement. It just, it wasn't there. Afterwards, when I contemplated, there was a lot of fear and a lot of anxiety.

[59:02]

But in the moment of actual the actual arising or the approaching of that place, that was just a moment of unfolding reality. And I felt able to accept that. I think that it's really interesting. One thing I remember is a teaching of Katagiri Roshi's that he talked about a lot. He talked about emergency case, right? And what he meant was, what will you do in an emergency? How will you meet that situation? And what Dogen, this instruction, Shoji and Senki were both presented to lay followers.

[60:14]

They were not presented in a monastery, they were presented in another setting for lay followers, and he was trying to share a practice that he felt could be instructive to people in their lives. So I'm curious to hear other... For me, the word more important to me than the word instructive is the word consoling. and the conflict of birth and death is dukkha. This is where we have much of our suffering. And so, for me, he's offering some type of consolation here. And that's what I search for in terms of my, really, feeling of the text.

[61:24]

I love the, you know, in this, that last line of the verse from Shinjin Gakudo, for they are both moment by moment manifestations of a sincere heart. That contextualizes what he's trying to get across to me, Peter. Yeah, I think we've actually stopped just short of the consolation pieces.

[62:44]

So the next paragraph is consolation. Just understand that birth and death as one thing is itself nirvana. That's really trying to get you to shift your mind. There's nothing such as birth and death to be avoided. And there's nothing such as nirvana to be sought because it's right here. Those are those moments, those absolute whole moments. You can't avoid the wholeness. No. But the last paragraph, the last two paragraphs, we'll get to them in more detail. You don't have to analyze or speak about it. You basically just need to I just think, well, actually, it says in it, just throw yourself into the house of Buddha. That's one of the greatest lines in Dogen. Just throw yourself into the house of Buddha, or just fall back into the arms of Buddha, and you can trust that.

[63:50]

That's consolation. And then he tells you there's a simple way to become a Buddha, and he explains it. It's pretty simple and straightforward. It's not abstract at all. It seems that he's saying that if you're longing for something outside that moment, that's where the suffering is. Yes. Just be here and don't suffer. Right. Well, as my teacher, Lori, has effectively drilled into me, you know, when I'm complaining about something, she's, you know, she'll say, you're suffering because you want things to be different from how they are. And reluctantly, I have to admit that she's right. Now, which is not to say that there's some things that are unacceptable or that we don't have to accept in the world.

[64:53]

We do not have to accept the ruling of the court and the legislature in Alabama. That's not acceptable in our world. But we also, in a sense, we have to realize it's not a matter whether they're acceptable or not. We have to realize that's what's happening. What is the appropriate response? We always need to have an appropriate response. It's integral to this moment. We can't leave it. Right. We can't pretend it's not happening. And, you know, it's like I think it's part of my Jewish personality structure. It's like when I fall down in the mud, You know, somehow my genetic programming has me roll around in the mud, say, I'm in the mud, I'm in the mud, I'm in the mud, instead of just like, stand up, you know, brush yourself off, you know.

[66:01]

What? Yeah, but that's because he wasn't Jewish. He found himself there. But then you have, this is a digression, then you have Lehmann Pong's daughter. When Lehmann Pong falls down and she throws herself on the ground, he said, what are you doing? She says, I'm helping. You know, that's one of the great Zen stories. But yeah. I'll just ask everybody, either this is something interesting or it's really sort of stupid what I'm going to ask you. But I was thinking about a really concrete everyday thing that I could put in here where it says birth and death. And I thought that tonight we had a dinner. So I'm kind of substituting pleasure and pain, like something we like and something we don't like.

[67:05]

Tonight we made a dinner. Andrea's with me at my house and we made like the best soup that has ever been made. And we had a loaf of acme bread. And I was eating that soup and that bread and I just didn't want it to stop. And I've had a problem with this my entire life that I don't want the eating part to stop. So I don't know if I can finish this question. Maybe you can finish it for me. So how could I apply the teaching that we've looked at so far to, as if it were birth and death, like wanting to keep on having that food and being deluded by birth and death because, you know, I don't know, does this, can somebody see his connection? Because I only saw connection for like a fleeting second. Does anybody else see it for more than five seconds?

[68:07]

You think there's no Buddha when you're having that moment. Say it again. You think there is no Buddha when you are doing that, when you're having that experience. You mean when I'm wanting to eat more? That's non-Buddha. Yeah. You want to get rid of that feeling and get back to Buddha. It seems to me the first cake you're eating is a real rice cake, and the one that you continue to eat is not a real rice cake. The picture of a rice cake. Your imagination of what you just ate carrying on. It's true, but there's also, in Dawkins' wonderful fascicle, A Painted Rice Cake, said only a painted rice cake can satisfy hunger. That's another perspective. But, yeah, okay. I don't even know, I'm already confused because this is a big, this is a big question for me about eating and ceasing, eating and ceasing to eat. Like, or whatever we're attached to.

[69:08]

So would, huh? Maybe this line don't, do not avoid them or desire them. Yeah, great advice. Well, I mean, I don't know, I should probably stop. Yeah, I think so. No, I think that's, I really think that's right on. Yeah. What do you think is right on that type of question where you're bringing it into? Yes. Oh, the question is, um, thinking about, uh, pleasure, pain, desire. I think for me, the question, what I hear in that question and what I apply to my own life is, what do I really know about impermanence? You know, am I really ingesting the reality that I know that that pleasure is impermanent?

[70:14]

which means I can, you know, and can I really enjoy that soup right then? It's hard. And, you know, I don't say it lightly to you. I think that's a real simple question that you're asking. And I would say it's very easy for me to formulate it that way, but all of us, in one way or another, I think, as John was pointing out, all of us get caught on that, those kinds of questions. It happens to everybody. And we're constantly, and that's why Dogen, the reason Dogen has to give this talk is because he was talking to people who, their yearning, our yearning is for the Dharma, to understand that, to be able to take it in and to be liberated And the real process of liberation to me is waking up in the moment and recognizing the way my mind is working.

[71:20]

And then asking, do I have some agency here? Can I, you know, am I stuck here or can I actually choose another direction and feel okay about it? I think that's part of the training. And it's bizarre, actually. Sometimes, like, you know, there's part of me that after 35 years still has some resistance to come down, to get out of bed and come down into this room. And I would hazard a guess that almost everybody in this room has had an experience like that. Right, right. And yet, when I do, and I come, and I sit down, I find I'm at ease, and I have to ask myself the question, what's going on here?

[72:32]

What is the nature of this resistance? It seems so deeply imprinted, but that doesn't make it real. It just makes it a deep human habit. Ross. At the beginning of your presentation, you were talking about birth and how we celebrate the birth of a child and death. very similar. And then I started thinking about in Zazen, the bell rings is the so-called birth of a period of Zazen. And when the bell rings in, especially during Sashim, are we mourning the end of that period?

[73:34]

Or not? We've got to be celebrating when the bell rings, especially on Lake Zao, more often than not. Not always, yeah. So that's kind of this. So it's not a permanent thing that, for me, that birth It's still a celebration of life. It's that lovely meal. Yeah, I was talking... Yeah, Dan. I have a question. I think the part here about death is death, birth is birth. It has its own period. It's very similar to the discussion Yeah, in fact, it says basically the same thing in the next paragraph of Ginjo Koin, I think.

[74:36]

So here's my question. There seems like there's something missing. So in the moment, that is, that moment when you're eating the soup and enjoying it, that has its own past, has its own future in that moment. when one frame of a series of photographs turns into another thing. Because that seems to be where the summary comes from. Capture where you were and how it changes. It's when past and future merge. Yes, I think that's right. Past and future. What happens when those become actual? Right, and I think that this is why I kind of presented this first. Because I think that the perspective of Zenki touches on that.

[75:37]

It touches on that fluidity and how we look at that because it's talking about total dynamic working, that things are always in motion, not stuck at a moment. We say that the moment of putting down the spoon or the moment of your griping about having to go down to zazen are just true expressions of that moment, and then we can say, okay, it's okay to gripe and go on to the, okay, I'm over that next thing, each moment containing itself. And because I was grumpy about going to zazen doesn't mean I judge myself or have to reevaluate my practice. I tend to feel that way, what you're saying. And I think that as we talked about somewhat in the mindfulness class, there's a tension within Buddhism about, there's a tension about afflictive emotions, whether

[76:51]

whether in the Mahayana perspective we fold them all in to our moment-by-moment experience as Buddha nature, or whether in, say, certain readings of early Buddhism, and I really want to be careful not to generalize, there certainly isn't a kind of valorization of being done with all afflictions. never affected outside of your reality. They don't arise. They don't arise. It's not that you negate them, they just don't arise. Yeah, I think that is. Well, I think that's the way it's proposed, and I think we have some philosophical differences about that. I must say, I was actually just reading yesterday, today,

[77:54]

Therefore, there is a dialectical extinguishment, even in early sutras. Right, and also you see, even in the story of the death of the Buddha, you know, it's not that there wasn't pain. And, you know, he had, some serious intestinal distress that took his life. And it was painful, it was clearly painful. Yeah, Peter. I think I have a proposition about the soup. Okay. Which is that the enjoyment, the complete and utter and thorough enjoyment of the soup and one's desire for the soup Say that again? Okay, who agrees with that? I think he's saying like,

[79:07]

There's a line, death is the mother of beauty in a famous poem by Wallace Stevens. He's saying that that enjoyment is associated with him, can be associated with the very fact of impermanence. Yes, that's true, okay. But it's also, but I just would put out there, the taste of that spoonful of soup itself as it comes into your mouth can be an awakening experience, can be as great a joy as you could ever have. Just the bursting force of flavor and texture and all of that. They don't interfere with each other. Yeah, I'd like to speak to something that Ross was alluding to.

[80:41]

You know, because I was just at a memorial ceremony for my oldest friend who died a year ago. He was a Zen practitioner and we had a memorial and we installed his ashes at Tahoma Zen Monastery. And I was pretty, I just felt unsettled for several days before and I was there and I just wondered, well, how's this going to be? And when I walked into the zendo, and it was like day four of Rinzai Sesshin, so everybody was really, their energy was really there. And Hirata Roshi was there, and he read a beautiful poem, and as soon as I sat down, I just felt this great relief and this great sense of being there and this peculiar mix of grief as people were weeping and tears came to my eyes and also joy that there was so much love in the room at the same time and celebration

[82:06]

of who my friend John or Tanzan was slash is, and those things were arising together. So, I just, this is a comment on what you were saying. It's like, yeah, I mean, generally, birth is a joy. Generally, death is grief. All of our feelings are much, much more complex than that. And I think the feeling of eating the soup is much more complex than that. And that complexity is, to feel that, is to be a Buddha. So, without wearing this thing, I know that after the first couple of spoons, Because it was so good, I was immediately thinking about, oh no, I'm going to finish it and it's going to be over, and feeling anxious about whether I should go get a second when I finish it.

[83:10]

So it was complex. I wasn't just enjoying that moment of the beauty of the soup. You had moved away from time. So the Buddha is this and the Buddha is that, but I was having experience out of my own karmic complexity. Can I get free of that by saying, oh, what would Buddha do? You might, you know, but it's also, you could just, you could also, I mean, I don't, I'm not, I don't want to problem solve, but it's also like, oh, there I am. Yeah, right. Yeah, Helen. I think what we're going to do is set, set clearly here. In birth, there's nothing but birth. Accordingly, when birth comes, when pleasure comes, face and actualize pleasure.

[84:13]

So if you were to stay fully with that experience in your mouth, that sensation, instead of follow that karmic pattern, oh my god, I need it more, you're telling it right here. I think it's in, how I read this is the constellation and it's the intention of Dogen to help us let go. And when we're in these struggles, like you with the taste of that soup and the anxiousness there, whether Dogen is successful, I don't know. I'm very ambivalent about Dogen. But I think his intention is to offer a vision of the Dharma that helps us have faith that Buddha is there Thank you. In the last few minutes, I know there's a number of people who haven't spoken.

[85:16]

Is there anything that people might want to say or ask who haven't spoken yet? This is a much larger question. I'm sitting here with the paradox of him saying, do not analyze or speak about it. And he's analyzing and speaking about it. Yep. Yeah, I came to that this afternoon. That's the next week's class. But no, we will talk about that next week, I think. It's worth talking about. It's... What? Well, but analyzing and speaking about it might be death. You know, it might be killing it. You know, who knows? Yeah, so let's get to that. Any other people who would like to say something?

[86:18]

Yeah, Andrea. Whatever we do, it's a beginning, it's an end, and then it's something in the middle. It's just going around and around and around. But we get stuck because we walk. Well, yeah, so I think that'll be interesting to get around to, so to speak, when we talk about Zenki, total dynamic working, because I also, in my mind, I visualize that as circular.

[87:24]

And we have to see how we think about that. So any last thoughts from anyone? Well, let's close with the Bodhisattva vows.

[87:39]

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