He's a meteorologist in philosophy. He's a ritualist as a practitioner. And he continues to be the appendage meteor teacher. But it's not a demonetary that includes some literary practice. And he empathizes that vision that keeps the thing that you receive when you regard it as a given or a fondness, known as a fondness that keeps the thing it was kept, unlike Japanese. Actually, all he's saying is that Chinese must actually keep the Hindu down like that. And that's exactly what he's saying. Because then, you know, me, Chinese, you know, he's not much of a Buddhist. He's not much of a Buddhist philosopher. He uses the language and so on. He talks about the lineage and so on. But it's really just the Hindu institution. And, as you might guess, someone like Nodeng, who's a priest, and for that,

[01:08]

If somebody's saying, we have a reform movement that is three phases inside the monastery, and we have the cultural prestige of Chinese Buddhism. China's always been the first with cultural prestige. And you can do with that to the point that the democracy, the military government, as well as the court, is very supportive of each other. And you may do important business, important jobs. That's good. So that's another side. And then, where it's just there, you still get Donald. This guy doesn't fit either of this. Radical philosophy for the ritual. He participates in both, but he does it in a new way, a new kind of thinking.

[02:11]

OK. I would like to hear a possibility about building as a Japanese . . . So what do you think? Can I let them talk? Well, think about some of the major elements in Dogen. In Dogen, silence them and ask yourself how they might fit in to the myth, complicated myth that they're looking at. Yes. Well, you know, I was talking about H.I., a person that has been in that, and I'm hoping it's trying to answer the problem of the way they're going to write, and I think that's just something we need to understand about what it really is, that we as a team don't do these facts.

[03:18]

We're barbarians. So how, how? Yes. . Yeah. What strikes me is that Dogen's great doubt is actually a great doubt of everybody's for a long time. He didn't make that up. That great doubt, whether he actually had it or not is another question, but it's expressing of exactly the situation of Japanese Buddhism in this day, like everyone is finding. What are we doing now? Not only have you been told that by Javi, not to come with us.

[04:19]

Well, one of the things that I wanted to cite is that in Chogoden, though, there are testicles that dwell at great length about Javi's, about taking ordination as an essential practice and as a guarantee. awaken not otherwise well and there's a lot of emphasis on so all actually all of the elements that you described And I haven't yet mentioned about the radical philosophical issues because it's so obvious. But all of the issues mentioned, all of the major topics that are hot in Japanese men find the top notion.

[05:31]

It isn't that the trouble gets set off. Again, . But they all find it. It just does the same thing better. Yeah, very . Yeah, quality. So . Well, doing something better can be different. I'm just thinking that the poem definitely started with how the Malaysian, his epitome of how to popularize, not quite the right way, but his effort to bring it back is the ordinary.

[06:32]

And that's like the hallmark of the poem. It's an effort to make a complete conscious practice. Mm-hmm. It's moment by moment events. Something like the way you were talking about the three mysteries are actually part of the practice. Another form, what you might call a less symbolically elaborated form, maybe. Yeah, I'm sorry. So I have a struggle.

[07:34]

But I read, I actually met Dogen before I read, before I thought he created all that stuff, really. Then I read the Chinese, I thought, hey, Dogen did all this stuff. So I'm kind of searching here to find what your point is about the community, what Dogen's doing, and see if we have community. But when you say that they're saying the same stuff, uh... Same phrases. Same phrases. So it's using vocabulary. Using vocabulary. They refine and sign up. And they stop phrasing the vocabulary. Right. It would. Yeah. It seems like there's a lot of them saying, using vocabulary, and saying the same thing. In other words, it depends what you mean by saying.

[08:47]

Yeah, or the same thing. Yeah, I really should say, I don't see if they read the agenda in a great way. Oh, yeah. Because they think that the Chinese are saying more, aren't they? The opposite of what they're saying. Isn't that kind of telling? that he's so interested in prophets that they don't talk about? Doesn't that suggest to me that he's not exactly saying the same thing when he's using the same vocabulary? I'll leave you to it. I'll leave you to it.

[09:49]

It's a revelation that I... I think that's something you would say to have to be careful about that, or it's something you should do to people at the time. Also, the idea of him being a popular writer, popular writing is the idea of having to sort it out. He went off to live in the mountains, after all, before he came to life and left. So, with the more you talk about why can't we have this, because it's kind of like you want to popularize it. You know, again, he went off to the mountains and he talked to his family. So, that's a big problem. And don't think about it. You need them to say it's good. You need to think about it. Yeah. Well, going off to the mountains is not unique to Japan, really. And the model that all the people in the Common Critic period were trying to popularize is not. That is one model that people have tried to apply to this period.

[10:55]

But I suggested that that's not a very good model that restricts something like danger. We may have tried that at some point early in the year, but it would be more interesting doing it in an African community by the end of the year. For popularization, and someone else said it may not be the right word, but accessibility for practitioners, whether monk or layman. Some way of translating the structure of the problem into practices that way, where you can just get started doing them. You don't have to master the system. You can start with the answer of the system. And now you wake up in the morning and you say, well, how did it behave? Or how did someone believe when the doctor behaved today?

[11:55]

That attitude towards teaching people, I think, is shared, whether for laymen or for monks. And you said something about the Japanese character. I haven't mentioned the Japanese character. I'm very shy about explaining people who are legally going to face the national territory, like the Americans do this, or Westerners. Let's do it in the West. Well, we Westerners are like this, and the Asians are like that. And I would feel it's a little bit better with Chinese and Japanese, but still, I'm I'm not interested in character, I'm interested in intellectual context. What's the context at a particular time in a particular place? Whether you can find that in this place, you seem to get into the same situation again and again and again, and therefore we could talk about some continuing characters, another issue, but potentially at this time, during the participating and having a conversation about Japanese, then it's a certain place in Japan, not because it's native Japanese. comes out of a historical accident as much as anything else. And that involves the question of how to behave as a fetus, more than it has in other places, more than it was in contemporary folks.

[13:06]

Even though they had the same ideas, right, of the inherent foot in nature and all this other things, it's focused on a sense of urgency of figuring out what to do with that. It seems to me, peculiar to this time, it seems to me it's produced people like those And the Chinese do the same thing. I mean, they would suck up to the government by saying, and we can protect the nation. They were a whole structure to that, like the Minokyo, right? About how the religion is a religion that will support politics, found the empire. I mean, that's not a Japanese, particularly Japanese association of secular and sacred power.

[14:12]

Right, yeah. And I think Dick Bacher probably had some idea about that. Yeah. At least at the state level. I don't know about the federal level. I'm sorry. What would you say would be the finding that the dungeon falls? I'm not sure that I have one answer to that, but one thing that I think has not been... I think we can understand it better, actually, than some historians of Japanese Buddhism or Zen Buddhism, and that is Dogen was a Vinyamax, among other things. He was interested, like Eisai, who he studied at Senriji, and like other people in his day, interested in a ritualized form of life through which you could express Buddhahood. In other words, the question, when you get up in the morning, what do I do now?

[15:17]

The Buddha has an answer, a set of concrete answers. And he found in Chan Monastir's routine, he could have found it in Japan, but I think it is probably more powerful for him because he was going to the source at then. He found there a lot of rules and regulations and behavior patterns that he could take as a model for a Buddha-like, a practical Buddha-like. There's a very interesting chapter called ,, the comportment of a practicing . The comportment, it's something like the comportment of a practicing . Yeah. Monastic practice, a ritual practice, a comportment .

[16:18]

But it means not just action, but regulated action. That type of action . And in a way, that title suggests a lot to me. I mean, it symbolizes a lot to me. It's about . that is less interested in the tensho type thing, but then gives an insight into the nature of the mind, to take that for granted in a way, that, look, that's our premise, that the mind is enlightened. And our issue is practice. And for practice, I have a tradition that has been sanctified. In other words, I'm not making it up. It's been sanctified by the people who understood that their minds were with it, that they were lived with, and have lived it for generations. So, we can trust it. You look at the Fendoa, you know, and he says, why do we use our genes? He doesn't say, because of the nature of the mind, you go off into some kind of philosophical thing about no thought, and he says, because all the Buddhism ancestors have track and good traffic.

[17:30]

That's enough reason for that. And if we take that as in life, well, I think Part of it was that he was a ritualist, and he combined that, unlike someone like Asai, who was more shy about really going for Chinese Zen. He went wholeheartedly for Chinese Zen, both his practice, contemplative practice, and his literature. So unlike the other people teaching Zen at this time in the early phase, he brought in all the wisdom of the stories, and precisely the language he's talking about. He brought in all the stories of the patriots, and you know, and all the quran and started teaching white literature. This was the law of that community that he was trying to create. He was trying to recreate a community that had this faculty and this understanding as expressed in this body of literature and not in tendized philosophy. And that combination of being very interested in the monastic reform and in this new literature, a new way of teaching through story

[18:36]

and example is, I think, one of the things, two of the things that, you know, that combination is going to make them very unusual among these really, than that. Yeah. Yeah. And he said, if you see a mountain, you know, [...] And now, your last bit, sort of think of that last bit. I just wonder if I first record that food, whether it really comes out. You stand out. You don't stand out as you are necessarily. I think there are two points to your question.

[19:39]

The first one I think is untrue. I mean, whatever I said, I know what I said. I think of it today in the moment, and I say the first one is untrue and the second one is true. That is to say, that he didn't say anything rude, I think is untrue. He said something very interesting. The way he put things together, even if he got vocabulary from China, and he got ideas from the from the indigenous Japanese indigenous tradition and so on, he put it together in a way that it was probably never put together before or since. He's a genius, but he's a genius at some point. Even if all the pieces were there, geniuses have to work with pieces after all. That is true. I mean, and therefore it's untrue that he didn't do anything new. On the other hand, it is true that he wasn't noticed. The people didn't read the Shoko Genza, and no one said, oh my God, we have a religious genius in our midst. He just founded a couple of temples and died, and had disciples who kept copying his books, but not broadcasting them, not writing commentaries on them, not making them a central part of Japanese medieval Gen culture.

[20:56]

And then, in the 17th and 18th centuries, they began to work on this material. and brought it all out and became one of the greatest minds in Japanese cultural history. So Soto then began it. So there are two stages. First, he becomes recognized in Soto then. His work gets studied and he gets talked about. And his ideas get talked about a lot. And then, in the 20th century, he gets recognized and investigated with. Not just a sort of grand Buddhist now, but a Japanese philosopher and Buddhist figure. And he gets put up with the greats in Japanese history. And now, increasingly, you see, he's being put up with Nargajuna and Vasubandhu and Tsongkhapa.

[21:57]

I mean, he's one of the best-known Buddhist sages, rightfully so. And when we have more materials, more carefully transcribed materials and stuff, I think they'll take off. Because it's so much better when we're just at the beginning. I read an article quickly about that a lot of the monastic practice that we think of as being sort of characteristically then for Chan. is actually sort of characteristically Chinese, and in particular with Chan, what's his whole body of literature and full emphasis on transmission of, you know, . But the thing that I keep, the question that I keep, have been wrestling with for months now is this question of, you know, what you say about his emphasis on ritual practice and that kind of thing, and the background context of

[22:59]

He's trying to make the Vinya accessible through math ordination, that kind of thing. Sheds a lot of light on, you know, the system in which Dogen was operating. But still, it seems to me that this formulation of six new precepts that went out and got so popular, I think, shortly then, do you think that that was particular to Dogen, that he innovated that, or that maybe it was kind of floating around someplace else and he grew upon it? Yeah, I don't recall you asking that before on email, and I still don't have the answer. Uh-huh. Yeah, that's what I'm trying to... That's what I've been trying to keep together, where I'm pulling on... I mean, I sort of know where the, you know, the three refugees are standard, and the three pure precepts appear in the Dhammapada, and in the literature, and that kind of thing, and then there's these... That's what I'm trying to... Then there's this group of ten precepts that come from a particular Chinese sutra, but to put them all together in that particular way and make that... sufficient for monastic ordination seems to me to be a rather radical step.

[24:06]

And when I said that to various of my instructors, some say, well, do you really have any reason to believe that Dogan started that? Or was it something that's floating around that he grew upon? And I do think, from what I've been able to tell, that he grew upon it from China. You know, I mean, it definitely has Chinese precedence. But kind of my impression is that It was an innovation of his. I just can't prove it. I can't help you. But I'll keep it in mind, and if I can, I'll talk about it. Okay. Have you talked about it? Yeah, and he said basically that, you know, Dogen didn't really talk about his own coordination, and the only things that in the only writing books that talk about precepts mention only these 16. And you don't know. So I'm looking at the 10 moral actions and the 10 novice precepts from the Vinaya and the Brahmabalas.

[25:12]

I'm trying to pull all this together and sort that out. But it's still kind of murky. But I do think, I do suspect that he got it sometime. But that's what he says, and I'm willing to believe him. about how it was understood there. We've got a lot of stuff in China, how it was understood there. Yeah. I have the impression that, from reading Avicii Suzuki, that when Dolvin took the philosophical, maybe the psychological stance, from China. He actually morphed, turned it more into what we say in the West, idealistic, than any other time. And I have that feeling myself, kind of a sense that there's rest, this war-mind-only feeling in Sokoh as I've experienced over the last 20 years.

[26:14]

Then in... Well, then I, then in a, in a... Well, that, basically, then I... Oh, I see. But you said he turned something from China. Right. And what was it in China? Well, that it was more grounded, had a more sense of the concrete material world than... And I'm just curious as to whether... I was never able to find that after I left. I went to someone else's house, and then I didn't know where I was. So it's probably bad news if I talk to him all the time. A lot of people have that impression that those in the... Yes, well, I think that this was a quote from George Chalmers. Wouldn't you expect that from me? Those things show up. I'm sorry, there's no mind.

[27:16]

That would make a more no-worldly. the idea that the phenomena is all that exists. There's no actual world beyond the phenomena of the world. If it is in some place in the universe, there is a substantial existence of the world beyond the phenomena of the universe. And that's where we are. There is a conventional reality of the phenomena of the universe. or a substantial world? It depends on how you want to call it substantial. But a difference between phenomena and a material world, a world that is in terms of structure, for example, the economy structure, which is not part of our community.

[28:30]

We're getting here fairly deep. And I would just, I myself would be hesitant to see a tropical distinction between Dogon, whatever it is that he's doing, I'm not sure I understand it, and... something called Chinese Zen that had a different perspective. I think there's quite a range of stuff going on in Zen. One of the things that's different about Dogen, and it's important to bear in mind, is that although he's borrowing a lot of stuff from China, the genre in which he writes, the syllable genzo, has no precedent. That's what it says. Literally no precedent. Has virtually no precedent in China. Zen masters in China particularly do not write the kind of discursive arguments that Dogen writes. They do comments in poetry. They make clever remarks. They write poetry. They do comments on poetry. They tell stories, and so on. But they don't sit down and write extended essays on themes, like ,, unpacking their understanding for the reader.

[29:47]

That's something different. So when you say, well, what is the metaphysics of or or something like that, it's very difficult. You have to construct it for them. And it's very difficult to say what Dogen's metaphysics is, but the difficulty is different. He says too much, in a way. It's very hard to put it together to figure it out. It is a complex, sophisticated, or just sophisticated, difficult world view. Anyway, we can read it. It is accessible. Of course, it's working on accessibility. Yeah, he's trying to explicate the principles of a religion, both philosophical and philosophical and ritual.

[30:53]

I don't know, I don't have a a view on that, and I was trying to watch it, and tried to scroll it down. I mean, one of the things that strikes me, the common thing with that in terms of Japanese vision, is the first text we write, the Bendo-wa, you look at the introduction of the Bendo-wa, it's very pungent. There, he talks about meditation as entering into a samadhi, right, the yiji, the yama, and then he goes into the standard, in a way, Japanese did his pungent vision of the world from the perspective of the big picture. Read that introduction to the Bendo, or before he writes the historical part, when he talks about the Giji drama. There, I think, is a gap.

[31:56]

You don't find that kind of stuff in, you know, he wasn't getting that out of the Chinese literature. He's getting that out of his Japanese train of thought. He dropped that style, the talk. And he takes up much more of the Zen vocabulary and Zen style. of talking about the world. And he dropped the Gigi Yuzanma as the name for his medication. He starts talking about scum, I guess. So one of the things that he might say, although, as I say, I haven't practiced monologuery, is that he moves towards a more fully articulated Venn style of talking about the world. Maybe in part because he's getting Zen disciples. He's getting these disciples who have known him, the dhammas, to the people who have read Zen texts. I'm sorry, even if I'm talking in their language, you might call it his native Zen language, rather than trying to broadcast that to Buddhists.

[32:56]

All right. All right. My own feeling is some things stay the same and some things change. And I guess I don't have a It is said one might specifically believe in Zen Buddhism. I don't have a sense that enlightenment is a single statement that you have or you don't have. And so he had some kind of understanding, and he worked on it, and he did do it, and he expressed it differently, but it's probably the same thing. He did. I think it's, in my mind, it's very difficult to think that what he did is that he either changed it or that's the truth.

[34:04]

I think it's a very complicated thing that involves culture and something beyond culture. I have a related question. Over this whole period we've been talking about, for us to explain as what the community is. Over the period of Japanese history? Well, the transitions from... Oh, the Kamakura transitions and... Right, from China to Japan. Oh, from China to Japan. The basic understanding of things that were known to the community. And I guess that we're learning new developments. Obviously, you discussed a lot of different ways of practice and different thoughts. But what about the actual truth or relevance? So I have trouble stepping back from particular systems or types of works in which I would say what it is that people believe was the basis truth.

[35:13]

So if we look at China at this time, Materials are dominated, and Chantai materials, Chinese Chantai materials, are well-known. There are some Chantai monasteries. They're rediscovering Chantai, and they write a commentary about Chantai. So you've got at least two models. I mean, apparently you've got the Theropteric model, which is quite different, and it's not very popular in China. It wouldn't become popular again until the Yan Dynasty, and the Mongols brought it from China. So this occurred there. at this time, the way of talking about the world in China. And finally, it's somewhat different because they're using, they're coming out of two different places. Whether you can get behind that and say there's a Chinese way of talking and there's a Japanese way of talking, it's a question that people have played with. And some people talk about, you know, models for the way we talk about it, the kind of youth branch model or function model, these sorts of things. often talked about that is the Chinese have a world view, whether Buddhist or otherwise, a world view in which they have a digital reality that manifests itself in this world as phenomenal.

[36:24]

And we are a part of that. And the process of the Tao and so on is the expression of that manifestation of it in three times. And the Japanese don't have that model. If they have a much more phenomenalistic model. Now what you see is what you get. And The hidden world is another world of spirits or something, but metaphysically, they're phenomena. And they don't think that human beings have these deep roots in the hidden world. But those are such abstract ways of getting so deep in the psyche and the culture that's dark down there. I mean, I don't say that you have more light. You have less light. And a lot of it is you have to smooth out a tremendous amount of it. It's quite abstract, modest. But probably a couple of answers make it so. as they reveal it. I'm just shy about that way of going. I'd like to stay on the cliff. Waiting around in the shallow end.

[37:26]

That's my question. They're getting deeper. Or did they already go as deep as they're going to go and close? deeper in the understanding of the different conditions? You know, deeper in the analysis and come up with new ideas about, you know, I don't know if you'd say that you don't like to go that deep. Well, I think they go deeper. Well, one thing that's often said, right? I mean, I can't help but be very nice. One thing that's often said that's different is that the Grampians took the notion of the visual enlightenment to an extreme. Whereby, shortly after making a talk about Capulet Nation, Agatha Goddard, all these friends, and somehow, inherently, we have good ways, but, but, and then, you know, and the Danica, they took it to an extreme.

[38:28]

such that they, they, this is called the Pondaki cross, or the original enlightenment cross, which is prominent at this time, can die in the entire world for the sake of reality. Perfect just as it is. Not just that we have a potential to become buddhists, but that phenomenon, just to say it's living, in all their multiplicity and ambiguity, And that Buddhism is the celebration of that in some way, rather than in what way is, again, that question of what do we do now. And it's often criticized by modern people. It's famous now in the photo, too, that it's been criticized. But that kind of worldview is a denial of the truth. It doesn't take care of the economy, the inclination, morality, dependent origination. It's a kind of... best of all possible rules, and it's the difference between what is and what ought to be. It's distinguished, and it justifies the status quo, both for ourselves as individuals and also for the government.

[39:36]

There's no room or no rationale for action of any sort, spiritual action, except upon a critical level, as it belongs. But that it expresses something in Japanese culture, Japanese religion, that is very defeated and contribute often. a desire to affirm the immediate reality, just as it is the idea of Christmas. And that there's less of a tendency, even though the instruments for doing it are in Chinese, there's less of a tendency to push it to that end. What do you say, that's going deeper? Or perverting it, or whatever. I mean, that's the odd side of it. So, One example of that would be the famous re-translation, you might say, or re-interpretation of the Nirvana through capacity to all sentient beings of the Buddha-Nature. I'm going to quote it again and again, and I'm going to talk about how to study the Buddha-Nature fully, because the Buddha-Nature said all being is the Buddha-Nature.

[40:44]

It took it from the potential within a human being to a metaphysical vision of the Buddha-Nature, as the activity in the world of the Buddha-Nature. And some people will celebrate that. Abhay Massal will celebrate that as, you know, the pinnacle of all Mahayana non-dualistic thoughts. And then other people will criticize that as a lot of the problems that happen in Greece. That it celebrates what's here now, whether it's the 18 people in Nanjing or whatever. As somehow, of course, you can play with it. But I think To be fair to Dogen, however you interpret that, it's clear that he doesn't, he himself doesn't interpret that as justification for not dealing with it. It's good to make sure it's practiced. It doesn't exist outside of practice. He's really a practicizer. And he's much more interested in what do we do Lunchtime?

[41:48]

You can pass it on. I'll work 15 minutes overtime. Time and a half, I think. I think you have a question for Michael. Why doesn't he tell you that in the early Maccabees, or the Indians, or the Chinese and Chinese? Yeah, it's a difficult question. We certainly have terms that are cognate, like patata patata. The Buddha nature is a translation, usually in English, in the sense of a Chinese word, force. And that term itself was in, you know, he translated Buddha nature. It was very often written with a character meaning lineage. It's a homophone. depending upon this radical, if you use a heart radical, it's one, if you use a woman radical, it's another. The same, the homonym, right? And when it's written as a lineage, we're talking about a term that's very ancient, medium, that is in Buddha-gota.

[42:55]

Buddha family. And it's from the very earliest Mahayana. The texts say, we are members of the Buddha-gota. That is to say, unlike other forms of deities who listened to the Buddha as though he were a stranger, we belong to his family. That is to say, we are his descendants. And that was one of the original meanings of a Bodhisattva. It's somebody who belongs to the lineage of the Buddha and will, by his vocation, inherit the property of the Buddha, namely, omniscient. So it's a way of talking then about being part of a condition that accepts Buddhahood. as a goal. And having the potential, because you are a member of the family, to achieve that. And Buddha grows with us. It's a very important thing. And it's very Mahayana. And it gets mixed together. Just because of the accident, when you write the two characters, it gets mixed together. You have this metaphysical term, matrix, which we sense would be something like Buddha card, Buddha myth.

[43:57]

This is a term that comes up all the time, although not very effective. But you also have, along with the idea, you've got the idea. It sort of, in a way, carries the family back to a cremated space of an embryo. So those ideas are very early in my life. They're not really there. Thank you very much. I think it has opened up a lot and I think there are a lot of questions and comments that were lost in the rush to present all the material and Thank you. Yeah, we don't know whether to clap or not.

[44:49]

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