We're going to be studying the Fukan Zazen-gi, which is translated in many different ways but the universal promotion of Zazen or sometimes it's called universal recommendation of Zazen for all people. Another translation is rules for Zazen, but there's a lot of different translations. So is everybody in the right place? Is that what you want? I have copies of Fukan Zazen-gi for everyone and Matt just told me an interesting story. He went to Kikos this afternoon to get these Xeroxed on a harder cardstock so that people could keep them as a chat card. And when he went to pay, the man said that he wouldn't charge him for this

[01:04]

extra paper because, what did he say to you? He said it was the Dalai Lama's birthday. He said it was the Dalai Lama's birthday, but then he actually said it was the day the Dalai Lama ascended his teaching seat. So on the occasion of that, our Fukan Zazen-gi I think this is a sign-up sheet with a place for name and phone number and then six spaces for the dates of the six classes. So if you could put your name in there and check off in the first box for the first day of the class and let's keep them together just during the class we can pass these around. And I'll split these up. I think it's a really good

[02:15]

idea to get to know each other even a little bit and so I'd like everyone to say their name. It has become a kind of tradition in some classes to have everyone say their name before each class and I think by the end of the six weeks we maybe know each other a little bit better. So why don't we start with Kevin and it's up to you. You can say first and last name. That would be fine or just your first name. We don't have to repeat it after Kevin but just listen for each name. Susan.

[03:16]

Susan. Julia. Julia. Greg. Gary. Gwen. Carmen. Carmen. Jonathan. Jonathan. David. David. Ian. Ian. Martha. David. Greg. Greg. Paul. Greg. Matt. Matt. Linda. And how many of you are planning on or are here just for tonight because you happen to be a guest or... Alright, is there any other housekeeping kinds of things? Matt, did you have something you wanted to say? The head cook here asked me to make an announcement which is that if you would like to come to dinner before the class, if you're coming from outside and would like to come to dinner, please talk to somebody in the kitchen first so they can make sure there's enough food

[04:21]

and please remember to pay. We ask a $7 donation for meals and there's a donation box near the front door of the dining room. Thank you. Dinner's at 6 o'clock. dinner and class. So there's two people for sure and then some other people may, case by case, decide to do that and they'll let Lee know. Okay. Yes?

[05:24]

Any more... Oh, how many people are missing? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Here comes some. Well, we should get some more. Does everyone have one? If you have to share for tonight, we'll get some more for next week. Okay. So I just wanted to say what I had planned for the six weeks of the class. After we say our names, I'd like us tonight to recite the Fukanza Zengi and then this may seem unusual, but I would like to ask or encourage you to learn the Fukanza Zengi

[06:30]

by heart and to have some volunteers through the weeks to recite it. And one may think, how could I possibly do that? But as many of you know, by just reciting something over and over and over, at a certain point you realize you know it. And the advantages to having this kind of a piece of writing incorporated in your body is, I can't emphasize enough how helpful it is to be able to have it with you and draw on it when you find it will come to you when you need it. So with all the sutures that end up getting to be memorized just by chanting them, the first time I took a class of Fukanza Zengi, which was, I was looking at my notes, was 1977, and we were encouraged to recite. And at the beginning of the class,

[07:39]

I think it might have been a 12-week class that Rev. Anderson taught, there would be the recitation. And I didn't, this is not the translation, this is a new translation that's been worked on by both practitioners and scholars, and this is what we're chanting now, but I had memorized at that time another version of this. So I would like to try and redo it, but I think that's a little hard because they're so close, you know, I'm sure they'll get all mixed up. But I really would like to encourage you to take that on as a practice, trying to memorize this. And maybe someone might even be ready by next week. We'll see. So let's, because we don't have anyone who's memorized, has someone memorized this? Does anyone know this by heart? Yeah? Would you like, this version, would you like to try? Maybe. It's up to you. Maybe next week. Next week, okay. Alright, so next week

[08:49]

we'll, Kevin has volunteered. Is that what I did? So let's chant this, and I just wanted to mention about holding the sutra card for, we have a lot of people here who are in the practice period, and the sutra card is held like this, with the three fingers behind, and then the thumb and the baby finger make a little stand, like a little left turn, so that you hold the teaching of the Buddha, or in this case, the teaching of Dogen Zenji Buddha. You hold it upright, and if you're in service, rather than holding the sutra card down and looking at it down here, or even leaving it down on the ground, I've you actually hold it upright so that you can keep your spine straight. It would be helpful if you could pass a pen. Oh, of course. Here comes a pen. Okay, so Megan's pen goes back to Megan. Okay, sorry. So, in keeping with, in I think Catholicism, there's something

[09:55]

called Divina Lectura, or the Divine Reading. Is anybody familiar with that term? It's how you study. Is that the right term? Divina Lectura? Divine Reading? Right, exactly. So it's a way of approaching one's study. Lecto Divina. Divine Reading. So when you study, actually in formal study hall, and same with service, you're taking care of your posture and your breath and your awareness, and then with that focused and concentrated mind, you read without the mind of trying to grasp and kind of get it and understand it particularly, just allowing it to come in with this, with your posture being part of the entire study. Okay? So, for those of you who don't have your glasses or whatever, can't hold a card,

[10:59]

just, can everyone share? Okay. Well, let's see. Let's chant it. So in chanting, we would just, we wouldn't stop at the end of any sentences. It just is one continuous flow of sound. So the punctuation and so forth isn't emphasized. Okay? Would someone like to announce it? Okay. Okay. Okay.

[12:12]

Okay. Okay.

[13:31]

Okay. [...] Okay, okay. On your right palm, thumb tips slightly touching, straighten your body and sit upright, kneeling neither left nor right, neither forward nor backward. Align your ears with your shoulders and your nose with your navel. Rest the tip of your tongue against the front of the roof of your mouth with teeth and lips together, both shut. Always keep your eyes open and breathe softly through your nose. Once you have adjusted your posture, take a breath and exhale fully. Rock your body right and left and settle into steady and movable sitting. Think of not thinking, not thinking, what kind of thinking is that? Not thinking, this is the essential art of Zazen.

[14:38]

The Zazen I speak of is not meditation practice, it is simply the dharmagate of joyful ease, the practice realization of totally culminated enlightenment. It is the koan realized. Traps and stairs can never reach it if you grasp the point. You are like a dragon gaining the water, like a tiger taking to the mountains. So you must know that the true dharma appears of itself. So that from the start, dullness and distraction are struck aside. When you arise from sitting, move slowly and quietly, calmly and deliberately. Do not rise suddenly or abruptly. In surveying the past, we find the transcendence of both mundane and sacred and dying. While either sitting or standing, have all depended entirely on the power of Zazen. In addition, triggering awakening with a finger, a pen or a needle or a mallet and effecting realization with a whisk, a fist, a staff or a shawl. These cannot be understood by discriminative thinking, much less can they be known through the practice of supernatural power.

[15:40]

They must represent combat, the unseen and hearing, not an outstander prior to knowledge and views. This being the case, intelligence or lack of it is not an issue, meaning no distinction between the dull and sharp-witted. If you concentrate your efforts single-mindedly, that in itself is wholeheartedly engaging the way practice realization is naturally undefiled. Going forward is after all an everyday affair. In general, in our world and others in both India and China, all equally hold the Buddha seal. While each lineage expresses its own style, they are all simply loaded, sitting totally locked in resolute stability. Although they say that there are 10,000 distinctions and 1,000 variations, they just wholeheartedly engage the way and sobs and wryly behind the seat of your own home to wander in vain through the dusty realms of other lands. If you make one misstep, you stumble past what is directly in front of you. You are gaining the pivotal opportunity of human form.

[16:42]

You're not passing your days and nights in vain. You are taking care of the essential activity of the Buddha way, who would take wasteful delight in the spark from a Flintstone besides form and substance are like a dew on the grass, the force to live life like a dart of lightning and even instant vanish in a flash. Please honor followers of Zen, long and customary roping for the open. Do not doubt the true dragon. Devote your energies to the way that points directly to the real thing. Revere the one who has gone beyond learning and is free from effort. A forward looking enlightenment of all of the Buddhists succeed in the samadhi of all the ancestors continue to live in such a way and you will be such a person that your treasure store will open up itself and you may enjoy it freely. So in this class, I wanted to talk about

[17:46]

kind of the background of the text and also something about Dogen Zenji himself because some of you may not be familiar with him and I think to have a little bit of a background a general understanding of who the person is who wrote this and where the text itself fits into a Soto practice is what I hope to do tonight. So Dogen Zenji was born in 1200, January 2nd, 1200 is one date, although we celebrate his birthday on a different day, the 26th for some reason. But anyway, this is his 800th year, his birthday was, he's 800 this year. So there's been a lot of Dogen studies and Dogen conferences and events and I know Norman is teaching a Dogen, a selected Dogen, selected writings of Dogen

[18:50]

for a class that starts next week on Tuesday night. So this is the year to emphasize Dogen, I think. Now we are in Soto Zen, there's an understanding of who Dogen is that's now, just now and actually these last, in these last decades or so, the vision we have of who Dogen was and the role that he played has been subject to historical, more scholarly historical investigation. And many of the things that I took for granted about who Dogen was and his teaching and his relationship to his own teacher and so forth is now being kind of pulled apart through the scholarship, non-Soto Zen scholarship.

[19:52]

I think the scholars in earlier times were Soto Zen Dogen scholars and they had a more sectarian view of who Dogen was. So it's interesting, the first time I heard these things, it's like I found myself kind of like, I didn't want to hear it, no, please don't. It's like hearing that Robin Hood stole from the rich and stole from the poor and kept everything or something. You kind of, don't ruin my legends for me, but I think it is helpful to have an understanding that's based in not so much the myth, although the myths and the stories have a place just like poetry or any kind of myth or story speaks to our psyche and speaks to our religious life in a different way than just the facts, man. So how to balance those two things,

[20:53]

maybe not throw out everything, but at the same time have a balanced understanding. So there's a kind of legendary view of Dogen's life that I, for many years, took as the straight facts. So I'll try to weave together what the historical and the legendary, kind of how they fit together. So Dogen was born into an aristocratic family, possibly the illegitimate child of a woman whose ancestry went back to one of the emperors of Japan, and his father died when he was about two. And he was raised in this aristocratic milieu with a very good education,

[21:53]

was probably introduced to Japanese family, Chinese literature and poetry and Chinese writing at a very young age. His mother died when he was seven years old, and that one event was a major turning point in his life that he writes about. In fact, and this is one of those legendary things, but has impressed me very deeply at his mother's memorial service, when he saw, you know, when you light a stick of incense, there's two trails of smoke that come off of one stick of incense. It burns from both sides. And when he saw the two trails of incense smoke

[22:56]

going up and disappearing, he had a profound understanding of what was going on impermanence that went deep into his body, mind. And that losing his mother at that young age may have actually turned him, probably turned him in this direction of a spiritual life. He was being kind of groomed to be a court minister or some kind of maybe active in the government in some way. That's where they thought he was going. But at 13, he kind of left the family and sort of took refuge with an uncle of his who was a priest on Mount Hiei, that's H-I-E-I,

[23:57]

which was the big monastic, Tendai monastic place in Japan, which was a mountain that had a lot of different monasteries on it. And he ended up becoming ordained as a monk as a pretty young guy. So I think all that pretty much, you know, flows the importance of his mother's death. And he also felt that this was what his mother really wanted him to do, which is what he said to his uncle when he went to the monastery, that this was what his mother's wishes were for him to be ordained. So, you know, in some ways it parallels the Buddha's life. You know, that's what I mean by the legendary side of it. The Buddha, the story is that he also was, you know, being groomed to maybe be the king or head of this clan, the Shakya clan and so forth.

[24:59]

And his encounter with impermanence by seeing a dead person after leaving the palace compound turned him towards the spiritual life at a later age. So this kind of, never know how to pronounce this word, hagiographic, the kind of legendary story Anyway, these are woven together and they're parallel, or they are, they reflect each other. I have so many notes, folks. I have to see which one of these little tabbies is the one I want. Let's see. Not that one. So, after being on Mount Hiei, he found that this was not, I'll just do this from heart. I won't be able to find this now. He mastered, supposedly he mastered very easily

[26:07]

the Abhidharma Kosha. He read that very young, which is a scholastic work from India, very detailed. He was like really a bright young student and his, he had a burning question, which had to do with the Tendai teaching and the Mahayana teaching that we are already, we already have Buddha nature. We are already enlightened. And so his question was, so if we're already enlightened, why do we have to do all these practices and dazen and spiritual practices if we already are enlightened? He didn't understand that. And this was a burning question that eventually brought him, he left one of his teachers and began studying with a teacher named Miao Zen, whose teacher was a Zen teacher, different from Tendai, who had gone to China, Sun China, and was practicing Rinzai,

[27:11]

well, Japanese Rinzai, or Lin Chi, Chan or Zen. And that teacher had died, but his disciple Miao Zen was also teaching. And the two of them decided that they would go to China together, Miao Zen and Dogen would go to China together and settle this matter. Dogen wanted to settle this matter for himself. And Miao Zen wanted to go where his teacher had been to study. So they went to China and going to China in that time in the 1200s was very risky. It was, took a long time by boat and there was a good chance that you may not make it or be caught in a storm and things like that. So he set off with his teacher and that was where I want my date. But anyway, he was about 23, I think when he went there.

[28:12]

Or let's see, maybe he was a little bit younger, 21. So when they got there, there's different versions of what happened. And I think one of the versions is that he had this quest where he went to different teachers and sought, tried to meet various teachers and learn their Dharma and finally ended up meeting his teacher that he became enlightened under, Ru Jing. Now there's another more historical version of his life which basically said he didn't really do all that much traveling and make all these pilgrimages all over. He kind of stayed pretty much in one place. So I think the ideal is going off and searching and finding your teacher. But it probably wasn't quite like that. He maybe went to one mountain and stayed there pretty much the whole time.

[29:15]

There is some note that he made a pilgrimage of about two months to another monastery and then came back. So this is where the ideal and the actuality don't quite mesh. But as an encouragement to seek out a teacher, you know, you want to be... That is an ideal that can be an encouragement to you whether or not it was actually completely accurate. It probably wasn't that way that he traveled all over quite that way. So during this visit to China, he did meet like on the boat. He wasn't allowed to come off the boat right away because Myosin was able to leave because his master, he had Dharma transmission from Yosai or Eisai who had Dharma transmission from a Chinese master. So Myosin was able to leave the boat. Dogen didn't really have the right documentation.

[30:17]

So he stayed on the boat in the harbor there for a while. And he met up with a Zen master coming from a monastery who came onto the boat to buy mushrooms, dried mushrooms from Japan. And Dogen was this young kid, really if you think he's 21 or 22, he said to this teacher, was an old guy, he said, how come you're involved with buying mushrooms? Don't you have some younger person who could go and do that for you? And aren't you interested more in studying koans and sitting Zazen and studying rather than going off and doing this kind of mundane activity of going buying mushrooms? And that teacher just laughed and said, you don't understand anything about Zen. And that really took him aback. So this encounter with the true teaching which he felt he wasn't able to find in Japan through this, these actually head cooks

[31:20]

that he bumped into were a big influence on him. But still he hadn't settled the final question. And right at the end of his, he had decided that he was going to leave and the abbot of the monastery on Tien Tung, that's the name of the mountain, had died. And someone suggested there was a new abbot there would be very good. And so he went and that teacher was named Ru Jing. And when we chant the lineage in the morning, we call him Tendo Nyojo, Dai Nyojo, Ehei Dogen. And when we do the chant in Japanese, it's Tendo Nyojo. And in Chinese, it's Ru Jing. And he's also called Tien Tung Ru Jing for the mountain. Zen masters are often named after the mountain or the name of the monastery that they taught in. So his meeting with Ru Jing was,

[32:26]

part of the story is that Ru Jing also had a dream, a very strong dream about a foreigner coming that was going to be very important for him and receive his dharma. And so when Dogen, this young, bright monk, eager, smart guy came shining back, Ru Jing was supposedly, that he felt this was his disciple and their first meeting, they had a meeting of the minds. And Dogen asked if he could come anytime, day or night, to come and ask him questions. And he was given permission, which, you know, it's unusual. I think that point is an unusual point that Dogen was given permission to come, not in formal dress, like not wearing his okesa, the formal robe that you would wear to go to visit for a formal meeting.

[33:28]

He was told he could come at any time informally if he wanted to, like a father and son. So it'd be like intimate informality, but he was given permission to have that. Now, there's some sense that Dogen, he understood the written Chinese, but the spoken Chinese may have been more difficult for him. So he may, one other way of looking at this is that he may have needed some kind of remedial or more one-on-one contact with the teacher because he maybe wasn't able to pick up everything during a regular lecture, something that's a possible detail that's not mentioned by Dogen. So some of the main points of Dogen's teaching, which are claimed to come from his teacher, Rujing,

[34:29]

are the practice of shikantaza, or just sitting, as the practice that realizes the truth of body and mind dropped off, or shin, jin, datsu, raku. That's in Japanese. I don't know what it is in Chinese. Shin is body, mind, jin, or shin is mind and body, jin, datsu, raku, dropping off. Shin, jin, datsu, raku. And the practice of realizing shin, jin, datsu, raku is just sitting shikantaza, which also resolves, this is the other, one of the main points of Dogen is practice, realization. Practice and realization are one thing. It's one, it's like one word, practice, realization. Practice, dash, realization is one, rather than...

[35:32]

Another understanding, which is you practice, practice, practice, and then you have realization. Rui Jing's teaching, and Dogen's main emphasis in almost all of his writings in his masterwork, The Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, or the Shobo Genzo, these are some of these main points. Practice, realization, the unity of practice, realization. We'll get back to all these. Shin, jin, datsu, raku, dropping off body and mind. And shikantaza, just sitting, and Shobo Genzo. Shobo Genzo is the, it's the name of his masterwork, the Shobo Genzo, Treasury of the True Dharma Eye. And he also talks about the Shobo Genzo, the true dharma, being passed down unbrokenly from Shakyamuni Buddha through all the ancestors, down to Rui Jing, and then to Dogen himself,

[36:36]

Shobo Genzo, the Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, which he then felt he needed to bring to Japan where they didn't, he felt the true teaching was not there yet. Even though Buddhism had been there for quite a while, but he felt this Treasury of the True Dharma Eye had not yet come to Japan. And he took it upon himself, upon leaving China, to bring the Treasury of the True Dharma Eye to Japan. So I wanted to say a little bit about this relationship with Rui Jing and who Rui Jing was. Um... In this, when you bring to bear on the writings of Dogen and his own writings about himself and his disciples' writing about him, you find that if you look at them chronologically,

[37:38]

and they all have pretty much, the Shobo Genzo has about 95, what are called, fascicles, for some reason. I think it's from, you know, a group of, um, in Italian, a bunch of sticks together is a fascio? Anyway, I think it must come from that. Anyway, they're like chapters, but they're called fascicles. I've never heard the word fascicle used for any other work. I don't know, somebody else may have come upon that word for little treatises that are... But anyway, the Shobo Genzo has 95 fascicles, and we think of the Shobo Genzo as this masterwork that Dogen kind of did all of a piece. Because that's how we, it's come down to us, you know, there's these volumes that have been translated up the Shobo Genzo. But it wasn't quite like that. He wrote them piecemeal over his entire career. He died very young, you know, he died at 53. He was born in 1200, he died in 53. He came back from China at,

[38:40]

I think, age 25. So he didn't really have that many years of teaching and writing, and he wrote, he was very prolific. He wrote all these fascicles, 95 fascicles, and poetry, and other things in Chinese, smaller things. And he wrote and compiled something called the Eihei Shingi. Eihei... Eiheiji is the name of Dogen's monastery that he established after some attempts at different monasteries. Which means eternal peace. Eihei... Eiheiji is temple, so eternal peace temple. And he did a whole, very detailed rules and regulations of how you run a monastery and how you practice in the kitchen and in the monk's study hall and in the toilet area

[39:40]

and how you wash and how you fold your robes. And just, so he did, he was, if you think about having all the things that he wrote about in a pretty short time. So anyway, back to the Shobo Genzo, he, this masterwork was not written all in a piece or conceived of, I don't think, as one body that would be bound and put in. It was over these years, piecemeal. And our usual understanding, and my understanding before this kind of demystifying Dogen was that it was just Dogen Zen. It was one, he came back from China carrying Rujing's teaching and he presented it and from the time he came back on Japanese soil until his dying home, it was one thing. But actually, if you look carefully, just as you look at any other kind of person's work, it will change throughout the year,

[40:41]

throughout the years, according to all sorts of proximate causes and circumstances and political things and whatever is happening in the world really affects one's understanding. So Dogen's teaching is not like one flavor all the way through. And I think what the historians are doing now is putting together what was going on in Japan at the time, that certain things were written and politically and so forth, to see and see within these fascicles where his teaching changes throughout time. And it does over the decades. Disturbingly so. You know, there's a fascicle called Raihai Tokutsui that I'll just mention where he talks about the fact that on Mount Hiei women are not allowed on the

[41:42]

sacred grounds of Mount Hiei. And he feels this is just this deplorable practice. It's a diatribe against the established Buddhist establishment and these practices which he feels go against the Dharma. And then later on he changes his views about anyway lay and priest and women, you know, there's certain things that change over time. So we kind of want to, the ones we like, we want to think, well this is Dogenyo, but actually there are changes. The beginning of his teaching was more universal, you might say. It was directed to maybe a wider audience, lay people. And then at the end, and I think we can find this also in contemporary teachers, at the end, near the end of his life, he really focused on the monks and passing down very specific

[42:43]

priest-oriented, priest-craft things and ceremony. So I think in fact he goes so far as to say that I'm sorry to say this, but you can find it in his work, you know, that you have to be a priest in order to really understand, things like that. Whereas at the beginning it was very wide. Ben Do-wa, which is one of the, was the first thing we know that he wrote upon returning from Japan, is really it's questions and answers, the latter part is questions and answers about Zazen and practice, and it's one feels it's very encouraging that anyone can practice, and then later on it gets narrower. In fact, one scholar feels that these latter things, that it proves that Dogen was senile at the end, because there's such a difference. Yanagida Seizan, who's a very well-known scholar, who was also Rinzai,

[43:44]

feels like some of these things, just that's his way of justifying some of the things that he says in the end. We don't like to hear that about Dogen, you know, hey hey Dogen, we kind of want to keep our spiritual founder pristine in a certain way, but anyway, I don't mean to upset you. So the Fukan Zazengi where this falls in kind of Dogen's opus, his life's work, it's kind of interesting. Now, this particular version that we just chanted, this is a new translation of it, but this version is chanted in Zen monasteries daily. In fact, my understanding is that it was

[44:46]

chanted in the evening during Zazen, so you'd be sitting there facing the wall, and then someone would introduce it, and you'd begin to chant the Fukan Zazengi, and of course doing this day after day it would be memorized, you'd know it by heart, and you'd chant it while sitting Zazen. So it has a very particular place in the liturgy and daily practice of Zen monasteries to this day, Soto Zen monasteries. Dogen was the founder of Soto Zen and the other main branch is Rinzai Zen. There were maybe five main schools in China, the five schools that ended up, those lineage died out until there's these two main. I guess Obaku Zen maybe is a small school. But anyway, Soto Zen

[45:47]

is by far the major school in Japan and yet in the West, because of D.T. Suzuki I think for the most part we were introduced, the Westerners, Americans and so forth, were introduced to Rinzai Zen primarily in the 50s and 60s, so we were I think many people who read those books early on were imprinted with Rinzai Zen but Soto Zen is more prevalent. At any rate, in the monasteries Fukanza Zengi would be recited in the evenings every night. Now, in the early 20th century, in like 1922, there was another version of the Fukanza Zengi that was discovered and it was owned, the provenance of it was

[46:50]

owned by a colleague all of a sudden very recently there was this new one that was found and somehow or another it was not really studied or looked at, it was kind of kept in this beautiful, it's a national treasure, it's an autograph kind of, but it wasn't really studied or looked at and compared what was said in this one, what were the changes what's Dogen saying here and Karl Bielfeld who was practiced at Zen Center in the 60s and early 70s I think this was his dissertation where he took the early Fukanza Zengi and the latter Fukanza Zengi as well as other meditation texts from China and also other things that Dogen's written on meditation itself and he did a comparative study, which is what we're going to be looking at

[47:53]

I think we did order copies of this book I think it's in paperback, am I right? Yeah, it's out in paperback and we have some in the office if you'd like to get them, get one for yourself, but if you don't want to, I will be Xeroxing for you the comparative thing that he has very beautifully in the back here that's got the different versions on the same page and in bold what's the same and in italics what's different, so I'll be giving that out so you don't need to buy this to have the different versions, but this is his study of those versions historically, which is a lot of what my classes will be about, taken from this book as well as other things so you're welcome to buy it. Actually, how many people would be interested in purchasing a copy? Okay, I think there's plenty

[48:55]

in the office, so let's see, those of you who are never here when the office is open, maybe I can bring some here and someone from the office might be able to sell them to you, would that be a good thing to do, bring them to the class? A couple copies, those of you who aren't here during the day. So, the version that we chant now is called the, for some reason, the Vulgate version, Vulgate but it wasn't written in I thought it was because it was written in Japanese but it was written in Chinese and it's also called the Koroku version Koroku was the time the era Koroku and it's guessed that it was written about

[49:56]

in the last decade of his life about 1243 something like that now the earlier version is called they named it the Tenpuku version the Tenpuku version and that one that's the one they found the autograph copy is also called Tenpuku which I think is also the era when it was written and that was probably written in 1233 now this is an interesting point when Dogen got back from China what he said that he did and actually in this work called the Bedowa he said I wrote right when I got back from China

[50:58]

I wrote the Fukanza Zengi to bring to set forth this teaching that I received from China but he got back from China in like 1227 I'm giving you all these dates just so you can get it all in view so in 1227 this autograph copy is 1233 it's dated 1233, there's 6 years between the time when he stepped foot off the boat and when he wrote this earliest version, the autograph version, the Tenpuku version but he said and there's this in another writing he said I wrote it as soon as I got off the boat so there's some question, was there another version, an even earlier version that's kind of a phantom version because there is no copy

[51:58]

of it, it hasn't been found and it would have had to have been written in about 1227 when he first stepped off the boat and the earliest one we have, this autograph one is 6 years later 1233 so the question is was there even an earlier one that really he talked about, it was really fresh off the boat and where is that and is it lost and is this autograph copy, the 1233 one just did he just recopy that earlier one or is it different now in the colophon, where it has the date, it has the words that say composed composed by Dogen Zenji rather than copied by and so the feeling is that this autograph copy was a revision or a new version because it didn't say copy at the bottom, it said composed by so there's

[52:59]

conjecture or a very good possibility that there was this earlier version that we have lost that we don't have which may turn up sometime so so and that one is I don't know if you care about the name but it's called it's close to the Koroku, it's the Ka-Roku but anyway that one we don't have so it's kind of a phantom and then the Tempuku version we have and the Vulgate which came later let's see 33 to 40, maybe 10 years later so they reflect the changes that Dogen had about Zen practice, the Zazen itself this is the meditation universally recommended instructions for Zazen so this is the instructions for sitting Are there any questions about any of that? I was wondering if

[54:05]

it's just totally conjecture but if somebody had re-written or re-written something whether they were optimizing it or just copying it over if they were indeed the author of it would it just automatically say composed by I mean I think the from I'm not sure exactly what the characters are in Chinese but I guess there's because there was no Xerox machine when they just copied over then they would say copied by it would be a copy yes it would be a copy of so I think that was this distinction that composed was a different sort of that was the proof that it wasn't just a straight copy it was something maybe not a whole completely new but revised in some way so

[55:05]

something new in it now I also wanted to say that in China there were meditation texts that were around that Dogen probably saw and the main one is called Chan Wan Jing Gui Chan Wan Jing Gui So Cha Ni and if I could find my notes right I would tell you exactly what that means but it's basically meditation instructions Jing Gui is like Xing Yi or rules and this was kind of a popular thing that was known and was probably known in Japan perhaps

[56:06]

as well and what we will find when we look at the comparison of the different texts is that Dogen took verbatim from the Chan Wan Jing Gui many phrases many whole sections are just lifted right from this meditation text which was pretty well known and used. So our thinking of the Fukan Zazengi as being this is Dogen's true way from China from his teacher and he's going to bring it out it wasn't quite like that it was in the context of another meditation text which was well known and used and he was very familiar with but there are new things that he adds and he praises the author of it earlier in his career and then later on he says

[57:08]

the author of the Chang Yang Jing Gui didn't know anything so I have to put the story to rights so that's one of the things where he changes from early to late which gives one pause how was it that he had to so strongly break away from this old meditation text and these teachings in fact they call this one Dogen's Declaration of Independence because at the time that he wrote this second one he really added some new things and it was the same time in that he well going back to his history of what was happening with him when he came back from China he went back to Mount Hiei to his old temple that was there Kaminji I think was the name of it which was his teacher Myosan's old temple he went back there and stayed there for a couple

[58:08]

of years but things didn't work out quite so right and he ended up leaving there now there's conjecture about what didn't work out right one of the things is that here he was back from China and most people didn't go to China and study and he was from this aristocratic family, had a lot of connections but somehow he wasn't offered a post, there was a new temple being built, a big monastery complex being built and he there's some thought you know this is 800 years ago right but the scholars sort of pieced together that he may have because he visited somebody that he may have thought he would be the head, the abbot of this new monastery complex big monastery complex that was going to be a Zen thing that was going to study Chan but it was

[59:09]

offered to somebody else who had also gone to China and recently come back, it didn't go to him so there may have been some disappointment anyway he left Mount Hiei and went to a small temple that he the Keninji which was on Mount Hiei no? where is Keninji? Keninji Keninji it's not on Mount Hiei excuse me let me look at this so when he first came back I don't know if it's that important sorry let's see 1223 after Keninji

[60:19]

he resettled in Fukakusa so let's see when he first came back he went to Keninji which was oh here we go, it was under Tendai jurisdiction so it wasn't on Mount Hiei but it was under Tendai jurisdiction so he came back in 1227 and he had this certificate verifying that he had the inheritance from Mu Jing and he went to Keninji which was had been this previous temple he had been at which was under Tendai jurisdiction and Rinzai Zen was practiced there and it's unclear why he left basically in 1231 but he went there to a place in Fukakusa and he took over this monastery that wasn't being used and had a practice period

[61:19]

there actually and tried to start this Soto, you know there was this is the Kamakura period of Japan and Dogen is thought of as a reformer during this time there was a lot of it was a kind of a the teachings people felt were being lost not degradation but the decline in the teaching and the quality of the teaching and Pure Land Buddhism Shinran and Nichiren also were reformers during that time all three of them Dogen, Shinran and Nichiren with different kinds of Buddhist practices all as reforms came up at that time so he was bringing this he wanted to reform and bring the true Dharma back and so he established this place called Kosho Horinji this independent

[62:21]

Zen monastery that he started using the traditional Chinese style that he had learned while he was in China so this was a new thing and it's right at this time that he composed this 1233 that he composed an autographed right when he was establishing this new monastery in fact he wrote it the last day of the practice period at this little monastery that he started and this manual was presumed to be connected to this it was like a retreat that he had and they connected this manual the autographed one with that retreat so let's see just looking at all these things

[63:22]

so this is a kind of popular more like a popular preacher the connection that this had with lay people that this universal the universally recommended instructions or universal promotion of Zazen so it had a kind of popular wide appeal and that earlier one that he wrote had absolutely no impact on the Soto Zen establishment the Tempuku version was basically that was not the one that was looked at or used at all now I wanted to say something else about the history thing up until the 20th century Dogen we've kind of inherited this huge body of material translated things and interest in Dogen but Dogen was really not studied the Shobo Genzo was not even

[64:34]

looked at or studied by monks up until very recently like 20th century he was known as the founder of Soto Zen and revered as the founder and so forth but in terms of the way he's thought of now as scholar and religious thinker and the use of his language Dogen the way people talk now about Dogen's language in fact I have this quote from a philosopher who said see if I can find that this Japanese philosopher said regarding Dogen's language viewed from a philosophical standpoint Dogen's Shobo Genzo is matchless in its command of Japanese language and logic within the power with the power to realize the ineffable through speech and discussion

[65:36]

so his use of language now is looked to as being just the epitome of it he takes phrases Japanese phrases and turns them upside down and all around and sort of deconstructs them and reconstructs them if you read this doesn't necessarily this particular manual may not be the best example of that but if you read different fascicles of Dogen they're very very very difficult to translate into other languages because it's it uses Japanese in such a particular manner the idiom and so forth and we've heard this before in our in the in the years that in the last 25 years or so

[66:36]

we know this about Dogen but the previous centuries he was kind of unknown that way he was not read and not studied which I find pretty interesting and it's in the 16th 1600s there were two teachers I'll just bring this up one named Manzan and one named Menzan who began to take a look at Dogen and pulled out in fact what we know of Dogen in fact Shikantaza and Dropping Body and Mind and these things that we associate with Dogen are really from the 1600s to now that these things have been pulled out by these scholars in that period Tokugawa period yeah so we can't they were such big scholars and promoters of Dogen actually that we can't see kind of

[67:38]

around them to what what may have been there before they said this is what Dogen's main thing was this was his teaching so and they were also Soto priests so they have a kind of secular not secular sectarian view also that they may be trying to promote so these new scholars are trying to look at you know trying to get for example they can't find anywhere in Rujing where he talks about Shikantaza for example or Rujing's own writing that we have Shikantaza or dropping off body and mind or practice realization is one thing if you look at what Rujing wrote it's not to be found now there may be reasons for that because what we have are from his Chinese disciples and those things may not have been

[68:39]

paramount for them they may have not been the main things that they wanted to bring out whereas for Dogen they really meant they were the main things so it's hard to kind of reconstruct all these what is Dogen and what is the interpretation of Dogen or what is what is men's on and man's on can we get them out of the way to see and it's hard so let's see what else do I want to say so this Fukanzazengi the Vulgate one was part of it wasn't part of the Shogoganzo it wasn't part of these 95 fascicles it was a separate piece that was kind of tacked on to the work called Eihei Kuroku which was in Chinese and it was different writings of Dogen and some

[69:40]

and it's tacked on in a way that people feel like it was tacked on that it was originally written as a separate thing and was added on sometimes and then it was taken out again by men's on it was taken back out by men's on 1600 so it's now thought of as a separate work in and of itself but it was originally written in Chinese so for years it was part of a work but probably not originally written that way and now we have it back again in a separate work let's see let's see so I think I wanted to mention some other things

[70:49]

that Dogen wrote about meditation that are part of the Shogoganzo there's something called Zazengi Zazengi which is a very short piece and it's the word gi both in Fukan Zazengi and other gis has a lot of different meanings and it can be rules, ceremony, manner, mode, style, principles, and etiquette rules, ceremony, manner, mode, style, principles, etiquette, so when you hear the word gi, when we think, if you just call it rules it may it doesn't carry enough I don't think as the Japanese do ceremony, sometimes we talk about Zazeng itself as a ceremony the ceremony of Zazeng

[71:51]

so Zazengi is written there's a translation of it in Mununududra which is there's other translations of it rules for Zazeng there's also something called Zazenshin which is in the Shogoganzo there's Zamaiozamai which is the king of samadhis I think it's translated as which has meditation instructions in there there's also a poem called The Lancet of Zazen is that the proper translation? Acupuncture Needle, The Lancet which is a poem which is about, it's like Zazen instructions on the mind of Zazen so he wrote a variety of different things in Bendo

[72:52]

so we'll be looking at the two Fukanza Zazengis and the and the Changwan Jingwei which so much of Fukanza Zazengi drew from that we'll be able to see what was really traditional things and what was dōgen, the new things Zazenshin translated as Lancet of Meditation or Acupuncture Needle of Meditation so was this too much detail on all the text and all the things with that? did I did you find it uninteresting to kind of get bored? yeah

[73:52]

well I think what we'll do we have about 10 minutes or so, I think what we'll do next week is actually start with the text and it's broken into like an introduction and then kind of the body and then the end and in the middle there are very particular which I really want to go into carefully, very particular instructions for sitting about posture and how you get in and out of your posture, how you prepare he drops a number of things from that old meditation manual which I want to put in because I think they're they're very interesting about the eyes and eating and so my my emphasis more than on the historical thing but I did want you to see kind of how this fit in to Dogen's life I really want to look with care about meditation instructions and and also with the practice period

[74:56]

people who are sitting a lot to incorporate these the instructions and the admonitions really into your own sitting and then questions may come up from attempting to practice in that way and especially the whole thing and hopefully we'll spend a good substantial time on think of not thinking which are very particular things that are from Dogen and that which are meditation instructions which I want to look at together and then there's also just seeing in the language what all these there's so many references to koans you know like this part about a whisk, a fist a staff or a shout, those are all you know he's very literary Dogen, he's read extensively

[75:57]

and I think in Asian or Chinese and Japanese writings they'll reference in a word something that will call up a whole story and a whole lineage of teachings around that and to have that to be familiar with it it makes it so the depth it becomes very deep and kind of wide and deep when you read something like this you can hear the echoes of all the different stories and different teachers going back to Shakyamuni Buddha so I think it's very dense in that way, the references so we'll look at that as well Just one last thing and then are there any questions? I just wanted to go over the title

[77:03]

it's traditional to actually look at when you do sutra study and also with this supposedly you go word by word and I think with six weeks of classes we won't really be able to go word by word but this, I don't know if we have this in our library anymore, this was an early thing where it takes word by word and has the Chinese characters and all the different English for that particular character and then translations on this side done by about six different people G.U. Kenneth Roshi and Dr. Abe and so anyway, this was done in the 70s but for Fu Fu Kanza Zangi Fu means wide, general universal of all so I think this is universal wide wide, general, universal Kan is

[78:05]

admonish promote recommend encourage and advise admonish promote, recommend encourage and advise so you get this wide, general universal encouragement, advice promotion, recommendation wide and za means seat, cushion or sit that's the za and and there's a note here, it says originally it meant a level place for an altar or to sacrifice or to abdicate adopted by Buddhists for jhana or meditation so the word that we know as zen is the Japanese way of saying the Chinese word Chan C-H-A-N and Chan is the Chinese way of saying

[79:08]

the Indian word Sanskrit word jhana D-H-Y-A-N-A which was the word for meditation jhana it's a transliteration is it transliteration in Japanese? it's not the meaning jhana, it's the sound jhana became Chan became zen so that's where we get zen so za sounds like za was this altar that was used for meditation and then zen is this, it's sort of untranslatable, it's zen, jhana and then the yi, which I told you before, which I mentioned before yi is rules, ceremony manner mode, style principles and etiquette yi

[80:12]

g-i, yi is rules ceremony manner mode style, principles and etiquette so you can see where someone may want to say the universal encouragement sitting ceremony of sitting but the tendency is not to use the word ceremony there, but Tenshin-san read there's an article in the windmill about the ceremony of zazen which is a kind of if you wanted to look it up, it's in 86, no excuse me 96 spring I think, 96 or 97 spring maybe I'll, there's a shelf in the library of Dogen reference books that I'll ask Daigon to put that on but it talks about the ceremony of zazen

[81:13]

Rev talks about using, talking about zazen as ceremony and this yi I think it comes from this yi and we're going to be chanting it we usually chant it on Thursdays and I asked Rin if we could add it for either noon service or another morning service so we get more used to chanting it during this practice period when was this new translation adopted it was just this past year yes, there's been a translation project that the Soto Shu, the headquarters, Soto headquarters in Japan has been very interested in having a uniform English translation just like if you go to Japan there's a translation of the Heart Sutra that we chant, you know, kanji, zaibo and wherever you go it's just kanji, zaibo

[82:17]

there's not like three or four different ones, but in America and in the West I guess every group all the different groups did their own translation according to their teacher and the group that was there so wherever you go it's slightly different so there's this project to have a uniform English translation of these main texts so Fukanza Zengi, the Sanno Kai our meal chants the Four Vows the Heart Sutra yeah, all these different chants so this one just came out, I think we adopted it maybe two years ago so does that mean that all Soto Zen temples in the West are now using this translation? well, you know, there's a kind of controversy because when you chant something for the last 25 years you don't want to change it, you have an emotional or not even emotional

[83:17]

you know it, you like it, you don't need a chant card you can just do it so there's resistance to adopting these new translations which were done with all these scholars who were writing all these books on Dogen and Zen plus there were poets there Norman was there, and practitioners to get at what the actual meaning was and have it be accurate and yet beautiful and also chantable so right now we're in the middle of an experiment and Greenbelch I think is like at the forefront of this experiment where we've adopted them all except that we haven't done the Four Vows yet and we're chanting them and like Kevin knows it by heart probably a number of you also are getting to know it others of us have to use a chant card all of a sudden again so it's not actually happening yet and the little groups have different little groups, I think Berkeley is in on it and Shasta Abbey and Zen Center

[84:18]

and Los Angeles Zen Center some of the main Soto groups it's a Soto thing have these copies and I think some I remember one teacher who has a little group out in Pennsylvania, she said they're not going to go for this so she's just sticking with the old one yeah but some people hate them and some people really like them but I think the more you chant them the more they become part of you and the differences there's certain things, I'll just say like totally blocked in Resolute Stability that line used to be totally gauged in a mobile sitting right, and now it's totally blocked in Resolute Stability and that's you know, they spent a long, long time on getting those words and some people can't what do you mean totally blocked in Resolute but it has to do with the actual words that are used

[85:20]

and sitting like a wall and all sorts of Zen phrases that are meant to be just that so anyway, that's that's just because was everyone happy with the result, the people who worked on it, were they all happy in the end? were they all happy in the end? I don't think so I think, you know, there were some compromises and the scholars you know, they especially like with the chantability and poetic feeling and the scholars they would really hold out for something and you couldn't chant it just like, for example merging of difference and sameness so that got changed to equality so I think it's hard to please everybody okay, thank you very much

[86:20]

and we'll close the class the way we traditionally close Sutra Study with the dedication of May May I teacher May I May I

[86:38]

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