So that you would meditate 24 hours a day, literally. And they would have, they actually had a little, like chin rest, like a little board that you would put up in front of you so that in case you fell asleep, you wouldn't fall over. Because of course you would fall asleep. But the idea was that they wouldn't lie down, and they would make an effort to meditate 24 hours a day, continuously for months and months at a time, or years, or whatever. So, they were doing this one night, and the teacher, who was an old guy, used to walk up and down, you know, he'd show up once in a while, I guess, probably he was taking a nap, instead of going to bed, and get up and come into the meditation hall, and he would walk up and down, and yeah, he had his, he had his, he would walk with slippers, he would take off his slipper and whack people who were sleeping, to wake them up. And the story goes that one guy next to Dogen was sleeping. Of course, when I hear next to Dogen, I always think about the guy who goes to the psychiatrist

[01:04]

and says, my friend has a serious problem. So maybe it wasn't the guy next to Dogen who was sleeping, it could have been, I don't know, but Dogen says it was the person next to him who was sleeping. And the teacher came by with his slipper and whacked him, and said, you know, you foolish person, you know, to realize the way it means to drop your body in line, how could you be sleeping? In other words, you're so attached to your body, you're sleeping, why would you need to sleep? You know, if you really were, knew what this was all about, you would never fall asleep. How could you waste the precious moment, you know? So he hit him, and when Dogen heard this, he felt that he had the experience of dropping his body in line, and he felt that this question that had plagued him all these years since a young boy, this practice question, was resolved for the rest of his life.

[02:04]

So this was Dogen's big moment. Even though he describes it, we know about it because he wrote about it, but he writes about it very modestly, he doesn't go on and on about it. He just says, just that, no more than that. And goes on to talk about other things. Anyway, so for Dogen, this idea of dropping body in line, meaning, of course, as we all know, our attachment to body and mind runs deep. I mean, it's serious. When somebody, you know, threatens you, you jump. Even if you say, well, I'm not attached to my body at all, still, when somebody tries to punch you in the nose, you flinch, because it's very deeply rooted in us that we are attached to our body and our mind. And so, to drop body and mind, I would say, myself, doesn't mean that you would disappear in smoke or something. Like, there she was, and now there's nobody there, you know?

[03:07]

Where did she go? She's gone into another realm. But rather that you would deeply transform attachment to body and mind, and be free of it. So, and you can see, if we take these as steps, how deep that must be, since it comes after all these other steps, which seem themselves quite formidable. So, when you, of course, the steps are also simultaneous, right? Because, what is to study the self? It is to forget the self. That's what it is. What is to forget the self? Well, to forget the self, which is the same as to study the self, is to be confirmed by the myriad things. And what is that? Well, that is to drop body and mind. And then, that sounds a lot like realization or enlightenment. And just so that you are clear about it, know that there is no trace of that.

[04:09]

At this time, there is no trace of enlightenment at all, remains. There's no enlightenment here, at all. Because enlightenment would be something, you know? This is the dropping of everything. And if enlightenment were something in my mind, you know, that I thought was a great thing, and I drop body and mind, and I've also dropped enlightenment, there's no trace anymore of enlightenment. And this no trace, this tracelessness, goes on forever, has no end. And this, then, so you can see that psychologically, the attachment to the body means that we're afraid of death. Because we think that death means that we are going to be gone, and we don't like that idea. We want to be here. And so, we attach to the body and mind, and not wanting to lose it. But when you drop body and mind, then there is no losing anything. Nothing to lose. There's eternity, in a way, that one's life is eternal. So, there's no problem, you know, about losing the body and mind.

[05:15]

Because the real self is seen to be traceless and endless. And so, there's no fear. This is a fearless state of non-attachment to the body and mind. One could lose, and there are many stories in the tradition of some teachers who, you know, were threatened. They said, oh fine, kill me. Of course, the stories always end with, and then the killer was amazed by this, and threw away a sword, and, you know, became a disciple or something. Is it appropriate to make a very current social connection to this? Who knows, but do it anyway. Several things seem to come out of the interpretation that went into this section. Beginning, and I'm looking at our society at large and social issues. When we're talking about authenticating and self-esteem, taking that to also be acknowledgement and respect for other people.

[06:17]

And not only individuals who may be lacking self-esteem, but whole, what are generally referred to as minority groups or subcultures in the society who've been told, you're not as good for whatever the reasons are. And then that drops to another level, lesser level. And when you talk about actualizing or authenticating myriad things, you're extending that respect and self-esteem on a common level. And taking it to the next phrase of your body and mind, as well as the bodies and minds of others, drop away when you have that common self-respect. It reminded me of many decades ago of the last math classes I had. I think it's algebra, where you're doing an equation and if you find a common denominator, you can drop the common denominator and go from there and deal with all of the numbers

[07:20]

above that line. And so if you're extending actualization and respect and authenticity to all people and equally, you can drop the distinctions that hold you back from respecting one another and the body and mind can drop away so you can deal with those elements at the higher level that are common to all. And so then the no trace goes on to extending that. Well, I think that I've often thought of it that way myself. In fact, I think if you think about this business of koan, of universality and individuality, and the individuality being the road to the universality, just being what one is connects one with everything, that's actually a powerful idea in terms of this issue of, like they often call it, identity politics in different groups, because if you say our group is a

[08:29]

separate group, we have our own culture and we're separate, we have to separate ourselves from everyone because of our culture being what it is. We don't want to dilute our culture by having too much contact with anyone else. And so then we are suspicious of everyone and want to be apart from everyone. That's one extreme. The other extreme is all cultures, all people are just people, so we're all in one big pot, and so my culture is just not important. It's the humanity that's important. But this way that's being expressed here is the fact that it's only through the integrity of the individual person or culture that one would touch the universal. So whatever your culture is, you should totally be that culture. But if you really thoroughly are that culture, or that individual, it's a question of an

[09:32]

individual person, then through that individuality you touch everything. And then you can find a way to honor, I am this, but I really accept everybody. I can appreciate everybody through being this. And I think that one finds this, often you find this, like I found, for example, a great meeting of the minds with practitioners of other traditions. Because if somebody in a religious tradition has really thoroughly given themselves to the study of their particular tradition, they usually arrive at a point of universality. And so then people can meet very easily at that point through the individuality of their traditions. And I think that's true even of a craft or an art. If you thoroughly study sculpture, you understand everything. You really give your life to that. You understand a lot about life, not just about sculpture. I mean, there are those people who study sculpture and learn about sculpture and don't

[10:37]

get to this other thing, and those people who study Zen Buddhism and get Zen Buddhism but don't get this other dimension. But I think generally speaking, it's available through the individuality. And so I think that's our great hope, actually, in terms of a peaceful world, is that we would all come to understand this and so find a way to be able to honor our individuality as a person or as a culture. And put our energy into it and make it better and make it beautiful. And at the same time, not have that be a separation from all others, but actually be a way that we can contact others with a good spirit. And I think that certainly in the world of religion, there's so much going on in this regard. There's so many dialogues, Jewish-Christian dialogue and Jewish-Buddhist dialogue and all these wonderful many, many separate different kinds of meetings going on all over the world.

[11:40]

I think in the hope that if religions, which have been such a force for division and confusion and trouble in the world, if the religions could begin seeing, honoring each other's traditions as separate traditions and yet finding a kernel of universality, then this could be a wonderful force for peace. And so, I've been involved in a lot of that stuff and it's really terrific, and it's very important stuff, even though I have great resistance to meetings and conferences and conventions, but still there are many of them, that's how they take place. But, you know, so that's very much so and I've often spoken in that light. I also feel, though, that there are some real potential traps or pitfalls, especially when we talk about the way I've seen the issue of self-esteem applied, or in a way it feels somewhat different from what I see Dovah teaching, because I think that there can be a tendency

[12:44]

initially when you feel, in a group that's put down, you feel really attacked, to jump to the other extreme and try to defend the self, and in a way it's tricky because you do maybe have a right there to look at your identity or yourself. There's also a way I've seen in my life, and I've also seen groups sort of jump into this way that the self becomes a barrier, you know, and I think that, you know, what Dogen is saying here in the second part, I think is incredibly important, which is that if you think you're, if you're trying to carry yourself forward and think you're doing things, and keep saying, I do this, I do that, or my group did this, my group did that, you know, and the way I see it, there's just a lot of suffering there, because then you keep trying to live up to that image of yourself that you've got, if I'm good at this, I'm good at that, or compensating, you know, in all these psychological things that go on. And saying, looking and seeing that everything is carrying you, I mean, there's just a lot of suffering there because you don't have anything to maintain, to put all this energy

[13:47]

into maintaining your self-image, so I just want to, I mean, I really, you know... No, no, I think you're quite right. Balance, yeah. But it's possible that in the case of great wounding, it's very much possible that this stage, which from the standpoint of health might look troublesome, from the standpoint of being wounded, it might be a necessary thing to pass through. So, to study the Buddha way is to study the self, that might be too much self in that, you know, but maybe that's a stage, but then once you study the self thoroughly, then you forget the self, so it's kind of in here. Yeah, Joe? Yeah, I was just thinking how this fits in with the idea about taking refuge in the Buddha and the Dharma and the Sangha, that emphasis on the Sangha, because what I see here is that it's saying, or that Dogen is saying, that we don't reach enlightenment

[14:51]

by ourselves, that we reach enlightenment through our interaction with each other, that we enlighten each other, that if I see you and Sonia and, you know, even Sarah, who I don't know and who I might never see again, but if I can really see her and see her true self, and if she really sees me and sees who I really am, then we enlighten each other. And, you know, how differences kind of fall away and a separation falls away, we realize we really are one. Yeah, I agree, and I think that, but another aspect of that is that the self is not just sitting in your seat, you know what I'm saying, and everything else is the non-self, the self is also sitting in all our seats. Exactly. So that our experience of our self is in others.

[15:53]

And that's the dropping of body and mind, dropping my own separation, my own thought that I'm just this person in here, and I realize that I'm really, you know, everyone else too. Yeah, as I often say, when I'm looking at you and listening to you, it's really true that you are my life, right? My consciousness is much more illuminated by your words and your visual image and so on, that's what's there in my life, right? That's what I am at that time, I really am. These things, this image and this voice and so on, it's not you either, but it's not what I would call me either. It's very true. It's literally true. Yeah. I guess I was just going to say, what you said is a kind of radical teaching here, which Thich Nhat Hanh talks about, which is that there is nothing here except myriad things

[16:57]

coming forward. In other words, sitting here in this room, what creates this is everything which isn't me. So it's like the rug and the stuff that's behind me and there's the bulb and the trees outside and what the trees are made out of. That kind of endless wave which only other, you know, the myriad things are coming forward in this moment, and that's all that's here. But there's nothing separate. Body and mind dropped. Yeah, there's nothing separate. Yeah, that's a wonderful teaching of Thich Nhat Hanh. I think that's, it's a great expression, but I've never, I don't think any, I think he really invented that, unless it's somewhere in Vietnamese Buddhist tradition. Do you agree with his expression? Inner being. Well, yeah, well, inner being, inner being, but also the concept that Thich Nhat Hanh often repeats, which he says, like, Buddha is made of non-Buddha elements, or the self

[17:59]

is made of non-self elements. It's as if, you know, we see ourselves, it's a little bit, also a little bit like figure and ground thing that I was saying before, you know, like we see ourselves as, there's this outline here and I am inside the outline. But he says that it's the opposite of that. What creates this outline is not what's inside it, but all the things outside of it that leave this space here, somehow. That's like the Dharmasutra, though. Let me just put out this other little perspective, that we can't be intimate if we don't admit our difference. That is, we have to be who we are before we can be intimate. Yeah. So, it's important to acknowledge yourself, and to know yourself, in order to have intimacy. It won't be that if all you're doing is looking and trying to find similarities, you

[19:00]

know, and you're not being yourself, and saying, this is, like assertive, we call it assertiveness, because that relaxes people, you know, then there can be a relationship. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I was just saying that this particular expression of Thich Nhat Hanh's, I think, is really wonderful. It's like what you're saying, it reminds me of an approach to creating something artistic, like to draw on something, and the form is defined not by what you're putting there, but by what's not there. Yeah. Yeah, right, exactly. Let me check. I have a, I'm glad to hear this part about when one side is illuminated, the other side is dark, is to fight your best efforts for 20 years. It's got me pretty boxed up. I like this. I'm wondering if maybe there's not another interpretation here, that this whole paragraph

[20:06]

strikes me as sort of a negation rather than an affirmation. I mean, if you look at, it looks like it's, I read it as setting up the next section. Which paragraph were you talking about? Paragraph three, when you see forms or hear sounds, it talks about when you see, and it's talking about you, see forms or hear sounds fully engaging body and mind, and yet in the next section, it's talking about body and mind dropping away, and then it says you grasp things directly, and grasping, I've always felt was, I mean, in the Zen sense, was different than apprehending or, and it's almost seems like when it says, when one side is illuminated, the other side is dark. But even the notion of sides seems to defy, you know, complete apprehension of something or the Buddha nature of something, wouldn't seem like there would be sides necessarily. So, I don't know.

[21:09]

Well, that sounds good to me. Well, I was just... That's a whole other way of looking at it, yeah. Well, I don't know. I think, I'm not sure, you know, you don't want to hang too much on the word grasp, because that's just an English word. Right. Used to, because I don't think this, I don't think the grasping implies the kind of, you know, clinging and that kind of thing. However, like I say, the Genjo Koan is like that. It's very, you know, one side flips over to the other side. So, I'm sure that there's a lot of truth to that kind of interpretation. Well, I think, last comment before we stop. Wouldn't the grasping understand, perhaps? Yeah, I think. Or really merge completely. So, that means 15 minutes to Zazen, for those of you who want to go to Zazen, to Nizendo. And we'll end here, and we will come back together at 7.30 for a brief session tonight,

[22:15]

7.30 tonight. Okay, so we'll start from where we left off. Thank you. So, last time we were, we finished discussing the part about to study the Buddha way, to study the self, and so on, and all that. I'll just give you a little quotation from Nishiyari Bokosan on this point. Only when we practice each moment of time as all of time, and each dharma as the entire dharma, do we know the intimacy of the self and the myriad dharmas. Only when we practice each moment of time as all of time, and each dharma as the entire dharma,

[23:23]

do you know, do we know the intimacy of the self and the myriad dharmas. So, that's his comment on that. Who can remember what all of you said? So, we're going to go on to the next part. When you first seek dharma, you imagine you are far away from its environs. But dharma is already correctly transmitted. You are immediately your original self. When you first start to practice, you imagine that you're far away from where you're trying to get to. But even at that time, even when you imagine you're far away, and this is your experience, you know, it's not just a thought, you really feel this way. Even then, even at that time,

[24:29]

dharma is already correctly transmitted. The completion and the culmination of the path is already present at that time. And you are immediately your original self, and original self is a phrase connoting, you know, that you're Buddha already, the ultimate that you are. It's already present. And this immediately is a good word because immediately means not only at that time now, but also it means without mediation. There's nothing between you and it. And the fact is that mostly our experience is mediated experience, experience of something in between ourselves and what we're facing in our lives, either language or thought or self-concept or clinging or something is standing between us

[25:30]

in our experience. And what we call experience to begin with is something that's mediated. When we say, I had an experience of something already, there's something standing in between. It's not that experience that Ruth was saying before about making a sculpture and being so immersed in it that you lose yourself, you know, as if there's no more materials anymore. It's just experience of doing something. That's immediacy. And you are, in terms of your immediate experience, even as you think that it's not so, that you're so far from awakening, even at the beginning, you are immediately your original self. You are already at the end of the path. So this is why many times in the sections above, this is why delusion is already

[26:34]

awakening. This is why Zazen is always Zazen, even when our mind is wandering and we're confused about our Zazen. It's always, we're always there. And this is true of each and every thing, each and every person and existing thing. So I'm going to go on a little bit more. When you ride in a boat and watch the shore, you might assume that the shore is moving. But when you keep your eyes closely on the boat, you can see that the boat moves. Similarly, if you examine myriad things with a confused body in mind, you might suppose that your mind and nature are permanent. When you practice intimately and return to where you are, it will be clear that nothing at all has unchanging self. A person rides in a boat, looks at the shore and mistakenly thinks that the shore is moving.

[27:52]

If one looks carefully at the boat, one sees that it is the boat that is moving. In like manner, if a person is confused about the body and mind and discriminates the myriad things, there is error of thinking that one's own mind or self is eternal. If one becomes intimate with practice and returns within, then the principle of the absence of self in all things is made clear. When someone rides in a boat, as he looks at the shore, he has the illusion that the shore is moving.

[28:57]

When he looks at the boat under him, he realizes the boat is moving. In the same way, when one takes things for granted with confused ideas of body-mind, one has the illusion that one's own mind and own nature are permanent. But if one pays close attention to one's own actions, the truth that things are not self will be clear. So this is pretty easy to understand, right? No? When you ride in a boat, you know, there's the old joke about how you're riding in a boat and you drop your watch, you know, and then the boat keeps going and you're looking for it. You know, it dropped right at the corner of the boat here, you know, so you dive under it, you know, but it's way down there,

[30:00]

because you think that the boat is unmoving. So, if you're in the boat, it certainly does look like the shore is zipping by, right? Or if you're in a car, you know, riding in the car, you know, all the landscape is traveling by very quickly and you're just sitting there. Or, you know, like we're on the earth and the earth is actually going, you know, we're convinced that we're stationary and everything is stationary, but in reality, everything is actually zipping along quite fast. Quite fast. So, then the analogy, I suppose, gets more buddhistic and less physically apt, because, I don't know, if you look at the boat, you know, you can figure out that the boat is moving, exactly.

[31:02]

But certainly, if you look at your own life, intimately enough, and here again is where I think zazen practice, that level of noticing how the mind and body work. When you look closely, when you stop what you're doing and look closely at your life, you see that it's not the shore that's moving, it's the boat that's moving, which is to say you see that everything is changing in one's own life. So, we say, for instance, I did such and so ten years ago, or I was a little baby. That's a picture of me when I was a little baby. But not a single cell in that body, that little baby, remained in this person here. I mean, literally, there's nothing in that person that remains in this person here.

[32:04]

So, the idea that I was that little baby is really a conventional idea. That's like saying the boat is not moving, the shore is moving. So, when we look closely, we see that, in fact, we ourselves are an event, a series of events that's passing away moment by moment. And it's not that the world around us is changing, it's that everything changes, including ourselves, in a very radical way. Nothing really holds. There's just experience, experience, experience, moment after moment, with no real through line, even though we make one up. What about memory? In what you're just saying? Well, there's certainly a relationship between previous moments and the present moment. Because the present moment comes up conditioned by the past.

[33:08]

So, in the present moment of experience, conditioned by past moments, we have some experience. But memory is actually something that we experience in the present. You know what I mean? It's not really experiencing the past. When we have a memory of something that happened before, it's not the same thing as that thing happening before. And as we all know from watching television and seeing murder trials and stuff, people have memories that aren't always accurate to what happened, or memories of things that didn't happen at all. So, memory is a present experience which is conditioned to some extent by things that happened in the past, which are gone. You know, there isn't some through line that you can grab a hold of, so that you can get back to the past and figure out what it was. No, memory is just phenomena of the present mind. So, when you notice this, you know, honing in on your own experience,

[34:15]

you begin to notice that it's not the way you thought it was. It's not that the boat is unmoving. The boat is really moving. Everything is really moving. Nothing is graspable. And then he, of course, in the next sentence, makes the analogy, explains the analogy that that's how it is with our life. If you examine your life and all that arises in it and around it with a confused body and mind, not seeing the way things really are, then you might think that mind and nature are permanent. So, he's sort of here discussing... I mean, everybody knows that the body is impermanent. Nobody can deny that, because we see pretty clearly the evidence that the body changes is clear and that the body perishes is clear, and no one would deny it. But there are people who would think that somehow the soul is permanent, or there's something in me that's not the body that is permanent.

[35:16]

So, here, and Bhogosan says in his commentary that this is Buddhism. And this is more interesting. There's some difference in the Buddha's teaching on this point. And I have to investigate this more, you know, because I think it's not really a difference, but it's a difference of expression. But I have to investigate and understand this better. But this is saying here, and Bhogosan says this in his commentary, so that the body is impermanent, we know. That thoughts come and go, we know. But there are people, and maybe we ourselves on some level believe, that even though I know all of that, something here... Like, your question about memory might have been a thrust in this direction. Something in here is continuous. Something really is. I was that baby, somehow, you know.

[36:21]

I know a lot of things change, but I was that baby, and that baby was me. And I'll be the same person 10 years from now or 20 years from now. So, Dogon is saying, if you really look closely, you see that that's not so. That there is no unchanging self, there is no soul, there is no through-line. And this is to say that the body-mind is one substance, or one, not substance, but one phenomenon. And there is no mind without body. And he'll go into this mind-body, much more in the next paragraph, where he analyzes birth and death and time. Now, the part that I have to investigate more is that... So, nothing survives.

[37:23]

Everything passes away. At the time of death, nothing survives. Birth comes up, there's birth. Death comes up, there's death. Nothing else. So, in early Buddhism, in the very earliest teaching of Buddha... This is a little technical point, but maybe it's important. Maybe you can appreciate it, maybe not. In the earliest teachings of Buddhism, the idea was that rebirth took place instantly after birth, because there's no such thing as a consciousness not associated with the body. Consciousness and body are both impermanent and always in association. So, there's no such thing as pure consciousness. If there were pure consciousness, then there could be something eternal and continuous. But later on, in more scholastic Buddhism, there was then the notion of an intermediate realm, where when a being passed away, it would enter an intermediate realm,

[38:30]

where it would exist in some sort of funny way, not associated with a body as we know it. And then later on, it would take a body, which sounds an awful lot like something there that exists. But that's... So, Buddhism is always... Like all religious traditions, it's always in conflict or in some tension with its own tenets. And I think that Buddhism is always... The history of Buddhist thought is this sort of attempt to hold to the main points that it lays out at the beginning, and then it often strays from them and then comes back. And so, there are debates in the tradition. There's something that's like, you know, this great idea now is heretical. Forget it, you know, and then it disappears. Anyway, but here it's saying very clearly that there is absolutely no unchanging self.

[39:41]

Now, and you know this when you practice intimately and return to where you are. This is another way, another statement of this Genjo Koan idea. When you are in the midst of Genjo Koan, when you're really there with your life, completely confirmed by all things, committed to the moment of your experience fully, this is clear, he said. Okay, now several people have to come in. Yeah, I had a question of what you were just talking about. Isn't that what dependent origination is? Yes, exactly. It's something that triggers the next birth, right? Yeah, so every moment is caused, there's a multitude of conditions. Some of them obvious and some of them not so obvious. In fact, the entire universe conditions each moment of our lives.

[40:51]

The obvious conditions are clear, but everything in the universe is part of the conditionality that then produces this moment of Genjo Koan, and then that moment is an absolute moment in which all of time and space is included, and then it falls away, and then the next moment the same thing happens. So this is how it is. And there's nothing that carries through. There's only this arising and passing away, arising and passing away. Yeah? Isn't that the through-moment, the conditioning that creates the present moment? Well, yes, the conditioning creates the illusion of continuity and the similarity between moments, but there's nothing.

[41:52]

It's like if you took a string of pearls and laid them out next to each other. You might look at it and you might say, oh, that's a string of pearls, but then if you try to pick it up, you only pick up one pearl. So the fact that the pearls are similar certainly makes for the illusion of continuity, but when you pick it up, it doesn't work. How about the relationship that you had talked about before, that you mentioned? Who you are now, for instance, has a relationship to who you are in the past? Could the relationship be construed as a through-moment? Well, as long as you know that you can't pick up the pearls, because that's the problem. It doesn't matter what words we use, you know.

[42:52]

The important thing is this knowing for sure that there really isn't anything to be attached to. That's the important point. Do you understand what I mean? I understand it. I think I'm experiencing a moment of doubt. I hope that's good. Well, I've heard this described slightly differently, maybe not from a psychological standpoint, which is that there is a feeling of continuity, which is different from the feeling of permanence. In other words, to say, well, just because you have a feeling of continuity, that's an illusion. Actually, it's just a string of pearls, doesn't quite get it, because if there is this relationship or this sequence of causes and effects, you don't have to assert that there's something

[43:56]

that moves through time that's unchanging, but there's some sense of there is something that moves through time that is not unchanging. That is not unchanging. That is, it's changing. It's changing, yeah. So, the, that's a picture of me when I was a baby doesn't mean that there's an identity between myself today and the thing that that's a picture of, but rather that there's a whole sequence of causes and effects, which is quite imperfectly and incompletely represented by the picture, because all the causes, the parents and the schooling and so on, none of that is in the picture. But still, that's what we mean by that's a picture of me when I was a baby. Yes. And out of that comes a feeling of continuity. Yeah, that's good. That helps, yeah. Because, yes, it's not… we're not trying to deny here the experience that we have.

[45:02]

We feel that that was me. So, it's not that we're trying to say, you're not supposed to feel that that was you, right? Yeah. Like, you're not supposed to feel that. That's wrong. That's not… We lose members. Yeah. We lose members. That's no good. So, that's not the point of this at all, because, in fact, in the present moment of Genja Kona, we may have that experience of feeling as if we have a memory. This happened in the past and so on. But it's the status of that and how we hold that. Do we hold that as some sort of absolute? And the issue is really attachment to self or not, or freedom. And if we hold it as an absolute and we mistake it for something that it's not, and we confine our world to self, then it's a problem. If we are free within it and we understand that this is an experience that I'm having now, or relating to the past.

[46:04]

So, conventionally, certainly, we recognize a universe in which there are relationships between events in the present and events in the past. All right, thank you. That was all. Can we go back to the boat? Okay. That sentence has always perplexed me, because, maybe I take it too literally, but I understand the first part. You could look at the shore and think that the shore is moving, but if you literally look at the boat, you don't have any, really, just look at the boat, right? You don't have any sense of movement at all. You actually have to look at the boat and the water. And if you've ever been in a boat and the water, especially at sea, like when you're anchored… But at a certain point here, the analogy departs from the physical reality of the boat, I think. So, I think that's true, what you say, that if you stare at the boat, it's not going

[47:06]

to tell you that the boat's moving. But I think that that's just a fault of the analogy. I don't think that there's anything to that. Nothing more to it than that. Yeah, that he means the next sentence to the explanation of that metaphor, that if you examine myriad things with a confused body and mind, you might suppose that your mind and nature are permanent. And then the converse, when you practice intimately and return to where you are, it will be clear that nothing at all has an unchanging self. That's the equivalent of keeping your eyes closely on the boat so you see that the boat moves, even though it doesn't really hold water, so to speak. Well, maybe there's a phrase that was left out. Maybe where in the first phrase you're saying when you ride in a boat and watch the shore, the second phrase really is assuming there's an assumption that when you stand on the shore and keep your eyes on the boat, you're changing.

[48:07]

Letting you look at it from two different perspectives. Yeah, well, it could be. Keeping your eyes closely on the boat could be from the shore. An unspoken assumption, because you set up the pattern in the first phrase. Yeah, yeah. I have another structural thought that was particularly acute when you read the Cleary, which was he, he, he, he. And I scanned that and I scanned the other one as well, and it's apart from the poetic form of the primary reference that we're using, I recognize it also talks about you. It sometimes does one, but it's very direct in its relationship to the reader. When it says you, you mean? Yes, this version, the actualizing, the fundamental point speaks in the view, speaks to you and speaks to the listener or the reader.

[49:11]

Whereas the other two that you copied, and I think in some of the others you've been reading, but specifically it came, it was real clear in this last paragraph from Cleary where he talks about he, he, he, and then alternatively steps back to one or less specific reference. And so I think that there's a power in the reading and interpretation that's both poetic and form, but really clear as far as the message. Yeah, I think that in the Japanese there's no pronoun at all, so. So there's an assumption being taken and it's directed that way. I think it's effective. Well, I think maybe we should go on because the next part very much has to do with this

[50:12]

part. The next part will magnify what this is saying. In other words, what is this? So we have this question, we're left with this question about continuity, right? The question about continuity and discontinuity and things arising and passing away, and yet the experience that we have of a changing, of a self that somehow we know is changing, but on the other hand we also experience is not changing in some way. So this is perplexing, you know. And the next part is going to talk about this more, this whole issue of continuity and discontinuity and time. How does time work? Because it's about time, right? It's time. Genjo Koan means, you know, total universe reality arising in a moment of time. Complete, which means there is no other moment of time but this one.

[51:14]

And yet, on the other hand, we do experience, you know, there was yesterday, there's today, there's tomorrow, I was here before, I'm here now, I'll be here later, you know, the more conventional view of time and self. So what about these two completely different, seemingly different and contradictory and mutually exclusive views? And now he's going to, in the next paragraph, go into the discontinuous sense of time more thoroughly. So he says, firewood, and this is also a very often quoted passage, so again, firewood becomes ash and it does not become firewood again. Yet, do not suppose that the ash is future and the firewood is past. You should understand that firewood abides in the phenomenal expression of firewood,

[52:20]

which fully includes past and future. Ash abides in the phenomenal expression of ash, and firewood abides in the phenomenal expression of ash, which fully includes future and past. In other words, the moment of firewood, all of the past and all of the future is in that moment. It's not that it was, it's not that the ash was firewood and now it's ash, but ash includes in itself past and future, and firewood, it's not that it will be ash, it includes all of past and future in it, in all moments, you know, in this one moment. Just as firewood does not become firewood again after it is ash, you do not return to birth after death. This being so, it is an established way in Buddhadharma to deny that birth turns into death. Accordingly, birth is understood as no birth.

[53:21]

It is an unshakable teaching in Buddhist discourse that death does not turn into birth, accordingly death is understood as non-death. Birth is an expression, complete this moment. Death is an expression, complete this moment. They are like winter and spring, you do not call winter the beginning of spring, nor summer the end of spring. So, firewood and ash are each completely genjo koan, unrelated in some ways, conventionally of course they are related, just like conventionally we say that was me in the past, and of course we have experiences that support that conventional relationship, but I think what Dogon is arguing here is that it is that conventional relationship which causes suffering, which is the source of delusion. We must see also that things are absolutely complete in and of themselves in each moment,

[54:31]

and that is the part we do not appreciate. In other words, everything is free and ephemeral and complete, and that is what we do not see, and we need to see that in order to not to suffer, in order to be free. So, this, the nature, so oddly, this part about the firewood and ash is a description of the most profound nature of change. This is how change happens. What we perceive of as change is actually not change. So, change radically is identical to non-change, because it is not that something changes, it is that permanent, eternal things appear moment after moment. So, like, this is, in St. Augustine's, has a very similar analysis to this, you know,

[55:36]

in the Confessions of Augustine, it says that, he has a long part there on time, the nature of time, and he says that when we talk about eternity, we think that eternity means a very long time. You know, that is how we, conventionally, we think, eternity means longer than a million years, longer than a trillion years, longer than a gazillion years, that is how long eternity is. It is a really long piece of time, but he says that is not what eternity is, that is illogical, because, of course, obviously, whatever big, long piece of time you were to think of, you would think of that it could be that big, long piece of time plus one, right? So you would never get to eternity. So eternity is not a big, long piece of time, in fact, the whole nature of eternity is that it is not time at all, it is outside of time. That is the nature, what is eternal is not a big, long piece of time, it is not time

[56:37]

at all. So, firewood, a moment of firewood, which is complete, is a moment of firewood that is not in time, it is eternal. It is not there, it is not, everything that exists is in time. So this firewood does not exactly exist or non-exist, and it is not in time, it is totally complete with all of time in it, and then it passes away, and it hardly was even there. So that is why life is like that, that is why we call life non-life, and that is why we call death non-death, because the real nature of life is that it is eternal, and it appears as changing. So we suffer because we want our lives to be eternal, but they are impermanent and changing, and then we want them to be eternal, which means we want a very big piece of time, but we will never get a big piece of time. But in reality we have nothing to worry about, because the eternal is there in every moment

[57:41]

of our lives, and everything we need is actually there, that fast. So this is what he is trying to tell us, that we need to appreciate the actual nature of time and of our experience, which we can only appreciate when we bring ourselves to each moment of our experience in this way that he is over and over again referring to, genjo koan, totally being present, totally committing ourselves to a moment of our experience, letting go of any separation, letting go of any sense of self outside of the experience. And again, in Zazen practice we get to appreciate this possibility, the feeling and the sense of this, even though, as he said earlier in the text, when Buddhas are Buddhas, they don't necessarily know they are Buddhas. When we experience time in this way, we don't necessarily know that we are, because it's immediate. There is no mediating factor like consciousness or talking to ourselves and saying, oh, that's

[58:44]

genjo koan, etc., etc. All of those things that make up the usual mediated experience in time don't apply here. But yet we can, like somewhere he says, we can touch this with our body and mind, even though we can't experience it as we conventionally experience other things, which are only experienced in time and through some mediated experience. So I don't know if this is all getting true or making sense, but it would be probably wrong if it made sense. Yes? Well, I'm just trying to tie together some, you know, things I've been taught from other sources, you know, here. And it seems that, I don't know if Dogen is using the terms nirvana and samsara at all, but isn't the teaching, because I thought you had said earlier that there is nothing eternal or continuous, but isn't the teaching that nirvana is a state where you touch upon that, but it has nothing to do with our personal selves or with linear time, it has nothing to do with conventional time?

[59:47]

It's not a state though, nirvana, as if it would be a state of mind or something. Uh-huh, uh-huh, okay. Yeah. Okay, right. But yeah, that's very much... So wouldn't it be correct to say that when you are totally in the moment, that is eternity? Yeah, right. You can't define it, because you can't say what a moment is. No, yes, right. Yeah. You could never measure a moment, or that's a moment, you know. Now it's another moment. Right. No, couldn't do that. Right, yeah. Also, there's something very radical about what he's teaching here, and it seems to somewhat go against what I know seems like a very cultural belief in Buddhism, where you're saying, well, I'm doing this now so that I don't have this rebirth to worry about, so I'd better give to the poor, or whatever I do, or not squash a bug. I'm not saying that that isn't admirable, but there seems to be a concern with where you're going, you know. Yes. And the way he seems to be cutting through that... That's right. Forget it, forget about your death turning into another birth. That's right. Yeah.

[60:49]

Yeah, that's why Zen does not emphasize rebirth and so on, and good karma and bad karma, because of this kind of a view. It recognizes and honors that side of Buddhism, but that's not the specialty of Zen. That's not what Zen is mostly concerned with. It is concerned with this issue of genjako and completely penetrating reality in this moment. Mm-hmm. Is Buddhism, with lack of a better term, but positive or caring or compassion or taking care of other people, whatever that is, is that just choice then? What do you mean, just choice? You mean, it doesn't matter so much anymore? Mm-hmm. Really, there isn't anything there. There's nothing, there's no outside force.

[61:53]

There's no big daddy in the sky that's good and kind and going to take care of everyone. Mm-hmm. So why would somebody do good, you mean? Or why would you worry about it? So, if there really is, it is what it is, it's not good or bad, it just is what it is. Mm-hmm. And where we... It is choice. Is that right? Well, I'm not sure what you mean by choice. When you say a group of choice, I'm not sure what you mean. I can... I can attempt to live a decent life, or I can go live on the beach someplace, or I can go murder someone. It doesn't matter, you can plan. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, don't forget, remember the beginning, the first four sentences?

[62:59]

Remember? You know, when all things are Buddhadharma, there is birth and death and practice and sentient beings and Buddhas. When all myriad things are without self, there is no birth, no death. Remember? There were these four sort of steps there, and they seem to be a progression. But also, it's clear that each of the four steps includes everything, includes all the others, and needs to be part of the picture. So, it does matter whether we do good or not, but not in the way we think. So, the more conventional aspect of Buddhism is part of this understanding of Genjo Koan. So, we do good and we avoid evil. And we try to benefit others.

[64:01]

But not because there's a continuous self that's going to benefit from that in the future and win a better rebirth and so forth, but because to do that is the natural expression, is the free expression of really penetrating and merging with the Genjo Koan. In fact, morality, rather than being a system of do's and don'ts that will lead us to a better situation, is on a deeper level nothing more than a description of how things look from the standpoint of Genjo Koan. So, from inside of it, there isn't any good or bad, and it doesn't matter what we do. But what happens is, from inside of it, that is what we do. Good, we do do good. It's just like the thing about Buddhists. Buddhists don't necessarily know that they're Buddhists, but they actualize Buddha. They don't necessarily think, oh, look how good I'm being.

[65:05]

Look at how I'm doing all these good things, and how nice I am, and how Buddha I am. They just do it, and the results appear to someone standing outside as good, goodness. What about the people who don't do good? What about them? Still, it's Genjo Koan. So we can't... Practically speaking, what that means is that we can't condemn people who don't do good. What about the effect? Enlarge. It's bad. And that's Genjo Koan. It's still bad. Okay, I'm going to... Before I respond to other, or listen to other, I'm going to find... Nishara Gokasan has lots of interesting things to say about this part, and I want to...

[66:09]

Let's see what he says, and see if his commentary is helpful. His commentary would perhaps help. After firewood becomes ash, it will never return to firewood. After the present you dies, you will never return to the former you. Returning is inevitably cut off. So when we think, like in Buddhism, of rebirth, the idea we have is that I'm going to be reborn. Me, this me inside of me somehow that slips out somewhere when I die, and then slips into another body, and it's going to be me in there. That's how we think. That's how we look at it. But that's not it. You never return. You is associated with this body and mind.

[67:11]

When it's gone, it's gone. It's cut off. Even if you enshrine the Buddha's relics, the Buddha won't come along with them. Tathagatas in the ten directions are like firewood that perishes in the fire. All you can do is build a stupa and conduct a condolence ceremony. Dogen Zenji will not return, and Bodhidharma will not be resurrected. In the same manner, the nishyari of today will not be the nishyari of tomorrow. That's him. When the continuation of one lifetime stops, the former nishyari will not appear again. There's the famous koan that maybe you know about the guy who, a couple of priests who go to the funeral ceremony, and the one priest wraps on the coffin and says, Alive or dead. And it's a corpse, you know. Alive or dead. And so he turns to the teacher. Alive or dead. And the teacher says, I won't say. And he gets more and more agitated about this.

[68:13]

And on the way home, he says, Alive or dead. Alive or dead. And the teacher says, I won't say. I won't say. He says, I'll punch you out if you don't tell me. The teacher says, I won't say. And he punches him out. And then he has to leave the monastery because you're not allowed to punch out. He never sees the teacher again. The teacher dies. And he never sees him again. And then later he comes back with still the same question. Asks the new abbot of the monastery, Alive or dead. And the abbot of the monastery says, I won't say. And then he understands. Because you can't say. Just like here. You can't say alive or dead. Birth is called no birth. Death is called no death. And that's why in a Buddhist funeral ceremony, always we say, there is no coming and there's no going. This person who was in our lives and moved us so much never really appeared and never really disappeared. So yes, we have our human grief. But on a deeper level, we know that this person didn't appear and didn't disappear.

[69:16]

The person is eternal and always was. So then he goes on. Today is only today. Yesterday is only yesterday. This is the landscape of discontinuation in the Dharmadhatu, meaning the whole universe, without self. You may think that Nisyarya, the present, will continue without being cut off because cause and effect or action and result extend throughout the three worlds. But this is an ordinary view. The Nisyarya today will never appear again, even in one million years. Birth does not become death. Death does not become birth. Birth is only birth. Death is only death. And they never overlap each other. Therefore, we should experience all the way to the bottom today. We should open to one phrase and practice just one practice and get all the way to the bottom of the independence of the self, thoroughly experiencing this birth. Even if you become a Buddha in the future, you or the present will never be seen. It is just one time, one direction. If we think about it, what seems to be just an ordinary person's petty realm today is

[70:19]

indeed very precious. But then there's a great part where he talks about death. It's actually quite funny. What are you worried about? You're alive and you'll never, you can't die while you're alive. You know, as long as you're alive, you will never die. And then when death comes, there's only death and there's nobody there to worry about it. So why would you, what are you worried about? Which is what this teaching is saying. There's nothing to fear. No, it's just, it's so funny. What was the sound of your voice before you were born?

[71:26]

Yeah. It points to the eternal that's here now. So this is kind of hard to appreciate. I know, but. I don't think so. Oh good. I wanted to ask you, right before we started this module discussion a little while ago, you started talking about some difference of experiencing an unmediated experience and the infinite and you just whispered a little bit about it and then came to a quick close and I'm totally hanging on your words because I wondered where you were going to go with it or wanted to hear more about that. Well, this is, in a way you could say, this is a description of immediate experience, profound experience that, you know, mediated experience, as I was saying before, is when

[72:31]

there's something between ourself and our experience, when we're not completely merged with our experience. And in fact, you could say that all experience is mediated experience. When we know, oh, I had that experience, already we're in the conventional world of mediated experience because now language is mediating our experience or consciousness is mediating our experience. So, in a way we can't experience eternal deep reality and yet we can touch it, to use this phrase that I think is Dogen's phrase, we can touch it with our body-mind. So, in mystical experience or religious experience is different from ordinary experience. In that it's immediate experience and it can't be so definitely pointed to and remembered

[73:37]

and dealt with and written about, etc., etc., as ordinary experience can. That's why mystical experience almost always resorts to poetry and paradox. Because when you say, well, all of a sudden I saw the stars and the whole world, blah, blah, blah, and I felt this and that, that's not quite it still. Because then you're just explaining some physical symptoms or sensations, but the experience is bigger than that. So, he's in effect attempting to put into language, and the trouble is that when we try to understand it as language, what does he mean, the firewood has passed and future? What does that mean? Well, in a certain way it doesn't mean anything. He's just trying to basically deconstruct the conventional view. In reality, he's not really proposing another view that one could exactly understand or

[74:38]

experience. He's just saying that there's a deeper and more immediate way of living our lives than the conventional one. And, in the terms of Genjo Koen, and he's saying, and the conventional one is also this profound view too. And it can't be dispensed with. Yeah, like the flowers falling. Oh, still your own. Because when I was hearing your piece about the necklace that you can't pick up, I've always been a very sentimental, nostalgic person, saving photographs and all that, you know. And lately I have been trying to let go of certain parts in my life of holding on or wanting things to stay the same. I'm feeling pain about that. And I do realize, I recognize the truth of what you're saying. Well, that's where suffering comes from. But it just means moment. So, I'm kind of getting it. But I think there's some kind of current of essence of what, like, for instance, people

[75:40]

that love each other, that's the continuity that I feel. Like, even ten years later, there's some essence that's the same and we feel it with each other, but it's always changing. So, there's some kind of fluidity of the change where there's some constancy, too. Yeah, so in the present moment we can be nostalgic. Right? That's a feeling that we have now. No, I mean, Jerusalem, I remember a place you wrote about feeling miserable gut conviction and true. How do you relate that to this? Well, you know. Is that a fair question? Yeah, no, that's, I don't remember what, I don't remember that writing, particularly. This is the, this is, one hates to be held to what one wrote. The sense of that particular passage. Yeah. Yeah. This is, this is why.

[76:43]

Yeah, was it more than seven years ago? Right, this is why I like to publish in small press. That only it will be read obscurely. So, that's the part about flowers fall, you know, amid our long longing and we flourish in our loathing or in our aversion. So, which is to say that still, even though we have an appreciation for the depth of this kind of experience, which seems to be far beyond any human emotion, we're still human. And we still, we still honor human connections and human emotions. So, and this is the beauty of Genjo Koan to me. This is, remember I said I was so moved by that, by that line and Abe's and Waddell's

[77:46]

comment on that line, that Dogen affirms ordinary human emotion as the totality of Genjo Koan. So, that's what, that's how that, that's how that happens. But yet, it's different in that, again, it's how you hold it. And I want to read you, maybe there's a passage here that will help to say what I'm trying to say. It's a question of how you hold it. So, you have the pictures, the baby pictures, you know, but you understand that the baby is really gone, you know, and now we have the son with the beard, you know. You understand that that's really true, and you don't try to make that person with the beard into the baby, but you have the pictures in front of you, and you have the feeling, and that's nice. But you don't mistake it, you know, for something that you're going to like hold onto,

[78:48]

that's not really there. So, how do you hold it? Can you hold it and appreciate it as true human feeling? Human feeling is a wonderful thing, you know, it's, we're warm creatures, we like to be with each other, and we like to, we have relationships that are wonderful, so that's great. And it's not just this baby picture, but it's all baby pictures, and all children, and all, so on, you know. So, so it's the same, but different. But let me read you this one passage that, because there's another place where Dogen speaks about the same thing, and he adds a little part that I think might be helpful. This is a little chapter called Birth and Death, which is on the same point as here in Genghis Khan, and we'll end with this, because I see it's time. It is a mistake to assume that one moves from birth to death. Birth being one point in time has a before and after, it's the same thing, right?

[79:50]

Therefore, in Buddhism, birth is called unborn. Extinction too, or death too, being one point in time, also has before and after. So it is said that extinction is non-extinction. When we say birth, there is nothing but birth, and when we say extinction, there is nothing but extinction. Therefore, when birth comes, it is just birth, and when extinction comes, it is just extinction. In facing birth and extinction, don't reject, don't long. And that's the important point. Here it is, when accepting, when in facing birth and extinction, don't reject, and don't long. So, when we face birth and extinction, as Genjo Kōan, completely accepting it in this moment, without having the feeling, oh, I wish it weren't here, I wish it weren't so, I wish it were

[80:51]

otherwise, I can't believe it's like this, I want it to be otherwise, that's when there's anguish, and that's when there's suffering, and that's when there's no possibility of really appreciating our lives and of really having something to offer to others and benefit others, because we're very self-centered at that time, we're very focused on our own problem and the dissatisfaction of our own lives. But when we face each moment of birth or death without too much longing or rejection, we can appreciate it, and we can fully experience it, and in that is the actualization of Buddha. Benefit for others comes from that. So, I'll leave you all with that for sleep on. Think about it, or don't think about it, and we'll go on from there tomorrow morning.

[81:47]

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