So this is part two of our study of the Eight Awakenings of Great Beings, or Haci Dainin Gaku, Dogen's last fascicle. And to review what these eight are, first is to have few desires, second is to know how much is enough, Third is to enjoy serenity. Fourth is to maintain diligent effort. The fifth is not to neglect mindfulness. And we're going to proceed to the sixth, seventh and eighth. The sixth is to practice meditation or concentration. The seventh is to cultivate wisdom.

[01:01]

and the eighth in Kaza's translation is not to be engaged in hollow discussions. So if we look at two, three, four, five, six, these are sort of the core of our meditation practice in many ways. to find a place that's tranquil and quiet or serene, to make diligent effort, to practice mindfulness, to cultivate concentration, and to bring forth wisdom. And those are common elements that you'll find in a lot of these other Dharma systems that I mentioned, like the Eightfold Path and the Paramitas and the Factors of Enlightenment.

[02:12]

So I want to go to six. The sixth awakening is to practice meditation. To abide in Dharma without being confused is called stability in meditation. And then he quotes the Buddha. If you gather your mind, it will abide in stability. Then you will understand the birth and death of all things in the world. You will continue to endeavor in practicing various aspects of meditation. When you have stability, your mind will not be scattered. It's like a well-roofed house or well-built embankment, which will help you maintain the water of understanding and keep you from being drowned. This is called stability in meditation.

[03:16]

Often when they talk about meditation, I think often in early Buddhism, it's more technically speaking of concentration or samadhi. And it's identified with the four jhanas, which I'll go through you. But let me read you what the Aniruddha Sutta says. This dharma is for one whose mind is centered. There is a case where a monk quite withdrawn from sensuality, withdrawn from unskillful mental qualities, enters and remains in the first jhāna, rapture and pleasure born from withdrawal, accompanied by directed thoughts and evaluation. With the stilling of directed thoughts and evaluations, he enters and remains in the second jhāna, rapture and pleasure born of composure, unification of awareness, free from directed thought and evaluation, internal assurance.

[04:47]

With the fading of rapture, he remains equanimous, mindful, and alert, and senses pleasure with the body, he enters and remains in the third jhāna, of which the noble ones declare, equanimous and mindful, he has a pleasant abiding. With the abandonment of pleasure and pain, as with the earlier disappearance of elation and stress, he enters and remains in the fourth jhana, purity of equanimity and mindfulness, neither pleasure nor pain." Yes, so that's the end. This dhamma is for one whose mind is centered, not for one whose mind is uncentered. So there are ways of looking at early Buddhist practice, what we now see as Theravada practice, where the jhāna states, the jhānas are concentrations and some people

[05:56]

practice them. Some people cultivate them as meditative practices and approach them one by one and identify those physical and mental states in themselves. And then other approaches the jhanas are seen as naturally arising in the context of one's meditation. So in other words, they're not cultivated as particular states or particular concentrations, but they are the marks of one's deepening concentration. We tend not to talk about them a whole lot or practice them in an objectified way, but we all

[06:59]

know these states of mind. I found a commentary on the jhanas. Let me just go through this very briefly. So the first jhana is the rapture and pleasure that comes out of withdrawal, stepping back from one's normal activities and attachments, and it just, it fuses your body with rapture. So it's very pleasant. And we all have moments of that. And it's described, it's really interesting, the metaphor that's used, just as if a skilled bath man or bath man's apprentice would pour bath powder into a brass basin and knead it together, sprinkling it again and again with water so that his ball of bath powder, saturated, moisture-laden,

[08:15]

permeated within and without would nevertheless not drip. Even so, the monk permeates, suffuses, and fills this very body with the rapture and pleasure born of withdrawal." Does that make sense? Yeah. I mean, I think it has to do with how they prepared a bath, right? It's as if a skilled bath man or bath man's apprentice would pour bath powder, like soap powder, into a brass basin, which would also have a sweet odor and consistency, pour it into a brass basin and knead it together, sprinkling it with water. So you've got the powder You're sprinkling it with water until it forms a ball of bath powder that's saturated, moisture laden, permeated within and without.

[09:19]

So it's full of water and yet it would nevertheless not drip. So that it just it's it's it's fully it's full of water and yet it's contained. Right. just this is what you're this is what he's describing our bodies are like when we withdraw and feel this rapture that we're full of this rapture and joy and it doesn't leak you know and we don't lose it it's contained within our body does that make sense uh i'm not going to go through all of these but uh let me read you the fourth one You know, we have this thing against stepwise practice in Zen. This is definitely stepwise practice. The fourth. The fourth, you go through all these rapture states and then you divest yourself of rapture and are just...

[10:20]

kind of a mass of equanimity. Furthermore, with the abandoning of pleasure and stress, this is the fourth, as with the earlier disappearance of elation and distress, one enters and remains in the fourth jhana. Purity of equanimity and mindfulness, neither pleasure nor pain, one sits permeating the body with a pure, bright awareness so that there is nothing of the entire body unpervaded by the pure, bright awareness. And then the metaphor, just as if a person were sitting wrapped from head to toe with a white cloth, so that there would be no part of the body to which the white cloth did not extend. Even so, the practitioner sits, permeating one's body with a pure, bright awareness.

[11:24]

There is nothing of this entire body unpervaded by pure, bright awareness. So it's like you're just all white, brilliant, and empty without any marks, without the marks of suffering or of joy. Just on the one hand, just receptive of whatever comes and the other hand radiating this pure awareness. So That I think is the thrust of what this sixth awakening is, to imbibe in Dharma without being confused, stability in meditation. The seventh awakening is to cultivate wisdom.

[12:27]

It is to listen, contemplate, practice, and have realization. The Buddha said, monks, if you have wisdom, you are free from greed. You will always reflect on yourself and avoid mistakes. Thus, you will attain liberation in the Dharma I am speaking of. If you don't have wisdom, you will be neither a follower of the way nor a lay supporter of it. and there will be no name to describe you." It sounds rather grim. Indeed, wisdom is a reliable vessel to bring you across the ocean of old age, sickness, and death. It is a bright lamp that brings light into the darkness of ignorance. It is an excellent medicine for all of you who are sick. It is a sharp ax to cut down the tree of delusion. Thus, you can deepen awakening through the wisdom of listening, contemplation, and practice.

[13:37]

If you are illuminated by wisdom, even if you use your physical eyes, you will have clear insight. This is called to cultivate wisdom. It's interesting, Nirman says that here it says, Ka says, if you are illuminated by wisdom, even if you use your physical eyes, you will have clear insight. And the Nirman translation says, when someone has the radiance of this wisdom, then though he be blind, he will clearly see what people are. Which is interesting. When he says, I think,

[14:40]

I could see this either way. What Kāsa's translation says, even if you use your physical eyes, the problem there is that our sense functions are the basis of delusion, right? And here he's saying even if you even though one is physically blind, which is also perhaps a kind of delusion, you'll clearly see what people are. I like that. I like that. That's really a nice phrase. Instead of you will have clear insight, you'll clearly see what people are. And one might say, you will clearly see, I will clearly see what I am. In other words, From the beginning, we talk about, he talks about the robbers of the senses.

[15:45]

So not to allow the robbers of the senses to creep in. If you don't do that, then that is practicing bringing forth wisdom so you can see yourself clearly. Oh yeah. Can you remind us of that? Do you remember? And that was the last time, right?

[17:04]

Yeah, Rihanna? Yes, I noticed that too. Yeah, we had a lot of, we had a really interesting discussion this weekend when we talked about Dogen's beneficial loving speech in the Four Methods of Guidance, and he goes on in beautiful terms about loving speech, and someone pointed out that just raised the point of, oh, listening. And we realized, that's missing. that's missing from this Dogon fascicle. There's a lot about speech, about the outward motion, but it seems, I think to, it seemed to us, and I think it's the function of listening is perhaps more important than speaking.

[18:20]

And so if we were gonna, rewrite that the way Linda was suggesting this morning, we would include listening and speaking. Actually, Thich Nhat Hanh does that. In Thich Nhat Hanh's precepts, it's very non-dual, the precept of right speech includes, vividly includes listening, right? One of the other things, let me just say, again, in the Aniruddha Sutta, what he talks about as wisdom, in this point he says, this dharma is for one endowed with discernment. And what he says is this is the discernment of arising and passing away.

[19:23]

So this is like Bodhi, Dogen says, bringing forth the thought of enlightenment is seeing into the nature of impermanence. I believe that's correct. And it's wisdom is seeing that things arise and pass away. And that wisdom, the wisdom of our entire action is based on that understanding. When we understand that, it really conditions how we are going to act towards ourselves and towards other being and other things. So I like that aspect of the Pali Sutra. Other thoughts or questions?

[20:29]

Yeah. I wonder if that was his thinking about speaking. I need to stress more on the listening.

[21:52]

Speaking is easy for me. Listening means stopping and holding another as of equal value. So I'm just speaking for myself. But I think that we do put, I think our society needs to put more needs to put more emphasis on the listening side. It's not that the speaking side is irrelevant, it's really important. And I think that one implies, brings forth the other, but it's good, it's useful for us in our society. You know, he was in a situation, if you're in a monastery, there's an awful lot of listening that goes on, you know. In our world, there's both.

[22:55]

Anyway, Karen. I think listening can be hard because you kind of have to empty your own mind. Right. So often we're Yes, that's why practice of counsel is such a great practice because one of the guidelines is listen wholeheartedly and one of the particular instructions is don't rehearse what you're going to say. you know, just really take in what Karen is saying without then that sending me into my own self-regarding loop.

[23:59]

What am I going to say? Oh, you know, it's like there's three more people, then it's my turn to speak. You know, what am I going to say and how do I want to appear? It's like to the extent that we can empty ourselves of that, then surprising things can arise. Yes, Sue? This morning and a lot of this morning what came up for me was how do I do that? How do we do that? And when I'm seeking ways our practice, our morning program on Saturday, structures that. That's actually sort of a how thing. How do we structure that?

[25:00]

I also think that it would be helpful for me to acknowledge where this practice arises instead of just thinking about how I feel Right, well that's that's a if not a human habit, it certainly is a cultural habit. And, you know, I think about... These eight are

[26:04]

what you're being encouraged to do. And underneath them, for all of us, is the how. Sochin always, he's always talked about this, that how is doing. Yes, how is doing. and you can place that as different parts of speech, the word how, as a question, as a noun, as an adverb. Think about that line from Jomar Samadhi, the meaning is not in the words, it responds to the inquiring impulse. So it responds to, if you raise that question, how, then something in the world will respond to you.

[27:14]

That's the encouragement. And actually, we're almost at Dogen's commentary part where he, you know, basically what it boils down to is you can do this. You can do this, these practices. He's not giving them to you because he's not saying, yeah, these are the practices of Buddha and you may as well give up. That is not the teaching. It's giving you these practices, laying them out step by step or piece by piece because you may be able to do one of them. be able to do one of them better than another and this can open the door to awakening for us. Okay.

[28:18]

Let me go on to number eight, okay, and then we can, then we get to Dogen's part which is kind of interesting. Cosmic Translation, the eighth awakening is not to be engaged in hollow discussions, it is to experience realization and be free from discriminatory thinking with thorough understanding of the true marks of all things. So that goes back to the last point we're making, the true mark of all things is that they are impermanent and non-self. This is called not to be engaged in hollow discussions. The Buddha said, if you get into hollow discussions, your mind will be scattered. Then you will be unable to attain liberation, even if you have left the household, meaning even if you've become a monk or a nun.

[29:21]

So you should immediately leave behind scattered mind and hollow discussions. If you wish to attain the joy of serenity, you need to cure the sickness of hollow discussions. This is called not to be engaged in hollow discussions. So Nirman's translation is, as I said earlier, the eighth awakening is not playing around with theories and opinions. what he called not playing around with theories and opinions means letting go of dualities and judgmentalism that one may experience. Fully realizing the true nature of all things is what not playing around with theories and opinions means. And he translates the Buddha, I'm just going to read part of it. Therefore, quickly abandon your disordered mind and you're playing around with theories and notions.

[30:28]

If you wish to enjoy the pleasure that comes from calmness and the extinction of defiling passions, thoroughly eliminate the affliction of playing around in your head. This is what I mean by not playing around with theories and opinions. It's interesting. I think to speak to your point, Sue, the how of this calls for noticing those voices in yourself, noticing those hollow discussions or noticing what opinions you have and particularly noticing one's propensity for distinguishing between, for making a division between me and you, self and other.

[31:34]

That's the fundamental duality. And the way, part of what you do that is by really noticing the judgments that we have about anyone and anything. just realizing those judgments as they come up and just, it's not like dismissing them. Because you may not so easily be able to get rid of them. But you can notice, oh, so there's a judgment, there's an opinion. And sometimes it's not so strong and you can just set it aside. sometimes it's really strong and you have to dig in and investigate it. I've been reading an interesting book, it's been sitting on my shelf for a year, by Ben Connolly on Yogacara, people seen that?

[32:45]

It's pretty interesting, the Yogacara stuff is, it's hard because it's very systematic, but basically the message is look at all the stuff, we create ourself in our mind. Lori came back from studying, she was studying a sutra with And she just kept saying, conscious creation only, right? You know, it's like conscious creation only, and it's like, okay, stop already, you know, it's like, okay. And now it's like a mind, an earworm in my head, but it's really good. It's like if you begin to see how you're consciously creating the self out of these sense perceptions and the Yogacara method gives you a way of really looking and categorizing those sense perceptions.

[33:50]

To me, it's not like a photograph or a painting of reality or reality itself, it's a map. And that way it's very useful. But that to me, you can use tools like that to begin to look at how to deconstruct these states of mind and that's why, so actually in the Anuruddha Sutta, this is really interesting. The eighth one says, this Dharma is for one who enjoys non-objectification. who delights in non-objectification. Not for one who enjoys and delights in objectification. That makes it a little clearer. Thus was it said.

[34:51]

With reference to what was it said? There is a case where a monk's mind leaps up, grows confident, steadfast, and is firm in cessation of objectification. It doesn't really go in too much more there. But so. To me, non objectification. Is. To be completely subjective. And this is to to look at everything as part of. Oneself in the largest way. But if you take it as part of yourself, in some narcissistic way, then you're turning yourself into an object. And you're delighting, that's delighting in objectification. But to see, as we're often told, to see this cup, which is half full of tea,

[36:02]

as part of myself and literally to take some of it to incorporate that in myself and to handle it respectfully is non-objectification. So I really like that, that's, it's getting to a very, in the sutra it's getting to a very physical response to the world around you. It's like, how do you relate to people and things? And so you're not just in your head, Laurie. Well, what he says in the next sentence is, these are eight awakenings and each awakening contain all eight.

[37:37]

This is a typical Dogon-esque thing. Thus, there are 64 awakenings. When awakenings are practiced thoroughly, their number is countless. When they are practiced in summary, there are 64, but it's like, yeah, you go from wisdom to, I am you and you are me and we are all together. Cuckoo, ca-choo, you know? So let me read on here, these are the last words of great teacher Shakyamuni Buddha, this is Dogen, the ultimate admonition of the Mahayana teaching. He said on midnight of the 15th day of the second month, Buddha said, you should always endeavor wholeheartedly to search for the way of liberation. All things in the world whether they are in motion or not Now, all of you be quiet and do not speak." Those were his last words.

[38:38]

Time is passing and I am going to cross over. This is my last admonition to you. Without expounding Dharma any further, the Buddha entered Parinirvana. Another translation is that Behold now, because I exhort you, all compounded things are subject to vanish. Strive with earnestness, practice with earnestness. Dogon says, all disciples of the Buddha should study this teaching. Those who don't know or learn about it are not his disciples. Indeed, this is the Tathagata's treasury of the true Dharma-I, the wondrous heart of nirvana. So this is like the summary of the whole Shobo Genzo. Many may have been confused. However, there are many who do not know about this teaching.

[39:42]

as there are few who have studied it. Many may have been confused by demons and those who have few wholesome conditions from the past do not have the opportunity to see or hear about this teaching, but you do. In the age of the true Dharma and imitation Dharma, all disciples of Buddha knew about this teaching and practiced it. But nowadays, less than one or two out of a thousand monks seems to know about it. How regrettable. The world has declined since those times. While the true Dharma prevails in the billion worlds and the Buddha's pure teaching is still intact, you should immediately practice it without negligence. So here he's referring to the three ages of Buddhism, the three that followed the Buddha's passing.

[40:48]

so he talks about the true dharma, the age of the true dharma was the first depending on how you count it the first 500 years or the first thousand years during which the buddhist disciples were firmly able to hold on to the buddhist teachings and then the age of imitation dharma is the second thousand years or 500 years, I think it's like 500 is what I've usually heard, because that would make sense, which only resembles the right dharma, it's a kind of imitation of it, so that would bring us to about the Tang dynasty, 600 AD, which is also known in Japanese as Mapo, which is where we're at, which is to last for 10,000 years during which the Dharma declines.

[42:01]

It still can be heard. It's very difficult to hear, but it's declining. And I don't know what happens at the end of that. It's like maybe it all goes around again. Who knows? But this is one of the things about the time that Dogen lived in. It was really a very common thing in Japanese, in all the schools of Japanese Buddhism to acknowledge we are in the age of decline here. It's very hard to hear the true teaching. And so we need skillful means and kind of straightforward teaching to be able to meet the Dharma. So Dogen says, it is rare to encounter the Buddha Dharma, even in a span of countless eons. A human body is difficult to attain.

[43:04]

A human body in the three continents of the world is preferable. A human body in the southern continent, Jambuvipa, is particularly so, as one can have the chance to see the Buddha, hear the Dharma, leave the household and attain the way. So that's where we are fortunate to live. So these three continents is a kind of four continents, a kind of cosmological, Buddhist cosmological view. You had Mount Sumeru in the middle, and then it was surrounded by these four continents. And the southern one is Jambavipa. And that's the one in which humans live. And we're fortunate to live there because that's the one from which one can be awakened as a Buddha.

[44:10]

And Jambu Vipa replies, at the middle of this continent is a jambu tree, which is like a black plum. And this imagery is common to, this cosmology is common to Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism. So it sort of was throughout the Indian culture. And Jambudvipa is the only place where a being may become enlightened by being born as a human being. Now we can learn and practice these awakenings because the merit of our wholesome conditions from the past. By practicing and nurturing these awakenings, you can certainly arrive at unsurpassable enlightenment and expound them to all beings just as the Buddha did.

[45:17]

And that was Dogen's last writing. Yeah, Andrea? Yes. Sometimes like even with the Right.

[47:02]

Well, that's OK. I mean, I think to be to be honest, most of us learn how much is enough by going too far. You know, that's how we learn. But if we're practicing, that's the thing. If we have a practice, if we're mindful and attuned to what's going on, we recognize, you know, oh, that was too much. Just think about Thanksgiving dinner. Some of us have very hard cases. We eat too much every year. We forget the lesson. But really, that's how you listen. That's how you listen to yourself. And then you learn. So you have to be willing to make mistakes. And you have to have your attitude

[48:04]

non-judgmental and non-objective attitude is to actually accept your mistakes and realize that your mistakes are your teachers. Yeah, Hannah. Well, this is a great conundrum for us.

[49:22]

in a whole lot of realms, but that's, you know, historically, that one leaps out. Question I asked my teacher, Harada Roshi, in an interview I did with him, how could these enlightened Zen masters in Japan have sanctioned and approved the atrocities that were leveled on Koreans, on Chinese during, well, during a lot the first half of the 20th century. It's like, I can come to the conclusion that whatever they're calling enlightenment is not my idea of enlightenment.

[50:28]

And that is the conclusion that I come to. But it doesn't meet these criteria because you have to look deeply into these criteria. But what he said, which is really difficult but I think it's human was this was as far as they could see because as humans they were conditioned and even we see there are moments when the Buddha articulated his conditioning in ways that one might not necessarily agree with. So it's like, it's on you. How is, what has awakened Hannah? What's your view of the world and how do you share it with others?

[51:36]

And how do you accept others in their shortcomings. We saw this incredible movie, it was made in Japan, called An Honest Death. Has anyone seen that? It's about these two marvelous doctors who are both Shingon priests who were palliative care specialists who has led hundreds and thousands of people to come to peace with their death. And then the husband has pancreatic cancer. And this NHK crew had an arrangement to film him to the end.

[52:40]

And what happened, which was just, it just made us crazy, was all of his wife's practice went out the window. She, he kept asking for certain things. He didn't want his life sustained. He wanted, he wanted pain killing drugs and she just didn't do it. She wanted him to live as long as he could live. And it's like expressly against his written and spoken wishes. And you're watching the whole thing. And it's like, okay. we see how deep the roots of our attachment go. And it was a really challenging thing for a room full of chaplain candidates at Upaya watched this and there was so much anger that came up.

[53:52]

and we had to keep redirecting it. It's like, what's going on? Not what is she doing, it's what's going on with you as you're watching it? Not what was she doing wrong, but what are we carrying inside ourselves? And I think that the whole thrust of this teaching is about that. And also I say, if you want to go back to what I was saying about Ben Connolly's Yogacara book, the whole thrust of that and the whole thrust of our practice is look at ourselves and recognize that whatever we're seeing in other people, That is potentially and actually what we have within us.

[54:55]

And how do we work with that so that it doesn't run amok in this world? where all these desires I have are what causes me to suffer. And what I noticed is the handout is missing three words that are in the book. And I didn't want to read it. It's the last sentence. But I'm going to read it because I want to comment. of the whole thing says by practicing and nurturing these awakenings birth after birth

[56:05]

Yes. Ah, but that depends on how you, that, no, that depends on what you think of birth after birth means. Yes. Right. So that's, that's right. That's what, you know, uh, I have one birth and I eat way too much at Thanksgiving. And then a year rolls around and I have a chance for another birth. And I do the same stupid thing, you know. I've been doing that for 70 years. But we have, you can look at birth after birth in a long timeframe. And also we're taught to look at, we look at the wheel of dependent origination as turning moment by moment, of each moment being an opportunity for rebirth.

[57:48]

And I really think that the question just to carry, and maybe this is a place to end, is how? How do I do this? How do I meet this person that I want to turn away from? How do I encounter my own illness and death? How do I meet myself each morning when I sit down and face the wall? How? That's the question, how? So I think that's a good place to end. Thank you very much. Really enjoyable to study this. I feel so lucky to have had like these five days of sort of intensive kind of study like this and now we get to continue it today. Yeah.

[58:51]

Every one of these things is what we're doing today, I think. Like we're having few desires. Yeah We're very I I I We're just really lucky. We're really fortunate to have fallen into this rabbit hole.

[59:44]

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