Good morning. Bushing Gate Center. 2005. Institute of Buddhist Studies

[02:33]

Thank you very much. Well, gosh, good morning. It's great to see everybody. Yeah, we're having some weather, huh? Smoke as well. Interesting. Okay, so I'm going to talk about Uji. I wrote this book, you know, originally the title I wanted it to be was Atop the Highest Mountain. which is one of the opening verses of Uji, but in wisdom's wisdom, they decided to call it Being Time. Kind of a straightforward title. Nice cover though, huh? Really, really beautiful cover. So, you know, I wrote this book for practitioners. I wrote the book that I wanted to read. which meant that it has lots of footnotes because as a student of Dogen, I want to be able to know where that person found the information that they found so I can go and look it up myself.

[04:10]

So I wanted to do that. I also wanted to write a book that tried to explain just kind of on an intellectual level, what it is that Dogen was saying. Because, you know, sometimes it's really tough to figure out just what in the world he's saying, you know, from reading the English. So what I did was I set it up so that each paragraph, and you know, Dogen didn't write in paragraphs. Japanese doesn't work that way. So the translator decides on the paragraph breaks. So I used a translation by Wadela Nabi. What I did was each paragraph, I explained what I thought based on reading mostly scholarly books about Uji, what it actually meant. And then the last part would be my idea of how we would practice with that information.

[05:12]

So that's basically how the book set up. So Uji itself, which I didn't realize the first time I read this and you might not have either because it's kind of like working your way through the weeds sometimes when you're reading Dogen, you know, really Uji being time is what Uji means. Uji is an exploration of how we practice. It's actually quite a steps and stages presentation of Dogen's understanding of our path of practice. So he's talking about what is it? How does it function and why is it important? That's basically what Uji is about. The text of Uji starts out with several verses. The first two are verses by Weishan, which are actually, I would say, his expression of his realization. in the first verses. So he says, an old Buddha said, for the time being, the old Buddha is Weishan.

[06:19]

So Dogen's quoting Weishan. For the time being, I stand astride the highest mountain peak. For the time being, I move in the deepest depths of the ocean floor. This expression of Weishan's is also, as you go through Uji, you realize that this expression, as Dogen often does, at the very, very first few lines or paragraphs of a fascicle, he's giving you the whole picture. So while this seems as if this might be, this phrase here might be kind of like opposites, you know, you stand on the highest mountain and you walk on the deepest depths of the ocean, actually those are what are called Dharma positions. And those Dharma positions are not just the particularity of standing on the highest mountain and walking on the ocean floor, but they are also, in the context of each particular moment, they also encompass all other moments throughout time and space.

[07:23]

Everything completely there, completely presencing throughout time and space is happening. So in this way, these verses are actually a complete understanding of Dogen's text of Uji. So the way that Dogen structured this text is that he starts out with these verses by Weishan, these first two verses, and then he adds some to it. And then he goes through and he starts talking about it in a systematic way about how it is that we practice. And at the end of Uji is a series of koans that revolve around Weizhong waking up to what it is to talk about actually presencing ourselves for our life just as it is and responding to our life just as it is in the context of the totality of everything else that's going on at that moment. and how we respond skillfully in that moment. So that's, there's a full circle there. At the end of Uji, Weishan is a student.

[08:27]

He's saying, you know, I went to Shodao, I couldn't figure out how to do the practice. He goes to Matsu, Matsu explains to him, helps him understand the practice. And then as we full circle back around, we have Weishan's verse, the opening verse of the text. That's kind of the structure of what Dogen's doing. And so Dogen starts out talking, and then of course, he's talking about his understanding of this. And so he says, Dogen says, after the verses, he says, his summation of the understanding, the time being means time just as it is, is being, and all being is all time. Okay. Typical Dogen, right? It's like, what? The time being means time, just as it is, is being, and all being is all time. So Uji is this particular time, is being, so it's not a separate, time is not separate from being.

[09:29]

So for example, a bird, the dharma position of bird or the dharma position of you or the dharma position of this book or anything that you can name, things that are hidden and things that are apparent to us, these dharma positions are not separated. Like if it's a bird, for example, there isn't the bird and then there is time. So Dogen's saying these are not separate things. They are simultaneously the same thing. A bird is both a being and a time simultaneously, not a bird in time. And each being time is all being time at the same time. Each being time is all being time at the same time. That it is just this particular time. So that's how he starts out by saying the time being means time just as it is is being and all being is all time. And then Dogen goes on to say something which I think is very germane to us as practitioners and really helpful.

[10:34]

He says, the 16 foot golden Buddha body is time because it is time. It has time's glorious golden radiance. You must learn to see this glorious radiance in the 24 hours of your day. The demonic assurer with three heads and eight arms is time because it is time. It can in no way be different from the 24 hours of your day. So he's saying to us, you know, these glorious. Our glorious days, he actually uses 12 hours because in Japan and China at that time, 12 hours indicated a whole day. But the 24 hours of our day is Buddha nature. The 24 hours of our day is Komyo. It is this radiance. It is this beauty. It is this altruistic action of the world completely together with the world in this continuous practice of making the world. And we are part of that, not separate from that.

[11:38]

And that is a very beautiful thing. It is the glorious radiance of Buddha nature. It's a glorious radiance of the activity of a Buddha. And then he says in here, he says, but, or in. There is this demonic three heads, eight armed demon is also part of the 24 hours of this glorious radiance. As practitioners, we don't like that. You know, we're like, no, no, no, my job is to get rid of the demon. My job is to get rid of delusion, you know, not to incorporate that into my life, not to see that as part of the 24 hours. the 24 radiant hours of our Buddha nature. So Uji's about this, you know, how do we incorporate that? How do we understand the nature of our experience? How do we not reject things and say that, no, no, no, this can't be part of my practice. I don't want this to be part of my practice. You know, when you do something skillful, right?

[12:44]

We all do skillful stuff. So that's, we think, oh yeah, that's me, right? That's my Buddha part, you know? And then we do something that's really stupid and delusional and not helpful. Where does the Buddha part go? Like when we do dumb stuff, you know, and we say, wow, that was really screwy. Where does the Buddha part go? And when we're doing the Buddha part, where does the screwy part go? Like, do you think, like, maybe they're both there simultaneously at the same time? And that both of those could be this glorious radiance of the 24 hours of our day. That maybe there's something, there's this good-bad dichotomy that we like to get caught in and yet simultaneously at exactly the same time underneath that or concurrent with that or part of that is this glorious radiance. So he starts out right at the beginning, you know, kind of challenging our sense of what it is exactly that we're up to in our practice.

[13:47]

And then he says, I think of this as Dogen's kind of throwing down the gauntlet here to us in this text. He says to us, he says, since a sentient beings doubts of the many and various things unknown to him or her, are naturally vague and indefinite, the course his or her doubtings take will probably not bring them to coincide with the present doubt. So he's saying here, he says, you know, we have all these doubts about things that we don't know about, and that's kind of vague and indefinite. And he also says earlier, he says, You think you know being time, but actually you don't know being time. And so he's saying here, these kinds of doubts, the doubts that are kind of vague and indefinite and have no particular focus, or the ways in which we're asking the wrong questions are not going to bring us to coincide with what he calls the present doubt.

[14:56]

So what is that? So this present doubt is this great doubt that brings us to awakening. This is this koan about the nature of our experience that brings us to awakening. So we can have a kind of doubt that's corrosive doubt. We can have doubts that undermine our confidence. We can have doubts that cause us to lose the way, or we can have doubts that are what Hakon called the great doubt, you know, this Rinzai notion of it's the great fireball. I can't swallow it. I can't, you know, I can't throw it up. So there's this real, you know, koan about what is our life? What is our life? And, you know, Dogen calls this Gancho Koan, right? Genjo Koan is the immediate manifestation of this life. That's our Koan. You know, what? What is it?

[15:57]

What is it? What is this life that we're living? How is it that it can be 24 hours radiant? I sure don't feel like it's 24 hours of radiance all the time. So how can that be? So that's a koan, you know? That's a way in which Dogen's saying, hey, look over here. Don't look over here. The answer is over here. So this Gencho Koan is the immediate manifestation of this life. Presencing as suchness and it is things just as they are without obstruction. How can we include What we think of as a demonic Asura, how can we include what we think of as obstruction? How can we include that in our life and see that as suchness? How does that work? So. Uji is this deep exploration of the nature of being time through the context of a Dharma position. So the Dharma position is just this being time of each moment or thing as it presents itself with us and through us.

[17:06]

It is just this moment because that's the only place that we can practice. That's the only place that we can see the 24 radiance of our day. That's the only place that we can manifest and understand Gencho Koan. That's the only place that the mystery of our experience is revealed to us. So we have to enter our life as it is right now within the context of our own experience in concert with the experience of all beings. Right, Dogen says in Genjo Koan, to carry the self forward is delusion. To allow myriad things to come forth and meet you is realization. To carry ourselves forward is a kind of this selfishness, this way in which we are completely in the center of the circle that we've created of this notion about what our life is. No Koan necessarily about that. So this way in which he says myriad things come forth to meet you. How is it that we can let myriad things come forth to meet us?

[18:09]

Not crash into us, right? This way in which we, I thought about, you know, the midterm elections and I said, oh God, you know, it's like Christmas, but oh my goodness, what's going to happen? Am I going to get colds? Or, you know, what is it going to be like? I felt like the general election, you know, was like almost PTSD. So that's a way in which in some ways I'd say those myriad things came crashing into me. So how do I integrate that? How do I stay present for my life? How do I find that equanimity? How do I actually meet myriad things, not push them away? want to drag them down and get rid of them, but actually meet them and say, what is this? What is this? How do I practice with this? How do I find my equanimity? And part of that, finding our equanimity, is realizing and cultivating this sense, this belief, this faith in the 24 hours of our day as being radiant, the 24 hours of our day.

[19:14]

And by the way, the word that Dogen uses for the radiance is komyo in uchi, which is also the name of a major fascicle of his. So often these questions that you don't understand in Dogen, if you kind of flip through the Shobo Genzo, you'll discover, oh, there's a whole chapter on that. Then you can read that and figure out what it is that he's talking about. So Dogen expresses that this Dharma position is a particular thing, a particular being time, a particular situation within the context of the totality of all being time. And this is where our practice is. This being time is the where and the when of our practice, this right now of our practice. This is... when we are freed from karma, when we are freed from past and future. So, you know, where is our life?

[20:17]

Is it in the past? Does the past exist? What does the future exist? So Dogen's saying, you know, he doesn't deny sequential time. So he is saying, yes, we have a past. Yes, we have memories. We have all of those things. But in actuality, What are you experiencing right now? So in actuality, the thing that you're experiencing in the past is actually only completely in the present. And the thing that you're projecting into in the future is only right now in the present. There is no past and future from that point of view. There is just this moment. And it is in this moment that we are freed from the past, the karmic repercussions of the past. Because it is in this moment that we have free will to decide and to act and do our practice. Not some other moment, not in the future. You know, we say, oh, I'm gonna do this thing in the future. So there are some Buddhist teachings say, well, if you have enough lifetimes, lifetime after lifetime after lifetime, you'll be ready somehow to meet this, to cultivate a certain kind of mindset or Buddha nature or practice.

[21:29]

Dogen say, no, right now. He says, this is it right now. In Abusho, he says, how does this go? If the time arrives, is the time right now. So if the time arrives, is the time right now. If you say to yourself, well, I'm going to practice if the time is right. I'm going to apologize for something I did if the time is right, you know. So he's saying, no, if the time is the time right now, like this is the time right now that we practice. This is the time right now of our Buddha nature. It's not somewhere else. It's not in the future. It's this time right now and for it to manifest itself, it has to be within the context of the totality of what's happening, right? That's that myriad things coming forth, meaning myriad things. So in this moment, we have, this is the moment when we get to choose.

[22:30]

This is the moment where we can be free. This is the moment where we're not trapped. So we take responsibility for our lives. We take responsibility for the responses that we make, and we are freed in this teaching to do just that. So this is a very liberative teaching. coming in contact with what is, what is in right this moment. This particular dharma position of being time allows us to have that freedom. In Shoji, Dogen says, 100% alive, 100% birth, 100% death. The 100%, by the way, I've stolen from Shohaku Okamura. I really love that. He says, 100%, we are 100% alive in this moment, in this dharma position. 100%, whatever that is, and that 100% means that we can fully occupy without getting caught.

[23:32]

And if we are caught, that we can wake up to that caughtness, and then we have the free will to do something different. So then Dogen says, in Uji he says, as the time right now is all there ever is, each being time is without exception entire being time. As the time right now is all there ever is, is there some other time? Are we experiencing some other time? As the time right now is all there ever is, each being time is without exception entire being time. So this is kind of hard to get our wrapper heads around, right? Each being time is without exception entire being time. So one of the examples I like to use is in a book that Thich Nhat Hanh wrote about, The Heart Sutra. And he points out, he says, well, you know, this page of this book, if you look at a page of a piece of paper, you know, we know that paper comes from trees and trees must be nurtured by the sun and all of the functions of the earth that make the tree happen.

[24:43]

And then all the things that we interact with it. And actually, if we could actually do this, if we had the capacity to do this, We could name and recognize and see everything that had ever existed throughout time and space within the context of this particular piece of paper. And that applies to absolutely everything. So in this way, everything, whether we can see it or not, is our being time. Right now, you know, somebody in Hong Kong is walking down the street. Somebody in London is doing something totally different, having this thought. They are not separate from our being time. Yet at the same time, there is our, just our particular being time of our experience and how is it, how do we respond to that? What do we respond to that's right in front of our face? So why we understand that everything, every being time is also present and vital for the unfolding of our own experience. When we understand that, we start to integrate everything in our life and also recognize that our particular time and the particularity of others, that we respond in this inclusive and empathic way.

[25:55]

So we realize that we're not separate from, you know, you go to the store, you're walking down the aisle in the store, going to Home Depot or something. And it's like, you're kind of like, oh yeah, there's that other person there. They're just out shopping, you don't pay too much attention to them. But you know, that person. And that moment is completely your being time as you are completely their being time. Simultaneously, we have this empathic understanding of the nature of our shared experience. We don't think about it that way, but it actually is happening that way. So we respond in this kind of inclusive and empathic and compassionate way because that's what our practice is, right? That's our Bodhisattva practice. How do we respond in this intelligent, not like a kind of, way in which is sort of silly, compassion, but this way in which our compassion actually, you know, is myriad things meeting this kind of intelligent response to what's going on.

[26:57]

And the only way we can do that is to know that we're all in this together, to know that we're all in this together, not just all of us as people, but that bell and the trees and the dolphins and the polar bears and everything else. So we want to, the result of this is a kind of beneficial action that we engage in. And to illustrate this, I thought I'd actually read something out of my book. So I'm not reading you the geeky parts. I'm reading you the parts that, I think it's illustrious for this. So this is about, as a time right now, as all there ever is, each being time is without exception, entire being time. So I said, when we drop the model of time as sequential, all aspects of our path are present in this moment, and we are free to respond or set ourself in array with a totality of that moment.

[28:00]

Each moment makes up our current experience, including all previous and future experience. And at the same time, our current experience has its own life separate from past experience or a possible future. A concrete example of this is the moon. In Zen, the moon is often used as a metaphor for realization. It is also a good image because the moon's phases happen in a sequential manner. coming and going, yet the moon is never not full, the immediate present. Dogen writes in Suki, the moon, round and pointed, are not concerned with the cycle of coming and going. The moon is beyond coming and going. Whether we perceive the moon as full or in a phase, the moon itself is just the moon. Its true nature is not the view that we see based upon the earth's shadow upon it.

[29:03]

What we see is a portion of the moon, yet we know that the moon itself does not diminish or grow. In each phase of the moon, all phases of the moon are always present, and yet, to our eye, there is just the phase we see, independent of the other views. The moon's phases are not a problem. They come and go as the days progress. The problem arises when we think sequential time is time's totality, when we forget that the moon is always full. And then, The next thing, talking about dormant positions, about the experiences that we have is that even though they have particularity, they don't have any fixed particularity, any fixed positions or any particular outcome. And in practice, we're understanding that each thing must be paid attention to and that no situation or person has a fixed position, although it is particular.

[30:18]

And so in that way, we become more flexible and we're able to quickly and appropriately respond. You know, we had movie night at Ocean Gate last night and we watched a movie called Buck. And you know, this is a documentary about the guy who is like, I guess he wasn't the original horse whisperer, but that's what he does. Really interesting man. And he grew up in a foster home and his mom, foster mom, was there. And she said this amazing thing. I really love this. She said, Blessed are the flexible, for they do not get bent out of shape. Isn't that great? I thought, you know, we should put that up outside the Zendo door. So, you know, this is this way in which this flexibility is a willingness to be present for your life in a way that is not preconceived. It's not, you know, we're not getting all huffy about.

[31:20]

You say, well, you know, this idea about what is bent out of shape means usually means we're all huffy about somebody having some idea about us or saying something that we didn't particularly like, we get all bent out of shape, right? So again, I'll read a little section from the book here about this. So this part is just about buying things, going to the store. Because as I say in my introduction to the book, I really think that these teachings have to be able to apply to our everyday lives. I mean, Dogen didn't write this. Dogen did not write philosophical treatises on the nature of being in time. This is not a Western, you know, philosophical treatise on the nature of being in time or on the nature of this, that, and the other thing. He wrote it because he wrote it for practitioners. I mean, think about it. Dogen's practitioners, a lot of them were young guys in the monastery, you know, like us.

[32:20]

Uh, you know, people haven't changed that much. So, uh, this is, this is who he wrote these teachings for. Okay. So, uh, here's what I wrote. Adormous positions, inclusive and exclusive simultaneity expressed as a particular person being or situation is what Dogen is calling the state of dwelling of suchness and moving up and down. This movement must interpenetrate with other Dharma positions in order for things to change. This state is also at the being time of, as he wrote in the Dharma Hall Discord above, both having attained suchness and not having attained suchness. The attainment or lack of attainment is the interplay between all of reality arising without obstruction and our relative experience. Okay, so here's the example. A mundane example of how each Dharma abides and moves might be the occasion of making a purchase. We have in the past learned how to use money and we have the experience that payment will be accepted.

[33:31]

Yet simultaneously, we have many ways to pay. We might use several different combinations of coinage and bills, or we might be able to barter or swap for something. We could use a credit card, a debit card, Bitcoins, or online accounts. We might decide not to purchase the item after we discover the price. There are many possibilities for this or any other situation, and for that reason, it is completely different from all other situations. Yet it also contains the history and expectation of previous encounters, and it may be the springboard for other events. There are many possibilities for creative and skillful response. Although each moment includes all the other moments, we're going to narrow our focus to what is important at that moment. In the example given, what is foremost at the moment of buying something is how to pay for it. But just because we have made a choice, it does not negate all the other possibilities that are arising simultaneously.

[34:37]

How we narrow our focus is determined by our understanding of the totality of that moment. If we include self and other, our actions will be skillful. If we are only concerned with our own gain, we will probably act unwisely. Making a purchase is dynamic yet simple. It is one instance, it resonates, it moves, and it is even an enactment of suchness, perhaps expressed or not, but always abiding. Also, which is not here but later, is that this notion of one of the things that we could do while making a purchase is to steal. Right? We could decide that we're going to shoplift. So there's a little problem with that, you know, besides the fact that it's breaking precepts. On a deeper level, this is not inclusive of the totality of the situation because the shopkeeper is not going to go along with that.

[35:40]

We don't have that permission to do that. So when we shoplift and break precepts, we are engaged in an activity that is not inclusive of the totality of what's actually arising in that moment. So there's an example of where morality and ethics are very, very, very much a part of this text. Some people get confused. They think that when Dogen talks about non-duality, he's sort of giving an invitation for a lack of morality. But actually, non-duality itself is the basis for morality and ethics and compassion and empathy, right? So that's always part of this. It's not separate. It's an integral expression of this. And then finally, I just want to talk about dharma position as passage. Like, how does one dharma position pass into another? Often we think about passage as sequential. We say, well, this happened and then that happened. So again, Dogen's not denying the fact that, for example, corn comes from corn seeds, right?

[36:44]

Flowers come from a particular seed. People are born from particular parents and have particular genetic makeup. But he is very much interested from a practice point of view about this non-sequential passage. And in particular, how does the Dharma get transmitted? And so, passage is often, Abhi refers to this as passage-less passage. This way in which, if in the example in Ujji, Dogen gives us springtime, but there isn't any fixed time that we can call spring. There isn't any time that, you know, The winter is completely gone and now spring has completely come. There's always this way in which there's something going on. There's some interconnected, non-dual passage happening from one thing to the next. So this is what he's talking about in the context of Dharma transmission in particular, but in Uji he says, even when the time of their reaching is not yet over, the time of their not reaching has arrived.

[37:52]

So even in the time that we think that something is over, it's always never, it's always some part of it, some presencing of it has always been present, which is always true about everything. So reaching is not coming and not reaching is not yet. And this is the how. This how being time is how it moves from one thing to the next. So this is how we transmit our lives to each other. This is how we transmit the Dharma. This is how life itself transmits life to itself. Is this kind of passage that's happening from one thing to the next, that is an expression of the complete interconnectedness and permanence and Buddha nature of everything. And then I'll just read one more short passage from my book and then I'll stop and take your questions. So this is from a Zooey Monkey, which is another text by Dogen. And he talks about he talks about how. The teachings have been transmitted between at least one particular student and one teacher.

[38:55]

So this procession of moments is also the how of our spiritual journey. Our progress is made up of many, many moments, each in their turn, the passage of the various being times, interpenetrating that moment. The spiritual journey in Zen Buddhism is epitomized by the phrase transmission-less transmission, this passage-less passage of the Dharma. How is it that we pass from ignorance to wisdom? What elements are necessary for transmission, transformation? So Dogen tells the story of a student's progress in Sui Monkey, record of which it means record of things heard. He prefaces this with a simile that actually many of us are very familiar with. An ancient has said, associating with a good person is like walking through the mist and dew. Though you will not become drenched, gradually your robes will become damp. This means that if you become familiar with a good person, you will become good yourself without being aware of it.

[40:02]

In the main story, a young man was a student of Master Gutei. This student didn't seem to realize that he was learning or practicing. Dogen comments, a boy who attended Master Gutei without noticing when he was learning or when he was practicing realized the way because he served as a personal attendant to the master who had been practicing for a long time. In the course of attending to Master Gutei, he attained realization. Do you know how that is? Mel, I think I was your Anja at Tassajara, right? I washed your shoes. Mel had these white plastic flip-flops. Your Zoris, right? They were black? I did. I washed them every day. Is that it? I thought it was to keep the salt from between the little tabby thing. But I'll tell you something, Mel and I wear the same size shoes.

[41:12]

So I was your Anja and tram along behind him or preceded him and made fires and did various things. So I think, you know, I've learned many things from you just by being in your presence and washing your Zoris. Thank you. To continue the story, by focusing on the activity of helping Master Grete every day, the student was not aware he was being trained. He probably spent his time making the master's bed and fetching tea. Yet those activities, in accord with Master Goethe's instruction, created his passage from student to master. This transformation was due to the confluence of all the activities, all the befores and afters, and the independent moments of the student's life with the master. His interactions with Master Bute resulted in his total immersion and practice realization. Transformation was always present, and yet there was a particular moment of its recognition when Master Goethe acknowledged his passage into spiritual maturity.

[42:22]

So this way in which the master recognized his student. So there is that particular moment of this thing of saying, yes, this has happened, yes, this is it, and yet how we get to that moment is maybe not so clear. So in practice, you know, we can do all those things, you know, we can just bow perfectly at the door and we can sit zazen for hours on end and we can, you know, learn how to be that perfect soku or whatever it is. And yet, and yet, and yet, you know, there's this time when we're ripe and it is so much about our ability to coordinate and function with the totality of the things that are happening simultaneously. Thank you. I don't know how much I understand.

[43:22]

Ten minutes? So, hey, bring me your questions, comments, please. Yes. Oh, that's a good question. I think one of the things that I find really helpful about this is what I was talking about just at the very beginning.

[44:28]

way of looking at our life when we're having trouble and real problems and we say to ourselves, boy, you're sure an idiot, you know, that we can have this deep faith that really we are part of the 24 hour radiance of our day, that we are Buddha nature. That's a principle? Well, I don't, you know, I can't think of anything, you know, some particular thing that I've done recently that's deeply embarrassed me, you know. But I can say that I have certainly had those experiences and just knowing that, you know, I'm kind of an intellectual person. So yeah, that's great. Who said that? You know, we all come to practice in different ways and that's how I come to practice and it actually is helpful to me. So for me, you know, I might actually sit down and deconstruct something.

[45:33]

You know, I'm having a difficult time and I'll sit down and say, oh yeah, you know, it's like, Yeah, you really made this mistake, but it's really all workable and you really are a part of this thing and you don't quite understand how it works, but I'm going to have faith that it works because actually what else is there to do? That's not very intellectual. That's like, Oh my God, what else is there to do? Well, Bodhisattva practice, that's, that's what it is. So I can't, I can't think of anything like right off the bat to tell you, I feel like remembering that I am, the same and in this empathic relationship. with others means that if I'm having conflict, I'll give you an example. Here's an example. I don't know. I went to a San Francisco Zen Center the other day to do something and there was a woman who was probably homeless and she had like a wheelchair that was right in the middle of the only parking place in Christendom. I mean, it was like in San Francisco, there it was right behind the building, the parking place of my dreams.

[46:38]

And there's this woman with a wheelchair in the parking place. So I stopped my car, jumped down, and I said, wow, you know, can I help you move your wheelchair? But we had this great interaction with each other. And I think, you know, it's because this teaching about how we are all in this together. This is not like an adversarial relationship that I'm having this woman about her wheelchair in the parking space. I got out of the car with the expectation. that we could work this out. I could have my parking space and she could do what she was doing and it wasn't going to be a problem. And you know what? It worked out that it wasn't. We actually had a really lovely conversation with each other. Now that, you know, I can't say that I said to myself, oh, okay, now we're going to do this thing. But the fact that this teaching opens us up to the possibility of unobstructed action by seeing that we are all human beings in this place together.

[47:48]

So I got out of the car with the expectation that she and I were not different from each other, that our actual goals were not separate. And I think that it, and she also on her part, you know, was very reciprocal. We had a really nice conversation and at one point she said, thank you for being so nice because most people really ain't mean with me. Right? And, and like, I'm no paragon of, believe me, I'm impatient, I'm this, I'm that, you know, I can be really critical. But the thing about it is, is, uh, Sometimes, you know, we do this practice and it all works out great. So, I don't know, that's the best I can come up with right this minute. Yes, sir? Are you still recording this? Okay.

[48:49]

I decided to use Waddell and Abhi's translation because they're recognized as being good translators and because they are doing a word word-by-word translation. So that it means that sometimes when people translate Dogon, if there's a difficult part, they translate it liberally or in a way that is not a word-by-word translation. It's like they want to give you the meaning of it, but they don't, but they consider maybe somehow it's too difficult to translate in some way that would be meaningful to you. And so they interpret. what it is that you're reading. So that's important to me. I want to try as much as possible to read what Dovon wrote. Yeah, Waddell and Abhi did literal translations. The ones that are being put out by the Soto Shu translation, which were used to be on a website with Stanford, or literal translations.

[49:54]

And by the way, in about three years, they're going to have that translation of the Shambhala Vinaya. I think Heejin Kim is a really good translator. And I didn't know anything about carpentry. In fact, even now I don't know really anything about carpentry. But in those houses, as I took apart the windowsill, took off the molding, carefully peeled apart the staircase, I recognized all the men, all the people who put that together. And from them, I learned. And what I took from that as a Yeah, you know, it's interesting you say that.

[51:28]

Dogen says something kind of akin to that in Busho, he says, which means Buddha nature, he says that in Shakyamuni's room, The Sixth Patriarch was also present and what the Sixth Patriarch knew also informed what Shakyamuni Buddha knows. Now this is like really on my part, I'm really paraphrasing this, but basically what he's saying is that from the Buddha nature that Shakyamuni Buddha, that the Sixth Patriarch understood is the same Buddha nature that Shakyamuni Buddha understood and in that way, The sixth patriarch was present in the room with Shakyamuni Buddha simultaneously in the realization of what that is. Does that make sense to you? There's this way in which that it's like, this to me is a kind of, I can explain it intellectually, but there's this just real intuitive hit to me that this makes sense.

[52:31]

This real intuitive heart connection. You know, what you're saying is that you take apart the, the intricate carpentry or the joinery of the building, and that joinery teaches you. So that person who put that together in the first place is completely present teaching you in that moment. even though they're not present, right? And simultaneously, all those people who learned that technique and passed it on to each other are completely present in that moment, in you, in the wood, in that moment of realization of how it works, right? And so it's all there happening at the same time. It's kind of cool. You know? Yes, please. And a samurai challenges him to a duel, because he knows Musashi is from a no-swords school.

[53:36]

And Musashi has the oarsmen of this boat, where many passengers are on, quickly glide toward land. And then the drunken samurai gets off the boat, and the oarsmen and Musashi from the water, and Musashi says, you see my no sword school. I want to now jump to the elections. So the choice is, instead of trying to engage this guy directly, he went away from him and saved the entire boat. So this is a question of how do we know when the engagement is possible and skillful? and we don't, we could spend our time trying to fix the person in the White House, or we could quickly find the people that we think will skillfully run our country.

[54:40]

I think the, you know, I think the co-on, it sounds like, okay, sorry. So I'm not asking about our country, I'm trying to ask about the aspect of when we know what is the skillful action, right right so so here's right Yeah, well, not this, not that, and yet, but. You know, this is why we practice so that we can understand in each situation what the appropriate response is. So all of those things may be the appropriate response, but that's why you can't say. There's no fixed answer to our questions, right?

[55:46]

We can just ask ourselves. What is the most efficacious thing to do in this situation? How can I include everything that I can understand about the nature of the situation in a way that is respectful of each person who's involved or each being or each thing? And look at that from that point of view. And also look at ourselves. Am I angry? Am I like a nut in this moment? Am I feeling equanimity? You know what? So if there's no, There's no right answer because what we have to do is day by day, by day, by day, do the practice. And we keep doing the practice so that when these situations arise, we have a much better chance of doing the right thing. Right? So we develop those muscles and that's why we have to do our practice with small things. We have to be patient with small things.

[56:48]

We have to have equanimity with small things so that when the big things happen, we've got the muscles to respond. Otherwise, we're not gonna be able to meet the moment. So we have to really do our practice each day, each moment, moment by moment by moment. Yes, please. Well, yeah, I think so.

[57:51]

You know, it's like nothing can be grasped. So that this, this, um, As soon as we hold on to something, I mean, you know this stuff already. As soon as we hold on to something, it's like we've fixed it. We're trying to make it into a certain thing and it just can't be that way because everything is in, you know, this constant state of interconnected fluxing, you know, how does the expression go before the, the horse arrives before the donkey leaves, the horse arrives. So, you know, there's this way in which there's nothing to hold on to and yet simultaneously, we do have ideas about things, right? And we do have these practices that we do and we do have these guidelines that we have. So it's like we take everything we know and we apply it to that situation and then we let it go. So if it's not helpful and it's not working, we let it go.

[58:54]

And so, is this what you're talking about, Peter? You know, it's like... Yeah. Yeah. And the only way that we can do that is to... Maybe it's like in a category of Roshi's type of super speed, you know... You know, it's like... hold on, let go, hold on, let go, hold on, let go, you know, back and forth, back and forth. And always be willing to just say, you know, okay, what, what is it? What is it? What is it? And of course the answer to what is it is what is it? I'm getting the signal here. I get the, like the strikers way up now. It's pretty soon he's going to be like moving in on me with the, you know, bong, bong, bong, shut up, shut up. Yes, I will stop. What do I do next? I put up my hands and go, okay, let's go.

[59:54]

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