If you say it's whatever, that doesn't get it. If you say it's not that, that doesn't get it either. But if you don't say anything, that's not going to get it. That's right. So he just uses his lips. It's kind of a soft thing, I guess. Traditionally, they were made out of the hairs of horses' tails. So imagine a horse's tail brushing against your face. It could hurt. Maybe you mistranslated hit. He lightly stroked his face. Actually, I forgot to bring the Chinese with me. You can ask me again next time. But I really think he says hit. I'm sorry. Sarah? I wondered if there was some distinction between the question being like,

[01:06]

is there a place, is there a specific locale, like you were saying, and then the answer being something more like, it's always available. It's always there, yeah. It's always here. But we don't know it. We're not know it. But we don't usually recognize it. We don't realize it. Usually we're too caught up in all the judgments and discriminations and so forth. Even in the monastery. This isn't really a why question. This is a how is it that. Yes, that's right. Good, thank you. That's right. So colloquially it's why, but it's not a why, why question. Thank you. Thank you. Well, again, this isn't the order I was thinking of,

[02:07]

but let's do 220 because I think it responds to some questions that came up. Holding up one function completely pervades 1,000 or 10,000 functions. Expounding one phrase circulates 1,000 or 10,000 phrases. Without borrowing from the family style of the ancient Buddhas, completely reveal your own nose. Already this is happening. We use a stick to kill the 1,000 wild foxes in Baizhong's cave and give a loud yell to disperse the gang of 30,000 monkeys at Dredgen. This is not simply patience with the unconditioned nature of all things, but also allows the wondrous dharma wheel to turn forever. Even if you reach this field directly, you should know there is a path of going beyond.

[03:08]

Do you want to know the path for going beyond? After a pause, Dogen said, there is no wondrous secret of bodhidharma at Shaolin to be transmitted from father to son. When hungry, we eat. When thirsty, we drink. When healthy, we sit. When tired, we sleep. When we understand this right here, this land is the Western Heaven. The character is India? No, it's literally the character is Western Heaven. That was the way they referred to India, but both meanings are there. Yeah. So there are a number of things to mention here. Holding up one function completely or expressing one phrase, expanding one phrase. So Dogen talks about doing one thing completely,

[04:12]

or taking on one practice and doing that completely as a way of engaging all practices. And there's a kind of historical context for that too. So one of the things that was happening in Japan in the 13th century, the Buddhism before that, before Dogen and before Zen, was this complex scholastic Buddhism, Tendai in Japanese, Chentai in Chinese, that kind of tried to include all the different practices and all the different sutras. And that was actually where Dogen was ordained and all of the other founders of the new movements in the 13th century had been Tendai monks. And part of what was happening is that there was a feeling that the previously dominant Buddhist establishments, particularly Tendai and Shingon,

[05:12]

were really kind of geared to the aristocracy and to monks and that it was too hard for ordinary people. So there were a number of different forms of developing a kind of single practice. So in Pure Land, just chanting the name of Amida Buddha, Namo Amida Butsu, is the practice. That was a large movement. In Nichiren Buddhism, which developed a little bit later, they had the practice of chanting the name of the Lotus Sutra, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, that still survives. And for Dogen, Zazen was the one practice. Now he still did all, he still chanted and he still offered incense and did all these other things, but that's part of what he's referring to here, that just to do one practice completely takes care of it all. So holding up one function completely pervades a thousand or ten thousand functions. So this is something he talks about in various ways in a lot of places, just to thoroughly engage, to wholeheartedly engage in the practice you're doing.

[06:14]

When you're sweeping the temple grounds, just sweep, you know, just to do each thing completely. And he also talks about that in terms of how he talks. Expounding one phrase circulates a thousand or ten thousand phrases. So he says, Without borrowing from the family style of the ancient Buddhists, completely reveal your own nose. So in one of the earlier of these Dharma discourses, in Ehe Korok, we talked about how he came back from China and without bringing any treasures or sutras or images, he just came back knowing that his eyes were horizontal and his nose was vertical. And that was what he had to offer to Japan from all his training in China. So, without borrowing from the family style of the ancient Buddhists, completely reveal your own nose. So it's kind of a funny expression,

[07:17]

but, you know, there's some feeling of just being there, you know, being completely honest. Then he says, Already this is happening. So the reference to Baizhang's, to the fox, some of you must know the story of Baizhang's fox. I know that there's some people from these conferences here and I told the office that I wasn't going to go over a lot of basic Buddhist stuff for people who are familiar with it, but are there any Zen students here who don't know the story of Baizhang's fox? Good, okay, so I can tell the story. So this is one of the basic koans, one of the basic teaching stories in Zen. And Baizhang was a great Chinese,

[08:18]

one of the great Chinese Zen masters. And he's kind of the founder of the Zen ethics and he wrote the first Shingi, the first monastic guidelines, supposedly anyway, he's supposed to have done that, scholars question that now, but he's considered to have done that. The Dogen followed after when he wrote his pure standards. Anyway, he also was famous for, when he got old, they worked in the fields. So one of the reasons that Baizhang survived in China whereas the more scholarly schools died out after some persecutions is that they were self-sufficient and they started the practice of having farms like we do here at Green Gulch and of the monks doing agricultural work and trying to be self-sufficient. So anyway, Baizhang was one of the first people who really had this kind of community.

[09:20]

And when he got old, his monks were feeling bad for him and they hid his tools. And he refused to come out of his hut and he refused to eat anything. And he said, a day without work is a day without food. So there's this kind of work ethic that Baizhang is responsible for. However, there's this really outrageous story about Baizhang. One day he'd been lecturing his monks and there was an old man who was standing in the back of, who would come in and be in the back of the assembly and one day when the monks left, the old man stayed. And the old man finally came up to him and said, you know, I was the master here on this mountain of Baizhang in a past age, you know, in the Big Bang before this one, you could say. And somebody asked me, is a greatly cultivated person subject to cause and effect or not? And I said, no, they're not. And because of that, I became a wild fox for 500 lifetimes.

[10:24]

Can you say something to help me? And so Baizhang said, a person who's greatly cultivated does not ignore cause and effect or is not blind to cause and effect. And the man was released and said, oh, thank you so much. And would you please give me a monk's funeral? If you go around behind the mountain, you'll find a dead fox body and please give me a funeral for that. Baizhang said he would. So this is a complicated story. But anyway, one of the longer poems. So Baizhang had the signal, the bell rung to signal a monk's funeral, which is a very elaborate ceremony. I guess they're doing it for maleate and cremation and funeral up in Arcata. And I haven't actually participated in doing that, but it's a very complicated ceremony. All the monks were confused because nobody had been sick. All the monks were there. What's he talking about?

[11:27]

And then he led them around the side of the mountain, took his staff, poked under a rock, and there was this dead fox. He said, we're going to cremate this and give this a monk's funeral. It's very scandalous. Foxes in Asia, foxes are kind of trickster figures in Native American tradition too, but in Asia they're even more. They're kind of more malevolent. So wild fox means kind of false or fraudulent or something. Anyway, so he gave a funeral. Then that night he explained what had happened and about the former Baizhang. So there's so many aspects to this story, but the person who had become a wild fox formerly would have been called Baizhang because he was the abbot of that monastery. So there's some way in which it's himself. But anyway, one of his students who was named Wang Po or Obaku who later became the teacher of Rinzai and was supposedly this great, imposing, majestic figure

[12:31]

who was seven feet tall and could touch his nose with his tongue. Anyway, Wang Po asked Baizhang what would have happened if he had given the right answer instead of giving the wrong answer all those lifetimes ago. Baizhang said, come here and I'll tell you. Wang Po came up and slapped his teacher Baizhang in the face. He didn't wait for the teacher to slap him. laughter So this is a complicated story, I warned you. Baizhang said, I knew there was a red-bearded barbarian, but here's a barbarian with a red beard. And that's a reference to Bodhidharma, who supposedly came from Persia. Anyway, so these Zen koans have all these different allusions in them. And Dogen knew all of this stuff cold. I mean, he has quotes from little commentary lines from the Buklif record that he just throws off in parts of these.

[13:31]

So there's this whole kind of web of allusions. But anyway, here he's talking about we use a stick to kill the thousand wild foxes in Baizhang's cave. So he's saying here, instead of giving it a monk's funeral, we'll get rid of all the foxes who have been hanging out at Baizhang. So that's what that is a reference to. And then the gang of 30,000 monkeys, the Zhuofengs. Zhuofeng was another great teacher who is known for having been the head cook at many, many temples for a long time before he became a teacher himself. We have some of those around here. Anyway, and apparently there were a lot of monkeys at Zhuofengs, not just the ones in the monastery. Anyway, this is not simply patience with the unconditioned nature of all things, but also allows the wondrous Dharma wheel to turn forever. We'll come back to that.

[14:34]

Even if you reach this field directly, you should know there is a path of going beyond. Do you want to know the path for going beyond? And then he says, after the pause, there's no wondrous secret of Bodhidharma Shaolin. When hungry, we eat. When thirsty, we drink. When healthy, we sit. When tired, we sleep. So he's just pointing out the ordinary everyday activities as the realm of awakening. So there's a lot of aspects to this story. We could probably spend, well, probably we will spend the rest of the night on this story. Questions, comments? I just wanted to talk again about the West. Don't they, isn't Western paradise sometimes referred to as Amitabha? Yeah, but that's a different one. It's a different character. Oh, it is? Yeah. Because I'm wondering why India would be considered heaven, just because Shakyamuni was there? Yeah, it's just, for people in China, it just represented, you know,

[15:35]

just the way Japanese people saw China, and Chinese people saw India as kind of the source of these great teachings. But literally, it's just West heaven. But it's used as a standard. But sometimes they do it with a different character for Western paradise. Yeah, well, they would call that the Pure Land Jodha, yeah. Is that where Buddhism started in India? Yeah. Well, in this cycle of history, yeah. So is that implication in that question of why Bodhidharma comes from the West, that heaven aspect? Or is it just literally India? Yeah, it's just a way of talking about India. There's another, you know, they have these phrases, like China is the middle kingdom. But there's another phrase for China that's like that,

[16:36]

that's kind of very flowery. So I could have just translated that as India, but it somehow, sometimes the overtones of those phrases seem to be part of the context. First is that this whole discourse is totally the family style. I mean, this is all totally typical, and each phrase in here has been written a hundred times. That's right. That's right. And for myself personally, just coming to feel the way that I can completely reveal my own notes without borrowing from the family style, through the family style, that it's not like you have...

[17:38]

Yeah, there's a whole, there's a thing about both Chinese and Japanese poetry and art, too, that it's not about doing something original. It's about using the kind of vocabulary with virtuosity, with authenticity, right now. So the way, in his talking, you know, he's using all these... As you say, he's using all these phrases that he uses over and over again and that are part of the koan lexicon, or sometimes they're from Zhuangzi or Laozi or from Japanese poetry. When I was down at Tassajara last week, one of the students who had seen part of this had found a phrase that we translated from Dogen. It was in Zhuangzi, the great old Daoist writer. So Dogen had read the whole Buddhist canon by the time he was 12, I think, three times, or twice, anyway. So he was this prodigy, you know, and he knew all the...

[18:42]

So some of this is like us quoting Shakespeare or, I don't know, Thomas Jefferson or Bob Dylan or something. He's just using these phrases, but he's using it... But the point is that he's using it in some way directly for his students right there. He's encouraging them in a particular way. So we can only imagine, you know, what was going on in the monastery and, you know, his moods and, you know. So a lot of times he talks about the seasons, and when it's spring, it's this wonderful thing. But they were living in this place where, you know, for several months a year, they had six feet of snow. And they had just started building this place. The facilities couldn't have been that all comfortable. So it was kind of rugged. Worse than Tassar. But I'm sorry I interrupted. Did you have something more? No? But all of these phrases that are part of the Buddhist context

[19:56]

also have a lot of deep meaning, some of them. So he says, this is not simply patience with the unconditioned nature of all things. That's another expression for highest wisdom. So anapadika dharmakshanti is the Sanskrit. It means patience or tolerance with the ungraspability of everything. This is an expression, this is kind of the highest form of patience. It's kind of like realization of emptiness. It's real being willing to be in the world where you can't put anything in a box, and being patient with that, and realizing it and understanding it and being able to function there. And he says, this is not simply patience with the unconditioned nature of all things, but also allows the wondrous dharma wheel to turn forever. So there's a very active element in what he's saying about the teaching. So maybe we can see the Bodhisattva side of it.

[20:59]

It's not just realization, but it's realization that is being shared and turning and alive. So turning the dharma wheel is a phrase for what a Buddha does and works working in the world to help us alleviate suffering and save suffering beings. Sarah, you have one? I was wondering if that was the same as the phrase in the Profession of Wisdom, 8000 Lines, in the patient endurance of things that fail to arise. Yeah, yeah. It talks about it a lot in the Vimalakirti Sutra too. So there are, you know, in just the phrases here, there are embedded a lot of deep Buddhist teachings. But in that section, you know, he's always talking about going beyond.

[22:02]

Even if you reach this field directly, you should know there is a path of going beyond. So going beyond realizing emptiness, what does one do? This is basic teaching for his students here. What is the path that goes beyond? Isn't that where the whisk comes in? Well, this time he doesn't fling his whisk, no. He just says there's no special secret, you know. There's no esoteric knowledge. There's no wondrous secret that bodhidharma shall have. There's nothing to be transmitted. He's not the first to say that, but he says it in a colorful way here. When hungry we eat, when thirsty we drink, when healthy we sit, when tired we sleep.

[23:04]

Why do you have dharma transmissions? Just to understand this, just to celebrate this. Do you think you understood more about dharma transmissions? I don't think that's, that wasn't the point, to understand it more. But it's a celebration. There's nothing to be transmitted and yet, obviously going back to the one about teachers and students, there's a kind of, I think all of these teachings in a way aren't about giving you something you don't already know. The place of great intimacy is already there. The one we read just before, he talks about this has already happened. This is already happening. Where was that? Oh, you know, that's in this one.

[24:11]

Already this is happening. So it's not, so there's a whole question about language and about teaching and about text. And maybe it comes across more in here than in Shobo Genzo, because in Shobo Genzo he's really expanding these koans into these long kind of philosophical, poetic descriptions where he's associating freely and doing all these wonderful tricks with words. But here it's more kind of direct. Already this has happened. So there's this saying that's attributed to Bodhidharma that Zen is a special transmission outside of words and letters. And that gets understood differently. There are, there have been schools of Zen where they said you shouldn't study or read texts. And there was a temple I was at in Japan where the students are literally not allowed to read.

[25:12]

Oh, maybe you were there, Max. Which one? Bukkakeji? Yeah. Al was there. Anyway, yeah, so if students receive magazines in the mail, they're confiscated. Literally. The teacher there is wonderful. And I knew people who stayed there quite a while. But some of them wanted to study Japanese so they could understand the teacher better. And they had to ask special permission to get books to use to study. Anyway, that's one extreme view of this. I would say the point of being outside words and letters is not being caught by any of these formulations. So Dogen's using them freely. Already this has happened. So I think my sense of all the sutras and writings by Dogen and the koans and all that stuff which I love to study myself is that they're not there to tell you something you don't already know.

[26:14]

They're more like a confirmation of something that you kind of sensed back there somewhere when you were in that place of great intimacy. So these kinds of sayings by Dogen you may find inspiring or not. But the point of them is just to help you see something that's already there. So I think transmission ceremonies are like that too. But Dogen talks about transmitting, you know, Bodhidharma transmitting the dharma and jhāna and things like that. So he contradicts himself in that. You can see it that way if you want to. You don't though. There's nothing, there's no dharma, that's why we celebrate it. John?

[27:16]

It seems to me that his last statement there after the pause is somewhat paradoxical. I was thinking how seldom I don't live that way. And then I'm thinking, well those monks didn't either. I mean they're slaves to the schedule. You know, you eat when you eat, not when you're hungry and so on. You certainly don't sleep when you feel like it. Good! And for his honest person, I think for his honest person, he had to be pretty well dead before he would not go to his honest person whether he was healthy or not. So how does that square with this? Good. Any responses to John? Well at first I was thinking how kind and sensitive of Dogen. It sounds like the road with Walden Cox. Right! Although, do we know that for a fact? Or what's he saying? Lighten up.

[28:19]

I don't know. Do we know? Well, we do know that when Thich Nhat Hanh came to Tassajara a first time, he was kind of appalled and he said, all these people are suffering sleep deprivation. You should all sleep more. Thank you. And he talked about how people should smile, you know. So we have examples of that in our time too, of that kind of teaching. I don't know with Dogen. We don't really know what the schedule was. We don't really know what the regimen was at Aheiji. Maybe they were making it up like we are. In fact, he was trying to figure out how to teach this way for Japanese monks. He had seen this in China with his teacher and he was establishing it. He was setting it up. So this may have been a time when he was kind of saying we should relax the schedule a little bit. I don't know. I wouldn't necessarily take him that literally here.

[29:24]

I really like the way you put it. And yet, even if there was a rigorous schedule where they ate when the bell rang and they sat whether they were healthy or not, and they went to sleep when the signal for that came. I mean, they were probably tired then, right? Okay. So this is a good question. It sounds like I'm just very self-indulgent in one way. Totally self-indulgent. But also, you might say, if in fact they had a very rigorous schedule, and we don't really know, then him saying this, what does that mean? That's kind of interesting. Well, it's a metaphor for ordinariness and everyday activity. Well, at first blush, yes. Well, certainly that's there. Certainly that's there, just to do each thing completely. But I think it's a good question. It plays with what's going on with these monks,

[30:31]

and he's encouraging them to just enjoy whatever it is they're doing. Sarah? Didn't you read something? There was something last week about when I'm tired, I go to sleep. Yeah, he says things like that a number of times. I don't think we read this one, but there are other ones like that. And I was thinking about in terms of how you negotiate that with a total devotion to the schedule. And I had some feeling, I didn't articulate that much, but I think it's an expression of non-resistance to your life. So instead of thinking, like, I'm not hungry now, I don't want that bell to ring. It's more like, okay, we're eating. It's not like, oh, I happen to, you know, you convince yourself that you're hungry and you have to eat, but more like these activities will arise and you do them. And you don't do them without resistance. You do them without thinking, like, should I do this or not? Yeah, yeah, I think that's good.

[31:33]

And I don't think it's either or. I think it's good. So the way we're talking about this now is a demonstration of one way of working with koans, which is to look at something from different angles and different perspectives and really kind of see, play with what's going on in this particular story. So this is a story that Dogen's telling his monks. And there are lots of ways to look at it. Roberta? Well, I guess I see it as, you know, the saying, the hand that gives life and the hand that takes away, you know, that there are some aspects in practice where you're totally intimate and listening to your body and going with it. And then there are other aspects where you're totally, you know, where if you listen to your resistance every time you were sleepy, you wouldn't progress at all. So I kind of see it as, you know, landing on both sides.

[32:34]

And, you know, most Zen teachers, some are stricter than others, but they all have moments where they're totally, you know, like just a mother giving the student what they need and other moments where they're very, very much cutting off, you know, some attempts at self-assertion. So I just see this as one side, you know. I mean, I don't know how it was in Japan. I know from being at Tassajara, my own practice, quite a lot of the time, somewhat different from what you said. I didn't, like, want to eat that food or I was sleepy. I didn't really feel like I was, you know, like I was with it. Sometimes I was. But if I wasn't, I found that it didn't work to force myself. You know, it was easier just to say, well, I don't want to do this or I am sleepy, but this is my commitment. And there are always moments in a place like Tassajara where you have that allowing sign. I mean, everybody came up against that, you know. I mean, I don't think anybody who followed the schedule 100% was, I don't know what,

[33:42]

not very healthy in my opinion. You know what I mean. No, I followed the schedule perfectly. I believe you. Those two alternating signs is what I'm getting at now. Yes, yes, yes, good. You know, I want to go back to one phrase here. You know, part of this is how, one of the questions here is, how do we allow the wondrous dharma wheel to turn forever? There's that line in there. It's not just to realize emptiness. It's not just to realize patience with this difficult life, but also how do we allow this to continue turning? And I think in that context to see that we do what we have to do. So when Dogen got sick, he got sick and he didn't, you know, and he did leave the monastery once. I think we have it in the end of this where he goes to,

[34:43]

or if we don't, I can read it to you, where he goes to Kamakura for a while and then comes back. And so even in very rigorous monasteries, when somebody's sick you go into the infirmary. And so anyway, there's one tone I hear in here is just how do we, how do we sustain this practice? How do we keep this dharma alive? And I think that's where he's coming from when he's talking about when we're hungry we eat, when we're thirsty we drink, when we're healthy we sit. We have to understand this right here. So, you know, he does have, but you're right, he does have both strict sides and kind of grandmotherly sides. We're almost out of time, but I'll read one more

[35:43]

and we'll talk about it more in the next class, which is next Tuesday, a week from tomorrow. This is number 189 and this is the mid-autumn dharma discourse. And that was kind of the, so the months were, there was lunar calendar and the 15th day of the month was the full moon. So this was the full moon in the 10th month. And this was the, you know, the perfect beautiful full moon in Asian culture, in East Asian culture. And they still have, you know, moon viewing ceremonies when the full moon happens, but especially this moon. This is the most beautiful of all the full moons. The Harvest Moon? It's the Harvest Moon, right. So Japanese people still, you know, as horrible as Japanese society is, they still go out and when the cherry blossoms bloom, they go out and have cherry blossom viewing festivals

[36:45]

and when the maples in the fall turn red, they go out and have maple viewing. The whole family goes out and they have a picnic amongst the maple trees and enjoy the trees turning in the park. So there's this kind of connection. And of course, in Dogen's time in the 13th century, they did not have electric lights. They didn't have to worry about PG&E. They were very in tune with the season. So anyway, this is kind of a celebration event. This is the Harvest Moon Dharma discourse. So Dogen said, In the heavens, the moon is round and vast as the ancient mirror. In the middle of the month, in the human realm, the full moon extends over the entire world. In the dark, it rolls up 2,000 or 3,000. In the light, it unfolds to pervade throughout 7,000 or 8,000. Seeing the moon as like the eyeballs of the seven Buddhas,

[37:48]

produces joyful laughter. Seeing it as like Yunmen's sesame cakes, brings in uproarious clamor. Having arrived at such a field, can you enjoy your practice like this or not? So Yunmen's sesame cakes refers to a koan. Yunmen, we've already heard about tonight. But Yunmen, he's famous for giving short answers to koans. Anyway, he was asked short answers to questions. He was asked, What goes beyond all the talk of the Buddhas and ancestors? And he said, Sesame cake, or just cake. Anyway, having arrived at such a field, can you enjoy your practice like this or not? After a pause, Dogen said, Illuminating hundreds of grasses in many lands, everywhere a toad is jumping around with vigor. And the toad is a symbol of the moon, just like the rabbit is in East Asia. But there's this toad jumping around with vigor. So the moon is illuminating hundreds of grasses in many lands. So there's actually a lot in this.

[38:52]

There's a lot of symbolism in this particular one. And we're almost out of time tonight. Does anybody want to make one comment and we'll talk about it next time? The green gulch monks are sleeping. So in the middle of the month in the human realm, the full moon extends over the entire world. So this is talking about enlightenment and delusion and about manifestation in the world and about how we know and see and enjoy and celebrate a way of life. And so we'll talk about it at the beginning of next time. And now we'll close with our closing chant.

[39:39]

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