touched on some of the selections that you've already read and a number that you haven't. So what I'd like to do is have this be rather informal. So please just raise your hands in the middle of whatever and ask questions. And let's try that at least to begin with. What I want to do is do some introductory remarks about Dogen and about this text. and talk about it and its significance in general. And then I want to just do selections from this. We won't get to all of the selections that I've copied for you, but there's some that I wanted to talk about, and then some of you may have others amongst them that you want to talk about. So we'll just have a day to play with it. I don't know, how many of you want a general introduction to Dogen? Good. So, Dogen was the, is considered the founder of Japanese Soto Zen.

[01:07]

He was a Japanese monk. His years are 1200 to 1253. He went to China from 1223 to 27 and then came back and first lived in actually set up a temple south of Kyoto from 1233 to 1243, at which point, rather abruptly, he moved north to the mountains of northern Japan, far from the capital, and set up the temple Eheji, which is still one of the two main headquarter temples of Soto Zen. Dogen wrote just a voluminous amount, probably more than any other Zen master in history. A lot of his writings are based on talks he gave. So one question is just, some of you know, probably Dogen is most known for Shobogenzo, True Dharma, I, Treasury, and there are numbers of translations of the essays in those.

[02:13]

This work that I've translated over the last several years was Shohaku Okamura, uh... isn't the other major work of his though a co-worker with so much as long as the full selection of essays of trouble gets up so our translation will be out about a year from was the publications and it's very large little i don't we don't know yet but something like seven or eight hundred pages expecting uh... so there's a lot of material there the first uh... seven volumes uh... feature these Jodo, which literally means ascending the hall, but we translate it as Dharma Hall Discourses. So these were given in the Dharma Hall at Eheji. Actually, some of them, some of them, the early ones, I think the ones that you've looked at so far, are from Koshoji, his temple in Kyoto before he moved to Eheji. But they're very short. The context was that the monks would come in from the monks hall.

[03:17]

Dogen would be sitting up on the altar, on the high seat on the altar. And unlike this kind of format that we're used to in America, the monks would be standing. So most of them are very short. Some of them are long. And this is a traditional form that goes back to the recorded sayings in China. So Dogen was adopting this traditional form. And just to say a little bit about the comparison, the form in the Shobo Genzo, these longer essays where he kind of elaborates on koans or particular themes or motifs, also are based on talks, but more informal talks, and then more kind of elaborated. In some ways, the Jodo, the talks in Hikoroku are more formal, but paradoxically, they reveal more of Dogen personally, because in the essays in Shogogenzo, he's kind of more, the way they're more philosophical, they're more elaborated.

[04:30]

These short dharma hall discourses are, He's more, show more his training of his monks and his playfulness and sense of humor and his sentiment and his teaching style. So, one of the ironies is that Dogen's writing is so popular in the West now and in translation and there's starting to be decent translations of most of Dogen, a lot of Dogen. So my publisher says that whereas for Theravada people, Shakyamuni Buddha is most important, and for Tibetans, the Dalai Lama is most important, and Zen, Dogen is most important. And that's really funny because Dogen's writings were not important in Japanese Zen. his writings were not important in the spreading and the establishment of Soto Zen.

[05:31]

Shobo Genzo Orhei Kuroku weren't read outside of the Soto school until the 1920s at all. And even in the Soto school, up until then, there were just a few Soto monks and scholars who would read Dogen. And at times, even in the Soto school, his writings were kept secret. So even Soto monks couldn't read Dogen. Why wasn't it? Well, part of it is that... There were so many writings, such a body of writings, that people weren't sure within a couple of centuries after Duggan what was really written by Duggan. So there are now 95 different essays that are considered part of Shobo Genzo. collected in that way up until the 1600s though. There was a 28 SA version and a 85 SA version and a 60 SA version and a whole bunch of different versions and nobody, you know, so there was some question about it.

[06:40]

One possibility is that because in some of those writings, Dogen is quite vitriolic in his criticism of certain Rinzai teachers or Rinzai himself, that that was considered not appropriate to disseminate. But Dogen was important in Soto Zen for other reasons than his writing. So that's part of what I wanted to talk about. They weren't used either? They were used, but they weren't read. The Ehei Shingi, which I translated with Shimaku previously, Dogen's Pure Standards for the Zen Community, was an important text as a basis for things like the Tenzo Kyokun, as a basis for the monastic practice. But actually, there were others that were maybe more helpful later, like the Keizan Shingi. So three generations after Dogen, one of his main successors is named Keizan, who wrote his own Shingi, which goes into more detail about ceremonies and things like that in the monastic schedule.

[07:54]

So there were other Shingi that came later that were more detailed about particular monastic forms than Ehe Shingi. Ehe Shingi is more Dogen's attitude about it. So some of the material in Ehe Shingi goes into great detail about the procedures to be done at Eheji in Soto Monastery. But most of the procedural stuff is taken verbatim from earlier Chinese texts, or Vinaya texts. And what Dogen does most of that is to talk about the attitude towards taking responsible positions in the monastery. So, it's not that these weren't read at all. There were Soto teachers and monks would read Dogen, but it wasn't that his, but Dogen wasn't particularly known for his writing. He was known as Well, I'll come back to this.

[08:55]

He was known as a kind of miracle worker. So there are stories about Dogen's kind of super, you know, miraculous powers that I'll talk about. But I would say the two really most important things that Dogen did historically in terms of spreading Soto Zen were not his writings, but two things, and both of them are much more available in Ehe Koroku than in Shobokenzo. First he trained some very good disciples. And so we can see the training, his actual training of his students, more from Ehe Koroku than from Shobokenzo. Ehe Koroku is, most of Shobokenzo he finished before he settled at Eheji. There's just a very few bits of Shobokenzo that are from the later period when he was at Eheji. Most of Shobo Genzo, a vast, vast majority of Shobo Genzo essays were written within three or four years.

[09:57]

It's kind of remarkable, because they're, you know, they are such great monumental works of Zen philosophy and poetry and teaching. But most of them were done between 1241 and 1244. And once he settled at Eheji, he basically abandoned that form of writing and just did these Dharamhala discourses. I should mention just about Ehe Koroku. We're not going to talk about them today, but the first seven volumes are basically chronologically these dharma hall discourses. Volume eight has some material from earlier The dharma words, or hoga, so the talk I gave last night, some of you were at, I read from one of those, and those are from the earlier period. Then it also has shosan, or informal meetings, which are much longer, which are longer than the dharma hall discourses. Those are from Eheji, and then it has fukan zazengi, which some of you know. Volume nine has 90 koans with Dogon's verse comments.

[10:58]

They're really wonderful. So, you know, if we totally, if we have enough time today, if we, Or if we end up deciding to go all night tonight, then maybe I'll get into some of Volume 9 too. And then Volume 10 is his Chinese poetry. And that's interesting because it's some of the earliest token we have. There's a whole section of that which is from his student time in China. Some of those aren't so good. They're more formal and celebratory, and some of them are very good. And then it also has a bunch from Ehege and a bunch that are wonderful from his later years, so I included one at the end from that. I'm sorry, I got off track. I tend to digress in all kinds of directions, so anybody who feels like pulling me back is welcome to. So I started talking about his disciples and what's really important that Dogen did in terms of establishing Soto Zen. Two things, I would say. The disciples he trained and this lay ordination ceremony, which we still do, and his emphasis on precepts, so I'll come back to that.

[12:06]

In terms of disciples, we don't know how many monks were at Koshoji or how many monks were at Eheiji. There's one of the Dharma Hall discourses that talks about 30-something monks, that may be the number that were at Koshoji, the temple in Kyoto. But at any rate, Historically, there were seven great disciples of Dogen, who we can say really helped to spread Soto Zen. And within a couple generations after Dogen, Soto Zen had spread, you know, institutionally, historically, throughout the countryside in northern and southern Japan, you know, in many places. So just in terms of history of Japanese Zen, Soto spread mostly and was most popular in the countryside amongst the peasants and farmers. Kyoto was always the center of Rinzai Zen. So Soto always had many more members, but Rinzai was more influential maybe in terms of high culture, in terms of influence on samurai, in terms of development of the tea ceremony.

[13:20]

That all happened through Rinzai Zen. Not that it wasn't in Soto also. but there are still very few Soto temples in Kyoto. It's mostly Rinzai. So this training of his disciples, you know, it happened partly at Koshoji, but also in terms of seeing how he trained his disciples. We'll look at that today in terms of some of the excerpts I've picked, his way of teaching. And, you know, one of the things to say is that Dogen's writings, and as we read them now and as they're appreciated, uh... in japan as well as in the west in the twentieth century dogan has become uh... noted and celebrated as a great philosopher great uh... expounder of buddhism but he was never trying to uh... put forth some philosophical position he wasn't interested in uh... propounding some philosophy he was a religious teacher he was teaching to particular students always the shogun said to him

[14:26]

So I think we have to see him as a religious teacher, as a meditation teacher, as somebody who is training particular students. And who those particular students were has a lot to do with what his teachings were. So we may talk about that in terms of his disciples. Anyway, in terms of the training of these people, I think the Ehe Koroko really shows that most closely, because it's these very focused talks to his monks. I mentioned seven, just to mention, for those of you who are interested in this kind of thing, such as in history, there will not be a test at the end, but the seven main disciples that we could look at and see, in terms of their historical import later, there may have been other very wonderful practitioners there, and he does mention some of them by name, but Koen Ejo was his main successor. So he's first, and then Sene and Kyoko.

[15:30]

Sene may have also had dharma transmission from Dogen directly. Sene was one of the early, he's the compiler of the early volumes of Ehe Koroku. Kyoko became his disciple, but also had studied with Dogen, We must have been very young at the time, but their commentaries, commentaries of Sine and Kyoko on Shobo Genzo are very, very important. Their lineage didn't last that long, so they're not so important in terms of that, but the commentaries they wrote on Shobo Genzo are really the basis for how we understand Shobo Genzo now, because one of the things about Dogen's writing in Shobo Genzo, but also in Ehe Koroku, is that he's playing with language a lot, and particularly in the essays in Shobo Genzo, where he takes koans or sayings from the sutras and turns them inside out. It's, his way of turning inside out Japanese syntax is very hard to follow, but thanks to Sene and Kyoko's commentaries, and they were there actually,

[16:33]

studying with Dogen, we can see that the ways in which Dogen is playing with words, that he actually meant that. And people didn't really, until, I guess, Menzon in the 1600s, one of the great commentators on Dogen in Soto history, used Senei and Kyoko's commentary and established the modern readings for Dogen. So, for example, Some of you may have heard the essay Buddha Nature in Shobogenza. He takes the saying from the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, all sentient beings without exception have Buddha nature. And Dogen re-reads it, playing with the Chinese characters as all sentient beings, whole being, Buddha nature, or all sentient beings completely are Buddha nature. And so Dogen plays with language a lot to show the inter-meaning and inter-dynamics of Mahayana teaching and non-duality. And it plays a lot with Koan sayings, so we'll see some of that in some of what we do today.

[17:37]

And also with the sayings from the sutras. And we're able to understand what he's doing better because of Senei and Kyoko. So Koan Ejo, Senei, Kyoko. Tetsu Gikai was also a student of Dogen's. He, like the others, eventually got transmission from Koan Ejo, but Gikai was a direct student of Dogen's. This famous story about him, he was with the Tenzo when they first moved to, up to Eheiji, up to the north country, with what's now called Fukui, where Dosho Sensei and I practiced at Fukopuji. That's that area. And Gikai probably was from there. He was the Tenzo there initially. Dogen talked about wanting to give him transmission, but that he didn't have enough grandmotherly mind. Grandmotherly mind.

[18:39]

So he eventually was able to get transmission from Koen Ejo. But he became the abbot after Koen Ejo. And he was the main teacher of Keizan, who was sort of considered the second founder of Soto. Another one of these seven disciples of Dogen is Gien, who became the abbot after Tetsubikai. He was apparently a very, a lot of emphasis on Zazen, a very strict teacher, a very dedicated man. We don't know so much about him. But Keizan, he was also, Keizan had several of these people as his own teachers. including Gien. Another one who's very interesting is Jacquin, and he was a student of Dogen's teacher, Tiantang Rujing, or Tendon Yojo in Japanese, in China. So he was, Jacquin was Chinese, and a Dharma brother of, younger Dharma brother of Dogen from China, who after their teacher died in China, came to Japan.

[19:45]

which was not an easy thing to do, and became one of the main disciples there and was the head of the memorial hall. And he established a temple, Hokyoji, which still is one of the training temples of Soto Zen, not so far from Eheiji. And his lineage still survives. So, Jacquin is important. He had a student named Guiyun who became later an abbot of Eheji. And that lineage was actually dominant in Eheji for centuries. So then the seventh of the seven is named Kangan Guiyun. And he established a lineage in Kyushu that also survives. Soto Zen today in Japan comes from Keizan. Anyway, I know this, some of you aren't so interested in this historical detail, but I'm just mentioning it for those of you who are. And we'll get to the actual material soon. But anyway, I just wanted to mention these people, Kangan Gian, after Dogen died, like Tetsugikai, went to China to study there as well.

[20:49]

And came back and established this lineage, which was also very prominent for many centuries after Dogen. So my point is just that these seven people and many others were actually present for all of these dharma hall discourses. They were amongst the monks standing in the audience, and they were the ones who actually spread and established Soto Zen historically. So more than his writings, what Dogen actually did in terms of the historical spread of Soto in Japan was to train a group of very good disciples. The second thing I mentioned is that he, particularly in the later material from Hei Koroku, emphasizes precepts. And he doesn't talk about it here, but he started doing this lay ordination ceremonies that we do still. And that was a way in early Soto Zen that was developed through the next few generations. So it was a way for the farmers and peasants who did not have time to go and

[21:53]

you know, live in the monasteries or do a lot of zazen. They had done some zazen, they knew about it, but they could receive this initiation into the lineage through lay ordination and also receive instruction in the precepts, which is the application of how zazen mind is carried out into our everyday activity. So I'm going to be talking a little more about the precepts tomorrow morning, but basically Soto has emphasized the application of Zazen, the application of our Zazen experience into everyday practice, into our everyday activity, both in the monastery, but also through the precepts for lay people. So this is very relevant to our developing experiment of Zen in America, where we basically are doing lay practice or non-residential practice in most places in America. householder practice or even lay priest practice.

[22:58]

So anyway, Dokin started that sense of lay ordination. Well, I don't know, you know, I think through all of Buddhism there are lay precepts. Usually they're different, so they're usually the first five of the ten. In South Asia, too, are given to lay people. So the 16 precepts that we do now, I assume you do 16 here also? Yes. It's not clear if those were, it looks like those were started as a group of 16 by Dogen. The Bodhisattva precepts, as opposed to the whole 250, was started by the Tendai school that Dogen was first ordained in, and by a Saisho who founded Japanese Tendai. But I'm sorry, maybe that wasn't your question. No, that's good information. I was just wondering if doing this lay ordination, if you think it was an adaptation to the rural setting, that it wasn't, not just coincidental, that he did it, he was in a rural setting, which is different from Kyoto.

[24:14]

No, because they did lay, there were lay, I think there were lay initiation ceremonies for lay people and, you know, in other contexts too, maybe before Dogen. But he's using these 16 and his emphasis of this, I think, and his emphasis of precepts. So, let me come back to this idea of his audience. So, again, he's not just promulgating some Zen philosophy in his writings. He's always talking to particular students. So he was talking in the later writings, in the later parts of Shobo Genzo and in the He Koroku, he's talking mostly to monks, but there were also lay students. So there are, you know, there were lay people who came to hear these, these Dharamhala discourses, definitely. There were women as well as men. There were, it was, even though he's emphasizing in his teaching later on, this monastic practice. In fact, I mentioned, Dogen, as the founder figure in Soto legend, there's one account of, I don't know which of these Dharamhala discourses it is, unfortunately, but there's an account of laypeople going to hear one of Dogen's talks like this.

[25:31]

all of them testifying to seeing beautiful colored lights rising from the dharma hall as he spoke. So anyway, there's that kind of story about Dogen and many others, which is not what we usually think of in America where we come from a kind of secular scientific background, so I'll come back to that. At any rate, he was talking to monks as well as laypeople, but of his monk disciples who he was focusing on, a lot of them were from the Daruma school. So I don't know how much to go into this. Do you know about that? Okay, a little bit. All of the ones that have Gi, that's the beginning of their name, Tetsugikai, Gien, Kangan Gien I mentioned, Koan, Koan Ejo also, were from this Daruma school, so-called Daruma school, which was an early Zen school in Japan. And founded by a man named Nonin. I don't know if that's who the Nebraska Nonin is named after, but anyway, he's very much, the earlier Nonin is very much criticized in Japanese and history and by Dogen and his, or the Daruma school for, apparently they had the idea that if you just have Kensho or if you just see the Buddha nature, then you don't need to practice.

[26:58]

So Dogen, a lot of Dogen's very fituperative talks are aimed at that kind of understanding. And he particularly uses as scapegoats for that Dawei and sometimes Rinzai himself. So he was trying to undo particular misunderstandings of particular students. So, at the same time, I mentioned Geek High had been from from Echizen, this area in the north where Dogen moved to, rather suddenly, there's all kinds of speculation in Dogen's studies as to why Dogen moves rather suddenly in 1243 from Kyoto up to Echizen. And you may see in some books that people say that he was harassed by the Tendai establishment or so forth. We don't really know. I think there could have been lots of positive reasons why he wanted to move up there.

[28:01]

his main patron had land up there, which was donated, which was where Eheji was built. And a number of the students from this Joruma school were from there, including Tetsugikai, so they may have had very helpful, supportive family connections up there. We don't really know. He may have even gone, Dogen may have even moved up there as kind of a missionary of one branch of the Tendai school, which had a temple near where Eheji was. So, the usual stereotype is that Dogen was driven out of Kyoto by the established schools, and that's, there's not really any basis for that, that's later speculation. So, That's a little bit about the historical background. Again, there were many more disciples than these seven, but I wanted to focus on those seven just because of their role in establishing Soto and later Soto history. Those of you who studied the earlier Shobo Genzo also know about Sokai, who was another monk of Dogen's who received transmission but then died young before he moved to Eheiji.

[29:12]

So that's all by way of a little introduction to who Dogen was in the background of this before we jump in. Are there any comments or questions at this point? I have a question about those. You said that precepts that Dogen established came from his high school, the Bodhisattva precepts. Yes. Is that the 16 you mentioned? Well, it was those 10. There's a book called the Bonmyo-kyo in Japanese, the Brahmajala Sutra in Sanskrit. It's available in translation, but there were in China the 10 grave precepts that we take, plus 48 minor precepts that were considered Mahayana precepts. But Chinese monks also took the traditional 250 precepts, also taken by Theravada monks. And that changed in Japan, not in China. So one of the reasons why Dogen, again, a lot of the history we don't really know, it's a lot of speculation, but probably one reason why Dogen had to stay under the boat in China when he first got there for a while is that he had never taken full precepts.

[30:26]

So there was some negotiation that had to happen before they accepted him. So Dogen never took the full 250 monastic precepts, he lived that way, but in The Tendai school, again, I don't know how much to go into all this, I want to play with the text, but just as background, the earlier dominant schools of Japanese Buddhism were the Shingon and Tendai. Do you know about that? Shingon is the Vajrayana, like Tibetan Buddhism, and Tendai comes from the Chinese Chiantai school. which is the Chinese school of Buddhism that really synthesized all of Buddhism in a uniquely Chinese way and really is quite marvelous. very developed philosophy and that came to Japan as the Tendai school but changed in Japan and adopted a lot of the Vajrayana forms. So this was the, it's called in Japanese Mikyo Buddhism or Esoteric Buddhism. So actually all of Japanese Buddhism is very, definitely heavily Tantric or Vajrayana in terms of its foundation including Sato Zen.

[31:38]

There are ways I can spell that out but, That was the basis out of which Zen and the Pure Land and Nichiren schools developed in Dogen's time. But anyway, in this Tendai school, they focused on the 48, the 10 and the 48, rather than on the 250. So that goes back to Tendai. And then Dogen took those 10. He doesn't talk about the 48. I mean, it's there in Soto. Sometimes they're recited. One of the temples I practiced with in Japan, they recited it for their Do you do that here? The full moon ceremony? Oh, you do it twice a month? Oh, good for Darshan. Yeah, that's the way, in San Francisco Zen Center, we do it once a month on full moon, but it was never really intended as a, you know, it doesn't have anything to do with the moon, it was just a twice a month confession and repentance ceremony. Anyway, in Japan when they do it, they recite those 48 precepts sometimes.

[32:39]

Anyway, Dogen took the 10 and then he added the three refuges and these three pure precepts of doing good, not doing evil, benefiting all beings, there are various different translations, and came up with this 16. And I don't think we know for sure, but it looks like Dogen was the one who initiated the 16 as a group of precepts. So, other questions? That's a good question, whether he wrote them first or taught them, and they were compiled by particular disciples. all of the volumes of Ehe Koroko are compiled either by Ko and Ejo, by Senne, or by Giyan, who I mentioned. I forgot to mention, he's one of the compilers of, he's the compiler of the later Dharamhal discourses.

[33:43]

So we don't really know whether Dogen wrote them out in Chinese first and then spoke them, and then they were, they kind of were put together and Dogen worked on them, you know, with the compilers, with the editors, his attendants. We don't know. But they were, Dogen did work on them as writings and did also give them as talks and what the order was, we don't know. Some of them may have been, you know, again, this is just a guess, that he would speak them and the editor, the compiler, his attendant would take notes and then they would write it up. Some of them are very short and very kind of impromptu and playful and some of them have the compiler's notes, like a lot of times they're kind of stage directions, like Dogen would hold up his whisk or he would throw down his staff or get down from the seat. So that's the compiler saying that. So obviously some of them were based on notes taken of this event that happened in the Dharma Hall. Some of them may have been written down, and Dogen may have prepared something and then spoke of them.

[34:46]

A lot of them, so getting to what the content of these Dharma Hall discourses are, a lot of them are just kind of encouragements to his monks, or particular things that Dogen was trying to convey or teach. A great many of them are koans with Dogen's own comments, and the way he comments are based on the traditional ways that... Chinese Zen teachers commented on koans in text like the Blue Cliff Record, but also in the recorded sayings. So there are many different modes that Dogen uses borrowed from that. Sometimes he will give interlinear comments on a particular classical koan. Sometimes he will say what he would have said if he had been the person, which is another traditional way. Sometimes he'll just give a kind of introduction, or sometimes he'll give a summary. So we'll see some examples of that today. Some of the dharma hall discourses are for particular celebrations, like Buddha's birthday, or Parinirvana Day, or Buddha's Enlightenment Day, or the New Year's Day, or the Winter Solstice, or various festival days.

[35:57]

So there's a lot of those. A lot of the A lot of Heihe Koroku, he refers back to Hongzhe, particularly, more than Chantang Rujing. So, Brent mentioned the book I did a while back, Cultivating the Empty Field, which is from Hongzhe, who was the most important Soto or Caodong teacher in China a century before Dogen. He was the abbot of the same monastery that Dogen finally received transmission from his teacher at Chantung Wujing. Dogen's teacher was at the same monastery where Chantung Hongxue was at. Sometimes he's called Chantung Hongxue. So there's some of his, just a little bit of his writings are in Cultivating the Empty Field. He is also the person who picked the cases and wrote the verses for the Book of Serenity, the Shuiroku. So anyway, a lot of Hongzhe's writings are just quoted verbatim and commented on by Dogen in Ehe Korokku.

[36:57]

So that was fun for me, because I got to translate more Hongzhe after doing Cultivating the Empty Field. And there's a lot more of Hongzhe to be translated. So there's a range of different kinds of things that are in Ehe Korokku. And as I said before, there are Often very humorous, Dogen's wit and his playfulness, his strictness also, his way of teaching, all of that comes across in this. So other general questions or comments before we get into just looking at particular ones of these teachings? Anyone? Thank you, good question. Well, it's just, there's just, you know, maybe it's easier to do it just by looking at some of the text, but the range of what he talks about, the way in which he plays with the material, the way in which he gets to the essence, to the heart of Mahayana non-duality, the way in which he brings forth the teaching, to me is,

[38:19]

just very inspiring. I connect Dogen with Zazen. My first teacher was a Japanese Soto Zen priest in New York City, and he just did Zazen and talked about Dogen. So I'm still doing that, whatever, 30 years later. You know, along with, there are many other great spiritual writers in world history who you can go back and look at the material over and over and over again, and there's just, you know, I'm still teaching from Genjo Koan, you know, 30 years on, and there's new things in it all the time. And then to translate Dogen has been really wonderful, so I've translated with, you know, Kastanahashi, and now with Shohaku, and become friends with other Dogen scholars and translators, and trying to put this stuff into English. Just the process of translating it has been wonderful.

[39:26]

Dogen's really difficult, so translating with Shohaku Sometimes we, maybe this is more so in Shobo Genzo, but also in the Hikuroku, there are times we would come to a passage and some of it is fairly straightforward, but some of it is, what? What does he mean here? Why is he saying this? And Shouhaku would just stop and say, I don't understand. And I would just suggest things. Well, maybe he means this. No, it couldn't be that because this and this. And finally, I would say something. And finally, Shouhaku would say, well, let's try that. So that's what we have. But to understand what he's saying, to understand what he's saying, often the other thing, though, is that often we'd spend hours talking about a sentence or two. And not trying to understand, what does Dogen mean here? What is he getting at? And a lot of times, you know, there are different levels.

[40:28]

Because Chinese characters are, there is, there are various meanings that are possible. And sometimes intentionally, you know, they're, more than one of them are there. And so to get that, to capture that ambiguity in English is, you know, difficult a lot of times. We had the experience many times of struggling with a sentence or two for literally two or three hours, and then coming back and reading it very literally from Dogen's original, and suddenly it's very clear. My friend Norman Waddell was one of the first really good translators of Dogen. His book, The Heart of Dogen Shobugenzo, a little book, finally published. the Shobogenzo translations that were published initially in Eastern Buddhist in the early 70s. He told me that he was studying Dogen with Nishitani Keiji, who was a great Kyoto school scholar. And Nishitani said, would take a sentence from Dogen and say, and show how Dogen could not have said what he meant in any other way.

[41:40]

that what he was saying was very precise. So Dogen goes over and over, you know, these teachings that he's working over, more in Shobu Genzo, but also in Heiko Roku, and says what, particularly in Shobu Genzo, they'll say, you know, all the things that it doesn't mean, and all the things that, all the ways of misunderstanding it that are not what it's about. And he's, you know, he's very careful, and he, and at the same time, very playful. So one of the things I love about Dogen is the way he plays with the Dharma. He's not, you know, stuck to some... He's taking the traditional material. He's not in... He's not violating the actual meaning of the dharma traditionally, but he's taking traditional ways of saying it in sutras and koans and turning them inside out to show the real meaning. So he does this again and again. And so I, you know, a lot of doken, I spend lots of time, you know, this is, I don't know, the fifth or sixth time I've spent a day talking about stuff from Heiho Roku.

[42:48]

And I can just keep doing that, you know. My ambition is to never do any more translation. And to just spend the rest of my time just commenting on what I've already translated. So, anyway, that's a little bit of an answer. One short, not quite on topic question. How did you learn Japanese while you were doing this? Because it's a rather difficult language, is it not? My first course in Japanese was one of those horrible 10-week intensive, one academic year of Japanese in 10 weeks in the summer where you spend I don't know, eight hours a day in class and six hours a day at home going over it or whatever, which was miserable, but I managed to absorb a lot. But I've studied it. I don't know Japanese well enough to, for example, sit down and read a Japanese newspaper.

[43:54]

I'm actually not fluent in Japanese, but I know enough of Chinese characters. I've done some translating on my own, but mostly I've worked with native speakers. And so Shōhaku would be looking at the way the Ehikō Roku is published now. This is the original Chinese, and then this is Japanese uses Chinese characters. So Shōhaku would be basically reading from the Japanese, modern Japanese version of the Chinese, the original Chinese. Duggan wrote in the original Chinese. Duggan wrote this in Chinese. So Shobokenzo is written in Japanese. Ehekoroku and Eheshingi are written in Chinese. So I actually do better working with Chinese, although I've done some in Japanese too. Japanese includes Chinese characters, but then also has these Japanese words and verb endings in this Japanese syllabary alphabet. So if you study Japanese, you have to learn Chinese characters also.

[44:57]

Anyway, so Shoaka would be reading and was working with Kastu. He would read the Japanese and try and say what the sentence said, and then I would... And then I know enough about the Chinese characters to ask a lot of questions. And we'd look up characters, and some of the characters that Dogen uses are not, you know, they're not used in modern Japanese. So, you know, using a dictionary and going over it character by character. Some of it is just straightforward and I wouldn't have to ask any questions. But looking at the, I would be working from the Chinese more, and Shouaku working more from the Japanese. But anyway, I did study that first year in college and then another year in college and then I studied a little bit, you know, different times since then. But I know enough Japanese so that when I was living in Japan I could have conversations and make myself understood and so forth. And depending on the teacher, have jokes on in Japanese. But anyway, it's a difficult language. Well, my friend Kaz says that you can't really understand Dogen until you read him in English.

[46:26]

And that may be true. So Japanese people can't just sit down and read Dogen either. But it is a function of translating, particularly Chinese. So Hongzhou, the same thing. Pronouns are understood. They're not given in the Chinese. Occasionally, they are. But in English, you have to fill in he, she, they, you. So there are all kinds of choices that need to be made. Singular and plural are not necessarily there. And even where the sentence ends isn't clear. There's no punctuation in the original. So if you're looking at, always the best way to study Dogen, for Shobokenzo or anything, is to look at two decent translations of the same material and look at them together. You can't do that with Eikoroko because there's only one translation. There's something else that was put out that some of you may have seen, but it's not worth looking at. And it's not so available in America anyway.

[47:36]

But for Shobo Genzo, looking at any two good translations, you get a better sense of the original. But you may see that there are places where one translator may end a sentence in one place and the other in another place. And that's totally possible. Even where the sentence ends isn't necessarily clear. Sometimes it's clear in context, but not always. So there are all kinds of difficulties just in the Chinese. English is a much, much more precise language. which is why science and basically English has taken over the world because in a technological world, English is much more precise and there's less ambiguity, it's less poetic. Of course, our delusions and our confusion from being caught by grammatical syntax and thinking that way is true in any language. So all languages are a problem for some students.

[48:39]

Anyway, there's a way in which Chinese and Japanese lend themselves to a sense of ambiguity that maybe English doesn't. But still, it's possible, I believe, to capture that in English. That's what I've tried to do. So if there's no more questions, we can jump into some of the text, but if there's something else anybody wants to ask, generally. Okay, well let's start. So I have some that I wanted to talk about, but we can also, you know, we have some time today to do this. But I'm going to jump around. I wanted to start. with number 239. Brent, is there another version?

[49:43]

Do you have, Brent, another version of the one that people have? Are there more copies? I think I took one. Yeah, because maybe you'll be better. I could tell you what page number and so forth if I'm looking at the same one that you are. Great, thank you. I'm sorry, 239. Yeah, page five. So I'll just read it first, and then I'll say some things, and then I want us all to talk about these. So, by the way, the titles at the beginning of them in italics are from Shoah, by myself. These are our kind of little capping, instead of ending capping phrases, just introductory pointers. So the courage of patchwork monks, That is not in the text, those are our titles. So, Dogen says, the courage of a fisherman is to enter the water without avoiding deep sea dragons.

[50:47]

The courage of a hunter is to travel the earth without avoiding tigers. The courage of a general is to, I have one, thank you. The courage of a general is to face the drawn sword before him and see death as just like life. So as the note says, that's a paraphrase of something from Zhuangzi, the great Taoist philosopher. What is the courage of petro-monks? So sometimes when I'm reading this, I'll just say Zen practitioners, but literally it's petro-monks. After a pause, and often in these Dharma hall discourses, there's a pause there that says after a pause. And in the Chinese Jodo, During those pauses, there was often dialogue between the teacher and the monk. So we don't really know. Some scholars think that maybe in some cases, there might have been some exchange between Dogen's monks and himself that were just edited out.

[51:52]

They just kept Dogen's words. There are just a couple of examples in Heikuroku, two or three examples, where there is some actual interaction with a monk in these. And I think you get one of them in the material you've covered already. But anyway, after a pause, Dogen said, spread out your bedding and sleep. Set out your bowls and eat rice. Exhale through your nostrils. Radiate light from your eyes. Do you know there is something that goes beyond? With vitality, eat lots of rice and then use the toilet. Transcend your personal prediction of future Buddhahood from the top. So, Dogen emphasizes always the everyday, the everyday stuff. The point is, how do you apply this, your experience of Dharma to everyday activity? So what is the courage of Zen practitioners?

[52:53]

So he starts with, you know, deep sea fishermen encountering dragons, Hunters, I don't think there were tigers in Japan. Well, I guess he's paraphrasing Zhuangzi in China. I don't know if there were tigers in China, but there were predators, you know. I mean, humans were a prey then before we totally achieved domination over the earth. The courage of a general or a warrior is to face the drawn sword before him and see death as just like life. So what is the courage of a Zen person? So this is a good question. Maybe I won't say anything. What do you think about Dogen's answer? externally or internally without running away.

[54:09]

Just to follow the monastic form, so spread out your bedding and sleep in Japanese monasteries, the monks sleep in the monk's hall, in the same place where they do zazen, and there's a, it's very neat, there's a, it's called a kankin, there's a cabinet which has a quilt and bedding in it and There's a time in the schedule when you pull out the bedding and you go to sleep with your head facing the center. And there's a position for sleeping. And then there's a time in the morning when you roll up your bedding. And there's a kind of informal sitting there before you put on all the robes and everything. Anyway, these are everyday things in the monastery. Yes, Liz. I was just going to say something about, in this context, it seems be talking about an openness to one's own imperfection, non-judgmentalness toward experience. So where do you see that? Where do I see that? Non-judgmentalness toward experience.

[55:13]

Transcend your personal prediction of future broodhood. Uh-huh. Yeah. And the everydayness of just opening, constant opening to experience. Uh-huh. And then there's the scatological reference. Dogen talks about that a lot. Just everyday stuff, even using the toilet. But there's also, you know, this sense of humor here. What about radiate light from your eyes? Rick? He says exhale through your nose, radiate light. Okay. It sounds to me like he's talking about energy, enthusiasm, to bring your whole passion and heart to laying out your bed, to going to the bathroom.

[56:16]

Yes? I hear that connecting with the line, with vitality, eat lots of rice. Yes. It's hardy, yes. So actually, we think of, in our Newtonian paradigm, we think of, we hear sounds with our ears. We see shapes and colors with our eyes. But actually, when we make eye contact, I think we're radiating light from our eyes, aren't we? Have any of you experienced if somebody's staring at you, feeling that? So we do radiate light from our eyes, but we don't usually think of it that way. So it is very lively. So he's talking about courage, he's talking about, now I could look up the Chinese character, but anyways, it's this quality of

[57:29]

fearlessness and energy. And, you know, for warriors, it's meeting the sword in front of them. That was back when we had, when soldiers used, you know, had more kind of face-to-face combat rather than pushing buttons. But, anyway, just to meet what's in front of you, to take care of everyday stuff. I like the juxtaposition of these rather noble, more prestigious forms of courage, as opposed to that of the patron monk, which is courage in the face of what would be considered, perhaps, mortal. I can see why the rural practitioner would appreciate what Dogen had to say. you're going forward and you're seeing things that are unknown, which is what happens when you just choose the life of just sitting there.

[58:37]

There's a lot of unknown that you have to face, but there's also, you may have known it. I mean, this may not, great doubt may come up. Dragons and tigers and the sword of Manjushri, yes, good. Also, what's interesting to me is in the first part, it's without avoiding deep sea dragons, without avoiding tigers, without avoiding the sword. And that somehow resonates to me, too, like being able to have the courage to not avoid what the patchwork monk is. It's not true in our culture, dragons and tigers and swords, no danger. Sure. And dragons in this light, are they not really the invitation to enlightenment?

[59:47]

And the tiger, a more sacred symbol. Well, I think it's both. I mean, in the context he's giving it here, there's this danger. But yes, you're right, as a motif. So this is referring back to Zhuangzi, who was, you know, 200, 300 BC, China. And I don't know if, well, dragons were always kind of auspicious in China. European dragons were always more malevolent and dangerous, but the Chinese dragons were, you know, very enlightened, so I don't know if that has to do with Chinese and European dragons themselves or with just people's reaction to them, Chinese and European people, but anyway. Yeah, so tigers and dragons are a common motif in Chinese cosmology. That's actually a Yin-Yang image too, but they both represent a kind of enlightenment or a kind of

[60:56]

courageous expression of the truth. Yeah. It seems to me that the first examples are not of danger, but they're the great prize for those particular occupations. And even the general conception that dying in battle would be a great prize for a soldier. Maybe so, I think for the general, I don't think that the hunter or fisherman are necessarily, you know, hunting and fishing for dragons and tigers, but yeah, there's some of that. What about this personal prediction of future Buddhahood from Gautama? Do you know what that's a reference to? Anyone? The Lotus Sutra, where it predicts everyone's Buddhahood. Right, good. So in the Lotus Sutra, There's personal predictions of various of the disciples of Shakyamuni.

[62:04]

So very specifically Shakyamuni says to Shariputra and to various of the great disciples and to his stepmother Mahaprajapati and some of the women too. that in the future, in the future, so many eons from now, in the world system, such and such, you will be the Buddha, and it gives him the name. And very specifically, you know, so there was this idea that if you practice long enough, eventually you will become this, a Buddha in another Buddha land, and that each Buddha land has one Buddha, so we're in Shakyamuni's Buddha land. But actually, it's in the Lotus Sutra that that shifts. And I think this is an important shift for all of East Asian Buddhism. And particularly, Dogen uses the Lotus Sutra a lot. So my next book is going to be about Dogen's worldview and how he uses the pivotal story in the Lotus Sutra to express that. But at some point in the Lotus Sutra, this shifts from personal prediction to, if you just read and remember and treasure one line of the Lotus Sutra, you will be a Buddha.

[63:13]

So, but here, Dogen's kind of even turning that up a notch. He's saying, transcend your personal prediction of future buddhahood from Gotama. Do you know there is something that goes beyond? So I mentioned last night this idea of going beyond Buddha. It's very important. Dogen talks about it many, many, many times, this Buddha going beyond Buddha. So in Dogen's way of teaching and talking, Buddha that is Buddha is not Buddha. Buddha is only Buddha when it's Buddha going beyond Buddha. So if you actually have some realization of awakening and you hold on to that and you write it up and put a frame around it and put it up on the wall, that's not Buddha anymore. And here, Dogen is emphasizing, spread out your bedding and sleep. Sit at your bowls and eat rice. Exhale through your nostrils.

[64:14]

Radiate light from your eyes. Eat lots of rice and use the toilet. So the last line is kind of like, don't worry about becoming a Buddha in the future. Get over it. What are you doing right now today? So our practice is not about, so I was talking about this last night, our practice for Dogen is not about practicing waiting for enlightenment at some future time, waiting for something in the future. Your practice is the practice of enlightenment right now. It's not about something you're going to get later. So transcend your personal prediction of future Buddhahood from Gautama. This is the courage of Petra monks, those Zen people. Can you just eat your rice today? You said last night, just continuing to practice. seems to be a not point of the point.

[65:19]

So that seems like what he's saying here. Just continue. Yeah, right now. I suppose it's fine to be just here and now, teaching, and then zen, and being. So you think that the Flower Ornament Sutra is not about here and now? I haven't read all of it. I think it's about 1600s, but anyway, it's a curious translation. But it's wonderful. One of the benefits I got from going to Tassajara was in the study periods I was able to finish that sutra.

[66:22]

But even if you read a little bit of it, even if you just read a few chapters, yes, it's very flowery, it's very lofty, it's the most psychedelic book I know of. It's very visionary, it's very wild. But you somehow imagine that's about something in the future? Or somewhere else? It's a good question because this seems to be emphasizing everyday ordinary stuff. Ordinary mind is the way I do teaching. Sleep, eat, use the bathroom. It's just very straightforward. I would say, so it's a good question, and I would say the point is that that's not at all separate from the wild visions. I'm going to be teaching the Gandavyuha Sutra this fall. I'm looking forward to it again.

[67:23]

So the Flower Ornament Sutra, I recommend to all of you, just to not pick it up hoping to read all 1600 pages, but some of the chapters are rather short, and you jump in anywhere. It's holographic. The whole thing is there. So it's really, it's wild stuff. So this has to do with what I was talking about, some of you were here last night, about using imagination and the importance of imagination in our practice. So the kind of wild images of, you know, the world dripping with jewels and musical flowers and just all that wild stuff in the Flower Ornament Sutra, that's not talking about anything different than this, I would say. how we see it may be different. So there's the story in the Vimalakirti Sutra, you know, that... It's a really important question. It's a good question to give to this dharma hall discourse.

[68:24]

In the Vimalakirti Sutra, in the beginning, in the first chapter before Vimalakirti shows up, the Buddha is preaching to the assembly and Poor old Shariputra, who's the butt of a lot of the Malakirti's tomfoolery in that sutra, has the thought, how come this world, you know, is full of briars and thistles and ravines and steep mountains. And he talks about it in terms of the land because it's the question about Buddha land or the Buddha field. And he says, and he wonders why, you know, if Shakyamuni is this great Buddha, which he obviously is, how can we be in this impure Buddha field? And I think for us to read that now, given all of the cruelty in the world, and given all of our disappointment, and since Steph isn't here, she's the disappointed one, but she's cooking lunch, I guess.

[69:28]

Anyway, the... difficulty, the corruption of our government and just all the wars and all of the, just the massive corruption of our society and the violence and, you know, given all of that, you know, how could this be Shakyamuni's Buddhafield, you know? Anyway, it's that kind of question. So Shariputra's thinking that, you know, and of course, the Buddha knows that, I mean, Shariputra's thinking that, excuse me, and Shakyamuni knows that he's thinking that. And he responds and says, you think that it's this way. And then he takes his big toe, Shakyamuni does, and touches the ground. And suddenly, all of the disciples see the world filled with this great, you know, with jewels and flowers falling from the sky and wonderful canopies and parasols and the earth itself playing wonderful music. And it's just beautiful. Then he lifts his toe and it goes back to the way it was, and he asks Shariputra, basically, is it the fault... For people who are blind, does that mean that the sun is any less present, any less real, because they can't see it?

[70:43]

So anyway, the question is how we see it. So in this particular dharma hall discourse, now this isn't what Dogen is saying specifically, but as you spread out your bedding and sleep, as you set out your bowls and eat rice, you don't need to imagine or visualize flowers falling from the ceiling of the monk's hall, but I would say that this is what he's talking about. Yes, Tom. That's just my interpretation, OK? That's my comment to your good question. I'm sorry. You mentioned Kinshipikai and his grandmotherly mind and all of that. Because I remember the end of the story is he says he finally understood that there was no practice, no Buddha besides just practicing this. And until that moment, he had always Right, he imagined, he had some delusion about some enlightenment somewhere else.

[71:53]

Again, this is what I was talking about last night, that we think there's some other place to be. We think that there's enlightenment in Japan or California or, I don't know, wherever. But, or, you know, if we practice, if we do put enough hours of cushion time in, that at some point in the future, you know, we'll see the flowers falling. But they're right here. Yeah, although the way that is worked, the way that Tetsugikai says it is that he now sees that dignified bearing, dignified demeanor is itself the Buddhadharma. the proper conduct of just the monastic forms, just to bow when you enter the zendo, just doing all the monastic forms that Dogen's been emphasizing at Eheji, that in itself, the signified bearing is the Buddha Dharma, all of the Buddha Dharma.

[72:55]

Yeah, so that relates to this, too. So there's an essay in Shobo Genzo, which I translated with Kaz, which is going to be in Kaz's next book, called Beyond Thinking, called Gyo Butsu Igi. And our translation of it is The Awesome Presence of Active Buddhas. So in the actual activity of Buddhas, in the actual activity of Patra monks or Zen students, this awesome presence is already here. We don't believe it sometimes. So this is why faith is important. But anyway, this is what he's talking about. He's talking about the awesome presence of Patra monks as they eat lots of rice and then use the toilet. Yes. What about it? Yeah.

[74:00]

So I was talking last night about how Zazen is a performance art, a mode of expression, that it's a creative act. And part of that is that we see the wall in front of us. We hear the wall in front of us. We see the cars going by. we bring our intention and awareness to our intention and awareness. So I think it's necessary that we have this sense of the richness of our life. And it's not about imagining something that's not there. But actually, every time we you know, look and see someone, we are creating a scene of wonder. We don't usually think of it that way. We usually think of the world as dead objects. This is the Newtonian paradigm.

[75:05]

Not to blame Isaac Newton, he was kind of a mystical fellow himself, but we tend to, in our world, believe that all the others out there are just dead objects. We think that other people are just objects we can manipulate and we certainly think that the earth is something we can manipulate and that we can cut down old growth forests to make a profit and liquidate our assets or we can invade countries and take over their oil because it's just there for us to use. and we don't see that the world is actually alive. So, we're going to get to one later about the pregnant temple pillars. So, we'll talk about this more. So, we could keep talking, but let's jump to another one. Let's do a real easy one first. A really simple, straightforward one. Number 306. Stage 8.

[76:10]

So, if Dogen starts off, dropping off body and mind is good practice. This is why I like Dogen, he's so funny. Dropping off body and mind, Shinjin Datsuraku is one of Dogen's description statements for ultimate reality. It's also just a description of Zazen, is just dropping off body and mind. This is, he equates this in some of his writings with Anuttara Samyak Sambodhi, complete perfect enlightenment. But here he just says, dropping off body and mind is good practice. It is. Please enjoy it. Make a vigorous effort to pierce your nostrils. This image of piercing your nostrils appears again and again in the Heikou Roku. It's the traditional Zen saying. After we'd been through many, many volumes of translating it, Showaku and I realized that we had very different understandings of it. So I always thought of it as kind of so that you can breathe, you know, pierce your nostrils too.

[77:25]

But actually, so it does mean that. Clearly in some context, some places it talks about piercing your nostrils in that way to be able to breathe. But also it refers to piercing like, you know, like like modern piercing. So some people have nose rings and this actually refers to the image of the ox training and that you pierce, so Zen trainees are supposed to pierce their own nostrils and put a ring in it so that they can be led. This is also one of the meanings of this. Both are there. But I didn't, I wasn't thinking of it that way in shock, but wasn't thinking of it the other way. Anyway, make a vigorous effort to pierce your nostrils. Karmic consciousness is endless with nothing fundamental to rely on. So this is the basis for case 37 of the Book of Serenity. where it says that karmic consciousness is endless with nothing fundamental to rely on, and that this is the fundamental awareness of Buddhas.

[78:29]

So he says, it's endless with nothing to rely on, including no others, no self, no sentient beings, and no causes or conditions. So this is also kind of funny because karmic consciousness is the consciousness of delusion, we're on 306, and here he's saying that it is... that it includes in karmic consciousness itself, no others, no self, no sentient beings, not even causes or conditions, which is a kind of... And again, this is very funny. Anyway, he says, although this is so, eating breakfast comes first. So have you all had your breakfast? So I don't have anything else to say about this one. Anybody? Comments?

[79:32]

Questions? It's very funny. I always get a little nuts with this really funny, simple ones. Well, this has all kinds of deep teachings in it. Pierce your nostrils. Karmic consciousness has no causes or conditions. So, you know, a joshu was once asked, does a dog have buddha nature? And he said, moo, or no. And the monk asked, well, all things have buddha nature. How come a dog doesn't? And joshu said, because it has karmic consciousness. So this is our situation. Of course, he was also asked once by a monk, does a dog have Buddha nature? And he said, yes. And the monk said, well then why would it appear in a dog body? Why am I in this mess? And he said, just because it knowingly and willingly transgresses.

[80:37]

So this is our bodhisattva practice. So all of that, this short, I don't know however many sentences this is, contains all of Buddha's practice in it. Still, even so, eating breakfast comes first. So what does he mean by pierce your nose? When I think of piercing the image, by the nostrils, and I often feel that way in my practice. Well, I talked about it, I don't know if you were here when I did, but there's two meanings. There's also piercing your nostrils so that you can breathe fully. But there's also, you know, pierce your nose so that you can put a nose ring in there so that you can be led by your teacher. So this is what trainees have to do, is to be willing to be an ox being trained. But both meanings are there.

[81:39]

So we're going to have lunch in about an hour, but maybe we need to have a little break to stretch. So sitting on Zafu's altar, it takes a while. Just a five minute break.

[82:02]

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