Good morning. Dogen's Extensive Record, Volume 9, Case 47. Jingxiao Ming, Mihu, had a monk ask his Dharma brother, Yangshan, do people of today still need enlightenment or not? Yangshun said, it is not that there's no enlightenment, but how do you not let it fall into duality? The monk returned and reported this to me who deeply affirmed it. So this is the last day of our Rohatsu Sashin celebrating Shakyamuni's enlightenment. So this is a question about enlightenment and its relevance today. Jingxiao Mihu had a monk ask his Dharma brother Yangshan

[01:06]

Do people of today still need enlightenment or not? Well, maybe we don't. Maybe we don't need that anymore. Or maybe we need it more than ever. Or what is it that we, how is it that we need it? Yangshan said, it's not that there's no enlightenment, but how do you not let it fall into duality? Or the way Tom Cleary translates it in the K62 of the Book of Serenity, how do you not let it fall into the secondary, which has a different kind of meaning. And Mihu affirms this response, of course. So it's reminiscent of some other stories.

[02:09]

And I'll come back to this basic question, do people of today still need enlightenment or not? But Yangshan said, it's not that there's no enlightenment, but how do you not let it fall into duality? So, there's a story that, Dogen mentions a lot that I like and that some of you have heard about a monk going to the sixth ancestor, Huineng, and presenting himself. And sixth ancestor Huineng said, what is this that thus comes? And which is kind of a strange way of saying, who are you? What is this that thus comes? The monk didn't know what to say.

[03:14]

And sometimes in these stories, it looks like they're talking back and forth right away. But sometimes there might be some period of time between the question and the response. And in this case, the story says that the monk went and sat like an iron pole for eight years in the meditation hall, and then came back and said, Now I can respond to what you said. And he said, and you asked me, what is this that this comes in? And the monk said, anything I say will miss the mark. So it took him eight years to get that. But then, when I asked him, well then, is there practice enlightenment or not? So that's kind of like this question. And the monk said, it's not that there's no practice of enlightenment, it's just that it can't be defiled.

[04:20]

And Huineng was very happy and said, yes, that's what all the Buddhist ancestors take care of. So here it's not a statement that it can't be defiled, it's how do you not let it fall into duality or fall into the secondary? It's a little bit like the question to Dongshan, what Buddha body does not fall into conditions? So we talked about this last spring in the practice period, and yet Dongshan just said, I'm always close with this, I'm always intimate with this. So this is a kind of, how do we not fall into duality or fall into the secondary? It's not that there's no practice realization, only that it can't be defiled. So there are various ways to turn this. Let me just read Dogen's verse, but then I want to come back to the case.

[05:30]

Dogen said, we easily discern true and partial in the enlightenment of people today. These are the traces of the self before the empty kelpa. Although carelessly making mistake after mistake, in the intimate entrustment from west to east, they fully meet." So maybe it's that the teacher and student fully meet, or maybe it's that could be read as the true and the partial fully meet. How do we integrate? this ultimate enlightenment with the situation of our lives in this world today. Do people today still need enlightenment or not? So Dogen also talked about this story in one of his essays in Shobo Genzo, Daigo, Great Enlightenment.

[06:37]

And this translator reads it. Do people of today still need awakening? Yangshun replied, awakening is not non-existence, but how will they avoid a second head? So this secondary or duality could literally be read as a second head. Is there something, some head above our head that we need? What is it that we need? What's this enlightenment business? Are we just living our lives? And Dogen says in commenting on this, the monk returned and told Miho of the exchange, Miho approved it, this today in the monk's question is the now of the persons living today. So when he asks this question, he's asking it now.

[07:42]

It is the now that makes us think of past, present, and future, and though there are millions of times, they are all today and now. So all of the stories from the past, all of the events of the future, they're all just right now. This practice is the samadhi of all beings. We are communing with all beings, those we know and those we don't know as we sit here. It's not just about you. Many beings are on your seat right now. And what this is getting at is that many times are right here now. So Duggan also talks about being time or a time being. And so we've heard about that recently from Ruth Ozeki, who calls them time beings. They're beings in time, or beings of time, or beings, anyway, who are now, but when we talk about them, they're now.

[08:51]

but all these times are now. Anyway, Dogen also says about this, he said, in Song China, in recent times, there have been monks who said, awakening is the fundamental hope. Speaking thus, they await awakening. So, is enlightenment only in the future? Some people have this idea that if you do this practice, and if you study, and if you engage with a teacher, eventually, maybe later on, there'll be some awakening. What good is that? So the case, and that goes to the case 62, which also in the Book of Serenity, which is the same story. Well, there's a few things here that are really interesting.

[10:04]

It says that before this dialogue, the monk had just asked, do the eminent sages since antiquity arrive at the real truth? And Mihud said, yes. And the monk said, if it's the real truth, how can it be arrived at? sort of similar question. How can we arrive at something if it's the real truth? If it's the real truth, then if we arrive at it, it wasn't there before. So is it real now and then it wasn't real then? Is the awakening you think you might have, you know, after years of practice, Is that something that didn't exist right now? How could it be real awakening then? Is it an awakening that suddenly appeared in the world when the world was previously deluded?

[11:15]

Anyway. Yangshan said, it's not that there's no enlightenment, but what can be done about falling into the secondary? So there's a number of ways to read this response from Yangshan. It's not that there's no enlightenment, but how do you not let it fall into duality? So what would that mean for enlightenment to fall into duality? To think that there's enlightenment and delusion would be one way. that there's enlightenment and there's not enlightenment. So there's some people who are enlightened. They're called enlightened people. I remember I went to give a talk in San Francisco once at this, I guess it was an ashram, it was the ashram of the founder of this school I was going to at the time, or had been to, California Institute of Integral Studies from, what was the name of, it'll come to me, anyway, some great Indian sage who had founded that school, his widow was still keeping this place alive, and I got there and

[12:21]

The first thing they asked, somebody asked me, are you enlightened? And I said, well, we don't usually talk that way. He said, well, there were some people here last week and they said they were enlightened. So I guess, you know, in some traditions, you know, people are enlightened or they're not enlightened, you know, that's okay. But, so is that an enlightenment that has fallen into duality? Or what about enlightenment falling into the secondary? It's just, you know, it's, it's become a, It's become some enlightenment that applies in Kansas or California but not in Chicago. So these are questions to ask on enlightenment day. And then there's the basic, you know, there are many stories about what Buddha's enlightenment was.

[13:31]

I like the one from the Flower Ornament Sutra where it says, this is also a case in the Book of Serenity, it talks about this, but the Buddha awakened and said, oh, now I see, all sentient beings, all beings, are completely endowed with the wisdom and the virtue of the awakened ones. Only because of their obstructions, their conditioned obstructions, their karmic obstructions, they don't realize it. So it's already there, but because we have all these hindrances, because we have all these obstacles, they don't realize it. And then they say, I should teach them. And they say how strange that is, that they don't just realize awakening. So from that perspective, our practice isn't about getting something or finding something or realizing something new.

[14:37]

It's about getting rid of all the things that are in the way of it. There are various ways to see this. It's not that there's no enlightenment, but how do you not let it fall into duality? And then there's this wonderful exchange in the commentary to the case. National teacher Zhang asked an imperial attendant monk, what does Buddha mean? The monk said, it means enlightened. The national teacher said, has a Buddha ever been deluded? And the monks said, no, never deluded. The national teacher said, then what's the use of enlightenment? So if, you know, if Buddhas are only those who've always been awakened, then, you know, what do they have to do with us?

[15:41]

Well, I won't speak for anybody else, but I know I have some delusions. Maybe there's some here who don't. So, what does it mean? What would it mean to let enlightenment fall into duality or into the secondary? Then there's Dogen's response in Genjo Koan Deluded people have delusions about enlightenment, I'm paraphrasing, and enlightened people are enlightened about their delusions. How do we not let that fall into a duality? So I'll read some of Hongzhe's verse about this case, about this story in the Book of Serenity before I go back to Dogen's verse. Hongshu said, the secondary, distinguishing enlightenment, breaking up delusion.

[16:46]

Quickly, you should free your hands and relinquish net and trap. Accomplishment, before it's exhausted, becomes an extra thumb. Wisdom can hardly know, like you can't bite your own navel. So. Relying on wisdom to know what enlightenment is, he says, is like biting your own navel or maybe seeing your own eyeballs. People of today, do they still need enlightenment or not? Well, you know, maybe we need it more than ever. How do we deal with the koan of today in these strange times? But how do we not let it fall into duality?

[17:52]

How do we not let it become just some other good, bad, right, wrong? dualistic trap. Dogen's verse, we easily discern true and partial in the enlightenment of people today. So this true and partial refers to this polarity. It's in the harmony of difference and sameness we've been chanting. It sort of comes up there in terms of sameness and difference. The ultimate, the true, the universal, the upright, literally in this way of talking about it. So this is the polarity that's in the, in the Jewel Marrow Samadhi also, and in the Five Degrees teaching, and so to Zen.

[18:55]

But true and partial mean literally upright and inclined. The character for true also means upright. We easily discern true and partial in the enlightenment of people today. And the last line says, in the intimate entrustment from west to east, they fully meet. So in many ways, our practice in this tradition is about fully meeting. So that's another way of saying the harmony and the harmony of difference and sameness. The harmonizing of ultimate and particular, the universal and the phenomenal. So we've been talking in some of the past days about issues of balance. How do we balance out different aspects of our practice or of reality? The focus of settling and calming in satsang with the openness and spaciousness of imagination, for example.

[20:06]

This is referring to this basic balance, this background ultimate reality that all of you have some sense of, or else you wouldn't be here. Some glimmer of something. And then there's the partial, the particular, the phenomenal world, all the problems of our society and our lives and so forth. and all the particular things. How do we, you know, and then I mentioned this statement from Suzuki Roshi that we're constantly losing our balance against this background of perfect balance. So this, in the background, is this ultimate reality. And then our practice is to express that, express meditative awareness in our everyday activity, in the world, in our relationships, in our activities, in our response to issues in the world. So this is true and partial.

[21:14]

We can easily discern true and partial in the enlightenment of people today. So he's not saying that enlightenment is only one or the other. In fact, in the harmony of difference and sameness we've been chanting, It says right there, grasping at things is surely delusion. According with sameness is still not enlightenment. So just uniting with the universal or the ultimate, that's not the enlightenment we're talking about here. That's like the Buddha who's never been deluded, who's, you know, useless to us. But Dogen says, we easily discern true and partial in the enlightenment of people today.

[22:20]

These are traces of the self before the empty Kalpa. That's interesting. What's the self before the empty Kalpa? So the empty Kalpa, the Kalpa's a very, very, very, very long period of time, much longer than the United States of America. or even then human, well anyway, there are different versions of how long a kelp is. The one I often use is the bird flying over the top of Mount Everest with a piece of silk in her talons, and once every hundred years in the time it takes to wear down Mount Everest completely is one kalpa. But there's also this idea, this goes back to Indian cosmology, pre-Buddhist Indian cosmology, that there's a kalpa of arising where things come into being, there's a kalpa of sustain, then there's a kalpa of decline, and then there's the empty kalpa.

[23:25]

which is a very long period where there's sort of nothing. So, these are the traces of the self before the empty kalpa. It's like asking, what is your face before your parents were born? Or, as we had talked about yesterday, what is your original face before you have eyes, ears, mouth? So yesterday we talked about a story about how do you share the Dharma with someone who is blind and deaf and mute? Anyway, the self before the empty kalpa would be not the self we usually think of as our self. Or maybe it includes that self. Maybe it includes all of the stories you identify yourself with, your social security number even. Anyway, we easily discern true and partial in the enlightenment of people today. These are traces of the self before the empty Kalpa.

[24:30]

So this ultimate and particular, this true and partial, Dogon is saying, go way back. or they're traces of something that goes way back. So, again, how do we... It's not that we carry around this ultimate truth and walk around with it like a flag that we wave. But how does our sense of it inform the particulars of the phenomenal world and our engagement with it? Of course, we're just part of that phenomenal world. Then Dogen says, although carelessly making mistake after mistake, in the intimate entrustment from west to east they fully meet. So this, you know, people write me with questions about Dogen, and they ask, where is this saying from and that saying from?

[25:42]

It's like all those sayings attributed to the Dalai Lama, which, you know, anyway, some of them are pretty ridiculous. But there's one that, I don't know, maybe somebody knows, where Dogen says, my life was one continuous mistake. It's often quoted. I have never found that exactly in Dogen. But he does talk about making mistakes. For example, here. And there is, in the background literature of Dogen, you know, actually one way to interpret one of the lines in the Julumare Samadhi is that, making mistakes is auspicious." That's Kaz Tanahashi's translation of that line. He'll be here in a few months. Sadhguru says, although carelessly making mistake after mistake. So, you know, some of you might relate to that. I mean, there might be some people here who have never made any mistakes, but there have been some people who have made mistakes in the forms of the sasheen, just, you know, hitting the bell a little bit in the wrong place or something like that.

[26:53]

Those are, you know, relatively minor mistakes. But, although carelessly making mistake after mistake, in the intimate entrustment from West to East they fully meet. So this intimate entrustment is about what we're doing here. How is this practice tradition about Well, or is it? Do people today still need enlightenment or not? Is the intimate entrustment from West to East here or not? If it is, then there's full meeting between us and Dogen and the Buddha. And there's full integration between the ultimate and the particular. right in the middle of making mistake after mistake, right in the middle of carelessness.

[27:55]

So, you know, we make some effort at being careful and taking care of things in a very particular way and hitting the bells at the right time and all that stuff. But still, we carelessly make mistake after mistake. The servers come in at the wrong time. The order of the bowls is off. You know, anyway, mistakes happen. And part of skillful means is that it's actually useful to make mistakes. That's how we learn. We try things. We pay attention and we try to find the appropriate response to all that's going on and we make mistakes. But maybe we can learn from them. Anyway, is that partial enlightenment or does that mean enlightenment is not something we still need today?

[29:02]

And again, going back, I would say that this practice, this practice realization, this settling and opening, this calming, this insight, the balance of that in the precepts of being respectful and listening and not speaking of faults of others, not name-calling, but also speaking truth. is something we very much need today. So this is our day of celebrating Buddha's enlightenment. This is the day of Buddha's enlightenment. Has the Buddha ever been deluded?

[30:09]

No, never deluded. Then what's the use of enlightenment? So here we are. It's Sunday morning and it's the fifth day of Sashin. Whether you're here for the first day or you've been here for all five days, it's the fifth day of Sashin. This afternoon we won't have discussion. We'll have a question ceremony. So let's take time for discussion now. If anyone has any comments about whether or not people of today still need enlightenment or anything else, please feel free. Yes, Eric. Good.

[31:10]

That's right to the point. I'm not sure I get that one. Okay. Thank you. So did you ever fall asleep sitting? No, but I woke up sitting. Other comments or questions or reflections?

[32:19]

Yes, Brendan. I like what you said about this idea of trying to strive for the ultimate and let go of the particulars. Emptiness is not some other world, it's like a true world beyond this one. Emptiness is dependent upon the meaning of presentations in a certain way in our world. But we see that this is the world that is empty. it.

[33:27]

Right, right. Emptiness is the way things is. Yeah. So it's not so, but you know, people come to spiritual practice and they want to get to some exalted other, you know, state somewhere else and it's not, that's not it. Whatever, whatever you think that is, that's not it. Yes, Chris. I came from a trip, like a family that always did transcendental meditation. I assume that that was like enlightenment was the only thing they ever talked about. And since I started Buddhist practice two years ago, I think I can count on one hand the amount of times I've heard the word enlightenment used. Which I sort of, I like that because it definitely felt like When you're chasing after something, you can never run fast enough.

[34:29]

Right. And when you arrive right where you are, you have nowhere you need to go. Yeah, here we are. Yes, so that word enlightenment, it's a funny English translation of, well in the Chinese there's one character that means awakening, there's another character that means verification. The character that's Satoru, Satori, sort of, you know, you could What's not enlightened either is this kind of sudden spark of insight. So words that I usually use for that and they're used by a lot of translators are awakening or realization. But sometimes it's useful to use this word because we do think of it that way sometimes. Yes, sir. things like enlightenment and delusion, and we make this, you know, we make this separation, and sort of insist on the separation, so enlightenment can be the future.

[36:09]

All that kind of thing. But it seems like part of what's, that's the falling into the duality here. there's a reference to the harmony of difference and sameness, and that's really interesting too, I mean, because it's not talking about the harmonization of difference and sameness. We don't have to do something about difference and sameness. It turns out that the use of the word polarity, that's probably a really good word, it's not Yeah, so it's also been said that for enlightened people there's no difference between enlightenment and delusion, or for awakened people.

[37:16]

For deluded people there's a big difference. Yeah. Well, yeah, exactly. The practice isn't to be enlightened and not to be deluded. The practice is to be where you are. So, in the middle of this world of delusion, to fully be here, to occupy this situation. Yeah. So do people of today need to wake up or not? It's a real question. Or is it only some people that need to wake up? We have the right answers, but those other people, they need to wake up. Some people think that way. Yes, Howard? We don't let enlightenment fall into duality and let it not How do we not put teacher-student quality relative? The student comes for us. The student declares the Dharma to the teacher.

[38:19]

In this tradition, it's really up to the student. I can't tell you who you are. I can't tell you how to be Buddha. You have to show me. It seems like I've surrendered to this tree that's either irrelevant or I'm missing why it's there, but it's bugging me. Good. Well, yeah, no, this happens a lot that teachers will tell students to go and ask somebody else, you know. It's a kind of pedagogical, you know, kind of maneuver. And then come back and check with students? Well, yeah.

[39:24]

Well, sometimes the student wants to do that. I've had students come and tell me things they heard Reb say, for example, or the other teachers say, oh, OK, that's good. So this tradition of going around to different teachers You know, we have that in this room. There are people here who've studied with or been with various other teachers, and I think that's really cool, because it really, like, enlivens, you know, the background of how we are together. And this is another version of that. But yeah, so Chouteau was mentioned, who wrote the Harmony of Differences, Sameness, and the Song of the Grass Hut. And the first day, we talked about Laman Pang, who quoted this saying about the grass, which is relevant to this story.

[40:26]

I'll dig it out so I say it exactly the way I said it before. The bright, clear hundreds of grass chips are the bright, clear mind of the ancestral teachers. That's actually the same thing we're talking about today. But Lehmann Pang, who was this great enlightened layman in the Tang Dynasty, studied with Zhito and Mazu, the other great teacher. They were the predecessors of the Soto and Rinzai and other lineages. And he went back and forth between them. And sometimes they would ask him, and there are stories in our tradition about teachers asking, well, what did that other teacher say? So this is part of how we actually engage in this process, as Niausson said, practice realization and not falling into duality, or falling into duality and then getting up, making mistake after mistake, is talking about it different ways, repeating what others... So this is part of the process of telling these stories.

[41:45]

So Zen claims to be this teaching beyond words and letters and so there are libraries full of teachings about that. And all these stories and the commentaries on the stories and the commentaries on the commentaries on the stories and now we're making more. Tom? is enlightened by truth in one theory or example. It's just there. It's all around us all the time. And we hope to open the valve a little from time to time. Yeah, I like that image, open the valve a little. That's good. Yeah. So, yeah, it's not something that's somewhere else. That's right. We had a story about that too, I think. Yeah, well, there's that, yeah.

[42:56]

Well, like returning, you know, you're much like one searching for the ox while riding the ox. And he asks, how is it after understanding? It's like a person returning home riding the ox. So even when you're searching for the ox, you're riding it, but you don't really know it. Yeah, so enlightenment's not a thing, actually. And actually, nothing is a thing. From the point of view of Buddhism, it's all just, the word that Nyozanyu's processed, it's all just this dynamic dance that's happening. So I've often quoted this statement by Dogen, that just experience the vital process on the path of going beyond Buddha. So Buddha is the one always going beyond. Or the practitioner is always going beyond Buddha. Or Buddha is always going beyond Buddha.

[44:01]

It's not that Buddha is in the past or in the future, but Buddha is in process. So yeah. Yes. Thank you. Kathy. Good, yes, so the great master Zhao Zhou, Zhou Xu said, I do not take refuge in clarity.

[45:11]

And we talk about not knowing. And so, you know, sometimes people come to me and they complain about their zazen being kind of foggy and confused. But maybe that's because there's something there that actually, you know, you can't really get a hold of. And yet, you're in relationship with it. There's some process going on. So our idea about our practice is just our idea about our practice. And we're used to saying, oh, this was good, and that was bad, and whatever. This was right, and this was wrong. But we don't really know what's going on. We don't. And that applies to the world, too. We have this huge problem after the election. We don't know what's really going on. There's some things we do know. We do know that there are various particular dangers. So does the people today still need to wake up? Well, yeah. Partly, that's to realize that we don't realize everything that's going on and that things move in waves.

[46:27]

Anyway, it doesn't mean we don't have responsibility to try and be helpful, whatever that means in a particular situation. Yes, Brian. Oh, it's so tender, it's so deep, it's so beyond anything I can say, but it's... Yeah, it's the receiving of the teaching. It's the transmission from teacher to student, going back to Bodhidharma, going back to Suzuki Roshi, going back to Shakyamuni. And in the Sandokai we chant, the mind of the great sage of India is intimately transmitted from west to east.

[47:32]

So we're celebrating in Rohatsu Shakyamuni Buddha's enlightenment. Is Shakyamuni still here today or not? Is that mind still here today or not? Don't know. Don't know. We'll have to wait and see. Right now. so anybody else have anything you want to offer jenny There's all this kind of hustle and whatnot between the two of them, always reminders that there's more to life.

[49:21]

Yes. That's right. Yeah. There are many ways in which these conversations work. Sometimes. Sometimes shaking hands, sometimes whatever. So...

[50:10]

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