I think that there's a part of you, and I hear you saying that sometimes when you're sitting you are not thinking, and sometimes when you're sitting you are thinking. So somehow there's a part of you that knows when you're thinking and knows when you're not thinking. And that part is what I see as something that's seamless between those two. A part that's always present, always observing, and allows you to know the difference between thinking and not thinking. Do you think that's what he's calling non-thinking? Yeah, then maybe the non-thinking is the part of you that knows the difference between not thinking and thinking, and persists between us.

[01:06]

And this whole business of thinking or non-thinking or not thinking, this koan, like other koans I've encountered, it torments my tiny little mind. And it also reminds me of the Vajracetaka, the part where it says, because there are no marks, we say there are marks. So it's like there's this or there's that. And it's like if we pick either one or we fall into either, we've missed, you know, I've missed the point. If I try to grasp it, or if I try to, in some way, I've missed the point. On the other hand, I can't get away from it either. So I can't dismiss it or disregard it. In my own experience, when I first began sitting, it was very important to me to figure out how not to think, because my thoughts really... was horrible. So I wanted to find out how to live with and how to, you know, how to be able to sit there and just breathe. And during Sashin's, in the early years of sitting at Sintra, it seems I remember having some kind of extraordinary experiences, but I can't really recall them now.

[02:26]

But as I continue to sit, I don't seem to have any extraordinary reasons. It just all seems rather ordinary. These are wonderfully profound testimonies. So for a while it kind of alarmed me. It's like, okay, I'm sitting with machines, but nothing extraordinary is happening. On the other hand, I wasn't alarmed by my thoughts anymore. It didn't seem to me so important to be able to stop thinking or not think all the time. So, I don't know what I'm saying exactly, other than it's just how do I abide in the space where I don't know? I don't know, I mean, I don't actually know it. I mean, I can say thinking looks like this, or I can say I have some feeling for non-thinking, some kind of spaciousness, but I don't actually know. And so the feeling is how do I abide in not knowing, and then how do I figure out how to express myself by whole being?

[03:33]

I'd like to throw a few things in. There's two questions I would... First, though, I'd like to say there's two questions I think it would be useful if we could answer in this weekend. One is, why does Zen not have guided meditation? Right? Why does Zen not have guided meditation? And the other is, why do we sit together? I think both of those questions are implicit in what Dogen's talking about. And let's not assume that thinking, non-thinking and non-thinking are real distinctions.

[04:42]

They're here in this sense, but maybe non-thinking and not thinking are not… maybe it's not a real distinction, maybe it is. And there may be several kinds of non-thinking. One kind of non-thinking, I would say, is that what we're doing here is making a number of distinctions, the kind of distinctions you make to yourself sometimes, and now I think in a way you speed up your practice, process of practice, when you share these distinctions with each other. because just the distinctions that came out this morning might occur over a year to you on your own, but here they've occurred in 20 or 30 minutes. Now, what do you do with these distinctions?

[05:45]

We could say a kind of non-thinking, I can certainly use the phrase that way, I'm not saying it's what Dogen means, is not to think about these distinctions, but to hold these distinctions in mind, which is a very basic process in Zen practice, to hold something present, but not think about it, but hold it present. Okay. So then we can ask, which is also related to what Dogen is saying about, if we hold something present and something happens, what is that process that's happening? If we don't do anything except hold it present, and yet that is either satisfying or productive, what's going on? Does that make sense as a question? Okay, so if you hold all these distinctions we've made this morning present, something does happen.

[06:56]

One is a kind of sorting process. happens. You find more energy going to some than the other. We can't exactly say why, but more energy goes to some of them, some of them you forget, some of them stay present. What is that? What's going on? And not only do you find a kind of attention being drawn to some of them more, they also start relating to each other as a sorting process that occurs. And I think if you have a kind of active holding but not thinking about, actually something resolves itself. That's just a kind of speaking about how to work with what we've just come up with today. Work with them as if they were all your own thoughts, because they all could be.

[07:59]

And the other thing is, I think we... Let me put it this way. One of the easiest things in the world to do is to bring your attention to your breath. Anyone can do it. You say, I bring my attention to your breath, and you bring your attention to your breath. That's very easy to do. To keep it there for any length of time is one of the most difficult things in the world to do. That's very interesting. Why is that the case? Why is it so easy to bring your attention to your breath and so virtually impossible to keep it there? I mean, Wayne's always saying, been saying how simple Zen is. Yes, that's one of the complicities right there. That's very simple. If you can answer that question, you understand a great deal about Buddhism and a great deal about yourself.

[09:08]

Now, I'm just trying to clarify a little bit, in the spirit of Dan taking inventory of his thinking, clarify our thinking here. And I would, if I were to answer that question, partially answer that question myself, is What you've done when you bring, and this is to me, it's kind of basics I'm going over with, to keep looking at these basics in context of a wider experience and a wider understanding. If you keep bringing the basics back into a widening understanding and experience, the basics begin to have much more power. So, And we can look at a dynamic here. So you're bringing... What you're bringing is, when you bring your attention to your breath, is you're bringing a sense of location to your breath.

[10:19]

You feel located here. You bring your attention to the room, you feel located in the room. You've brought a sense of location here. Okay? But very quickly it goes back to your thoughts. And that's because primarily... you haven't brought your sense of identification here. Your sense of identification has remained with your thoughts. And as long as you think who you are is your thoughts, or what's really happening in your life is involved with your thoughts, you cannot keep your sense of location here. Your sense of location will shift back. So what we're doing when we're practicing is we're bringing our sense of location repeatedly to our physical situation. What snaps back to your thinking is not just your sense of identity, but also your sense of continuity.

[11:32]

even if you stop or loosen your identity with your thinking. And Dogen, in one of his fascicles, and it's in the Kaz's Monadutra, quotes Nagarjuna, that once you perceive discontinuity, actually perceive discontinuity, your belief and dependence on self is in the process of dismantling. Okay. So the more you understand discontinuity, change, impermanence, etc., it becomes easier And reminding yourself of that and holding the truth of impermanence in you and before you.

[12:43]

Your sense of identity doesn't go back so often to your thinking. But your sense of continuity keeps going back. Because we have to establish continuity. If we don't establish continuity, particularly for us Westerners, we feel pretty weird, we feel crazy. I mean, if you take some sort of psychedelic and you can't tell one moment from the next, you feel pretty loony. One of the things we have to do is have a sense of continuity. Okay. So when you keep bringing your sense of location back, and that's what bringing your attention to your breath is, in mindfulness practice and zazen, is you're basically practicing with this shift of the sense of location and more and more the sense of identification comes with it. Now the sense of identification has to shift to a kind of device, is to shift it to another sense of continuity.

[13:52]

Because it's easier to shift your sense of identification if you can give your sense of identification pulled out of your narrative thoughts. Are you following me? Yes. So you're slowly removing, the dynamic is, you're slowly removing your sense of identification from your thoughts. And more and more you can do that. But you need to then put your sense of identification somewhere else. So you have to create another kind of continuity. And this is really what's the root of the four foundations of mindfulness. You create a sense of continuity in your body. And mindfulness coming back to, oh, I'm just sitting here. You're creating a physical continuity. Now there's three main... places you can shift the sense of continuity to. One is your body, one is phenomena, four we can say, and one is your breath.

[14:57]

And the fourth is, or third is, I should practice thinking a little here, at least counting, is your field of mind. Not the content of mind, but the field of mind itself. And that's all a matter of practice. Now, little enlightenment experiences or little insights and so forth, it helps to do this. And let's kind of de-bigify enlightenment and say that actually a kind of enlightening process is embedded in practice in the ability to recognize very small things. that are real changes. You can say you're waiting on a bus and you kind of get somewhere and you're late and you stop for a minute and you say, well, I can't go any faster on the bus so I'll just sit here and enjoy myself.

[15:59]

Well, everyone does that. But to actually do that and then from then on Never be anxious about something in the future is an enlightenment experience. But it can just happen on a bus. You say, okay, I'm not going to worry about this until the bus gets to the stop, and then I'll see if I've got the job or lost my job or whatever it is. Yeah? And you could hold this state? I mean, it would never again happen. Yes, when that never again happens, that's an enlightenment experience. And you can stay there. It's such a deep recognition... you're always working from that point rather than the other point. It's described as a turning around in the seat of being. But we're also... It sounds like big words, turning around in the seat, but it can be such a little thing as... And one of the great things about David Chadwick's book, because he's practiced so long, he's the perfect person to write this book, is he recognizes many such small experiences of Sukhirashi as in Latin experience.

[17:02]

So practice makes it more likely that a small trivial recognition actually becomes a turn in the road. So these things are happening all the time, every moment. Sitting practice changes our receptivity. So what I'm trying to get at here, let me try to catch you. So you're moving your sense of identity and using and recognizing your sense of identity is tied up with a sense of continuity. And you're shifting to keep trying to find that continuity in your physicality, in phenomena, which is also dharma, and in your breath, this breath. A kind of discontinuity, continuity. Each breath, each moment. And in the field of mind. And you can see, now a teaching like the Four Foundations of Mindfulness is a teaching to show you where you can find a new kind of continuity.

[18:13]

Roshi, are those new bases of continuity progressive or simultaneous? Do you try and establish first a new basis of continuity, breath, and then... Well, they're simultaneous, but we always need a target. So you pick one and focus on it. But one makes it easier to do the others, and you shift until you can do all of them It just comes naturally. It's a second nature. When I was with Ivan Illich recently, as I told some of you, he's kind of my Western teacher. It's wonderful for me to be with him. But a small group of people got together with him in Assisi in Italy. I had to give a lecture in Lucerne. I had a few days after this lecture in Lucerne. So I drove... Europe is small compared to America, but it's still quite a long drive from Lucerne to Assisi in the middle of the night.

[19:22]

But anyway, I drove down to Assisi, which is south of Bologna and near Perugia and near Rome. And we have some relationship that he doesn't have with anyone else. because I practice and he finds for him his Catholic practice is a sense of imminence it's present everywhere and so we have some kind of practice relationship that's quite interesting and he talked about in Catholicism and what he recognizes in me is a second nature And although we wouldn't say, we'd say something like original nature or some other phrase, but he feels that monastic practice as he knows it. And he's very separate from the church. He's still a priest though.

[20:23]

And he's, as some of you may know, he was Pope John's Who is he? I-L-L-I-C-H. Ivan Illich. And he was Pope John's secretary, the famous Pope John of, I don't know, the 30s, 40s, whenever. And he's really quite broken with the church. But he says, although I'm very far from the church, I feel that I'm a representative of the tradition. And I thought that was a good line. And... He feels that the practice as he understands it creates a second nature. So now I think that's a useful idea to bring into our practice is Dogen talking about creating a second nature or discovering or generating another nature that we nurture. Okay, so you practice bringing.

[21:27]

What I'm trying to get to is focusing on what Dogen's talking about here. We're practicing bringing our sense of location to our sense of to our physicality, our sense of being present in a in the world and to our breathing and to our field of mind. And all these practices themselves are an evolution. Any of these practices are like, you know, as I've said, when you bring attention, the essence of... I mean, everybody wants you to be attentive. I tell my daughter at school, maybe a little different than others, to pay attention to what she's doing. Everyone says that. What makes it Buddhist is that you bring attention to attention itself. Everyone wants to bring your attention to something. But when you bring attention to attention itself, you in effect exercise the muscle of attention.

[22:31]

Attention itself develops. So whenever you do anything like bring your sense of identity to your breath or your physicality or the phenomena, that as a kind of power, power, something, develops. It's like a muscle you exercise. Okay. Now, okay, so you bring your sense of Let's say you've successfully brought your sense of identity to phenomena. And you've successfully brought your sense of continuity to phenomena. Okay? You've done that. And let me say that there is in practice a stage where you have done that. or pretty nearly done that.

[23:33]

Not because it's 100%, but because there's been a fundamental shift in how you function. So that's, in computer language, that's the default position. But it's not just that you've done it or this has become your default position, but the process of making the effort is about 90% of having accomplished it. So that's what makes practice rewarding. It's not about accomplishment, it's about a process. Okay. Now what you notice if you can begin to distinguish Now let me say in this process there's two main tools, yogic tools, that need to be developed, ideally. One-pointedness, the ability to keep your attention wherever you put it.

[24:34]

And as you know, the traditional teachings, in fact, you find out it's true, that when you do that, it keeps going back, it keeps coming back, because there's not only an identification with thinking, there's an inherent restlessness and distractedness that we have, physical, mental restlessness. So it keeps going off the point. But eventually, not only does it come back easier, it eventually, even when it leaves, it comes back by itself, and finally it just stays. So developing one-pointedness is an essential yogic skill and the other essential yogic skill is a non-interfering observing consciousness. A consciousness which observes but doesn't interfere with what it observes. Those are two skills that are also part of the process of everything we're talking about now is when you do any one of these things you're developing these skills and developing the skills etc. Okay. The more you have a non-interfering observing consciousness, you can observe quite clearly, you can physically feel.

[25:41]

I think Heidegger is interesting where he talks about, essentially it all comes down to mood. You're working with a mood, you're working with a feeling, and that's a gate into things, not your thinking. Kind of mood, of which thinking is a product of that mood. Mood is, we have to understand in a big sense, Okay. When you can begin to hold in your body, hold in your... Again, this is a yogic practice. And all mental phenomena has a physical component and all sentient physical phenomena has a mental component. We have to remember that. And the more... That means all states of mind have a physical component. So you can work with the state of mind by the feel of it, the physical feel of it. Okay. So you get so that you can see clearly your sense of identity and your sense of continuity. And you can see how they function. Now what you notice in addition to that, then, quite clearly, is your witnessing self.

[26:47]

And how the witnesser, if you're speaking about, accompanies the sense of location and sense of identity. And you can really experience it. So that means the witness also changes, and that's a very important thing. Lots of people think the witness is some permanent thing, cosmic, regressing, wider and wider witnessing. I think if you practice with real care and notice what you're doing, actually the witnessing function changes, and it changes in relationship to what it's witnessing. And so you also begin to move the witnessing function. Now, once you start seeing the witnessing function changes, then you really do not think you have a permanent self. Because somehow, deep down, this witness thinks, oh yeah, well, everything's changing, but the witness is permanent. That means no matter how much you practice, how much you understand Buddhism, everything's changing. If you somehow deep down think the witness is permanent, then you really believe in a permanent self.

[27:52]

You function as if you had a permanent self. And we could say the same way. As long as your thinking keeps returning, your sensible location keeps returning to your thinking, no matter how well intellectually you understand everything's changing, in fact, you're functioning as if things were not changing. So the important thing is not what you believe, but whether you function as if things were permanent. And you function as if self was permanent. Okay. Okay. Now, Dogen and this master and this monk are all talking not about thinking that identifies... They're not talking about thinking as identity. They're talking about the activity of thinking. So, this Lancet of Seated Meditation assumes that you've freed yourself from identifying with your thinking. That make sense? And Dogen's only talking about now working with the activity of thinking.

[28:57]

So I think we have to hone in and focus on what is he speaking about? He's speaking about not thinking as your identity. And I think most of us, a lot of us think, well, I'll keep thinking. That's because you're identifying with your thinking. Dogen's now saying you... Okay, you may not have freed yourself from that, but let's look at the activity of thinking itself, independent of whether you identify with it or not. Okay? So he's not trying to deal with whether you identify with your thinking or not. He's only dealing with the activity of thinking. He's dealing with a much more fundamental question than whether you identify with your thinking. Sorry. So I think... That was... I'm trying to keep my comments limited to focusing on this text, so I just tried to do.

[30:00]

But maybe it'd be a good time to take a break. Yeah. So it's 11 o'clock, and you're going to stop at 12.30, roughly? I think that's right. So let's have a break until 11.30, about, or so, 11.35, and then we'll come back. Okay, thanks. Well, it seems to me what we've done so far this morning is we've... had a lot of thoughts that could all be our own thoughts about this subject, this topic, about this aspect of practice that Dogen has brought forth. I think this is, you know, and then we've tried to, we've cleared some underbrush to look at precisely at what Dogen, more precisely at what Dogen's trying to say.

[31:05]

And I think both are part of our practice. One is to just associate, what does this make us think of? I mean, you read the text like this, it makes us think of some things, just so we think of them, and we hold those things. What's that all about? At the same time, what makes that process then more fruitful is to try to look at really precisely what Dogen's talking about. Because the more precise... I mean, Dogen's own precision then allows us, by trying to come into his precision, aside from what he's saying, just to come into his precision of thinking, begins to clarify our own associative thinking. And I think the key to this kind of study is you really have to read in a way that rarely does anyone read, unless you're an English major or something, and you have to analyze texts or that kind of thing, because these texts are written that way.

[32:19]

You have to look very carefully at a different pace. You have to look in the... Like when you read a poem, if you read a poem with your busy mind, I mean, it might be interesting, but you have to come into the pace of the poem. and the pace of the poem is telling you, that's the first thing it tells you. Okay, join the pace of my poem and then maybe we can then look at what I'm trying to say. And this text is also trying to show us a certain pace. In that light, Randy, maybe you could read this sentence again that Russell just read. Verifying that such are the words of the great master, we should study and participate in the correct transmission of fixed sitting.

[33:31]

Maybe, Fran, you could read the next sentence. This is the investigation of fixed sitting transmitted in the way of the Buddha. Okay, now that's enough, I think, for us to look at now. Now, I don't know exactly what the Japanese is of, obviously. And I don't know what cast and flavor that Carl was given this to. I know Carl pretty well. We practiced together tussle hard in the 60s. And he's a really fine person. And when I was in Japan, he also was sitting at Antaiji. So we used to sit together at Antaiji, and we lived in the same neighborhood. And he did take... Sukhiroshi's admonition or recommendation to study Dogen. And it's great.

[34:32]

I mean, this book is a product of, you know, Dogen as Sukhiroshi's lineage, really. So, you know, as much as I trust any text, I trust that this is a fairly accurate translation within the framework of how we understand things in our lineage. So, let me read it to verify. It's a great way to start because it means, are you willing to take seriously this statement? Are you willing to take seriously what Dogen is saying here? Are you willing... to take it that Master Hung Dao of Yue Shan knows what he's talking about.

[35:32]

So we can't proceed unless you're willing to assume he knows what he's talking about. Now, he might not, but we can't proceed. You can't proceed very well with a doubt. We may end up thinking he doesn't know what he's talking about, but let's proceed with the assumption he knows what he's talking about. That's what verified means. Verifying that such are the words of the great, this great master. There's a whole section in Dogat somewhere of studying the word great. Just paying, you know, looking at the word great. What do we mean when we say great? There's something that's great. Verifying that such are the words of the great master, we should study. We should study. We should pause there. Study. What does it mean by study? What is studying? And participate in. And we should participate in. So we're doing that. We're all practicing.

[36:35]

So we're participating in the correct transmission... Correct. So he's not saying we should do something that's inaccurate or not correct. We're participating in the correct transmission of fixed sitting. So why transmission and why correct? Is it only to be transmitted when it's correct? And is it only correct when we transmit it? Is there sinning that's not transmitted? In other words, this brings up all of these things. So Togon, very specifically though, seems to be saying that we're participating in the transmission. It means not only that you're just participating in your own sitting, I'm sitting here, etc., but in fact you're also participating in the transmission of sitting, receiving it and passing it on.

[37:45]

And if you aren't involved in the receiving and passing it on, this is not correct sitting. So Delgin is very clearly saying there is no sitting. that's not lineage sitting. There's no sitting that isn't part of this. I mean, let's just look at, for instance, teaching for a moment. From the time you are born, you're being taught. From the moment your parent leans over the crib, you're being taught. And it's very clear that when babies don't have that teaching, physical contact, etc., they end up to be, you know, so mentally and physically crippled that they can barely function. I mean, the Romanian orphan kids are a good example of that. They have brains that just don't function anymore because they didn't have teaching when they were young.

[38:48]

Teaching, which is also affection, touching, how you pick someone up, everything. The only point I'm making is that... I mean... Yes, there's some given, there's some nature, but almost everything is nurture. And so we are teaching, already we're teaching. So Dogen assumes that you're already inseparable from teaching, and now let's... look at what is correct teaching. What do we do with the teaching we already have? So the idea of teaching is in the idea of transmission. In other words, you've already been transmitted to by your culture, by your parents, etc. We should study and participate in the correct transmission of fixed sitting. And then he says, this is the investigation of fixed sitting transmitted in the way of Buddha.

[39:53]

This, this, what does this refer to? This refers to study, participation, transmission, and correct transmission of a certain kind of sitting called fixed sitting. Everything is in that this. And this is the investigation. This is how we investigate fixed sitting, transmitted in the way of Buddha. So, now another thing he's saying here is that your sitting itself is a form of investigation. Sitting is not just sitting. Now I've arrived, I've had these few moments of coddling myself. Sorry. It's the investigation of those moments which is sitting, not the arrival of those moments.

[41:04]

It's the transmission of the correct investigation, we could say. I'm just looking at these two sentences and I throw that out as looking at some detail. So now, how do you feel about this? Does this make sense to you? What is your thoughts that arise from looking at these two sentences? Yeah. It requires... I mean, you start with the word verifying, describing, verifying, but if he says very strong here, this is the investigation of it. It sounds pretty opinionated. Yes, definitely. That you could say about Dogi. This is one opinionated guy. So... I wonder how I... And I appreciate one of your first thoughts, but it's how can we use this Dogon text helping us in our practice?

[42:21]

And I'm looking at this, trusting and believing he's somehow right, because he's still around, we're still reading it. But how can I prove, how can I... check that this is really Buddha's way, not the Buddha way. How did Buddha check? Because he comes across as strong and At least right now, I don't have really access to checking on these writers. You know, I would say to relate it to wider Buddhology, because I would like the one-pointedness that Roshi spoke of as a shamatha, stabilizing, fixed sitting perhaps, type of thing, and the vipassana, which is kind of the second level of the investigation of mental dharmas.

[43:26]

And so right there it says that first you have to have that that one-pointedness, and then you begin the investigation of the thoughts or processes or mental dharmas. And so I think that my interpretation is that that's, you know, Dogen's kind of... creative way of saying these very basic Buddhist truths. So I don't think they're off the main path. I think, to me at least, it looks like they're more his way of phrasing it. Would you like him to be weak? He'd like him to give you a little more leeway.

[44:31]

Yeah. Well, I know we're not supposed to get ahead of, you know, the fifth... Who says we're not supposed to? ...text here, but without being weak, I don't know, I couldn't... Without what? Without wishing Dogen were weak, I could do with a little bit less of Hardly anybody ever gets it right. Everybody in this country gets it wrong, and half of everybody in China gets it wrong, and that comes with Govind's definiteness, and I think that's what you're reacting to. It's not just the firm statement, but we know another part of Govind's discourse is his certainty that, as a matter of fact, everybody else is doing it wrong. It's illiterate. What's wrong with that? It's possibly unlikely to be true, since he's talking about people who are also making a stupendous effort.

[45:42]

Yeah. The Buddha was, the myth is that he was born and took seven steps and said, I alone, nobody else is the world-riding one. And all the sutras mostly say, the rest is, this is, this is sutra, this. How do we put that in context with Dogen saying, this is the way, there isn't any other. I know it's very unfashionable nowadays. But it was unfashionable sometimes. And Foster Bond, who doesn't talk that way, it's more just whatever the style of polemics in any part of history, that's largely what happens. And if you read... some of Tibetan Buddhist history. It's just full of the most vicious slanders and slurs against the so-called opponents that you can imagine. So I have to take this with a large dose of butterfly butter.

[46:49]

Unsalted. I have a proposition. Going back to that word, verifying, if I'm familiar with Carl's use of that word, it's one of the characters in the compound that we find in the Ginjo Koan, in the Ginjo. And it sometimes refers to realization and verification. And Dogen uses the phrase very often, practice realization. Like, practice realization is one effect. So I would like to refer to what Meike Roshi said earlier. It is, if we, and my paraphrasing, if we find something that we disagree with Dogen, let's be clear, or let's examine, what is it about it? And so going back to that word verify, what that means, again, an association that means to me is somewhere in the words of supposedly Shakyamuni Buddha, he said, don't just take my word for it, try it out yourself, and

[47:55]

So going back to that word, verify, what that means, again, an association that means to me is somewhere in the words of supposedly Shakyamuni Buddha, he said, don't just take my word for it, try it out yourself, and in a sense, verify it, the truth of it. So to me, that we're practicing, we're also verifying, or that's our, that's our, what's the word, predicate, prerogative, We can practice it, but we also can, we also, it's up to us to verify. So, Frank, I would say, or going back, just making a light comment, we practice it, and as Roshi said, we see what we see. We know this is our experience. And I think it's okay, I feel, I have... My experience with Suzuki Moshi, even though I know he had strong differences of point of view or opinion from others, I never heard him use harsh words like that toward others.

[49:04]

I mean, he would maybe speak harshly to a student. I think that's a different context. But again, why would he speak harshly to people that he doesn't know, doesn't know firsthand, who preceded him by generations or centuries? who he only knows of through their words, which were perhaps written down by them. In other words, I have been apprehensive of Dogen for being so critical for so far removed. And running it through my own experience with Suzuki Roshi, I find that it's odd. I mean, I question. I won't go so far as to say that he's wrong, but I do question it. You question Dogen's way of being so... Harsh to people he doesn't know firsthand. But going back to the word verify, which I think is what we're doing, and I absolutely love it, that based on our practice, our collective hundreds of years of practicing in this room, that we get the opportunity to stick our necks out to verify it or not.

[50:12]

Yes. I would just say I think we need to keep in mind who Dogen's audience is, which is primarily his own students and followers, so in terms of who he's writing for and who's going to be exposed to the writings in his lifetime, we're in a perspective where we're exposed to all sorts of different teachings and we're getting kind of second, you know, from so far away in time or whatever, whereas if he's speaking to people who've already made a commitment to his path and so forth, part of it might just be skillful means to kind of keep them from get confused or distracted with other, you know, competing points of view. You know, if he's just writing for monks and so forth, he might want them to just be very clear about what he wants them to do in these writings. Since, you know, he's not sitting right there in front of us, he comes off a little bit different. I mean, I share your experience like, whoa, easy guy. Who's he writing for, and is that really just such a point? And that's what I keep doing.

[51:13]

You know, because that's actually, if I may say, a very interesting point. Who was he writing for? There's another book, something called Soto Zen in Medieval Japan, which the whole book is devoted to Dogen and his immediate disciples, from Dogen himself to the people who he was practicing with up through Keizon. And they were a strange lot. You actually feel wonderful heartened by the strangeness of my contemporaries. You have this room, and the people that I studied with under Suzuki Roshi were all eccentric. Anyway, there's a whole world that we don't have the opportunity to go into now, but who was he talking to? So that's a good point. I don't know what to do with this, but I think also it's true in a way that actually Dogen is here and that he was writing this exactly for us.

[52:19]

Especially given what you said earlier about about the transmission of the Dogen lineage and that. Also in tying in with this piece in verifying the words of the Master that he writes about. Also, of course, in this process, we're verifying for ourselves the words we've done by participating in sitting together in this process. I'm having two branches on the word verifying. One is viewing it as to find it true or accept it as true, and the other one is to make it true by studying and participating, which surprised me because until this discussion I hadn't thought of it in that way.

[53:29]

I would add a third, to try it on as if it were true. And maybe some of the, it's interesting that y'all are having that reaction of the finger wagging. Reading it alone, going away from the text, I'd read it and I'd walk around and then feel guilty that I wasn't really getting serious about this. I wasn't sitting enough, I wasn't pointed enough, I was somehow just not right in there. And maybe that's the purpose of that tone is to get you to snap to instead of just sort of being sloppy around. So I kind of resent it, but then in a way that sort of chastening is beneficial for me to re-examine what I am doing because I can get off there on my own tangent and verify that for myself.

[54:34]

Yep, I'm doing it right and everything I do is great because, of course, that doesn't last very long. You know, just to take what Dan said about this notion of verifying, I mean, filming Buddha, I mean, probably everybody in this room knows this, but I'll just say it anyways, but they weren't just any old words, they were his dying words, like the very last thing that Buddha wanted to say was... You know, you're on your own. Don't believe me. Check it out. And so this has big impact to me, and I see it as a very critical, maybe the most important part of being a student is that sense of verification. It seems like that sense of correct transmission and that question of is there an incorrect transmission and holding that question, it bothers me.

[55:46]

It's the fear that I would sit for 30 years and be practicing the wrong practice for something, but it's not getting caught up in the fear, but the question of is there an incorrect transmission. That's a big theme in Dogen's writing that I perceive, that he uses that phrase, correct transmission of something, again and again and again and again. And I have taken that to mean that he was acutely aware of what he perceived as not adequate to the transmission. And again, this may not be the opportunity to examine that quality of it, other than just to flag it and note it, that it seemed to be something he was it's correct to use the word fanatical, but he was intensely occupied with that notion.

[56:48]

And I think he was doing, what I feel from him, he was making absolutely every effort that he could do to clarify what that meant. And so I do appreciate that whether it seems funny and cranky in the larger context, I feel his effort, that he was aware of something he thought might be slack, Incomplete, insufficient. And so we may find some criticism in him, but I think he was, anyway, he was really looking at that. And I think our style is... tends to be more tolerant. I don't think Dogon could have had a guest season. He didn't like men and women practicing together after a while. Well, and I think we have many people who come through here who do different kinds of meditation, different kinds of views on life and practice and enlightenment and spirituality. I think by nature, being here and practicing with people, we have to be fairly broad in our

[57:54]

and accepting how people choose different ways. But I appreciate what Dogen has said. You know, that kind of, you know, wake up, pay attention. What is true. Anyone else in this particular aspect? Am I in the right place? Am I sitting in the right place at the right time? Am I in the correct transmission? You have to verify that for yourself. Well, I think this theme that's come up is an interesting one. I think that we have to take out the politics and polemics from Dodin.

[59:04]

What does polemics mean? He's trying to establish this particular point of view in a certain way. And that's his main consideration, not the truth. His main consideration is to establish a point of view. I'm using it, though. And then, okay, so if we take that out and then we see his definiteness. And I imagine Dogen was a kind of cranky kind of guy. And I don't imagine he was being so compassionate. I'm sure he felt for him compassion meant connectedness, not so much Tolerance? Tolerance, but more connectedness. But he was in a... And he's writing. There's not much tradition of writing.

[60:06]

Dogen is quite unusual in writing down this stuff. And you can be sure that the other teachers, you know, contemporaries and his predecessors, were, you know, putting everybody down. They just didn't write it down. They just put them down. And I think... And Dogen was exceedingly intelligent. And I think that very intelligent people like that often see in a moment a flaw in someone else's thinking. Or that they haven't quite, they might be doing Zen quite well or understand Buddhism quite well, but actually there's something not clear. And he just dismisses it. And I know some scientists who are like that. Practically no other scientist is really smart. Only this, he, or one other guy who's sort of smart. Because he agrees with me. I think Douglas is probably that kind of person.

[61:14]

But I also think he was... Japan was a small country. And I'm speaking about this in relationship to us, not just as history. Japan was a small country, not very many people. I don't know what the population of Japan was, but probably compared to Denver or something like that. Not very big. And particularly the educated part of the population. And there's an interesting theme, and some of it's in that book that you mentioned, of this natural wisdom and Daruma Shu school and the illiterate Buddhist side that Dogen brought in, and partly one of the most remarkable things Dogen did in his correct transmission is transforming the way precepts were understood. He basically stopped the transmission of the 252 precepts for men and 350 for women, as far as our lineage is concerned and Japan is concerned.

[62:21]

This is a totally radical thing to do, while all the time he's talking about doing it absolutely the way his predecessors did it. He, in fact, did one of the most remarkable things in the history of Buddhism. And when I was in Japan with Thich Nhat Hanh, He could not, Dogen Han couldn't believe that, he simply did not believe that, in fact, all the serious practitioners in Japan actually took the 252 precepts. And he met with Soto priests, and he met with Rinzai priests, and everybody talked. It can't be true. Every serious practitioner in China and Vietnam, they may take the 16 precepts, but if they're real, they then take the 252 or 350 precepts. But Dogen stopped that. That's a radical thing to do. Now, Dogen somehow... We can say that he transfused that into monastic life and the details of monastic life.

[63:25]

And one of the aspects of the details of monastic life is to create... details that are so refined they're outside our range of observation. So it's not like you have to do it right. It's that, can you observe that you're not doing it like everybody else? I mean, there's some people I practice with for years and years. You sit right beside them in Sashin and they still do it differently. It's not important that they do it exactly like me, but they're able to do it exactly like me. Because can you have that level of observation? And the precepts are about creating that kind of level of observation, a kind of excavation into the details, excavating details. But I think what Dogen, I think what we have to look at, there's an interesting book by Harold Bloom called The Western Canon.

[64:27]

And if anybody want to look at it, it's quite interesting. And one of the things he says, and I think he's right, is somebody like Shakespeare did not write about, he wasn't an artist who showed us what people were like in his time. He actually created the models for who we are now. In other words, he, of course he was the heir of his people, but he had the kind of talent, not only had a functioning vocabulary larger than any other writer, he also created more differentiated people than any other writer has created. And we now live those differentiated roles. I would say they didn't exist at his time. He actually created them from his own genius. And so somebody like Shakespeare probably was one of those rare people, like some scientists and so forth, who recognized that they're creating culture.

[65:38]

And I think Dogen recognized he was creating culture. And he came into Japan and came back from China and he saw a lot of stuff in China. And he, I think, what we have to look at here is he felt he was not transmitting Buddhism to his successors. I think he thought he was transmitting human life to Japan. And I think Suzuki Oshii had some such vision in coming to America, too. So, because he felt what we do right now is going to be what Japan does for the next hundreds of years. He was very clear. If we do it that way, oh, it may be nice, we can be tolerant of what you're doing, but if we do it that way 200 years from now, we're going to be in trouble. So I think we have to see him as a cultural transmitter. He didn't think, this Buddhism I'm practicing, this is human life. I would even say he didn't care about Buddhism.

[66:48]

Buddhism was just a way to say, this is what it means to be alive. And this is the way we will find ourselves most fully alive. And if we discover this, Japan will be on the right course. So you can see, if you have that kind of sense of... And that's not just because he was a certain kind of person. He happened to exist at a particular historical moment. And you have to have the capacity to recognize and act on this moment. And this is a big part of, in fact, a big part of Buddhist teaching, is that we could call the instantiation of each moment. Instant, this is an instant. Stant is to stand, and in means to either enter in or to have no place to stand. So to enter into a place that's so momentary, it's hardly a place to stand. And so each moment is a kind of instant. And yet each moment, in Chinese thinking, there's no abstract time and space.

[67:54]

Each moment is an instantiation or actualization of time and space. So that is time and space. That's an act of time and space. And in fact, Soto, in contrast to Rinzai, emphasizes the spatialization, as Fora points out, of thinking. And Dogen's piece, Uji, as you know. So there is the sense that when you do anything, I think in the Vedas or someplace like that, it says, only the act is sacred. Because when you act, then something happens. And often it's unpredictable. You think I'll do this, I'll do that. But you take one action and things start happening that wouldn't have happened if you just thought it. So when I pick up this bell, all time and space pour into this moment. And that's basically the Chinese way of thinking about time and space.

[68:57]

So Dogen could feel that he was at a historical point where everything was pouring into exactly how it was done. And so he had a real strong feeling. That's wrong, that's wrong. And I think, yes, it's not a flavor we like now. And what we're doing now, I would say, and what Sukyoshi did, And I can remember, there were various teachers. There was a Chinese teacher, Toulon. Remember Toulon? He took a different name. Yeah, I remember. He was a big guy. He was funny. Korean, I think. What? Manchurian. Yeah. And he used to say, all the lineages of Buddhism are in me and all the other lineages died out and never went to Japan. And he was attacking all the other teachers and Sukhyoshi. Now I told Sukhyoshi, he's saying all these things, do you think you should respond?

[69:58]

And I told him, Sukhyoshi said, oh, that's why he never responded. So, but let's look at it as not just Tsuchiroshi's, you know, wider nature or gentle nature or something, but it was a much more effective strategy. Tolan is, you know, whoever heard of him now. But in terms of an impact, Sukhiroshi's book and Sukhiroshi's... I mean, Sukhiroshi, as Maizumi Roshi's quote, which is quite good, it's going to go in the jacket of the book, Maizumi Roshi said something like, before Sukhiroshi came to the West, nobody sat. And when Sukhiroshi came to the West, he stayed in one place and sat. And now all over the Western world, people are sinning.

[71:01]

And I think Maizumi Roshi's right. There's some things Sukharshi did. And we can also say, yes, that was his nature, but it was also a strategy. And so right now, we have a guest season as a strategy. We're not just being friendly. Because we're not at a point where I can say, if I want to, that's wrong, that's... There'd be nobody here. So we say, that's right, that's right. Yes, Dan. About Dogen's strategy, I find it interesting historiologically that his disciples, those who were in his immediate sangha, were a strange lot. They were, yeah. Didn't practice what he was teaching, apparently. They weren't devoted to Shikantaza and so much of what we've been reading. Two questions. Hypothetical question.

[72:05]

Was he trying too hard? Because he seemed to have these wonderful teachings, which seem to be blossoming now in our time, were basically ignored or buried or unrecognized for hundreds of years, 600 years or so. They were not actively taught and practiced for centuries. They were hidden even. I'm not sure what the dynamic was, whether they were ignored or hidden. They were hidden. But some intentionality to have them disappear. So did he try too hard? I forget the second question anyway. Because it seems to me, Roshi, what you're saying, I think what he did do in his precision, and the precision has taken root centuries later, and I think that Suzuki Roshi felt, and of course he wasn't the first on loan, but Suzuki Roshi implanting Dogen in our midst, there's this, again, a tremendous, not just among practitioners, but people worldwide are fascinated by Dogen.

[73:17]

So maybe it was that type of precision that the Japanese couldn't assimilate or something. I don't understand that. Well, maybe we can respond to that as we go along. But it's something we have to think about. I just want to say about Harold Bloom's book Western Canon he doesn't just say the Western Canon is Shakespeare all kinds of people contributed to the Western Canon of what we think it is to be a human being and what's interesting about his point is that we're always making what it is to be a human being We manufacture what it is to be a human being. We don't just discover some nature. That's a very Buddhist way of thinking. There's no inherent nature. We generate, we develop. And Buddhism is a way of being a human being. Buddhism is a teaching about how to be a particular kind of human being.

[74:22]

And we're all deciding whether we want to be that kind of human being. Isn't that the essential and unique character that is human nature? is that we do have the capacity alone in the universe of changing profoundly and intentionally. Even if you believe in God, God can't do that. Only human can do that. That's a very Buddhist point of view. I think only Buddhists hold that point of view. It makes sense, though. You know, a lot of the, for example, the charges of intolerance and maybe almost arrogance that can be leveled at,

[75:25]

at Dogen, say, for example, and something like this, can also be seen as that kind of surety that comes in the creative process in which finally when one has created this second, maybe that's the way you're using it, second nature, I mean, we certainly don't want a painting that's sort of so tolerant of other schools that they're incorporated, unless you're Russian. But, I mean, in other words, you're going to exclude, and part of the creative process is exclusion. In fact, it's destruction. In order to channel that energy, to make it... cohere in that second nature.

[76:29]

And we don't want to build a building that's kind of lackadaisical. You know, say, oh, well, I like that support over there. I know it's weak, but I'm going to put it in because it wants to be part of our building. You're going to exclude it. You're going to take the strong supports. And so I know that, I guess, relating to my own practice, I spent many years studying painting, and now I'm not... Now I've taken the creative process part of that and put it in my practice. So I see a lot of this as where you... do recreate that. And so I'm a little more forgiving of other people's strong statements, you know, of Buddha's seven steps. I wouldn't want him to say anything else, except something really strong, because that's the instantiation of that moment.

[77:37]

Yeah, I think so too. Yeah, Frank? With these strong statements and with these strong things that you would like to keep alive, right, and build a building or build a path with strong elements, as provocative as they are, weak elements can be as helpful and provocative. You know, I think there should be a balance to... It just feels more compassionate, you know, and realistic, because I'm a bit, I don't know, weak and strong, but it all feels very, you know. Well, I think any artist recognizes their weak elements, too. Yeah, it's just, instead of being focused on the strong, you know... Well, I know, we can go to that point and say it's rigid from going, it's not strong, it's just rigid.

[78:43]

But I think, you know, a strong building also has some kill. Weak elements also have some strength, but... But as I said, as a creative entity, I can see something like Zazen Shen. It has its delimitations and exclusions. You know, it's near... It's 12.30. I think we're supposed to stop soon. So, um... Yeah, um... I think, Frank, we just have to accept Dogen was that kind of guy. You know, he's a little... We might not like him if he was here. He might be extremely annoying. But at the same time... It's nice to have him as endo.

[79:49]

Yeah. Don't let him out, though. Don't let him talk to the guests. Yeah, but... But there's wonderful fruit on his gnarly boughs. So that we have to And it may be, I think that the most realistic, useful way to look at it is not that we don't like it or there's no reason we should feel put down or excluded or something, but does his definiteness and does his polemical stance interfere with his actual expression or teaching? That may be the case. So from that point of view, we should decide whether his stance, as any stance, will be some kind of limitation. But you have to have some stand before there's anything.

[80:51]

Well, if we're going to stop, then we're going to have a lunch and then a break. And I think we start again at 3.30. How do you feel about, let's have a few minutes of, how do we want to proceed in the afternoon? Do we want to continue the same way? Would we like to, you know, see if we can do three sentences instead of two? We talked about doing small groups, breaking into small groups and having some discussion. Yeah. Will we ever actually get to Dogen's Lancet at this pace? Oh, no, this is Dogen's Lancet. The little poem at the end. Oh, well, we could skip to it if we wanted, but we... What does Dogen say? He says if you aim at a... If you shoot at a target 100 times and you miss at 99, all 100 hit it. If you hit it the hundredth time.

[81:58]

I think what we're doing is, this is the poem. And we shouldn't go faster, really, than we can do it in the kind of detail Dogen expected. What this does show us is that cancel everything for next week. This is not a practice you can do in a weekend. But if we get started on this, this is great. And I would say that we could look at practice from the point of view of seeds. And a lot of what we've done is spreading seeds around. And I would say maybe in that sense we're Buddhists or Buddhist teachers. Then we could also talk about preparing the ground for the seeds. Maybe in that sense we're more doing Dharma practice or Dharma teachers or something. And I think that's part of what we're doing here.

[83:02]

There's a lot of seeds around now. And now we've got to prepare the ground. And transmission practice is what he's talking about primarily, is sharing the fruits. And I think that's also what we're doing now, taking the fruits of our practice and sharing them. Yeah. There's a word, I believe, that you used in the past. The word, and I think Dogen is doing it here, where he's, what he says, he was simultaneously demonstrating what he's talking about. Yeah. A metalogue. Metalogue. Yes. So I think what we're getting into, or what I would like to examine, is this next phase as metalog. He's saying something, but he also shows us how he does what he's talking.

[84:02]

Well, I think what Dan is putting out and what Koan is definitely trying to do, and why this is essentially Koan writing, it's not philosophy, is that you can only really get what he's saying if you are what he's saying. Does that make sense? In other words, the sentence asks you to realize the state of mind that he's trying to teach in this lancet. And so if you really pay attention to the sentence, the idea is, the ideal is, that it generates the mind that is teaching. I think we could say that Dogen, maybe in his disappointment with his disciples, wrote this book and realized he couldn't transmit really what he wanted to.

[85:06]

But I think that's too narrow a way to look at it. I would say that what Fran pointed out is Right, but I'd carry it a little further, which is that, yes, what Dogen is speaking about here is shamatha and vipassana. And we can understand investigation to be a Dogen's word for insight or inner seeing. But this is the Zen school, and he's establishing a Zen school. And there was, I think, a very big break with India. And if you look at the break that China made with India, you can really see how Zen and Chinese-derived Buddhism is different from Tibetan Buddhism, for example.

[86:18]

And one of the big differences is the difference between prescription or recipe and gestation. Somebody's here. Should we see what this person wants? Gestation is... means digestion or gestation? Gestation, like a baby's thinking. Okay, being... Okay, so... Um... So I think if we read this sentence as you were looking at, and I think correctly, that in this sentence is implied shamatha and vipassana. What's radical, and I think what's radical in what we're looking at right now, is the recognition that Dogen is saying that this fixed sitting itself is investigation. In other words, what distinguishes Zen from so-called Theravadan or Indian Buddhism is shamatha and vipassana are joined in one activity.

[87:26]

They're not separate activities. And Dogen is radical and says that fixed sitting itself is the very investigation called vipassana. And that's what I think we have to come to terms with. Can fixed sitting be a form of investigation? That's the radical question I think Dogon is raising here. Great question. And so I think that's what he says. He says, this study participating, corrected in fixed city, this is the investigation transmitted in the way of the Buddha. The transmission of fixed city itself is the investigation. And then he says down here, as you see, these words, what is the very skin, flesh, bones, and marrow of thinking. So here we have thinking that's bones, marrow, flesh. I mean, he means what he's saying. This is not a metaphor.

[88:27]

So, okay, when we go on this afternoon, at 3.30, I think it's a good idea to break up into three smaller groups, six or so people each, and just have a discussion among yourselves about what this means. You can have more of an intense discussion with a few people. I would come around and sit with each of the groups, which I can't do in Europe because they're speaking a foreign tongue. And then after a while, I don't know, an hour or something, we'll gather together in one group again, proceed, see what's happening. We'll keep taking actions and see where they lead.

[89:31]

And also gives me a chance to not be involved in the conversation. She's probably good too. Okay. Thank you very much. So let's sit for one minute. I don't promise I won't. Just however you are, there's still many special postures. Thank you very much, that was fun.

[91:42]

The plan is, as you know, I think we'll meet till 6.30 now We'll meet tomorrow morning at 1, I think. Is that right? Instead, up to 12.30. And then at 4, we'll have a Shosan ceremony, question and answer ceremony. And... So it can be in the... You know, this... was Dan's suggestion to have this Shosan ceremony and it implies that while we're doing this from last night a question could be evolving in you about this in relationship to this teaching and your own practice. I'd also like you to give some thought before we leave

[93:07]

Sunday, maybe after Shoshan ceremony and we have dinner, there might be a little time to talk about whether you think we should repeat something like this. And little things like, are the breaks too long? Or could we do it for four days instead of three days? Or, you know, whatever. And I'd like to hear from each somebody, at least one person, can be more, from each group, with, you know, kind of, as I said, the general direction of what you talked about plus any strongly held views or inconclusive arguments, things like that.

[94:13]

So... I'm... all ears. We open with how the discussion came to kind of support in the road. And one road was... The discussion together. In the group, the large group. On one road, on one hand, is what Dogen is saying and how that's useful, how that relates to our own experience and practice. The other hand, or the other road, is who is this guy?

[95:17]

And why is he saying these things in the way that he's saying them? And what do we think about that? Is that an important part in that?

[95:32]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_86.49